The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Another Wednesday

(A little more discussion on Jean Grey was added Thursday)

Compulsory plug: The Legends APA benefit auctions are approaching their final 24 hours. Some activity so far, but - understandably - I'm hoping for quite a bit more by the time these wrap late Thursday.

Okay then...

Can't we take a quick & binding vote to declare this Thursday night instead of Wednesday, so when we get up tomorrow morning it'll be Friday? We've suffered through dirty trick votes and recess appointments in the past five years, can't we bend the rules in our favor once?

A bits and pieces post:
First, channel all good thoughts and feelings to Tammy as she's in the midst of a great deal at the moment, any specifics of which are for her to elaborate on or not. Here's looking towards a good report upon her return on Friday. (See? Another reason to vote to skip Thursday this week.)

Tonight we get the kick-off of the new season of South Park with a "Return of Chef" episode, and I'm still wondering how much of the recent hub-bub was a publicity stunt. The pieces haven't fit together properly for me, but we'll see. (Post-show update: Well, hey... shows what I know!)

Wizkids decided to make this week's Wednesday sneak peek a split between two:

One about the upcoming 3D objects in the Danger Room starter set. In the mix is a retroactive reclassification of earlier 3D objects and it's going to be a bewildering read for anyone jumping in for the first time. It's making sense to me, but I'm going to let it age a few days while others iron more of the particulars out; I'll check in on it later to see how everything settled.

The other is the second character sneak peak for the starter set: Jean Grey. I put her shot up top. It's a fairly nice, versatile 50 pt character with the following dial:
A very useful 50 points. Two clicks of Telekinesis up front, Mind Control on the second and third clicks, Incapacitate on the third and fourth, then Psychic Blast on the 5th and 6th. Her Defense numbers are very steady, and she can take some damage and still be effective. Indeed, two clicks of Damage and she's at her peak for attack purposes. At first she's going to be used primarily to TK a teammate into a position to strike, since under the current rules that will allow the one moved to get into a new position and attack in the same tuen.; at least that's what most players will do. If you're operating under Doc Nebula's Heroclix House Rules you won't need to employ such chicanery, but the official rules are the official rules, and so we masses work the flinty soil...

Most of the complaints will rest on both her 6 Range and the lack of color in her Defense slot.

The 6 Range is somewhat lame, as she should be able to affect people at more than the range of a handgun, but it is what it is.

As for the defense-related complaints, while no one expects her to be tough they do expect her to be more difficult to hit, be it through Super Senses or Energy Shield/Deflection. A powerful psychic with telekinetic powers should be able to a) see it coming a little better than most and b) able to at least slightly deflect incoming attacks. Comparing her with Cyclops (shown last week), though, one could say that she is more difficult to hit with her multiple clicks of 16 Defense. Sure, Cyclops has a 17 Defense from a distance due to his Energy Shield/Deflection, but if someone is standing next to him and Jean, he's going to be the easier one to hit.

Still, Seth needed to make an economical version of her, and I believe he did a nice job. This is a very useful Jean, but definitely one who needs to be part of a team. (See additional discussion tacked to the bottom of the post.)

Speaking of a team, though, I was a little surprised to find that she and Cyclops add up to 90 points. I expected her and Cyke to be paired up, forming at least some level of team as a pair - a round 100 points - but it doesn't appear to be the case here. Hmmm. Well, I'm all the more interested in seeing how this comes out. Will we see a 110 pt. Colossus? We'll see in the weeks ahead. Colossus, Beast, Angel and Storm lie ahead.

Back to the sneak peeks we see that next week they'll be premiering the new Powers and Abilities card, which lends credence to the rumor that there will be eight Team Ability/power changes. Two of them we know (Masters of Evil and Combat Reflexres) and Hypersonic Speed is said to be a third. The specifics..? That's a week away.

Additional discussion - Revisiting Jean Grey:

I took the new piece on the run last night and didn't give it a second thought until today, when I realized (among other things) that since she's 50 points it invites a direct comparison with her Infinity Challenge veteran. Here are the two dials, side by side (click on the image for a larger view):

I've quickly seen that players' strategies have gotten accustomed to using the old Infinity Challenge version, where they came to view her as a combination Telekinetic cannon and healing machine. They were used to having her push, then getting teammates to use their X-Men Team Ability to each take a click of damage in order to restore her to full health, where she could potentially use that opening click of Support to heal them. That's the combination they saw her in, so for the most part anything to do with Attack Values -- save for that first click, where she'd need to roll to see if she can heal someone -- weren't important. As she would be staying farther back, too, the Energy Shield/Defelection granted her a Defense of 16 + 2 = 18 from ranged attack, and 19 if she was placed on hindering terrain. That's the strategy and the Jean Grey they were comfortable with.

The newer version is more versatile in terms of her aggressive powers - adding Mind Control, Incapacitate and Psychic Blast - but the lack of healing Support, lessened opening Defense at range, and only two, opening clicks of Telekinesis call for a different strategy. With only a 6 Range and a single target, too, many won't feel comfortable placing this Jean close enough to a target to use her powers.

Still, all of that's a matter of personal strategy.

What didn't occur to me until today is the question of how accurate or not she is.

Both the 2002 and this upcoming version could be faulted for lack of flight, though to be honest she really didn't use her TK that way much for the section of her career we've seen, and it tended to be a strain when she did. Often people immediately start remembering her from the Phoenix stage, when her powers were beginning to ramp up, and momentarily forget that that wasn't Jean. That was a separate entity who'd taken Jean's place while Jean herself was in a sort of protective coma, restoring herself. Still, this is a Jean from after all those events, and she did have a more powerful degree of telekinesis than she'd had prior to all of this.

This new version of Jean is distinctly from when she was part of X-Factor, shortly after her seeming return from the dead since everyone had thought she'd died on the Moon.

Now, my days of being conversant on X-Men minutiae are decades in the past, and at the rate history was being revised and layered that was going on even back then I have little idea what an accurate snapshot of this period would be... (and have to note that even Marvel hasn't come up with an entry for her in their Universe directory) though I find myself giving some weight to the objections that this Jean didn't have much if anything in the way of mind control powers. This is reinforced as I check her Wikipedia entry, particularly the section headed "Return", and am reminded that the absence of telepathy upon her revival was a plot point that included a great improvement of her telekinetic abilities. (Don't read very far in that entry, though, or eyes and/or brain will melt. Shee-ee-eesh! No wonder I dropped all that and buried the memories.)

So, I have to judge this upcoming version of Jean as being less than representative. A proper version would have had no Mind Control and been able to fly. To the extent that she has them, Jean's telepathic powers were restored at a later point.

Still, none of this makes the upcoming version useless, and in functional terms she should be fun to play. However, we are left with a version that seems to simultaneously represent aspects - talents and limitations - of Jean from different eras. As for the Mind Control... I don't know. I could chalk it up to an ability she had but for emotional reasons didn't tend to call on..? Yeah, I'm stretching here.

The truly obvious answer? Despite the X-Factor costume we've been given the Jean Grey we saw in the first two X-Men movies, where her telepathic abilities are described as being similar to Professor X's, but simply far less powerful.

It's an imperfect explanation of the piece, but it's as good as we're going to get.