Welcome back to Clix Bait! I’m glad you decided to check out the blog, and I encourage you to let me know what you think. You can reach me directly by email at clixbait@digitaledengames.com, or join the Facebook group and comment there, or just throw a comment at the bottom of the blog. Any way you choose to do it, I’d love to hear from you! I’d especially love to get an email from our contest winner! I have prizes for you, and I sent an email requesting your shipping information, but I fear it got lost in your spam filter, so E. Young, if you’re reading this, email me!

I’m getting a bit excited about playing in the Mega Qualifier in Lexington, KY (Rusty Scabbard) next weekend. I’m going to get back to playing the non-standard teams that I tend to play better, and maybe redeem myself after trying Blackbird in Fairborn. I’ve had a little practice time this time around, too, so that should help. But it all just leads to one bit of advice to everyone – know your play style. You can have an absolutely amazing team, but if it just doesn’t fit how you play, you will lose.

Which reminds me how much we have coming up. Month two of the Days of Future Past event is going on this month, so we’ve got more wanted posters on the playing field now. I won’t bog down the intro with details, but I will show you where to find out more! And while we’re moving forward like the Juggernaut to the ROC Cup, venues have started getting their invitations to host the winter WKOs. The winter WKOs always bother me a bit because they’re butting heads with the holidays, and venues are having to bash their skulls into the walls trying to figure out when to schedule so as not to compete too badly with each other, allowing for the best turnout possible. It can be a painful and time-consuming process, I promise you. And I almost forgot about the team challenge. I am sad I won’t be able to make that one.

Anyway, what have I got for you this week? Well, I asked Tylor Spees to share with us a bit about his innovative whales team, and he was kind enough to indulge me. I was asked about making dials, so I decided to break down how I do it in Miniatures Mutations this week. The Fringe is going to Gotham this week, so hopefully you’ll give a second look to my old friend. With that being said…

Team of the Week – Whales

• with Tylor Spees

Tylor Spees has had a lot of success with what I consider a fairly unconventional team, and this is something that always appeals to me. I asked him if he could take some time to tell us about his team, and this is what he shared with me:

So Chris asked me to do a write-up on the monster team I’ve been playing the past couple months and seeing the past contributors to this blog I’m thrilled to be included, lol. Let’s start off with the build.

Tylor Spees Monster

Let’s start with the strengths of the team and why I think it can stand up to, and even overwhelm a lot of the current meta teams. First, we have a +8 initiative bonus which gives us the leg up on most teams out there besides giant girl swarm (we’ll talk about that later) and some fringe X-men teams. This is key because we always want to be playing on star trek underground! In fact, in the events, I’ve won that was the only map I listed on my build sheet. Once you get map the idea is to move across with whales and Carnages while carrying the 4 walking woods and mini. We are essentially making a plasticity wall to protect our retaliators. The team has 7 characters with plasticity and 9 with sidestep so it’s very easy to position where you need to while making it a nightmare for your opponent. With the whales, woods, and mini calling in ID’s we apply enough pressure to force the opponent to get retaliated on. All the while being very hard to take significant point off of. One of the key offensive point is that the whales can break walls after moving so you can choose when and where on the map the battle will happen. Also, energy explosion is a very underrated power right now and the team takes full advantages of it with the whales and Harley ID. All in all, it is a very hard team to deal with and can leave your opponent feeling trapped with incredibly limited options forward.

As for things to watch out for when playing the team the list is fairly short. In fact, there are only really 3. First, teams that have a better theme bonus. Taking you to an open map can really hinder your retaliation threat. Not insurmountable but it is a nuisance. Second, teams that can fill their starting area. Filling the starting area means you can’t give them Leslie pogs which means you don’t get walking woods. If this happens you lose significant offensive and defensive power. And finally, teams that can reach your retaliators before you can make use of them. This isn’t usually an issue because on the underground and with walking woods it’s very hard to do. Unfortunately, all three of these conditions are met with one team… Avengers giant girl swarm. This is far and away the worst match-up for the team and the only bad match-up I have found. While not entirely crippling it will be an uphill battle for the victory.

In summation, this team is a ton of fun to pilot. If played right it will seem to have your opponent on their back foot from turn two onward while making you feel in total control of pacing and placement. It also has a lot of room for variation to make it your own. Thanks to Chris for letting me share and I hope to see more whales out there in the future!

Thanks, Tylor! Great team, and great breakdown! I especially like that you still have room for Trouble alerts. Speaking as someone who has seen the team in action, I can verify that it is effective.

