The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Fantastic Forces: 5 weeks and counting

(Another Heroclix post. Non-fans, run away!)

Though they've choked back on the flow as compared to a couple weeks ago, we're still getting an unprecedented amount of information on Fantastic Forces, a Heroclix set that has better than a month until even the pre-release events. My continuing speculation is that people at one or more levels in the marketing chain are... let's say anxious about the market interest in this set.

This will not only be the first set to include more than the one-per-case giant figure seen in the past two sets, and to include double-based figures with a new movement mechanic, it'll be the first set where the number of clix per box will be cut from 4 to3, to accomodate the larger figure in each booster box. Some of us have rolled with it, and are simply watching to see the pieces justify the change, but more than a few are standing, arms folded, with variations on "there's no way you can prove to me that this is a good move." (Hi, Grant!)

So, I suspect, the decision's been made to push more info out so that the retailers can get a better idea of how big the ripples are from each new stone in the pond. Including bystander pogs, game cards and limited edition pieces, we have the details on 61 items from the set at last count. The ones to be added today were (as the scheduled, Wednesday sneak peek) The Shocker. Yeah, yeah, those 1960s names... Still, this is a lower tier Spider-man villain bound to please a vocal handful of fans. That it's been made into a useful piece at each of his three levels is all the better.

Later in the day we got the full stats of the "Nova Blast" Johnny Storm "mail-away" figure which came up for sale online from Wizard over here, for $6.99 each. It's a fairly good piece, though not the superb one they mistakenly showed us earlier in the day - praises for which I just had to edit out of this write-up. Even in the diminished version it's left most of the fans a little more interested in knowing the details of the rumored "Nova Blast" card that will make a particular power on that dial (Pulse Wave) into a more devastating blast. A nice sculpt, too, the combination got some motors revving - though the dial version they decided on this evening -- with three opening clicks of Poison instead of the Pulse Wave we were told about earlier -- is much less exciting. (Btw, the figure will be set up on a flight stand before its release, have no fear, players.)

Possibly significant side-note: With the inclusion of this mail-away piece the Fantastic Forces set will have two Johnny Storm pieces in addition to the rookie, experienced and veteran Human Torch. I'm wondering if the stats Wizkids showed (with Pulse Wave instead of Poison, both on the dial and in the write-up) might prove to be what we'll see on the Johnny Storm super rare in the set. (Edit: Or not. One of WizKids' reps just took the blame for the error.) That would have been consistent with the move we saw earlier this week, concerning the next piece I'll discuss.

Earlier in the week they sprung the sculpt and stats for another member of the Fantastic Four, Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman. The sculpt is questionable, and the face - looking like a Michael Meyers-ish, bland, blank mask version of a young Joan Rivers - is nothing to get excited about. Frightened, perhaps, but not excited. Instead, I'll focus on the versions as game pieces. (The shot I'm showing here is of the Sue Storm LE/SR, btw, though the same sculpt is used in all of her versions. The experienced is simply becoming transparent from the waist down, and the veteran is completely transparent -- just as they did for the CT versions; shown down to the left is the experienced version from 2002.)

Featuring generally much better-constructed, more economical dials than the versions seen in 2002's Clobberin Time set, the key element everyone looked at immediately were her Defense numbers. See, with the addition of a Fantastic Four card the mechanics of the FF's team ability so that they can share each other's Defense stats no matter where they are, intended to demonstrate how Sue watches out for her teammates and uses her invisible force fields to protect them. So, people were looking for the 18s and 19s seen on her Clobberin' Time versions' dials. Well, they found them... but only in a couple places. The veteran version starts with a Defense of 18, making it the highest to be found among the baseline pieces. However, the Sue Storm limited edition/super rare has a 19 Defense.

Moreover, she's generally a best of all worlds proposition.

