Please note this article is the opinion of one person, The' Le, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of the HCR staff or it's contributors.

The gaming community is desperately waiting for HeroClix to be picked up by a new owner and come back from the dead. Some say it’s just a matter of time, but until that happens, I have some ideas on how to fix HeroClix.

**Please note, I, DemonRS did not write this article. It was written by The' Le and appropriate rep can be given by clicking HERE

Hi, I’m The’ Le (pronounced Tay Lee), owner of #############.com. I’ve been an avid fan of HeroClix for many years now, and I’ve been a judge for the last four years. For better or worse, a lot has changed since the old days of Infinity Challenge, so let’s just get right to it.

Special Powers
First introduced with Marvel Avengers and then DC Justice League, Special Powers are a great way to bring something different to the able and have some more comic-accurate figures. Personally I hate Special Powers. It totally breaks the spirit of HeroClix, which was originally designed as a game that didn’t need cards or separate pieces of paper to track. Even worse, every new set seems to introduce a dozen new FAQ pages because of it.

That being said, I would argue that we simply can’t get rid of Special Powers. That’s right, I hate them, but I think they should stay. The fact is that Special Powers have indeed made the game more interesting, and there are a lot of them that were made just right (JL Joker, JL Green Arrow, Avengers Winter Soldier, MM Danger). However, there is still just far too many of them out there (and many stinkers at that). I think the best solution is to cut back on the number of pieces that have Special Powers.

Think about this: each set is limited to 60 figures. By my count, there are 47 figures in the DC Crisis set with Special Powers. Forty-Seven! That’s absurd. If you really want to make Special Powers feel “special”, then cut it down to 25 figures; that’s a healthy 42% (compared to the 79% in DC Crisis). Honestly, do we need yet another figure that can use Perplex but only on its own combat values? Clearly the designers are handing out Special Powers “just because they can.”


Giants
I think some of the newer Giants rules are right on. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that you can now use Telekinesis on Giants, but that’s fine by me since it makes Giants far more useful. However, it’s still pretty hard to use a Giant-focused team successfully (without Trigon) because they are just so limited to what they can do well. After all, most of their strengths are also their greatest weaknesses. Giant Stride is a good start at making them cooler, but it’s silly that they can only taxi someone if they have zero action tokens.

So I propose this: all Giants should have the transporter ability (which comes with the Move and Attack ability). Why not? A Giant should be able to carry every turn if it wants to. The Move and Attack ability also makes a lot of sense to me; it should be able to walk past and slap you whenever it feels like it. It’s not unbalancing at all since that ability also carries a -2 penalty to the attack roll. In one fell swoop, Giants would become very cool in my opinion.

Keywords
Much like Special Powers, Keywords simply break the concept of playing the game without the need for cards. It is a far bigger offender of this than Special Powers, because there are a number of game mechanics that forces you to look at many different cards during the game (Monster Hunter, Mutations and Monsters Professor X, etc). While I am not a fan of the theme team mechanic, I think that can stay. However, HeroClix really needs to do away with powers and abilities that forces you to look up Keywords (Warbound, Inside Information, Secret Invasion Mr Fantastic, etc). No, I take it back – the theme team mechanic needs to go too. I like Keywords as a way to add flavor to the game, but it should remain only that. Keywords should have no impact on game play at all.

Team Abilities
The issue here is simple: we need more! By adding more true Team Abilities, we wouldn’t have a need for Alternate Team Ability Feats, and no need for Keywords. The Morlocks TA disappeared from the Powers/Ability Card because the designers didn’t want the game to get too complicated. That’s funny since Feats, BFCs, and Special Powers have already made the game too complicated. If anything, TAs are probably the simplest game mechanic out there, so why don’t we have more of them? This is a game about comic book super heroes (and villains), and many players are avid comic book readers. By adding more Team Abilities, it will make the core players happier, which translates into more sales. There’s no reason why we can’t have a Sinestro Corps TA, even if it does something simple like grant the Incapacitate power. Where’s my Guardian of the Galaxy TA? Where’s my Doom Patrol TA? Where’s my West Coast Avengers? You’re going to give me a Defenders TA, but no true Thunderbolts TA? Really?


Feats
Feats are a great idea that is poorly implemented. The fact is that Feats are a great way to make low point figures more competitive (which is a good thing), but too often they are placed on high powered figures to make them too powerful. The 25-point Fortitude feat (character is immune to outwit and exploit weakness) is great on the Armor Wars Spider-Man (72 pts), but it’s just totally unfair when it’s applied to someone like V Icons Superman (251 pts)… or God forbid the DC Crisis Superman chase (317 pts).

