Miraclo Miles

The Coming Of Galactus: Week Two Pictured here is the participation prize - Terrax the Tamer - from this week's Coming of Galactus tournament, which, for me, began at 11:30 Saturday morning. The sculptor is to be commended for capturing the look of the character from John Byrne's original presentation of the character. As with last week's kick-off, the turnout was good and the event was fun. Not pulling an assortment I really felt like fielding straight from the booster, I fielded last week's participation prize, the Silver Surfer , along with the 65 pt Grim Reaper , who was present as a Perplex assist to the Surfer and a secondary attacker. I was amazed that so many of the Surfer players (though quite a few didn't play him) didn't seem to have a clue about Soaring. My first round was against a Surfer, Crossbones and a Ken Hale bystander. He was definitely one of those competitive players who did not take the road to defeat well - not that anyone enjoys a loss....

Battles! This weekend, at least for me, kicked off the Coming of Galactus series of weekly tournaments. For me, they'll be Saturday events. Getting some packages to the post office was most of the first order of business, an unexpected problem and delay in the mix, but that's since been dealt with. By Monday the last bits will be on their way and hopefully by Wednesday all will be where it's supposed to be. The first event went off well. I not only pulled a Super Rare, I pulled one that was solid for this format and was one of the two I was looking to bring my set closer to completion: Winter Soldier . Another Guardsman in the mix (not that I played him, but if I'm going to pull another duplicate at least this virtually generic bit of armor is one I'll be aiming to hold onto; that makes 7 for me, so if I want a bunch of lame-ish flying guards for a Vault scenario, I'm on the way; they will help dress up a SHIELD force, too) and the Angry Surfer, along wit...

Heraldry The heralds of Galactus that will be participation prizes in a succession of four events starting next week have begun to arrive at venues, and the info's being spread around. (Updated: Wizkids posted the info.) Week One: The Silver Surfer A somewhat angry-looking Surfer, eh? The special power (Cosmic Speed) is similar to the super rare Quicksilver's from this set, and presumably represents a savings over what simply giving him Hypersonic Speed for those clicks would cost. A very active piece, as with all of the heralds in this series the Power Cosmic's immunity to Outwit and built-in Willpower will allow him to be active two out of three turns. He should do nicely in this format, and since a herald from the previous week can be substituted for part of one's team in the following week, I expect to see many Silver Surfers during week two, though perhaps the lack of a prize to be won will find more people deciding to simply have fun by playing teams made strict...

So, Cap. Where are you? Above is a shot from an early flier from GAMA back in April. A piece I was looking forward to, as it appeared to be a WWII-era, mainstream Captain America. Then we hit this weekend, with pics of pieces we're told were pulled from boosters, including this short bus, WWII-era, Ultimates Cap... ... which looks like a fan-made mod I'd be embarrassed to display were it my work. So... is the obviously better, earlier one a mistake -- something they decided to save for a later set? Is it - perhaps worst of all - part of a set of chase figures? The high quality of the sculpt up top would support it being a chase-level piece. ::sigh:: Chase figures in Avengers could be a breaker for me, especially ones such as this. I could conceivably drop the game after getting what I've already committed to for this set. As with everything else in clix, we'll see when we actually get to see. I know it's all a silly little hobby, but it's unfortunate to feel th...

The List -- A Second Pass Still too soon to really know what'll work and what won't (among the majority, which remains unseen) but that won't stop me from combing over the list again. I started doing this Friday night, but decided I'd already spent more than enough time on it with my previous post. Better to let it rest before wading into it again. The Bunnyman did a reaction post to it - in both the previous comment block and on his blog. Let's see... let's start just by splitting them into rarity levels and quick reactions where I haven't already given them. The commons: 1. Captain America (Ultimate)95 Is this the sculpt we saw with the smoke grenade effect at his feet, and the wings on his head so that we know... he's the Ultimates version in disguise as the 616 original..? No, as it turns out it is the Ultimates version, and it looks so fantastically crappy I will only link to the image. I'll hope for a decent dial and if it comes through I c...

The List? The List. A list of pieces, including point cost, for Avengers has begun to make the rounds. It's an odd assortment, with quite a few Ultimates pieces on it, thick on Young Avengers, and at least initially feeling thin on villains... if it's true (and the scan shown below looks reasonably legit) I'm having very mixed reactions. Well, if you want to know the seemingly likely truth, click below. Otherwise wait until next week. (Updated to include some reported dials and verifying pics.) As always, click on the image for a larger view. I'll be happy to finally see a Dragon Man, Guardsman (especially as a common, since the armor was used generically), and several of the Invaders/Invaders-era heroes. Will Yondu have a special power that's a built-in Trick Shot? A 29 pt Stingray is dismissive even for that character. He deserves much more than that. Iron Widow, or at least the front money is indicating it, may be an Ultimates version of the Black Widow with Sta...

