Heroclix Sneak Peek Wednesdays continue
This week it's seven changes to the Powers and Abilities. Also, today starts the one week of voting for the next one or two Collector's Sets.
If in the next day or so, as the info sinks in, I have a revised take on them I'll add a Second Pass note.
Taking the simpler, second item first, the choices are:
Dark Horse HeroClix: B.P.R.D.If you don't happen to know who some or all of these groups represent, then here are some very brief descriptions.
Dark Horse HeroClix: Grendel
Wildstorm HeroClix: Astro City
DC HeroClix: Metal Men
Marvel HeroClix: 2099
I've already voted. My choices?
1 Dark Horse HeroClix: B.P.R.D. In terms of characters of interest and variety this would be an easy sale for me. The B.P.R.D. was one of the two major selling points of Indyclix for me at the time. (Unfortunately for me, being here in the U.S., the other was the 2000 AD line.) A cool addition, this also strikes me as an another interesting, unofficial, potential theme bridge for Heroclix/Horrorclix blends. I'm expecting this to be one of the top two.
2 DC HeroClix: Metal Men: Goofy '60s concept that still holds charm for me. If they go with the classic team of Gold, Platinum, Iron, Lead, Mercury and Tin along with Doc Magnus it makes for a perfect seven figures. I liked them better back when they were simply robots with software "responsometers" to convincingly mimic emotions, but while I wasn't looking someone retconned them into being human souls captured in these forms. Feh. Also, Gold was "killed" and Magnus sacrificed his life to become the robot Veridium... so maybe he'll be in the mix that way... if it's made. I expect this set to only beat out Grendel but be trumped by the other three.
3. Marvel HeroClix: 2099 Eh. Never a strong fan of the concept. Still, they're at least based - however loosely in most respects - on characters I care about. I'd likely even just order it for the Doom and Hulk. As I reconsider it this could bounce up fairly quickly into a third, main choice. As with B.P.R.D. I expect this to be one of the top two.
4. Wildstorm HeroClix: Astro City Back within the first year or so of the concept I was a big fan, but long ago any specific character interest there evaporated and it's become for me nothing but a pastiche of other characters. From this remove they may as well be City of Heroes pieces for all of the interest they'd evoke in me as characters. Generic heroes, my interest in them would be almost solely one of sculpts and dials, with no personal connection to the characters.
5. Dark Horse HeroClix: Grendel A couple decades back I'd have been into this, but this now strikes me as an over-hyped, under-performing "universe" of characters who have little to no significance for me as characters. 80's smoke and mirrors masquerading as hip, high concept. Or maybe it's just that anything touched by the horrible, pseudo-talented Pander Bros. becomes dead to me? Either way, the subjective result appears the same. Should look cool and I'm sure Seth will do some nice dials, but if one's going to go after Matt Wagner items for a set I'd have much preferred Mage. Had that been the choice it would have been my #1 pick in this group.
It'll be interesting to see how the voting goes over the next week.
As for the changes made to Powers and Abilities, I'm not swayed strongly one way or the other. The earliest change they annouced, weeks ago, that Combat Reflexes will also provide a +2 to the Defense for close combat attacks remains perhaps the strongest, most welcome change in the mix. Still, these are just sinking in.
Earthbound is essentially as we expected, now stretching to cover Giants, too, so dials can now be created which can mimic a character changing size. It remains to be seen how they've changed the mechanics of Giants themselves, though I'm fully expecting that they'll at least be able to carry another, non-giant character.
Force Blast now involved a roll of a single die, but all the die determines is how many spaces the target - who is always hit - will be moved. It makes it less predictable, but potentially more useful. (I still would prefer to house rule in an attack roll with at least a shot at a stun effect with a possible Incapacitate, but that's me.) Second Pass: Iron Man and similar, repulsor ray-weilding characters still appear to be short-changed by the inability to use this over distance. F.B. will become more useful as we're seeing more Plasticity appear on dials and with the change to Combat Reflexes meaning there will be more times than ever when being able to reliably push someone away from close contact will be critical. I could have said that much without any change to F.B., though. As I look at a piece like Anthony Stark, whose F.B. clicks are lined up with 3 Damage... I'm not sure. A Feat card or two keyed to Force Blast could be all that's needed to supply a fix.
Hypersonic Speed. All the changes are to Option 1, the move/attack/move option. First, it's changed to a Power Action, so the days of JLA or Avenger super Speedsters getting to use that option without it counting against their team's actions will vanish at or around the end of June. Next, they cut the range for ranged attacks using this option in half. A Solomonic decision, I suppose, and it's more of an improvement than not. Second pass: No, it seems less attractive to me now. The halving of the Range attack was a reasonable fix, but changing HSS to a Power Action now means someone with Super Strength and Hypersonic Speed can't use Unstoppable with HSS for its full effect. So, no longer can Black Adam or Count Nefaria move at super speed, smash through a wall and continue to move, possibly even attacking. It still allows Nefaria to ignore hindering terrain for movement (using Unstoppable), but I don't see the advantage in the reassignment as a Power Action.
