Thanks for joining me for another edition of Clix Bait! As always, I’m happy to have you visiting my little corner of the internet, and I welcome you to join us by following the link to the Facebook page and share your thoughts. I’m always happy to see what you think, not only about what I’ve written, but about clix in general, and all different aspects of the hobby.

So this is a good news/bad news kind of week for me. The bad news is that I really haven’t had time to get any games in, or put a lot of time into team design. The good news is that I have had some paint and mod time this week, AND I received some orders that I had placed. So this week will have some nice reviews, as I received my House of X play at home kit, my Absolute Carnage Fast Forces (yeah, I’m a bit late to that party), and my lighted magnifying glass. That last probably doesn’t sound like something directly connected to clix, but we’ll get there.

Later I have a review of something specific in the play at home kit, but this feels like a good place to put my thoughts on the kit overall. I recognize what the pandemic has done to organized play, and so a change needed to be made, I’m just on the fence on how I feel about the direction chosen. For one, WizKids themselves sold out of the kits, and that forced me (and therefore I’m sure other players) to reach out to other sellers to get a hold of it. This meant that there was no solid price for the kits, and while there wasn’t a lot of variance, I still have concerns as to what this might mean if we need to do this again. Let’s also consider that one, if not both, of the maps were recycled. I can’t recall it myself, but I feel like someone online mentioned Krakoa was done before. I know Otherworld Castle was used before…I have bad memories of a grinder on that map at Nationals, but I can still say at least it’s a good map. But all that being said, it was widely available, and not really expensive, so again, not sure how I feel overall about the kit.

You might wonder why I waited so long to get the Absolute Carnage Fast Forces…well, I don’t have a good answer for that. By the time I realized I wanted it, I couldn’t find it locally, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to order it from elsewhere. Really, when you look at the pieces in the pack, there’s not something that screams, “I NEED this!” but then, given that I like having plenty of Pauper options, it’s a good idea to have the set at my disposal. The Spider-Man in the set is particularly interesting, since he can be part of any theme team you want, and has a great Leadership ability. Black Cat may have some potential – I tend to disagree with my friend Trevor on that note, but at 25 points, she might be somewhat useful.

Before I get into the bulk of the blog, I do want to announce a contest. I had mentioned it on the Facebook page, and I’ve decided to go ahead and have the contest. So here’s how you enter…at the end of this blog, there’s a chance to reply to the blog. Just reply with your first name, the first initial of you last name, followed by “reads Clix Bait!” and you will be entered into the drawing for a custom Shard bystander that I made myself. I will have the drawing live on the Facebook page on Thursday, January 28^th at noon eastern time. Any entries received prior to 11am eastern time that day will be entered in the drawing. Once I have a winner, I’ll ask you to email me your information so I can ship the mini to you. Consider it a small thanks for reading!

So, what’s on the menu for this week? well, I’m flipping things around a bit, as what I have to discuss in Strategy Bytes (namely, Team Up cards) leads into this week’s build. I will note that a rules clarification made the build somewhat less appealing that it did when I started, so I’ll just let you read and guess where the problem was. I’ll be reviewing one of the maps from the House of X play at home kit, but before that, this week’s Work in Progress will give you some details about a tool you might find useful in your modding and painting. So let’s get started!

The Team Up cards in House of X are a little bit of a different beast than they were in JLU. JLU Team Ups were heavily focused on granting extra powers to characters, and a lot of the characters involved were actually pretty easy to fit on good teams. Amazo, in particular, was pretty flexible, and may have required you to give up your Sideline, his effectiveness really made up for it. This is not necessarily saying the Team Ups in JLU are better…but I would argue that they are generally easier to use (and in the case of Amazo, yes, it IS just better).

The thing about the House of X Team Ups is that they include a lot more global effects. They are a bit trickier to fit on teams (and some folks are looking for errata to fix the timing on when they take effect), but might have a bigger overall impact on players’ overall strategy. As I was looking through the Team Ups, I was planning on doing a top five picks, but I ran into a complication in my mind, as there really seem to be two distinct categories of Team Ups in this set, and each I feel deserve separate looks. On the one hand, you have theme fixers, which will allow some different possibilities for them teams. They’re not quite as flexible as the Spider-Man Family fixers, but they still have some potential. Then you have the more general game effect Team Ups, which are a bit easier to rank as I see it.

