Happy Sunday, everybody, and thank you again for joining me for Clix Bait! My record may not agree with me, but I had a great weekend of clix, and I’m anxious to share it with you. If you have some experiences you want to share, or clix related things you’d like to discuss, I welcome you to follow this link to the Facebook page and tell us about it. More than anything else, I love getting your feedback on the blog, so I can make it better for you.
As you’re aware, yesterday was the Kilted Classic, and I want to tip my hat to PJ for running a fantastic event. There were over 70 players at the event, and I don’t think there was a single player that had a bad time from the look of it. After going 2-3 in the tournament, you might think I was disappointed, but I was playing a very fun team, and there was no game I played today that I felt I played badly…I just had some bad luck with the dice, and two of my three losses could easily have swung the other way.
While I’m not going to break down each of my games, I will point out some lessons learned on the day. Without getting too into detail on the day, though, I can say that Felix Faust needs to be your priority if you see him on the other side of the table. His shut down on my probs put me a turn behind, which is ultimately what cost me the game in my final match of the day. I will also say that I did not face the same team twice during the day, but Blackheart is featuring prominently, and Thanos is making the rounds still, too (no surprises).
But you can overwhelm Thanos, and if you have a team that needs to get across the map, don’t be afraid to put it out there. So many teams can get to you wherever you are on the map right now, so a cautious opening move will often not save you from taking that first hit, while leaving you in an unfavorable map position. Not every team wants you to really extend as far as you can, but it’s important to figure out if you can avoid the hit, and if not, where you need to be after you take it.
The last lesson learned has nothing to do with Heroclix, but rather with my equipment. I’m going to need to research my set-up, as there is frame loss between the camera and the computer, and while I suspect it is purely a camera issue, there’s potential that there are issues in either the software (which I doubt, since others have had a great deal of success with OBS) or the connecting cables between the camera and the computer. Others have had more success with a simpler set-up, so I probably need to emulate them, but I’m a big fan of figuring things out for myself. To make a long story short, however, due to these technical problems, I will not have video to share with you from the event.
On another note, this week will be the prelude to a different approach to Heroclix for me. I began to talk about it last week, but I had already committed to playing the Cap team I played yesterday, so I wasn’t prepared to go in my new direction. But, if I’m going to talk the talk, I’ll be sure to walk the walk, so I am going to be committed to playing budget builds from this point forward. There are a few reasons for this, but a big one is that I enjoy interesting team-building challenges, and I also hope to show players that they can enjoy the competitive game of Heroclix without having to break the bank. It is certainly challenging, and requires not only a solid team build, but a definitive gameplan on how to run the team, but it is possible, and I feel it will be really rewarding if I can have a reasonable amount of success with this experiment.
With that, I’m going to get to the meat of things, and will start by pinning down my definition of a budget build. It’s not a typical strategy, but I think it’s important to have a clear idea of goals and guidelines before really getting into building in earnest. Then I have a piece that I want to look at that may factor pretty prominently into future builds, although I haven’t quite formulated a plan for her yet. I don’t have a budget build for this week, as I really wanted to keep the focus on the Kilted Classic, and I wanted to look at the winning build. I’m also really wanting to talk about my build for the event, so you’re getting a bonus build this week. As for customs, we’ll go to a galaxy far, far away and see what some customs artists have down with the world of Star Wars. There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s begin!
Strategy Bytes
This week is going to be a bit strange, as I’m going to be talking about build strategy, but less in the sense of table power and more in the sense of budget impact. I suppose it’s no great surprise that I talk about budget builds, since I’m a big supporter of Pauper, and I held a contest focused on budget builds. But I don’t think I really had a realistic concept of budget for that contest, and I think now is the time to really consider what a budget build might mean. I’m going to throw a few different ideas out there today, and then let you know where my decision-making process ultimately led me.
One approach to budget builds, which I embraced last week, involves setting a top end price point for each piece on the team. On the up side, you’re never going to go broke getting any single piece to make your team, but there are two significant drawbacks. For one, with point values dropping on quality pieces, there’s a good potential for a really large team, and if everything is close to the max price per piece, it could feel like your team is less budget than you had hoped. The other thing is that (as we all are aware) stronger pieces cost more, and so you’re trying to make up power in synergy rather than having a unifying threat that the rest of the team supports. This is not a bad thing, but it certainly difficult.
On the other hand, you could set a price point for a team, and use that as your basis for the overall definition of a budget build. This gives you the opportunity to build around a better piece, and possibly surrounding it with less efficient, but similar pieces to a bigger build, or even potentially make an OMAC build under budget constraints. The issues that I see with this are, for one, you could get so focused on that one big piece that you miss out on the rest of a potentially deeper strategy, and make a team that’s easy to counter, as your opponent knows they simply have to knock out your big guy, and the rest of the team falls apart. On a more practical level, a lot of people either can’t, or don’t feel comfortable, spending a lot of money on a single piece. This is both reasonable and understandable, but it does complicate how to approach budget builds.
