Welcome back to Clix Bait! Wow…two weeks in a row that I’m getting it done early. Didn’t think it was possible! But if you have any questions, comments, or if you just want to start your own conversation, I invite you to follow this link to the Facebook page and join the fun. I also welcome you to share the custom creations you’re working on.
Speaking of which, if you are part of the Facebook group, you’ll know that I have a project that I decided to work on that I was looking for suggestions on. While I’m not going with any of the suggestions given, those suggestions got my creative brain working and helped me figure out what I want to do with the base. The tricky part was the lightning on the base – most of the rest of it could be repainted to look less techie if needed, but the lightning really is tricky to repurpose, so I wanted something that would definitively use that lightning. I also wanted to do a bit more that cut existing characters off their bases and put them on switch clix for this, so I ruled out Asgardians, despite how cool that base might be. What I have decided on is the villains of Big Trouble in Little China. So the base will include Lo Pan, the three Storms, and that funky eye thing that spotted the heroes when they were crashing the wedding. It’s going to take a lot of work to get it done, but I think it will be pretty cool.
For those of you who may have missed it, today is the final day to get the Scarlet Witch promo figure from WizKids for placing an order from their online store (link here). I looked at it, and it’s not bad, but I’d need to order something I don’t have the money for right now, and I just don’t want to push my budget too far this close to Christmas. I’m 90% certain this is a reused sculpt, so if there are Scarlet Witch collectors out there, you’re probably not all that excited on that note, either. I think if you really want this piece, you’re probably going to be able to get it from someone else for pretty cheap later.
I want to take a moment to let folks know (who haven’t already run into this on their various clix feeds) that there is going to be a BIG online event on December 12th, brought to you by a lot of major podcasts and sponsors in the Heroclix world. Critical Clix, the Bradcast show, Majestix, and Clixed Off are all working together to bring you this event, so you can be sure there will be a lot of top tier talent playing, as well as great prizing. If you want to know more about it, you can follow this link to the announcement.
WizKids has given us a release date for the Eternals movie set, and it’s just 10 days away. For a set that’s going to release so soon, I’m a bit surprised we haven’t seen any spoilers, but then it’s going to be a small set, so they may just want to surprise us. Or they my be concerned that the set will be as underwhelming as the movie, and therefore want to hold off on revealing anything. No, I didn’t hate the movie, but I didn’t love it, either, and I could tell you all the issues I had with it, but this blog is supposed to be about Heroclix! As for what we might see from the set, it’s just hard to guess. Movie sets seem to consistently have one or two gems to get the boxes selling, but end up fairly lackluster overall, and with these characters, there’s a pretty wide range of abilities they could give the pieces, so I think its going to be a matter of how efficient they are as opposed to what they can do.
Other than that, I don’t have much to talk about this week, so let’s get down to business! I hadn’t really intended to make the whole blog focus around tempo, but when I started writing about tempo in Strategy Bytes, it carried over into the Pauper team build that I decided to throw out for Blueprint Builds. That led me to talk about a piece that should be on every Pauper build now, so Under Review looks at the most important Pauper piece to come out of Rise and Fall. And since I’m working on a team base mod, I thought I’d share some other examples (or, based on what I found, I guess you could say X-amples) of modded team bases. I hope you enjoy!
In the early days of this blog, I took some time to talk about some basic archtypes of builds, such as alpha strike and undying, but I’ve been mentioning another archtype recently that I never really detailed. To be honest, I never really considered it an archtype until I started playing a build that fits the definition, but now that I’m aware of it, I feel like it needs some time in the spotlight. Let’s talk a bit about tempo builds – their strengths, their weaknesses, and how they do what they do.
I’m sure more than a few people are going to frown on my analogy here, but I like to think of tempo as time of possession in American football. Some teams just want to hold on to the ball SO long that the other team really doesn’t have time to implement their strategy. There are quite a few tools in the kit to make this a reality, and even teams that aren’t focused on this as their win strategy still try to use some of the aspects of it to enhance their own strategy. But a full out tempo build is going to make sure that the opponent doesn’t get to do near as much as it does.