So first, I want to break out the theme fixers, and let you just see what possibilities you have there:

Team Up Card	Character	Effect
X-Men Themed Team	Wolverine (004)	When establishing themed teams, friendly characters with the X-Men keyword gain the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning keyword. (After revealing forces, you may replace character cards with their alternates. You can’t choose a Team Up if your starting characters share a name).
Star Jammers Themed Team	Corsair (018)	When establishing themed teams, friendly characters with the Shi’ar and Imperial Guard keywords gain the Starjammers keyword. (After revealing forces, you may replace character cards with their alternates. You can’t choose a Team Up if your starting characters share a name.)
X-Men Themed Team	Cyclops (019)	When establishing themed teams, friendly characters with the X-Men keyword gain the Utopia keyword. (After revealing forces, you may replace character cards with their alternates. You can’t choose a Team Up if your starting characters share a name.)
A.I.M. Themed Team	Sunspot (025)	When establishing themed teams, friendly characters with the A.I.M. keyword gain the Avengers keyword. (After revealing forces, you may replace character cards with their alternates. You can’t choose a Team Up if your starting characters share a name).
Acolytes Themed Team	Magneto (044)	When establishing themed teams, friendly characters with the Acolytes keyword gain the Brotherhood of Mutants keyword. (After revealing forces, you may replace character cards with their alternates. You can’t choose a Team Up if your starting characters share a name.)
Robot Themed Team	Karima (046)	When establishing themed teams, friendly characters with the Robot keyword gain the Sentinel keyword. (After revealing forces, you may replace character cards with their alternates. You can’t choose a Team Up if your starting characters share a name).

Obviously some of these are better than others, but before moving on, I want to point out a few things that you might not have considered when looking at these possible theme fixers. The biggest consideration is with Cyclops and Wolverine, as they open up possibilities for the Regenesis pieces using their bonus abilities. I particularly like the possibility of getting free TK from Rachel Summers. Being able to sneak Magneto on your team for 25 points allows a relatively cheap Fabian Cortez on the team to make a full point Juggernaut pretty ugly, and still leaves 45 points for other support. And don’t sleep on Sunspot – at 35 points he’d fit pretty easily on a team, and allow you to get a 20 point Dr. Alia Gregor on your team, which kind of makes a Medusa build interesting again (we’ll talk more about that later).

I had planned to give you what I thought of the rest of the Team Ups this week, but this segment has gone on a bit longer than I planned, so now you have something to look forward to next week! I’ll give you my top five House of X Team Ups that aren’t theme fixers!

So, now you know why I flipped the order this week…I want to look at one of these theme fixers and how it might make for a really good team. As much as I like the idea of doing something with Rachel Summers and her free TK, the more I looked at Susnspot, the more I liked the idea of pairing Alia Gregor and Medusa, so let’s see what a good build might look like!

Link: Chris Cottrill – AIMvengers

The basic mechanics are the same as earlier builds of the Medusa team, although changes have to be made since using the team-up card allows for only one Medusa on the team – Black Widow carries Medusa and a booster for a good alpha strike. Alia doesn’t need to be adjacent or have line of fire to boost the hair token, so you’re getting a bigger boost while still being able to keep Alia out of the line of fire, and that bigger boost means that the chance to hit is improved as well as the damage, which can be pretty brutal. Captain Marvel will not initially want to use Hypersonic Speed so she can carry Ghost Rider (who is swapped at the beginning of the game for Invisible Woman) so he can get a free attack after placement, benefiting from Perplex from Chewie and Black Widow. Sunspot’s special Leadership allows him to stay back and still give characters a chance to heal. Alia can also use Leadership, so she might give you some bonus actions out of Voyager. Sunspot’s special Leadership pairs extremely well with Captain Marvel’s multiple STOP clicks, making her an even more potent and survivable threat, with Chewie getting meaner thanks to Alia.

The theme is low average for what we’re seeing these days, so map choice will be a toss-up. But for this team, the important thing is to have access to your max five theme team probs, so it’s not that big of a drawback. Black Widow is a risky choice for taxi, and the swap for Ghost Rider gives you ten less points on the board, but it can be worth it to have that additional initial attacker, since you want to ensure something is at least crippled on that initial strike. Sunspot is going to be easy to take down, and while the plan is to leave him out of the fight, if your opponent gets around your strike force, you’re probably going to lose him. Alia is also a soft target that you’re going to try to protect as well, but placement of other characters and bystanders can go a long way to help with that. If you’re not an aggressive player, this team is probably not one that you’re going to feel comfortable playing.

If you ARE aggressive, however, you’ve got a great one-two punch that has really good odds of dropping at least seven damage on first contact with Chewie’s random damage number. I feel like most players will either go after the Medusa or Alia first, to reduce the damage potential, which gives Captain Marvel some time to do some work while the team is otherwise engaged. The opening hit can be really big, but the follow-up could be bigger as you have multiple hair attacks combining with Marvel for some real brutality, all backed up with theme team probs. Fun times!

I’ve had a lot of projects in the works this week, but the bulk of the work was more painting than modding. As I mentioned on the Facebook page, I made a batch of Shard bystanders for myself and a couple of friends, but these were pretty light on conversion. Three of the pieces were made from the Jubilee from the Xavier’s School set, while one was made from Husk of the same set (the only difference in the sculpts is the head). On all of them, I used a hobby knife to remove some of the hair to closer approximate Shard, and really that’s all the physical modding they required. The paint’s weren’t terribly difficult, and I will say that I preferred the Jubilee sculpt, as it actually had a bit of hair come over her shoulder that reminded me of the rat tail that Shard had in the image I was using. I opted to make her eyes reflect when she’s using her power, since that made them easier to paint. The new magnifying glass made the process a good deal easier.