I have finally decided to adopt a hybrid model…where I would set a higher top-end cost for a piece, but also look for an overall price cap for the entire team. This would allow a little more flexibility in what pieces you use, but also keeps us in the real world for the more budget conscious players. There’s still a chance you might get too focused on the big piece of the team, and there’s the question of what people feel is a true budget price cap, but trial and error will get me there, eventually. As for the numbers I’m looking at, I don’t want any one piece to be more than $15 (which is about the price of a booster), and I want to keep the entire team in the $50 range (there’s a little wiggle room, but I probably won’t stray more than one to two dollars). Let the challenge begin!
Make no mistake, building budget is a limitation that will make it harder to compete, and makes team building a more complicated puzzle, but given the direction of late, it’s a puzzle I want to try and solve, and I’m hoping you’ll share your input on what you feel the definition of a budget build should be. I look forward to reading your comments, and I hope that I’m not the only person interested in exploring this topic.
Disney+ is going to bring some interesting things to the table, but is it going to bring value? Are there going to be undervalued pieces that can make an impact in the right team? I think so, and I’d like to share my thoughts on one piece that I believe falls into that category. Let’s look at Gamora, Daughter of Thanos!
Commons don’t typically draw a lot of attention, and even the good ones (like Scarlet Witch from WotR) are still affordable, so I feel like Gamora is going to be accessible to a lot of players. She’s got a plethora of keywords, which will give her some flexibility for teams to use her, and she’s got the stats to be a primary attacker. These days, six clicks at 60 points is not peak efficiency, but since she has CCE and Exploit Weakness for her full dial, and the means to heal herself, it’s not that bad a deal. She also can’t be modified by opposing effects, so her solid stats are going to safe from manipulation. Charge gives her mobility, although she doesn’t have the reach of the alpha pieces in the meta right now.
So that’s where we start with the downside…you’re going to need to figure out how to get her into the fight, and keep her intact until that point. Her values don’t drop significantly throughout her dial, but she does lose her mobility. And although she can’t have her stats toyed with, she can have her Invulnerability taken away through Outwit, or bypassed with penetrating damage, so she is a bit more fragile than top tier primary attackers.
Still, I feel like she could be a good starting point for a budget build, but she will require not only the right team, but a solid strategy to go along with her. Of course, any time you talk about budget builds, these things are necessary to make up for the power gap between you and the top tier builds. I’ve not done the research to see what goes with her, but I think a Cosmic or Warrior build could probably be managed.
Are you ready for a treat? I have TWO builds for you this week, as I wanted to talk about my team for the Kilted Classic (which performed better than I expected), but I felt it was more important to share Scott Crampton’s winning build. We’re going to start there, as Thanos builds are pretty prominent right now, and his is one that I ran into with another player at the helm. So I feel pretty confident in letting you know how it works, what some potential pitfalls are, and how the pieces all fit together.
Link – Scott Crampton – Spider-Thanos
Making Thanos themed obviously makes him more dangerous. With a +6 to map, it doesn’t rank high in the theme category, but it does enough to complicate the conversation, and more importantly, provides probs. Dazzler combines with the Spider-people to let the S.H.I.E.L.D. team ability to be copied, which not only extends Thanos’ impressive range, but also gives a damage boost, at the expense of actions. Marvella provides a source of Barrier for defense, if necessary, but Proteus is going to do that for free, allowing you to save actions to pump into Thanos’ damage. Mary Jane Watson will help with the equipping process by bringing in Paparazzi, but she also helps preserve you action total by being autonomous, so you can get the damage boost and still be able to do something else. Mary Jane (from WotR) is a great secondary attacker, although she’s primarily there as a theme fixer, and more S.H.I.E.L.D. support. I don’t think I need to review what Thanos does at this point, but know you’re going to face a dual-target Mind Control followed by a standard ranged attack that both will take advantage of Alchemical Fire to drop a fire marker on hit targets for additional penetrating damage.
It’s not without problems, however. The support doesn’t stand up to a beating, and it’s limited on how many actions it can take, especially since it lack Leadership. As I figured out when I played against it, if you can swarm the team, you can definitely overwhelm it, so I think it will probably have issues with Animal teams, and I was able to take it (not as piloted by Scott, for the record) with a Cap swarm. The random factor is not horrible, but the team really wants Thanos to hit two gems consistently, and suffers on rolls of one and two. Not horribly, but noticeably.
I don’t want to misrepresent my experience here…when I said I beat this build run by another player, I’m not saying it was easy. He took out my taxis early, and if he had chosen to run at the end of the game, he could have very easily won the game, but I also wanted to demonstrate the pathways to potential victory. Having said that, it’s probably a good time to tell you about what I ran yesterday, so you can get a better idea of how it worked, and how it can give Thanos problems.
Link – Chris Cottrill – ‘Merica!