Think about the numbers: by applying Fortitude, the AW Spider-man figure takes a 35% total cost increase; V Icons Superman takes a 10% increase in cost; and DC Crisis Superman takes a measly 6.7% cost increase… yet that one feat is much more potent on the bigger figures.

On that note, I think the 10% rule was a stupid way to fix a broken mechanic. I own 4 copies of Fortitude (25 pts), and you’re telling me I can only use one of them in a 400 point game? P-shaw.

To fix Feats, there should be a different cost mechanic to them. One solution is to limit the prerequisite to low point figures; For example, Fortitude could have the following prerequisite: “Choose a character under 151 points”. This would certainly curb its use on uber figures. The problem is that your high point figures won’t have access to some really fun feats.

A better solution is to simply make the cost scale up! For example: “Fortitude costs [20] points. For each 50 points of chosen character's point value, this feat costs an additional [5] points.”

Want to put Fortitude on a figure that’s 72 points? It’ll cost you [25] to apply the feat. How about a 120 point figure? That’s [30]. Now if you want to stick Fortitude on that 317 point Superman, it’ll cost you a total of [50] points. That’s way more appropriate than the measly 25 points that the feat costs now.

So there you go.

-TheLe, on the web at #############.com

Special Thanks to DemonRS for posting my article. I hope to write more articles in the very near future for HCreams!

-TheLe

I also suggest heroclix introduces negative point feats, which could represent things like an injury before the battle or extreme exhaustion. This could be used for theme teams who only go over 300/400 by only a few points.

Here's my take:

Special Powers
I love em. In addition to the split dial regular powers, I'm a fan of powers like Possession that couldn't be represented on a Heroclix dial otherwise. I'll agree there may be too many. I'd say offhand - let half the set have SPs. However, that might be limiting depending on character selection.

Giants
I like the new rules, though agree the carry restriction in unecessarily confusing. I prefer rules to be streamlined to resemble other aspects of the game. For instance, I wish HSS'ers had a -2 penalty to AVs (like transporter move and attack) rather than have range halved.

I'm not opposed to giant transporters, and you make a good argument for them.

Keywords
I love the specific ones, loathe the generic ones. Still, I see a lot of power players in my area that don't use Keywords, and I can't help but think that it's nice to have an edge against these min maxers when i want to run a competitive theme team. I agree that hunting down keywords is a pain for cards like inside Information, etc.

Team Abilities
I personally think Serpent Society got the can because not only may it have been too game breaking, but it alos looked too much like MoE (example: Thunderball has the SS TA, but should have the MoE TA). I kind of like the ATA system, but would rather see it utilize a keyword mechanic. I'd like to see a permanent addendum to Outwit: Give this character a power action to counter an opposing figure's TA until the beginning of your next turn (of course it wouldn't work on PC/Q TAs, but you get the point).


Feats
I couldn't disagree with you more here. Anything that makes the team cost summation more difficult needs to go. You mention having four copies of Fortitude but only needing to use one. I'd rather all feats have a cost like ICWO - this feat costs X for every member of your team it is equipped to. PLayers shouldn't need more than 1 copy of a feat.

As far as the 10% cap goes: WK isn't looking anymore, so feel free to box it up!

Here's my .02!

In regards to the keywords, I like them, I think there should be a SLIGHT bonus to having a keyword oriented team.

The catch for me is that the keyword can't be a generic term. So the bonus would apply to a Keyword team such as:
Justice League or West Coast Avengers

None of those, I made a team full of soldiers and I win now..


That's dumb..


In regards to the special powers, While I was very excited to get the special powers (I was never against this) I do feel they've handed them out too much and many of them refuse to be "special" feeling. I do like some that let us have multiple powers on one part of the dial, but overall I'd like to see an increase in unique powers (not on the PAC) as that's their real purpose, and a reduction of people whom get these powers..

In regards to Team Abilities:
We definitely need more TAs. When we got morlocks and such I got all excited for whom might come next. And nothing ever did.. I'm not sure why this is.. The lack of adding new TAs probably is the one reason that Feats got such a bad name.

First.. Fantastic Four TA was ####, why not just replace it? Why did we need a feat as an alternate TA? If you weren't lucky enough to pull it then you had to play the crappy TA? That stinks.