My build focuses on dropping action tokens on pieces. Incapacitate may not do pushing damage anymore, but pieces still have to be clear to act, so you can manipulate the balance of actions with judicious use of Incapacitate, and other tricks to drop action tokens. But you really have to commit to this, and it has issues. For one, most of the time you’re dropping action tokens, you’re not doing damage, so you need to have a high degree of board control to make this work, and you’re likely to be light on points. Also, there are plenty of pieces that can disrupt this manner of control, whether through Leadership or Willpower, or traits that outright clear away tokens (like Blackheart). So knowing what can disrupt your control of the flow of action is pretty important, and will factor into your choices on target priority.
But you don’t necessarily have to limit your opponent’s actions to maintain control of the tempo. It’s actually more common to out-action your opponent. Most modern teams will have four actions, but most will also have tricks to stretch those actual actions into a string of events that make it feel like double or more. FREE actions are the most common, allowing movements through Sidestep, or using characters that do things for free, like Onslaught. Not all these actions are created equal – most players will try to use things that are just outright free, like Wonder Woman’s Incapacitate with the Lasso of Truth, but triggered FREE actions can be just as good, especially if you can stack the odds in your favor.
Jason Wyngarde is a great example of this. If you slap him with a few Perplexes, put him in line for a couple of probs, he can absolutely dominate a turn. His real value is not necessarily the damage he can do through mind controlled characters, but rather the damage he can do to the game clock. If he can keep stringing the Mind Control, then he can turn one action into four or five, which might not be the most effective actions, but will definitely keep control of the action clearly on his side of the board.
Autonomous can stretch the action total, too. Maggott obviously would not be nearly so effective if his bystanders weren’t autonomous. Granted, the combat values on autonomous pieces generally aren’t as good as your main combatants, but they really don’t need to be. For one, there are plenty of ways to boost their effectiveness, but even without boosts, they just need to get lucky once or twice and then maintain control of the clock to achieve their goal. We all would like to score massive points and wipe the opposing team, but in the end, you just have to have more points than your opponent at the end of the game.
I like this style of team, but I will caution players that, as I stated earlier, to play a full out tempo build requires a lot of commitment to the strategy in the build, leaving you a bit weaker than some other builds. It’s beautiful when it works right, but there are a lot of pieces out there that complicate the approach, and a bad turn can open you up to a lot of adversity. But then, the same can be said of most archtypes out there, so if you like playing a control-minded game, this might be the approach for you.
I’ll be honest…last week looking at a Pauper build had me wondering what I would have played if I had been there. There’s a pretty wide open book on how to build for Pauper right now, but it’s hard to argue against Onslaught, and so I started there and wanted to see where it would take me. What I’ve ended up with is a rather unconventional Monster build that falls in line with the tempo strategy I like running in the meta. I’m not sure if it’s the best way to go right now, but it certainly is an aggravating challenge to put in front of opponents!
Link – Chris Cottrill – Pauper Monster Tempo
Yes, there’s a lot you can do with Onslaught, but this build wants to use him to work with your two Medusas to continually drop tokens on the opposing team. This strategy may be more effective in Pauper, since you don’t have to deal with Blackheart and Emperor Gladiator. You may no longer be able to dish out unavoidable damage with Incapacitate, but if your opponent’s key pieces have to spend all their turns clearing, then you can focus on other means to deal damage. So Onslaught’s first mission is maintaining board control, he also can attack after doing a free action Incapacitate. But Hulk will be your primary attacker, making a full move Charge for an attack, then allowing a Medusa to carry him into a position adjacent to two other pieces to get another free attack. Onslaught gives you a prob to go with your theme probs, and Proteus gives you some Barrier, a retaliation, and screws up improved movement for your opponents. He can also be placed to help get Hulk where he needs to be for a second attack, too.
I do dislike the lack of Leadership on the team, but the free action from Onslaught and the bonus Hulk attack help to mitigate that drawback. Early, you will have to use Onslaught’s free to get the Medusa that drops two tokens into place through TK, and his costed action to move. You have a relatively small theme, so initiative rolls will likely favor your opponent. But you want the probs since you lack Perplex. The good news is that your attack values are good, and defensively, Onslaught can do a good job covering your approach. Battle Fury will hurt you a lot. I mean A LOT! So you need to prioritize your damage on pieces with Battle Fury, or that grant Battle Fury to others.
It’s tough to judge how effective the build will be, as right now there really isn’t a meta for Pauper. There are plenty of great team ideas out there, I’m sure, but until you see what they can do against opponents, it’s all guess work. Hopefully we can start some events running soon, and see what happens!