When I say I was very pleased with the team, that might sound odd when I finished 2-3 for the day, but I was pretty close to winning every game but my first, and just a couple of die rolls either way could have made for a much better day for the team. On the surface, it appears simple. You have two groups consisting of two legacy Captain Americas, a Scarlet With, and an A.I.M. Red Squad. It plays very similar to my old Wolverines team that I ran during XXS, but I learned as I played that this build was much more powerful, despite not having access to ID cards.
The reasons for this are numerous. For one, Cap takes a real beating, and your opponent will most likely be surprised at how hard each one is to get rid of. Scarlet Witch may not have the reach that Lila Cheney has, but she makes up for it with a full dial of Probability Control, and the potential for Barrier if she’s not killed outright. A.I.M. Red Squad may be easier to kill than Mud Man, and less of an offensive threat, but their damage boost for Cap is huge, and they also surprised a few opponents, since Toughness actually forces them to devote a more primary attacker to take it down since the secondary and support pieces often don’t have quite the damage output to take them out on their own. But the bigger deal is how effective the build is at using the Sideline. The team has lower defenses, so they often get hit, making it easy to bring in Sentinels. The team chews up support pieces quickly, so it can get Skrulls on the map without too much effort. It make a LOT of attacks, and makes it easy to plan out when and how to bring in Troubalerts and Troublemakers. Because of this, it becomes easy to overwhelm whoever you’re facing, despite the fact that they’re dishing out a lot of damage on your team.
Unfortunately, Cap’s Leadership is only on the top of the dial, so you can quickly and easily find yourself reduced to three actions in a turn, although you’re always going to have the free close attacks from Caps, so it’s not that horrible. It’s debatable if the Sentinel is a good choice for the team. It IS easy to get out, but since it starts in your starting area, and your team wants to be on the other side of the map, it takes some time for the Sentinel to get in position. Defensive minded players will not like running this build, as you HAVE to push full forward from the word go. The thought process is that regardless what you do, your opponent is going to get to your team, so your best bet for success is to get as far across the map as possible. That way, if you lose your Scarlet Witches (as I did against Thanos), you can still get your Caps the rest of the way to your opponent just through his standard movement. You also have to be careful to pay attention to your triggers, as you NEED to bring in pieces off your Sideline, and as I was adjusting to the team, I missed some important triggers that could have really turned the tide in more than one game.
But it’s a fun team to play, and if you’re the kind of player that likes throwing caution to the wind and just get in your opponent’s face, this is a good team for you. I have a feeling that with practice or another pilot, this team could actually make some waves in the meta. Sadly, I am rusty, and I’m just a decent pilot, so you get a 2-3 result. I welcome anyone to try it and see if they can do better!
I loved the cards from last week’s blogs, but it also got me looking at the world of custom Star Wars clix. There are a lot of examples out there, but I always try and break it down for you, and give you a taste of some of my favorites. I also try and give you a place where you can find out more about my favorite artists.
Unfortunately, for this first one, while I like the artist, I don’t like the site, and I’m not going to share a link…I don’t know how well I trust it. His username is freestylefetus, and he’s got a really great take on the Mandalorian. I feel like there’s a lot of work that went into the sculpt, and while some aspects are still a little “dirty” (I feel like the cape could use a bit of clean-up to smooth out some of the imperfections in the sculpt), the basis is fantastic, and wouldn’t take much work to clean. In fact, I think some of the imperfections might be able to be fixed with paint as opposed to knife and file.
On the other hand, XforceDeadpool1 from HC Realms not only has a very clean-looking Shocktrooper, he’s also created a custom dial for it. It’s been a while since he’s made this piece, so the dial probably hasn’t aged well, but that trait is a little crazy powerful even now. I feel like the mini itself was something that was not a custom sculpt, but a mini from a different game repurposed for clix, although the cannon looks like it was an addition to the base mini. Still, it looks good, and I always give bonus points for a card. Here’s a link to his HC Realms images for his Star Wars pieces, and another link to his DeviantArt page to see some of his other works.
I’ve showcased the works of kkl1984 in the blog before, but he still has some really great customs. You can follow this link to his eBay storefront if you want to see more, but I felt like his Luke Skywalker needed to be highlighted here. This one is the full package – a great custom sculpt and good paints to go with a custom dial and card. I haven’t asked if he does commissions, or just makes the customs he feels like making, but if you like what you see, it might be worth asking.
Anyway, that’s what I have for you this week. I’m hoping to get someone special involved in this segment in a week or two, but I’m always wanting to see what you’re working on. Just email me at clixbait@digitaledengames.com and show me what you have. I’ll try and get back in touch with you as soon as I can so we can share your thoughts and creations with the world.
Next week begins my budget focus. I’m sorry if this doesn’t interest all my readers, but I feel like it’s something worth exploring, and I’m going to have a lot of fun doing it. I already have a silver age build that will be the focus of next week’s blog, but there’s more fun to be had, too. Next week will feature another installment on 6 Clix Deep, and I’ll be featuring podcaster and cosplayer Kalder Ness! So I hope you have a great week, and join me for Clix Bait!
Clix Bait 