A few thoughts on Clixmageddon 2015

I played at the recent local Clixmageddon held in Neutral Grounds Centris yesterday, May 30. I ran my Team Avengers build - Red Wolf & Lobo, two Abysses, Hulkbuster, and AOU gravfeed Hulk, empowered by the Phoenix Force. I enjoyed myself somewhat, mainly for the social aspect of the event, truth be told - I was there with some friends, and made a couple of new ones - but yet again, as always with these things, the whole thing was an eye-opener for me.

Clixma 2015 pretty much settled in my head that Heroclix is at its most balanced in 300- to 400-point builds - that is when smaller-yield (and potentially more strategic) figs are used in favour of larger-yield (and more costly) figs, with the hitting power averaging at around 10 Attack for 3 Damage, the Defense is at 16 with +2 boosts thanks to ESD or CR, with plenty of Outwitters and Probbers and some Perplexers, each team consisting of three to five figs max, and scalpels yield more results than axes.

With Clixma's thousand-point build, you generally get either maxxed-out teambases (600 points) or single-fig tanks (usually at 200+ points) with an army of keyworded minions for the initiative roll boosts and to pump-up the tank fig's Attack and Damage values. To whit, my second fight yesterday was to an Iron Man boosted by six Recorder #451s and a Bob, supported by two Researchers (for the additional +s for initiative) and the Phoenix Force - on his first turn, Iron Man was boosted six times for all combat values, plus the Phoenix Force boosts, plus a couple of Perplexes, giving him 19 Range with 19 Attack for 8 Damage with Energy Explosion, and supported by 24 Defense, with Bob allowing Iron Man no need for line of fire to eliminate my figs, three of which he killed in just his first turn.

Another realisation is how the modern day rules and PAC are actually the best and fairest iterations of the rules and PAC so far - more pointedly, apparently, there was no first turn immunity back in the day, and no Rule of Three, and so you got all these alpha strike builds that were boosted so much they could eliminate more than half of your team in just the first turn (ie, the Iron Man build I went up against).

Just to illustrate the levels of absurdity these unrestricted thousand-point builds could reach: the final match was between a DC team boosted by Lantern Rings and Entities and a Shi'ar army build with a teambase centerpiece, only the DC team had about 25 to 30 Mera pogs and four New52 Aquamen who have a trait that gives them +1 for each Mera character that dies in their team, and so as the Shi'ar teambase teleported to the Aquamen's side of the map and Pulse Waved 23 Mera, the four Aquamen's Speed, Attack, Defense, and Damage were all boosted +23, which meant 31 Speed, 33 Attack, 41 Defense, and 27 Damage for four figs, who were then further boosted with two PPB and one Outwit thanks to four Entities - even when the Shi'ar teambase could attack four times with 19 Attack for 8 Damage, mathematically it can't hit against a 41 Defense fig, not even with three dice all rolling sixes, and you can't roll enough CritHits (eight CritHits for each Aquaman) to eliminate them with any efficiency and proficiency. Not to dump on the two finalists' talent and abilities and strategic acumen, as I've watched them play enough times - one I've played against in my first tourney ever - and they are two of the top five best Clix players so far in the local scene, but my goodness, was that Aquamen-Meras build so insanely abusive. Again, great players, but abusive builds. But it was great to watch, though!

Random Bullshit:

* I wanted to play against that Ziran build!

* Someone else ran a variation of the Seyfert/Sentinel team I built as my alternate team, only with an extra Sentinel instead of Ragnarok - and they were doing well, but was then disqualified as he wasn't using regulation dice for that game (the guy had about six pairs of regulation dice in his box, though, so I felt really bad for him because he was doing so well with the build). The guy he was playing with is a friend of mine, and being such a great sport, he suggested Team Sentinel's elimination be decided by a coin toss (heads = elimination, tails = continue the game), which my friend won. I need to buy that guy a beer!

* The Marvel fights were more engaged, more prone to contact attacks, than the DC fights - the final game more or less represented that difference between strategies: the Shi'ar build boosted itself with Perplexes then went up close and personal to hit the DC team, while the DC team just sat back and relaxed and waited for the boosts to come to it via collateral damage.

* The Marvel fights had teambases and giant figs/colossals - and most everyone used Phoenix Forces - while DC had Green Lantern Power Batteries (I think everyone who used a Power Battery used the Green one) and Entities galore.

* And all my friends would be happy to hear that I'm back to running regular teams!

Team Robot!

Raring for a fight.

The most abusive team build I've ever built.

Battle Report Short, #003

Swordsman, D-Man, Hellcat, and Manifold VS Sandman, Veil, Cammi, and Silverclaw - Team Swordsman won, but it was a very very very close fight all thanks to Veil's poisonous Smoke Cloud power. Team Sandman dominated the map once again with their Smoke Clouds, Barriers, and Mines, but thanks to really really bad rolls - four consecutive critical misses, a lot of attack rolls that missed by one - and Team Swordsman's team probs, Team Sandman lost. But they put up a very very very good fight, and the final act - Swordsman VS Veil - came down to Veil's failed Shape Change roll: if it had rolled correctly, Swordsman would've taken 4 damage from Veil's poisonous Smoke Clouds, thoroughly killing him (Swordsman was in his last two clicks, unprotected by reducers).