Wasps! Today's sneak peeks from next week's Avengers set are the Wasps of two worlds . Starting with the lower numbered one, we have the Ultimates Wasp -- and so technically her first appearance in clix form. For my purposes it'll be just another 616 (mainstream universe) Wasp variant despite the killer bee shirt. An aggressive piece (as seems to be the Ultimates' trendy trend) with a stealth-busting TA, she could definitely be of use to a team- especially one with any wildcards - though her low Speeds and short range (4) combined with being a flier with no move and attack ability will mean she's going to be taking a while getting where the action is. She could end up being a good harassing piece, and someone to help tie up an ranged-hitting threat, but at 49 points - a hair under one sixth of a 300 pt team - she's enough of a target to warrant going after in her own right. The late-dial Stealth and ES/D could help her be an effective blocking element. As no...

Dyspeptic Duos? [Now completed.] On HCRealms someone spotted an ad on Newsarama that ran a week early, and captured this ad image, the lower part of which may show us the first of the Duo Character pieces we'll be seeing in the game. I'm disappointed because I'd hoped the mechanic would be held exclusively for characters who were physically linked or who simply don't operate more than a few feet from each other. Cap & Bucky, though? If it's true, then it's a shoo-in that we'll be seeing a Batman & Robin duo in a DC set. What is, is , so I'll roll with it and try to make the best of the combination as it's presented. Hopefully the combined dial will be both formidable and economical, as it allows two actions to be taken in the same turn... but any time I try fielding it I know I'm going to keep fighting the impulse to want Bucky to circle around back of the enemies while Cap waits a few moments and then rushes them head-on. Hopefully mos...

Some (Quick) Avengers Catch-up With just hours more than a week until the set releases, Wizkids did an afternoon update of their Avengers Gallery . Now we're officially up to 20 entries, 19 of which are going to emerge from boosters, and 11 of those are clix. The clix detail additions are for Moon Knight and an Ultimates version of the Falcon . For 38 points, the Moon Knight appears to be an economical piece with some options. The Avengers TA, three opening clicks of Super Strength, an opening and two closing clicks of Stealth, and three Pounceable clicks of Leap/Climb. An opening click of Energy Shield/Deflection (I'm expecting an errata on that, to whatever they really want to call it with respect to him being a moving target) to help keep him from being tagged from range if he's out in the open, then one of Combat Reflexes to let him evade damage from a target he's moved adjacent to. His special power, noted by the red dots I've placed on his final three cli...

More Avengers Buzz Three weeks from now the Avengers Heroclix set will be hitting stores, and the latest issue of Critical Hit (it's a pdf) four sneak peeks of different stripes in it. One new character and three Feats. The character is one launched in the early '90s, and one I've forgotten about periodically until one fan or another mentioned him: Darkhawk . (Click on the image for a larger view; I'm keeping him small here so as to not throw the text structure off too much nor feel that I have to write multiple paragraphs on him.) The version provided is a rookie, and at #19 in the set he's an uncommon, so if my somewhat optimistic (in terms of quality control) previous analysis holds he'll show up twice per case. The keywords he's been given are Excelsior, Loners, New Warriors, Teen, and West Coast Avengers. (To be perfectly frank, while I've picked up the Loners reference from some current fans - a recently-formed team - I have no idea what the ...

Anything You Can Do, He... Might Do Better Today's Avengers Heroclix sneak peek is Taskmaster . Presumably they wanted to get it out of the way before getting too close to the holiday weekend. Eventually they'll get these into the Avengers gallery , but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it. Last week's Black Panther still isn't in there. In the meantime let's jump right in. (As ever, click an image for a better view.) Initial reactions are very mixed on this one. Paying 140 points for a grounded, single target figure with a 6 range makes him immediately a tough sell. He starts off competent and reasonably solid, with his special powers only kicking in once he's taken some damage. By his third click he starts in with his Photographic Reflexes in his Attack Value slot. It essentially gives one the option of copying someone else's Attack or Defense Value if they're within 6 squares of him and he has a clear line of fire. This is fairly versati...

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, whic...