OK! I’m back home from Ohayocon, and ready to play some clix! I’m thankful that you’ve decided to read my blog, and I encourage you to follow the link to the Facebook page and tell me what you think! Good, bad, or indifferent, it all helps me make this better and more interesting for everyone, so I hope you’ll take some time to tell the world what you think.

Mother nature has wrecked the weekend plans, so also feel free to tell her what you think of her. Yesterday’s Pauper Circuit event at the Bookery in Fairborn, OH had to be postponed due to a pretty serious weather threat, so while we all love the game, I think we can agree that we want safety first. And, hey, this might mean that I can actually arrange it so I can go harass Chad in person and compete in the event when he runs it in February! Today some teammates and I made the trip to Morehead, KY to Broken Door Games and their Pauper Circuit event. I’m also anxiously looking forward to hearing from Galaxy Games and the results from the first official Pauper Circuit event of the year (or ever, for that matter). I’ll spend some more time talking about Pauper next week, after I’ve had time to collect and digest the information.

What I WILL say about the Pauper Circuit event at Broken Door Games is that it was run well, and I was fortunate enough to walk away victorious! I think weather had something to do with the turn-out (there were only 7 players, but I know there were several that had weather issues preventing their attendance). As I said, I’ll talk more about it next week after I’ve had a chance to digest the event, but if you want to see video of some of the matches there, you can go to the Clix Bait YouTube channel and check out videos of the event.

The last couple of weeks have helped us put together our schedules, as the dates for the Spring WKOs, State Championships, ROC Qualifiers, and several other big events have been released to the public. Sadly, I don’t know of a big calendar listing everything going on (although, of course, you can search for events on the WIN), but Mid-South Heroclix has a really good list of regional events pinned to the top of their Facebook page, so I encourage you to follow the link there and see if there’s something coming up within your travel radius.

I think there’s something wrong with me. I’m just not getting excited about Earth X. And there has been some really great pieces that have been spoiled recently. I’m hoping my feelings will change when the set finally hits, and I definitely plan to get involved at the Rusty Scabbard’s pre-release on January 27^th, but my energy is not going to be what it has been. I encourage you to share with me what is inspiring you about Earth X so I can tag along for the ride.

Anyway, this week we’ve got a few things to look at, starting with a team that took two of the top 4 spots at the Owensboro qualifier last weekend. Yes, Sam Powell won the event with a great team, but it’s one we’ve already discussed. David’s team was pretty amazing, too, and I plan to add it to the archives, but I haven’t had enough time to study it to feel good about really saying anything about it. On the other hand, this rework of Giant-Girls I have played against a few times, and I get how it works, so I can speak intelligently on it. In Strategy Bytes, I feel like talking about solid use of colossals, and I’m sure I have something interesting to show you in Miniature Mutations, not to mention my view from the Fringe. So let’s dive in, shall we?

Team of the Week – Giant-Girl Part 2

So three of my teammates were running this in Owensboro last weekend, and two of them made top four against a solid field of 15, so I feel it’s probably worth talking about. If you follow this link to the Clixed Off YouTube channel, you can see the team in action. The videos are for the Big Bang Roc Qualifier 1/12. I credit the build to Randy Carter, but the whole of the CWO had some input on the team at some point.

Link: Randy Carter Giant-Girl Part 2

So where to begin? The build is looking to punish you for your opening attack. You take out a Giant-Girl, and then a perplexed up Ms. Marvel comes in and lays down some nice AOE damage, possibly scatters your team, and opens the door for a chain of Giant-Girl retaliations. The attacks are perplexed up, but you also have theme team probs to fall back on if that isn’t enough. If you play it slow, trying to be careful to make your first shot limit retaliations, then in come the Hulks, with either Exospex to get multiple attacks, or with the Venom Harness to negate your shape change and give him overall better stats. While you would think that losing a Hulk means losing the bulk of your offense, it’s not really a crippling loss, as you still have Giant-Girls, and, oh, yeah! – Starfox.

There’s a lot to pay attention to here, and there are times to equip and times to not worry about equipping. One of the shortfalls of the build is that it is not as straightforward to pilot as it might appear on the surface. Positioning is really important, as you need to make sure you can get in all your retaliations. As with any retaliation team, there may be issues if someone uses a call-in that they can get off the map to prevent your retaliation while still getting up on points – but the Hulks make this a lesser threat than with other teams. Losing one Hulk isn’t the end of the world, but if you can find a scenario to take both of them out in one turn, that makes the battle a bit more uphill.

I’ve played against the team a lot in practice, and I can tell you it is very good, but you have to know your team to pilot it effectively. Of course, the same can be said for Uni-Mind, Blackbird, Starro, etc, so if you’re looking for something a little different to try, this might be something fun to use.

Strategy Bytes

Talking about Giant-Girls got me thinking about colossals in general, and if you’ll excuse the pun, the huge impact they’ve made on the game. As I’ve mentioned before, I like free, and this plethora of free attacks is definitely appealing, but you want to take a closer look and figure out if they’re really going to be free for you.

