The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Saturday. Whenever.

(Local techno-upgrade followed by much ado about upcoming clix, so read or skip as you wish.)

Much local running around today.

Having been nudged to get the kids (for nearly all intents ages 13 & 15) set up with cell phones, and knowing I resolutely that I did not intend to do that using an expansion of the awful AT&T plan we currently had, I'd been keeping eyes and ears open for the best plans available. I'm a Crypt Leak & Abbygal (feel free to let me know if you two want me to refer to you any differently, though "Batman & Robin"would probably be a little more kinky than anyone would be comfortable with) had had a pleasant change-over to T-Mobile recently, so I pointed Ari in that direction. Sure enough, that was looking pretty good.

After I took care of some errands (primarily quickly checking on some samples for a rush project at the lab, and finally getting a disc of computer fixes and a FCBD promo Batman on their way to Grant) we went off to the local T-Mobile store.

Festooned with balloons inside and out for "customer appreciation day" it turned out to be a good trip. We ended up with four lines, each with its own, nifty (god, I'm old), color-screened phone, each complete with a built-in camera, a pool of minutes we'll share that's far more than we'll go through in a month, unlimited weekend and weeknight (9pm - 7am) minutes and no charge at all on calls from one of our phones to another -- all for slightly less money than what the two, crappy, techno-dinosaur, Motorola phones on the AT&T plan was costing us. Each of the phones themselves had a list price of $199, were discounted on the spot by $149, and when we send in the mail-in rebate forms I'll get the $50 each ($200 for the benefit of the innumerate and/or hung-over) back, so the phones themselves won't have cost me anything.

I laid out a little more for a charger for use in the van and a sync hook-up so we can easily dump the photos to computer, too. (No, no test shots to be posted here so far.)

So, getting much more for a few hairs less is a good thing, and I am rightly pleased.

Lunch was out at Friday's - because it was handy, we hadn't been there in a long time, and it fit our appetites - where part of the time was spent getting used to the new hardware.

Today's mail brought me the two Tsunami Relief Hulk Heroclix I'd ordered a few weeks back ($1 from each went to the American Red Cross), so I have a different version of the translucent, green Hulk, this one complete with a fairly different dial and purple pants painted on. Ah, the classics of fashion. He should be fun to play in a game using two upcoming game cards, Double-Time and especially the sure to be wonderfully useful Unstoppable, which will be part of June 29th's Fantastic Forces set.

Unstoppable, a 5-pt card that not only allows a character with Super Strength to move over hindering terrain, but allows him to move, smash an object, and move again in the same turn, is one of those additions to the game that will see many a lesser-played character brought into the game. The nature of play on indoor maps will likely change radically. This will allow physically strong but previously horribly slow-moving clix to approach a wall, punch a hole through it, and walk through all on the same move. Just the sort of thing they should have been able to do all along. This essentially allows someone like, well, the Thing (seen here, this is the version from the upcoming set) to do what he would have previously had to do at a truly laborious pace four moves, in a single move. Much, much more life is coming to the game. If they bring in a higher-Damage version of Pounce to help bring things even farther along we'll see many characters who seldom see play, such as the Hulk, become the often-used terrors they should have been all along.

Speaking of that set, it felt as if they were hemmorhaging information between late last week and the middle of this one. Aside from the spills they were making last week, this Monday morning saw the unscheduled appearance of the interesting, but in one respect disappointing , set of dials for the already dually disappointing Yellowjacket clix. (It's a dim choice of costume for him to be in for a giant form, and the sculpt is so-so. Hopefully the actual clix won't look quite so almost cross-eyed.) The dial, along with the special rules for giants in clix, will be useful, but giving Hank Pym, someone who's supposed to be one of the top scientific minds in the Marvel universe, nary a click of Outwit or even Perplex strikes many of us as simply wrong.

More items followed over the next couple days. By the time they stopped we were up to 45 pieces from the set, between clix, pogs and cards, revealed, and this with 8 weeks (at the time) until the official retail release and a regularly-scheduled sneak peek every intervening Wednesday anyway. Providing us with complete stats at each turn, too, is unprecedented.

I figure it was mostly at the request of retailers, eager to have Wizkids toss enough rocks in the pond to really see how excited (or not) the fans are going to be about this set. See, this is the month where the comics shops ordering their clix through the distributor who handles their comics orders - Diamond - have to decide on the size of their orders. People have been running warm to cold on many aspects of the set, much of it owing to not only so many of the Marvel characters already having been tapped (this will be the 7th distinct set of Marvel clix to appear since the game launched in 2002) but the inclusion of double-sized and double-based clix in each booster causing them to change the number of clix per booster in this set from 4 to 3. How much the straw that broke the camel's back this will prove to be is still uncertain. The obvious gamble being taken is that the grumbling will die down and most will continue to buy.

After Wednesday night - with extra, unannounced disclosures happening Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday - they were dramatically silent through Thursday, but on Friday they made the formal announcement for the replacement DC base set, Icons. Separate announcements were made for the starter set and boosters.

As is generally the case, the far less frequent DC sets tend to look at what the Marvel sets have done and do it better. In this case, unlike Marvel's replacement base set, Universe, this new starting point for the DC clix sees all new sculpts and dials of mostly "iconic" characters, rather than mostly just reissuing old sculpts and dials. The map included in the Universe set was not only a version cobbled together from two earlier maps, it was chopped down to a much smaller size - presumably to make a new player's introductory games tighter, faster affairs. On that level it was probably a good idea, but only on that level; the established players saw it as a disappointment.

The map we'll see in Iconswill be new and full-sized and is rumored to be a good one, which will be strongly welcomed by players who haven't seen a new map from Wizkids in the better part of two years.

Like Universe, the Icons starters will include 6 clix that aren't to be found in the loose boosters, so even those not interested in collecting the rest of the set will have no reason to skip the starter kit. Everything of consequence in it will be new. In order to sweeten the appeal of buying a case of the set they shrunk the size to 62 pieces (as opposed to the 104 pieces we'll see in the upcoming Fantastic Forces, which is already a slightly smaller set - by 9 clix - than the preceding few sets) so that, aside from half of the super rares, a player should be able to collect the entire set by buying the starter and a case. He'll likely have to do a little trading of a few extras, but it should work out neatly. To give you a sense of how reduced this is in size, in a normal set there would be 28 characters in the main set who are each presented as rookie, experienced and veteran versions. In Icons that's cut in half, to 14.

The combined strategy for this set - including what appear to be better sculpts and what will almost certainly be dials as good or better than what we've seen for these characters, not to mention that most of the characters will be well-known - appears sound. The fan response has been very positive, and probably the most anticipated REV in the set will be Superman, since he was so dreadfully under-powered in DC's debut set, Hypertime. Even his veteran version in that set has been eschewed by most players for being too limited. The 155 pt rookie was an absolute embarassment, giving the world a Superman incapable of even breaking through a wall without the aid of an object to use as a bludgeon. I'm sure Lois' cruel laughter was more than even Viagra could overcome...