I’m pleased that you’re here reading another edition of Clix Bait! Thanks for coming back every week, and thanks to those of you who have followed the link to join the Facebook group. I appreciate everyone who’s give me their feedback and their input on the topics I’ve posted. I’ve still looking for someone to help me grab useful and informative links, so if you want to be a Clix Bait contributor, feel free to send me an email at clixbait@digitaledengames.com.

So I was overall pleased with the tournament today. I like my team, and I felt that it did what it was supposed to do. My dice did not do what they were supposed to do (as anyone there can attest to), but even so I still finished second. I’ll be talking about the build a little later on in the blog, but I walked away with a couple of insights. I have four call-ins on the team, but unfortunately, two of them can only be called in by a single character on my force. I really didn’t like that, so I will be changing one of the call-ins to fix that particular issues. The team functions much better when I remember to use all of my perplexes (something I did not do the first event I ran the team in), and does cause my opponents to have to carefully pick their shots. I also realized about halfway through the event that when using Shade, I do not necessarily want to place all of my equipment five squares from the starting area…there is a legitimate reason for me to possibly place it further away.

One a side note, I brought a good friend with me to the event, and he ended up finishing fourth. This is significant since he has been out of the competitive scene for several years, and so I helped him put together a team that I felt could do well with an inexperienced pilot. That being said, here’s what he ran:

Medusa x3 – 150 points

Voyager – 50 points

Ms. Marvel – 15 points

Giant Girl (Main set) – 10 points

Giant Girl (Main set) – 20 points

A.I.M. White Squad – 30 points

Spin – 5 points

Stark Tower map bonus – 5 points

Wolverine Faculty ID – 5 points

Wolverine Wanted Poster – 5 points

Rusty ID – 3 points

Now, it was a small field of 8, and some people may thumb their nose at a fourth place finish in the event, but I feel that this is a good team to give new players a chance to be competetive in an event and get a taste of how the environment works. At least that’s the takeaway I got from his performance. It’s a team that you can get someone comfortable with quickly, and teach them a little something about the game.

As the event was coming to a close, we started talking about the upcoming Dark Phoenix set and what it was going to offer the meta, and I think Magneto was the focus of the most attention. You can follow the link to look at the dial and evidence thread on HC Realms, but I can tell you I like it that you can call him in for a retaliation, then get a regular attack out of him for the low cost of 25 points, allowing even Lila Cheney to call him in. Iceman is one that we expected to be a nice retaliation call-in, and he does look the part. Clever players are going to find a way to wreck colossals with him.

Anyway…running late, so I should get to it. As I mentioned above, I’m going to discuss my team of the week. We’ll continue the talk about efficiency too, and look at some big mutations. Of course, there will be fringe, so let’s get this party started!

Team of the Week – Cosmic Shade

So for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been talking about the team I’ve been working on. I’ll be honest, it’s not the most original team I’ve put together, and I give the majority (no pun intended) of the credit to Jay Major. He had a really cool three Shade team that looked irksome, but I felt it lacked some punch, so I worked with the team to tweak it to be a bit more aggressive, and a bit more me. I’ve been really please with it so far, but I haven’t run it in any significant events yet.

Link: Chris Cottrill – Cosmic Shade

So, by bringing Nightbringer to Gardener to equip, he can drop the Time Gem in Starfox’s square so he can equip. With that opening move, you have one action left to blip Shade across the board and hope to be irritating. If your opponent attacks her, she could potentially shape change into forcing him to attack a friendly piece. If your opponent hits, then Mangog happens. If your opponent misses or ignores Shade, then you can call in Beast or Kitty Pryde to try and do some work. Using the ring, Gardener can get a free attack every turn, and you’ve got plenty of perplex between Shades and Starfox.

No one is terribly deep on the team, and I think the strategy is very obvious on the surface, so your opponent knows the choices that need to be made. Still, I don’t think they’re necessarily easy choices, and they require some pretty solid rolls to boot. This is probably not a world championship team (although I sincerely hope it is), but it is a team that can play against anything out there and have a chance to win.

Plus, I have fun playing it, and that’s the most important thing. And don’t get me wrong…I’m still going to tweak and tune it until I think it’s where it needs to be given the current meta. Thanks to Jay Major for pointing me in the direction of this team, thanks to Randy Carter for being my idea sounding board, and thanks to Devin Owens (whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting) for giving me some new ideas to toy with.

Strategy Bytes

I’ll admit, I was hoping to get a little more feedback to discuss the topic of efficiency, but probably the best comment I received was from Lucas Van Holland, who simply said, “Way more than I did 6 years ago.” Which is true…when looking at efficiency, it is definitely a moving target, and the power creep is real. There’s a reason that Golden Age events aren’t dominated by pieces from the pre-card era, and very few pieces that were thought as dominant back in the day just don’t hold up any more. Yes, some of them were killed by rules changes, but many more just do not age gracefully.