Like the veteran, she has a flight base. The 19 Defense on the LE is going to be significant, and when one compares the 49 pt LE to the 67 pt Vet, I'd be inclined to want to keep the points, go with the higher Defense on each of the first three clicks, and be happy. The Vet really only offers one more click of life, has Stealth down the dial and holds onto her 2 Damage a little longer. The 18 point difference is probably better off used elsewhere, especially with that opening 19 Defense being shared by teammates. Aside from improving the odds on avoiding a hit, the 19 Defense has more of a psychological impact on an opponent, and could be especially helpful in protecting Reed, with his Super Senses laid on top of it and Ben with Impervious, where people are looking at having to roll high and then hope the 2/3rds chance in their favor lets the Damage through.

Comparing the LE to the 47 pt. Experienced version simply can't be done in any way that puts the E in a good light. The LE costs 2 points more, but for that we get: The same 6 clicks of life and the same 4 clicks of Barrier at the same 6 Range, plus Flight, one more click of Stealth, a +1 to the Attack Values on the 1st, 3rd and 5th click, +2 to the first click of Defense and +1 for the 2nd through 5th. The only thing the Exp has over the LE is +1 to the Damage on the 4th click, and it's unlikely to help.

There's no way to get around it, the LE/SR Sue Storm's going to be a significant chase piece for the set, all the moreso as it's also rarer than the uniques. (ie A case has 48 boosters, and on average each case will contain 8 uniques and 4 super rares, so these super rare pieces are half as common as they already difficult to track down uniques.)

The economics of Heroclix as a business - as with any "collectible" game - demand that a significant number of the people who get hooked on it buy a great many duplicates in their search for rare, key pieces. Aside from those who do it directly, as I do, buying a case or two of each set, there are others who do it as surrogates for others, hoping to make up their expenses by the resale of the most sought-after pieces. As many will attest, if one's looking for the base set pieces, the rookie, experienced and veteran pieces, and is a little patient, they can generally be picked up on the secondary market for very little. Most of the attention, and therefore the cash, is focused on the rarer, chase pieces. Indeed, most of the uniques become easier to find and less expensive to pick up once the early excitement's died down, more boosters have been opened and more of these clix are floating around.

Getting back to Sue Storm: On the other hand, it's really only going to be considered a "must have" by players looking to work around the team ability mechanics, and collectors looking for complete sets. For home games one can some of the same effect from the earlier Clobberin' Time versions, which with their generally higher Defenses will work well with the new FF team ability. On the downside, they're all priced (point cost on the dial, that is) higher, have less of an ability to attack, generally lower Ranges (though how much of a difference is there between 4 & 6?) and tend to get Barrier only late in the dial. The new REV, which shouldn't be difficult to get hold of, will work fairly well eve if one doesn't get the LE/SR version. My biggest criticism of the new versions (aside from the sculpt) is that they've essentially wasted points by giving each of them late-dial Incapacitate, when their attack values are so low that they're unlikely to prove useful. The little patches of blue are practically Viagra tablets on a deathbed, though that analogy gets confusing if someone points out this is a female, and the analogy falls apart as soon as someone says "there are worse ways to go out." So, I withdraw the failed analogy. So to speak.

Still, for all the advance information we've gotten in such detail, it's important to remember that even when one takes away the Juggernaut, Human Torch and Ultimate Nightcrawler pieces (which we shouldn't completely, because the dials on each should be interesting -- especially Nightcrawler, who we've yet to even see and which I expect to be one of the last of the Wednesday Sneak Peeks) we know will be there as REV pieces, we still have thirteen REV slots to fill, and ten of the twelve unique slots. (The tattered, goat-legged "Ultimate" version of Dr. Doom has long since been unveiled, and the other known unique, at least in name, is a variant version of Spider-man from the long-defunct 2099 series.)

While we have been seeing full dials on everyone unveiled so far, there are signs that WizKids has clamped down on some of the avenues of information. One significant source of information for clix geeks looking for an advance info fix have been the rumored/confirmed lists by boneyard. The current list of confirmed and rumored pieces for Fantastic Forces boneyard's been maintaining has undergone some strong editing in recent weeks, with many rumored figures dropping off in one, great fall, and others slowly joining the list of strongly rumored characters. There is no simple "rumored" list anymore - only the "strongly rumored." There are only twelve names on that list with twenty three slots to fill.

There's plenty of room for suprises and "Wow!" pieces. Until we see all of those we won't really know how hard they've tried so far to generate excitement.