What I want to verify, though, is the legality of placing a Smoke Cloud market on a square occupied by an opponent - the rule book and PAC don't say anything otherwise, and it seems logical that you can do that, but still, worth confirming.

Battle Report Short, #002

Sandman, Cammi, Silverclaw, and Veil VS Gluttony, Firestorm, and STAR Labs Researcher with Pandora's Box - Quite amazed how Sandman's team dominated the map with Barrier and Smoke Cloud and Cammi's mines. Sandman's Poison proved to be quite the boon for taking down Gluttony, and his special Barrier/Smoke Cloud with free placement really made Sandman a very very mobile fig, while Veil's Poisonous Smoke Cloud is great for forcing opposing figs to move around the board.

What really saved the game for Sandman's team was the Sidestep+Poison combo - seeing how both Poison and Sidestep all happen at Beginning of Turn, you can Sidestep your fig into adjacency then declare Poison. It's peck-&-scratch tactic, but that's one free damage on top of an action token attack. Time to develop more strategies to accomodate this tactic.

Team-ups to consider, #005

I managed to finally pull this guy from our last case, and so now I know what all the fuss is about, and so now I'm thinking about stripped down non-Doop non-entity builds for him, and have so far come up with this - 

- a placement-happy relics- & resource-negating team. Thinking about running this team with a Book-and-Hammer resource to give Gluttony some extra hitting capacity. We'll see how this build'll work out!

Battle Report Shorts #001

Team Ragnarok VS Hyperion Prime and a Phoenix Force-emboldened Trick Shot - I won this game fairly quickly and without much stress thanks to Seyfert's Sentinel trait combo'd with Ragnarok's high combat values supported by Harley Quinn's Puddin trait. At any given turn, Ragnarok could attack twice for 5 damage each rolling from 12 attack (with Running Shot and Energy Explosion, and supported by Harley's Perplex and Prob [and his Impervious and Shape Change powers ain't too shabby, too]), which he did to both Hyperion Prime and Trick Shot. It took about five turns to win this game. No resources backing this team.

Hulkbuster VS The Phoenix Force-emboldened Rasputins - a tryout game to see how Hulkbuster handles himself in an actual match, and won this game fairly easily. It took me two turns to realise how strong his Charge+Exploit Weakness combo actually is, with 12 attack and 5 damage that easily goes through a lot of tentpole figs out there. He needs Super Strength, though, and maybe a special Knockback/Force Blast power. All in all an eye-opener for the Charge+Exploit Weakness combo - not the first time I used it (I use this fairly often, especially with Pied Piper's rats [which killed an X-Men teambase a few months ago]) but it's the first time I've used it abusively. It took exactly seven turns to finish this game.

The Hood and Red Wolf & Lobo VS Phoenix Force-empowered Douchebag Jones and Emma Frost - the Hood and Red Wolf & Lobo prove themselves to be really strong figs in this game, more or less a classic tight combo of a low risk low maintenance high returns durable brawler and a reliable moveable sniper that doubles as a sponge with a really good stopclick. The Hood is very playable in his 220-point setting, but the real revelation was the Red Wolf & Lobo combo - not quite Fantomex and EVA, but a more reasonable variation on the concept, but has meta potential. Someone to watch out for. This game took more than twelve turns to wrap up. No resources were used, so it's going to be interesting to see how the three will handle themselves with a Lantern Battery or Pandora's Box (and if Red Wolf & Lobo will see any meta-playing in tourneys).

Battle Report: Hulkbuster VS the Hulk

Build:

*300 points

* AOU gravfeed Hulkbuster at 300 points

* AOU gravfeed Hulk at 300 points

Map:

* The Street Battle map from AVENGERS FCBD starter kit with five papercraft cars

Report:

Played best 2 out of 3 games, and surprisingly, the Hulk won both without much difficulty. The unhalved Charge with Super Strength allowed him to hit Hulkbuster with 9 damage at 13 attack, that Hulkbuster can only reduce to 6.

And whenever Hulkbuster's own halved-Charge and Exploit Weakness did manage to damage the Hulk, it was only for 5 damage (for some reason, Hulkbuster doesn't have Super Strength), and whenever Hulk chooses Hulkbuster to attack again (Hulkbuster's AVENGERS ASSEMBLE trait), Hulk's stopclick kicks in, clears all his tokens, gathers two Anger tokens which he can use to pump his Regen result, putting him back up to at least his fifth click (a click less than half his dial). The second fight even resulted in the Hulk's dial just hopping from seventh click to fourth click to seventh click to fifth click and this cycled out at least for four turns - if you get the right rolls, this can make Hulk effectively immortal.

I plan to run this match again with Hulkbuster at 225 points with the Red Lantern Battery as a proxy Veronica with at least Decoy, Nurse, and Stop Sign as Constructs, with the Battery providing potential Probs and Perplexes. We shall see!