Miniature Mutations

I had posted some custom Deathbot bystanders (made to look like Fembots from Austin Powers) earlier this week for sale on the Heroclix International Exchange, and someone asked me how I made the dials, so I thought this would be a great chance to reach out to a new audience as well as show my readers how I do it. It’s not terribly complicated, but it can take a little time.

The first step is to find a common or uncommon piece that shares the combat symbols and range values of the bystander you’re trying to create. You CAN use HCTools (which I’ll talk more about a little later) to create the top of your dials, but I’ve tried a few different ways for attaching these to the top of the dials, and it just looks sloppy in my opinion. You may be able to find a way to make it look good, and if you do, share it with me so I can share it with everyone else. But to me, the matching dial symbols is the easiest method. Then it’s just some black paint to cover the name, set, etc.

I print the dial itself using HCTools. You’ll have to make an account to do it, but it’s free to do, and they don’t send you emails or anything, so it’s really more of an extra step than a hassle of any sort. Just insert all of your information into the generator, and you’ll see your dial on the left side of the screen. Right click on the dial to save the image, and you’re done in HCTools. Then open up a text document using either Word or Open Office (or whatever you want to use) and copy and paste your dial. I can’t remember if it does this in Word, but in Open Office, it will be really oversized. Just right-click on the image and select “Picture” to open a new dialog box. It will give you the option to resize the image. Be sure to select Keep Ratio before you change your values. You want to set your width and height to 1.15” for the current standard Oreo dials. The older dials are smaller, and I believe you need to set the width and height to 0.95”, but I may be a little off on that.

Once you’ve got everything sized correctly, just use a color printer to print your dials. I have used adhesive label paper in the past, but that gets kind of expensive. While it DOES stick better, I have found it works fine to use regular paper and a glue stick to attach the new dial to the base. I think everyone knows how to pop open the bases so you can do this…I usually apply the glue to the base rather than the paper. You can use scissors or and exacto knife to cut the hole in the middle of the printed dial.

And that’s how I replace my dials! Feel free to email me or ask any questions you’d like on the Facebook page. I’ve gone on a bit with this explanation, so I didn’t cover switching the minis from the base…I’ll do that another time if there’s any interest.

View from the Fringe

We’re going to talk about numbers today. And when I say numbers, I’m referring to the size of your team. I’m not giving you a news flash when I say that theme has recently become a much bigger deal than it once was, and having more pieces on your team also means more IDs available to you. There are several ways people have been doing this – Thugs, Tribbles, Suited Henchmen – but with how strong the Gotham City keyword is right now, have you looked at the Court of Owls Initiate?

So the obvious from that last statement is that Court of Owls Initiate has the Gotham City keyword, which makes it a great filler piece at 10 points. Yes, the Thug is deeper and has a better dial, but on a Gotham City team, the Initiate can use your theme team probs, giving you a bit more flexibility on their use. And they have stealth, which can be useful, too. And let’s not overlook the Underworld team ability, making them a bit of a taxi. So you could manage a bit better position with that batarang-equipped Batman before using your free ranged attack. And if you mastermind to them, they reduce the damage by one. Not amazing, but it could be useful.

OK, it’s only three clicks deep, and has a 15 defense and 8 attack. That’s not why it’s on the team, but they could be easily picked off. The good news is that they’re not dying to Harley’s energy explosion outright, and on the last click, that exploit might actually find some use. Not likely, but I’m just saying. When it carries, its movement goes to a 6, which is meh, but it’s better than a Thug not moving you at all. No one is building a team around these guys, but they can help the right build a lot more than you may think.

So, if you’re looking for a way to get one over on those pesky X-Teams, this piece can help you get where you want to go, and add some utility to your team while you’re at it. It’s not the guy that’s going to get you your victory, but it can certainly help you get there, and may be overlooked by your opponent. Just a little something to consider.

That’s all I have for you this week. If you have anything you’d like to share, go to the Facebook page and let me know! I like seeing pictures of your custom creations, and hearing about your teams. If I like it enough, I might even put it in the blog. I’m also happy to answer any questions you might have about how I make my customs, or what I think about particular builds. And if you don’t feel like throwing it out for the world to see, just shoot me an email at clixbait@digitaledengames.com. I’ll get back to you as quick as I can!

Finally, I want to say thank you to everyone who has contributed to the blog so far – it continues to grow each week, but I’m always looking for new ways to improve. So please, share your ideas with me, make requests, or tell me what is working or isn’t working. It’s fun putting this together, but I like to know what others think of my creation!

So, until next week, have fun, and find your team!