So, astute readers will have noticed that there was something on the build sheet for the team that I didn’t include in the write-up. That wasn’t really an intentional omission – it’s just not something that is more a little bonus, and not necessary for the primary build. But I’ve told you before, if you have options that could potentially be useful, then make use of all the opportunities you can. The only unfortunate thing is, since Pauper is Highlander, you can only have one Sentinel on your sideline. Still, having that option on the table in a Pauper build is new, so it’d be wise to know what it can do for you, and if you should pick one up for your sideline.
OK, so let’s look at what this can do for you! It’s a giant with Sidestep, so that in and of itself is going to give you some added mobility if you get it on the board. An 11 attack is really good for something you bring in off the sideline for free, and while the two damage might not be what you hope for, the dual target Incapacitate is something to appreciate. Also remember that because it’s a giant, it’s going to get a Willpower roll of 3+, making it likely to be acting a lot for you. And if it does get KOed, then it goes back to your sideline, can can potentially come back into the game.
Every time that happens, your opponent DOES score 25 points, so use them wisely! With only three clicks, and a 17 defense, they can die pretty easy, but if you use them right, then one action may be all you need with them to swing the game. Unlike Troubalerts, these come out in response to opponent hits, and they start in your starting zone, meaning if you’ve strayed too far, there may be no point in putting them on the table as it will take them too long to get to the action. On the other hand, despite being giant, they are still a single based character, meaning they can be TKed, making that distance something less likely to cause problems.
I mean, having one on your sideline is not likely to win or lose you the game, but it’s definitely a useful tool to have at your disposal, and since it doesn’t cost you any points, well, this is something that I love seeing for Pauper. It’s not bad in modern, either, but I’m kind of focused this week on Pauper, so that’s where my head’s at. I recommend to anyone that wants to play Pauper to get one as a just-in-case addition to the sideline.
I find team bases interesting not just because you can but some of your favorite characters together in a single spotlight piece, but most of the team bases have interesting backgrounds to them, which allow you to bring more life to your creations. While I didn’t do it for this particular project, the idea of a Green Lantern Corps team base appeals to me, and would probably be really easy to put together. The only negative to putting these together is if you’re a completionist…there’s no easy place to go to create a team base dial, as HCTools only allow for standard dials. But hey, if you find a dial creator for team bases, I welcome you to share it on the Facebook page, as I’m sure there’s a lot of us who would love the information!
There are a variety of ways to approach team bases, so I wanted to start with the easiest and work my way up the difficulty curve. Here, we have a variant AvX team base by HCRealms user Superprime. For the most part, he just took switch clix and added them to the Gen X team base, although there were some that he did a quick cut and glue job to adjust their facing. Despite being light on effort, it still looks good, and a similar technique could be used with any figure just by cutting them off their existing base and gluing them onto a switch clix base. This would probably be the approach I would take for a Green Lantern team base…it would just be a matter of figuring out which base I’d like to use.
HCRealms user Plaguewyrm took a step further to create this X-Force base. Not only did he swap out bases for the switch clix, but he also did a great job on repainting the characters into the appropriate costumes for the team. Wolfsbane and Vanisher may have also had some significant mod work put into them (I especially like the way Vanisher is perched on the rock) to add to the dynamic nature of the overall piece. The only negative I see is the magma effect beneath Warpath that was meant for another character. In that case, I probably would have put a little paint on it to make it blend, but other than that, this is an outstanding piece.
On the top end of the effort spectrum, you have the original X-Men as presented by HCRealms user asmartfellow. He went for the look of the original X-Men, and definitely succeeded at achieving it. The Gen 13 base is a popular one to use, as it’s probably the cheapest and easiest to get a hold of, but I think there might have been a better choice for this team. Still, he did a good job making adjustments to the base to account for the team change, such as putting an ice patch down beneath Iceman and removing the lightning effect that would be behind Sarah Raimnaker. Little touches like that may not be difficult, but really help with the overall completeness of the piece.
So, do you have a team base project you want to share? Or an idea that you want to have someone take a look at? Well, let us know on the Facebook page, or send me an email at clixbait@digitaledengames.com and I’ll be happy to share or investigate.
I’d love to take this moment to give you a preview of next week, but I’m not sure at this point what I’m going to talk about. Moving into the holiday season is usually a pretty dry time for Clix action, and we’re still a bit away from new releases, so I’ll have to get creative for content. But there will be Clix Bait next week, and I hope you’ll join me for it!
Clix Bait 