But that was a bit of a tangent. When I asked people what they wanted from 50 points, pieces like the Hulk from the Mighty Thor Fast Forces, prime Vulture, and the super-rare Cyclops from Xavier’s School were mentioned. These may seem like disparate pieces, but they do have a few things in common. The first thing that jumps out at me is an 11 attack. Most of your major pieces have an 18 defense, so having a base seven to hit is pretty big, and being able to perplex up to a 14 can make their strike count. Yes, defenses can be perplexed, too, but you can’t get the whole team, so this makes your opponent choose to protect the key figure, or defend a more likely and vulnerable target.

Second, they have to have a strong ability to make them more useful than a random swing. The Vulture builds up charges, Cyclops shoots through walls, Wolverine (generally) flurries. It’s not enough to have a solid stat line…this baseline piece needs to have a utility function that will advance your overall strategy.

Finally, I feel this baseline 50 point piece needs damage of three or more. There are rare exceptions, but typically you want it to be able to push at least one point of damage past your opponent’s damage reduction. Again, the ability to use perplexes to be able to knock something off it’s “sweet spot” is pretty big, so you want it to have a base damage big enough to support that goal.

So based on your feedback, and my own thoughts on the matter, this is the comparison point I will be using when discussing figure efficiency. There’s still time to chime in on your thoughts on efficiency, and what benchmarks you use – just hop over the the Facebook page, and that’s going to be the Weekly Clix Topic. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts!

Miniature Mutations

Since the talk of the new X-Men animated set leaned towards colossals, I thought it might be cool to spotlight a few colossal customs this week. First up, we have the Royal Death Magnus by Faces77. I’ll be honest, I don’t know the origin of the character, but that doesn’t stop me from appreciating a nicely crafted piece. The creator even took the time to give it a unique character card, though I can’t attest to its balance play-wise. Then again, the same can be said for a lot of pieces that are tournament legal, so who am I to judge?

Moving back into our home turf of comic characters, I give you this fantastic Giganto, by HC Realms user onewingedcrow. I’m kind of curious where the sculpt came from – even on a colossal base, he doesn’t quite seem to fit. But the paints are outstanding, and I’m sure this would be an intimidating presence on the map. Anyone else feel the desire to put a Mr. Fantastic in his outstretched hand, or am I just weird? Don’t answer that…I don’t need my email filled with one-word messages confirming that I am, indeed, weird.

 

Finally, we have a couple of approaches to a classic – Sinestro! Tired of the standard Sinestro encased in the yellow giant? Well, maybe an army of constructs gets the same point across just as effectively! I especially like it that ArizonaHighways made the constructs exchangeable for a Green Lantern version of the character. And while Thulsa Doom’s Sinestro might not be interchangeable, the battery and its effect are pretty cool. I especially like the details around his eyes, although he may have gone a bit deep with that purple for his skin.

I look forward to bringing you more next week!

View from the Fringe

We’re always looking at ways to keep our opponents from hurting us, whether it’s by running pieces that are extremely hard to kill (such as Daredevil and Lockjaw), or by pieces that are rough to get your hands on to begin with (Green Arrow or chase Black Panther). While some teams are built around these ideas, it never hurts to have a little support in that department, so with that in mind, I give you the Fast Forces Nakia!

What do I like about Nakia? If she is adjacent to blocking or hindering terrain, lines of fire can’t be drawn to her. Give her Zero or Nightbringer, and she’ll always have to be targeted with close attacks. Add that she has outwit, and at 50 points, she can be a good call-in battery, and you have some potential here. She ignore hindering for movement, so you can put her on a map like Poison Ivy’s Greenhouse to get her in position to complicate your opponent’s decisions. The range modifier probably won’t do you a lot of good, but it’s an option to consider. I feel like warrior is her strongest keyword.

This piece does fit into the discussion on efficiency. With an attack value of 10 and a damage of only two, she’s not the picture of efficiency. Sidestep does give her some mobility to make placement easier for call-ins, but her defense and other stats make her a hard sell during team-building. Does that difficulty in targeting her make up for the sub-par stats?

On the right team, maybe. Right now, I just don’t think there’s a strong enough core to Wakanda or warrior to warrant the trade-off, but you never know what will be brought in in the next set. Or she might just fit with some WWE pieces…because you can’t see me!

That’s it for this week. Thanks again for reading…next week, I’ll talk about how my week two Regenesis event went among other things. For now, I hope your dice love you more than my dice love me.