“What do you mean? Their retaliation is FREE!” Yes, but also consider you have to place to get that attack, which means you are putting points in a very dangerous position. Tri-Sentinel, Mangog, and Surtur all have some brutal retaliations, but your throwing 25 to 35 points in your opponent’s back yard, so you want to think hard about whether the juice is worth the squeeze before you place. Or even before you include the piece on the team to begin with.

Now, don’t take that as me saying you shouldn’t include them on your team. Just make sure you have all the variables in the equation as you’re building your team. Hopefully you get multiple uses out of your colossals. Sometimes they can be your taxi for your main attacker. Sometimes they can help you equip in your starting zone, making your life and risk assessment much easier. This goes a long way towards mitigating the cost if you lose it, simply because you got a good return on the points investment. Another consideration is how it affects your theme. It may be worth losing the points during the game to give you the favorable map or the theme team probs. Retaliators are cheap, for the most part, and can help you get the theme numbers you need to get the benefits of a populous theme along with a power piece.

I bet you thought I was going to go into detail about good placement for colossals, didn’t you? Sorry, friends, but that’s something I can’t do. Every team and every match-up is different, so there’s no simple solution to placement. As with so many other aspects of the game, you get that from practice. You also get a clearer idea of whether or not the points investment is worth it.

Miniature Mutations

I have three things to share with you tonight – first off, part of the Pauper Circuit is to celebrate mods, and I wanted to show you some of the mods I saw at the Pauper Circuit event today! Sadly, since the weather reduced the turn-out, we didn’t have as many mods to see as I had hoped. Doug Mayse’s Maestro won best mod again, but I have a few other things to share with you, such as these two different takes on Charged Up. There were also some really cool 3-D printed barrier markers (now that’s what we should have in the ROC Kits – 3D barrier and smoke cloud markers!), and some shark pogs (that would be good to used with Black Lantern Aquaman, or the chase Aquaman from BtAS for ordinary fish).

Second, while searching for cool new stuff to show you, I instead found something cool that’s a bit old. But still useful, nonetheless. I found this to be a great walk-through for how to do a really serious mod to a Heroclix figure, and felt it would be useful to those of you who really enjoy modding pieces.

That also, however, brings me to my last and rather sad point. As I continue to search for interesting pieces to show you from the Heroclix mod community, I recognize that there is not really one place that people go to show off their creations, if they show them off at all. I found the Facebook page for Heroclix Customs and Mods, and was disappointed to see that no one has done anything there for over two years. Now, this may be because whoever runs the page has lost interest in Heroclix (it’s been over a week since I requested to join the group, and still haven’t had approval), or maybe the mod community is much smaller and less active than I think it is. Either way, for all you modders out there, I hope you will help me make Clix Bait’s Facebook page the place to go to showcase and discuss your mods. Please, share your pictures with us, tell us how you made your favorite creations, and tell the other modders about it. I’ve recently reworked my schedule, so I should have a bit more time to mod, myself, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of my creations with you! Oh, and don’t hesitate to ask for how-tos on mod projects – I think it would be great if we could all share ideas on how to do things.

View From the Fringe

Since I just got back from a Pauper event, I have to say I have the format on my mind, and I was forced to take notice about how remarkably useful this piece was. I am talking about big things that come in small packages – Big Tony.

I’m going to flip things around this week and start by pointing out the obvious problems with the piece. Yes, he’s only 3 clicks deep. Yes, he has a 16 defense with no evasion or reducers. Yes, he has to be adjacent to perplex only friendly characters. With 4 range and a base 9 attack value, he’s probably not helping out much there, either, and Gotham City Underworld isn’t the best keyword for Pauper (and only marginally better in the overall meta).

So why am I even talking about this little guy? Well, first, let me say perplex for 15 points. Yes, it’s a limited perplex for those 15 points, but it’s still perplex for 15 points. You might think that the adjaceny hinderance make him not worth looking at, but as you put groups of Tonys together, you recognize that the underworld team ability combined with his sidestep makes it possible to stack a lot of perplex for a small price. Giving a Pauper piece a 13 attack and 6 damage (yes, this really happened) can be pretty brutal.

I used to value over half of the powers on the PAC higher than perplex, but the last year has really changed my views on the power, and getting it for such a low point cost is a steal. While the call-ins in Pauper aren’t as game-changing as the ones in the meta, Big Tony still allows you to have a lot available on your team by giving you that extra body. As a Fringe piece, he’s not a must-have, but he’s also not something to dismiss without a second glance.

So that’s all I have for you this week. Next week I’ll be attending the Earth X pre-release at the Rusty Scabbard, so I may share a few initial thoughts with you about that, but if you’ve been looking forward to hearing about some Pauper Circuit results, and wanting to know what the teams are looking like, then next week is the week for you! I’ll probably focus on Doug Mayse’s second place team, as I discussed my build a couple of weeks ago.

Also, I will reiterate my desire to make the Clix Bait Facebook page the home for modders! So if you’ve got some mods you want to show off, go ahead and share them there. If you have friends who make some cool mods, then by all means, invite them to join the group. I want to see all the cool creations that people are imagining.

Good night!