Thundebolts. Turned the decent Avengers TA (decent since the Avengers have enough low point pieces to utilize free move) into a monster. Suddenly Captain America and Ironman were also feeling the need to be a T-bolt.

If they really want to make the "new" TAs feat related, then there should be a requirement on the feat to have the keyword for said team. It would have made sense to only allow those pieces with the keyword Thunderbolts to use the feat..


In regards to Feats:
I don't agree with the 10% rule. If I want to make a 400 point team that has 2 figures with a ridiculous amount of Feats.. Why can't I?
I also don't agree with the scaling point value suggestion. Arguably the pieces that are the "high powered" pieces you're speaking of really NEED Fortitude. Most of them are falling into a "one man army" theme. Yes they're harder to take down with Fortitude but that's really the point. The pieces that are unfair (that you've listed) to me are the ones that were rather game breaking. V-Icons Superman single handedly changed the rules to HSS and in the process ruined some low point value HSS pieces. Fortitude didn't make him unfair. It just makes him an even better broken piece.

Crisis Chase Superman is another case of somewhat broken pieces. What he can do and the stuff on his dial allows him to be a one man army on his own. Of course he needs to be played in 400 points. It's pretty feasible to build a 400 point army there that can take him out with or without foritude..

The scaling feats makes no sense to me, at least related to something like fortitude for Superman. I don't really dig that solution. Perhaps they could make another feat that does the same thing as foritude (Strong willed??) that has the pre-req of characters under X points, and costs less?
Because frankly 25 points isn't that cheap, so I can't justify putting it on a 50 point piece. And I also can't justify making it cost 50+ points for a one man army type team.. Playing a one man army is a playstyle choice, and until we can make a 1 space heroclick that has a sentinel length dial, fortitude is the only way to make them viable..

I pretty much agree with everything in the article.
Especially the Special Powers part. Not only did 47 of the figures in Crisis have Special Powers, but most of those had MULTIPLE special powers. I counted onces and including the LEs and Chase figures there were over 100 special powers in Crisis.

I'd dearly love the game designers to step back and ask themselves with each character if they really feel that they *need* to include a special power in order to accurately represent the character they are making. And try to limit it to one special power per figure huh? Does Green Arrow, a normal man with a bow, really need FOUR special powers to represent him?

Rep to you!

I'll also have to disagree about the feats section. It's too risky to play some of the high point characters without fortitude since there are so many cheap outwitters around. There are pictures of superman and thor on the card for a reason. And scaling the cost of feats up depending on the point total of the figure would be a huge headache.

As for Giants I wish they wouldn't have changed the lock down at 2 squares rule. I could care less about them being able to carry.

Entire articles now? Really?

The game won't come back if you don't want to play it as it was.

I love the special powers! Super-heroes have them,thats the point! SP's give each figure a better representation of what they do in the comics,and for me and my friends,thats what makers the game fun and exciting.We dont really use cardboard of any type anymore,but i love your idea for giants to have the transporter ability-they do need something.

If a Team Ability is game breaking, they simply need to change its description! This was done successfully with the X-men TA, and poorly with the removal of HSS option 2.

As for Alternate Team Abilities Cards, yes I like them too -- but only when the replace existing TAs. For example, I have little problems with the Alternate FF Feat (even though it is broken) or the Alternate Injustice League Feat. However, I am offended that they made a separate Alpha Flight ATA card! There's no reason we can't have a stand alone Team Ability for Alpha Flight!

`Le

Why couldn't the game come back with suggestions from the fan base?

After all if things pop up that get a lot of people supporting a few ideas then as the designer you MIGHT want to go ahead and listen to the people who are buying right?

You want to stay profitable, which means you gotta listen to your clients..

MUST... REFRAIN... FROM... COMMENTING...

I'll throw in my thoughts,

special powers
I 100% agree with you on special powers I love em, but do feel they are to frequently given out.

Gaints
I agree.

Team abilities
50/50 i would like to see some like thunderbolts, new avengers and such, but I do think ATA feats can cover some fo this.

Feats
Gotta disagree here i like em as is, your way would complicate feats, right now they are pretty simple. Your case for fortitude to me is silly. the whole point of fortitiude is that it can allow you to play a character like superman like he should be. Outwit is too simple a way to win against supes or other bricks and this feat above all others was needed to help balance the game. I think if you spend the 25 points you have the right to use it on whoever, in a 300 point game putting fort on vet supes leaves you with a whoping 24 points to spens and only 5 more could be used on a feat. Which is why I like the 10% rule sure you can have a fortitude but thats it, just one.