Which brings me to the real focus of this week’s discussion – my new lighted magnifying glass! I got this on Amazon for less than $15, and I love it for my painting, though it doesn’t do everything for me that I thought it would. The best aspect of it is the additional lighting it provides to my work. Some rooms have better lighting than others, and this tool is going to help you overcome some lighting difficulties. Plus, it can run on either triple A batteries or a USB connection, so it can go a variety of places and allow you some flexibility in where you work.

This was my first attempt to use magnification to do detail work on miniatures, and I have to say I wasn’t really happy with how it worked. The perspective shift makes it difficult to place the brush exactly where you want it, and can lead to some mistakes. That doesn’t mean that the magnification is completely without value, however, as it lets you see details that you might otherwise miss, and you can then touch-up without the magnification. I found this particularly useful, as when I took pictures of some of the minis I had been working on, the camera showed me some ugly spots that my eyes had missed when painting, so the magnifying glass allows me to address those without having to see what they look like in the camera.

For the price, the tool is definitely a welcome addition to my kit. The light is the most valuable aspect of it, and I could probably have found something just as good if not better for lighting for cheaper, but the addition of the magnification is very useful, so I’m not going to complain. With practice, I can probably paint under the magnification, but initially that’s proving problematic so I won’t be practicing much on that technique.

If you have any questions, or works you want to share, feel free to sent them to me at clixbait@digitaledengames.com and I’ll be happy to take a look at them, answer them or show them off as appropriate. Next week I’ll be looking at the new House of X minis and how the changes to the production process change the pieces interaction with paints and strippers, so come back and learn from my experiments!

So, as I mentioned earlier, the Otherworld Castle map is a reprint of an older map, but that doesn’t make it bad. In fact, I really like the map for a variety of teams, largely because of the complexity of its terrain features. Multiple elevation levels, liberally spaced blocking terrain, plenty of hindering terrain, and even a fair amount of water makes it a map that forces you to think about placement and movements, and the more thought that’s required on the part of your opponent, the more opportunities there are for mistakes.

There are a few things of note just as you set up and start the game on this map. First, anyone using the WWE ring are forced to place it outside the castle due to the elevated terrain. Since it has to be placed at least three squares away from starting zones, that severely limits where it can be placed. That split in the map is also interesting when setting up your team, as the starting areas are both in and out of the castle, with a small part of it on elevated terrain. This gives you a variety of options on how to set up based on the team you’re facing. It may not prove to be a huge advantage, but as I’ve said before, having options is always good. Finally, let’s not forget that this is the map you want to play if you’re running the new Jubilee, as she can flip to her more dangerous dial at the beginning of the game on this map.

I feel like this would be a painful map for characters without flight or Improved Movement: Elevated. It’s not as painful as Data Mine, but the limited ladders and strategically placed blocking terrain will make characters with limited movement struggle to get where they need to be. It’s also going to significantly complicate line of fire, so I like this map for facing off against characters like Batman prime.

I may have overstated the presence of the hindering terrain…there are a significant number of pockets of hindering, but they aren’t terribly large patches. This will encourage stealth based teams to spread out, but given the placement of the stairs, it may further complicate movement. Also note that the higher levels do not have any hindering terrain at all, so there’s no real sneaking way to get at people using the castle walls.

The water terrain is enough to assist Black Manta with some mobility, as well as giving him a starting point for flooding the castle. The down side is that with most other water-based characters, this water is blocked off from the rest of the map by the castle walls. In older events, the Flora Colossus would like this, but right now, most water based characters are not going to love it. Then again, there aren’t a lot of characters right now that need the water, so I guess that’s OK.

All in all, this is a good, if not great, map. I would recommend if you plan to use it to actully PLAN to use it. Don’t make the assumption that because it’s a good map it will just give you opportunities – those opportunities will be there, but you need to really look at how your team interacts with the map to know where those opportunities are most likely to present themselves. And, of course, how to take advantage of those openings. The same can be said of any map, really, but I feel this one deserves a bit more study time than you might be accustomed to, so take your time a think things out – especially your opening placement and first move.

So that’s it for this week…I hope you’ll join me next week, as I have a lot already planned for you. You’re going to get another team based on one of the new Team Up cards, as well as a look at my picks for the top five, non-theme fixing, Team Up cards. We’ll also see how the new figures do with strips and repaints. And if you have anything else you want to see in the blog, feel free to tell me on either the Facebook page, or email me at clixbait@digitaledengames.com. Until next week, take care, thanks for reading, and try and have some fun!