Pulse Wave is changed minorly, solely to make in impossible for a player to only use this power to knock friendly pieces off their activation clicks. Now an opponent has to be in the strike zone, preventing the complete perversion of the power's original intent.
Psychic Blast and Exploit Weakness are functionally unchanged, being subject only to a new bit of terminology. Penetrating Damage is now the official term for damage that can’t be reduced by powers and effects that reduce damage dealt.
Shape Change gets a good boost, as it's now activated on either a 5 or 6, so one third of the time it'll work. Hardly perfect, but it's a positive tweak. Most of us are presuming that this change of mechanics will also carry over to the Skrull TA, as we know some of the TAs will be undergoing changes. (All three levels of DC's Enchantress get a nice boost with this, as they have one or more clicks where both Shape Change and Super Senses are in play.)
Finally, Support gets a little while having some taken off the top. On the plus side, any successful Support roll will at least result in a click of healing. On the minus side, it's been limited in a fashion similar to Regeneration, in that the maximum healing that can be done is 4 clicks. (Roll a 6-sided die, subtract 2 from the result, treat any 0 or negative result as 1.)
There are more changes in store on the PAC card, we're told, but I have little reason to think it'll be on the powers themselves, but will instead be changes to the Team Abilities -- which I'm looking forward to, too. They're aiming to hit those next week, and I'm guessing then - or between now and then - they'll give us more of the dials for the X-Men in the Danger Room set.
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Comments
Making Support less effective instead of more troubles me. I know, Support pieces are a pain, but the solution to that is to kill them, since they're almost always useless for anything BUT Support. I restrict Support pieces to one per team, which seems to keep it in hand.
I think you have a brilliant idea; Force Blast should be usable at range. I've never used the power in all the games I've played, but if I could stand back and knock someone off a building at range with it, I very well might. Having it give out an Incapacitation token, too... hmmm. Maybe something like, it's still automatic when you're adjacent, but you need to make an attack roll to do it at range, or to get the Incapacitation token? I think I'm going to have to make another modification to my House Rules...
Pulse Wave -- yeah, I admit, there's no correspondence in comics for using it to get your teammates off their activation click, but there is also no correspondence in comics for an activation click it takes ten minutes of battle time to get rid of, either. I'm going to have to do something about Activation Clicks. I just don't know what. Maybe a rule that allows any fig to take an action token and a click of damage any time their controller chooses... Yeah. That might work well. It would certainly provide more control over your dial.
Shape Change is pretty much exactly what I've done, but they haven't given it the offensive component I have.
Excellent post.
Anyway, the change for Support appears to be a mix of limiting miraculous cures by eliminating the 5 and 6 click healing options while also weighting it towards 1 click of healing since that'll be the result for results of 1-3. This makes sense to me, given that we're talking about an action taken in the course of battle, so I'm thinking that mostly it's going to be a field dressing/jerry rigged repair (as appropriate) and maybe a little something for the pain. So, most fixes should be for just a click; if they get more time, then more can be done. I'm fine with that. I can at least understand the rationale for it, and I don't tend to rely on medics much anyway.
Force Blast definitely needs something, and at this stage it's either going to come from house rules or Feat cards. Their latest adjustment still strikes me as very casual and only helping lower cost and/or late-dial Force Blast figures. Eh.
Activation clicks remain a pain, yes. Something we generally have to try to rush through one way or another, eating up actions and moving the piece one click closer to KO. I know we were kicking some things around about them months ago, but I can't easily recall if we came up with anything useful aside from how some activation clicks should be -- ie low Defense but with Invulnerability to keep them from skidding too far into their dial. That's what someone like the Hulk should have.
I'm vaguely recalling thoughts of some special mechanic that would allow a strike to have weighted potential to either only do 1 click of damage or KO the character straightaway, figuring that that's mostly what happens in the comics, with someone transforming into or even functionally being replaced with a different character -- someone who really hasn't taken any damage.
Thanks for the comments! Sorry it took a while to get back to them.
The kicker is, you use victory points to pay for them. Knock off a 50 point opposing character, you have 50 points you can spend to play your cards. This would mean that for a while, at least, every game would have to be played without Feat Cards, which I think, given how some Feat Cards are used so consistently as to be nearly abusive (Fortitude, Armor Piercing, In Contact With Oracle), would be an improvement, as would limiting the effect (when it's in play) to one round only.
This would also allow you to play certain Feat Cards in response to other Feat Cards, or defensively. When someone comes up and Outwits your Ares' Impervious, you could play a Fortitude to defeat the move.
I haven't thought it all through -- obviously, cards like Thunderbolts and In Contact With Oracle would be so inhibited by the 'one turn only' effect that they might become unplayable, and Lazarus Pit would be straight up unworkable under this system. But, still, it strikes me as a workable idea.
Flashbang makes no sense on my system. I'm going to have to rewrite it entirely, perhaps simply making Smoke Cloud a free action entirely if you don't move and use it.