Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

Heroclix: Rerunning Some Numbers

I found myself describing the lay of the land for the new Heroclix rarity/set model, which we'll see in force in late June with the release of Avengers. Having recently made a pessimistic run through the financial side of it, I figured I'd add this ultimately more optimistic look at what we might expect.

My correspondent had just made the comment that it appeared to him that the new structure favored cases over bricks. I tend to think that anyone who came through the past several releases of Heroclix has come to view bricks with some suspicion while cases have generally been a surer bet, so I'm not sure how much his opinion was based on the new info. Still, depending on where the quality control is applied, the reasoning may hold.

I can't count on it favoring either side now, unfortunately, as the focus has returned to the makeup of boosters rather than bricks and cases. We don't even have the collectible case model/target, which allowed them to bring together a full set plus set proportions of extras and arrange the boosters into bricks that are intended to be packed together in the case. Now that there is no possibility that a complete set will be in a case we can't expect them to hold to that structure. Instead, we only know that they'll be leaning on the new rarity model and providing in each booster:

1-3 commons
1 -2 uncommons
1 rare
In 1 booster out of 3, one of the commons will be replaced with a super-rare.

Now, if they keep focused just on that, then the bricks and cases will be screwed up with some characters appearing much more than they should.

Still, let's look at what the model tells us to expect in a new style case of 20 boosters, 5 clix/booster:

Between 6 & 7 of the super rares (of which there are 12)
Exactly 20 rares (of which there are 16)
Approximately 31 uncommons (of which there are 16)
Approximately 42 commons (of which there are 16)

The three to four clix that are in the wiggle room are mostly between commons and uncommons, so it's most likely they'll fall mostly as commons which is mostly reflected in the above, where there's 1 figure's wiggle room remaining.

Theoretically, (and optimistically) if they start with complete sets and distribute them in a pattern a case buyer could easily end up with a complete set of commons, uncommons and rares, and about half of the super rares -- all in a single case. The next case on the line could have roughly the other half of the super rares and the same breakdown of lower rarity levels including complete sets. That's potentially the shining ideal under the new system, though we don't know if that's truly their target and Wizkids would be foolish to ever tell us it was. Someone buying three new bricks could conceivably come within as few as one super rare of a complete set. Could. But even if he did he wouldn't have the extra super rare to trade for the one he's missing. With each clix wearing its rarity on its base via an indexing color, I'm expecting that at least at first that will weigh heavily in most trades.

Someone who buys two new cases -- 200 clix, just 8 clix over what an old style case held -- will either have a complete set or enough of each rarity level to trade for what's missing, though that presumes a rarity level parity. (ie that the other super rares will be valued essentially the same as the Spider-man we've seen.)

Said 2-case/4-brick buyer will, however, have roughly 68 extra commons, 46 extra uncommons, 24 extra rares and between 0 and 2 extra super rares.

The combination of a set that's 62.5% of the old set size and a marketing model that calls for the buyer to buy as much product as he used to to complete a set translates into many more extras being generated. Unless the packing/figure distribution is highly imbalanced it might not look as bad at first because we'll no longer have REV sets, and so the sculpts will only be seen for a particular rarity level. (eg We won't have the same sculpt showing up on common, uncommon and rare bases.)

So, if the figures are evenly distributed, someone who buys two of the new cases will expect to see roughly 4 extras of each common, 3 extras of each uncommon, and 1-2 extras of each rare.

At the case level (which, again, is two bricks -- though it'll hopefully be highly important that they be bricks from the same case), because we have to take the 16, 16, 16 out of it for a set of the first three rarity levels, we would expect (again, if figures are well-distributed) one to two extra of each common, roughly 1 of each uncommon, and 1 extra of four of the rares... which doesn't seem bad at all. Under that scheme the Red Skull, which is an uncommon, would be expect to see between 1 and 2 times in a case. If we can believe the rarity color seen in the ad, the same will hold for Taskmaster. So, I'm not expecting to be "swimming" in Red Skulls and Taskmasters.

Imbalances of particular figures are likely, though, so one might end up with 10 or more extras of a single piece and potentially none of another within the same rarity; hopefully that sort of thing won't happen, but we won't know until people are opening cases.

At the moment, six weeks out from the set's release, I'm guardedly optimistic concerning the distribution when it comes to the question of collectibility.