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When I browse the /tg/ front page or walk into any LGS I may pass by on the way to work, there’s always one war-game that’s constantly on display. With the vast number of miniature/wargames out there, Warhammer is the most dominant franchise out there. However, Games Workshop’s cash cow is being threatened by none other than a ‘clix’ game. One that sold out of its new booster set five days before its release.
WizKids is a relatively young company being only 8 years old, but it has two of the most popular franchises in the United States under their belt, DC and Marvel Comics. Yes, I’m talking about HeroClix, the collectible miniatures game that brings your favorite comic book heroes and villains to life and pits them against each other in casual games of competition or serious tournaments. There’s a lot of hate on HeroClix for being a clix game and for not being as immersive, competitive, or as “serious” as many other war-games. Personally, it’s hard to compare miniature games against GW’s flagships Warhammer and Warhammer 40k simply because they’ve been in the business for decades and know what to expect from their customers. But we’re not here to talk about Warhammer; we’re here to talk about HeroClix.
Similar to WizKids’ Mage Knight, HeroClix is its spiritual predecessor. HeroClix utilizes a simple, easy to understand combat mechanic, mixes it with super powers and abilities unique to that figure (or generic colored powers that you can find on the Powers and Abilities card), and throws in your favorite DC and Marvel superheroes into the mix to make one fun game. The game is easy to learn but hard to master. It doesn’t impose fictional years of back-story, complicated terms or lexicon, or pages of mechanics just so you can shoot a guy standing on a ledge. No need to purchase any rulebooks separately here folks, the rulebook for HeroClix fits in your pocket and is brought up for quick reference (Like differentiating between close combat actions versus close combat attacks). Plus, you get to having fucking Dr. Doom, Red Skull, Cyclops, The Incredible Hulk, and Power Man on the same team, if you really want to. You could even make a gay superheroes team or all Jewish superheroes team. The downside of HeroClix is that you’re not always going to get the figures you want, as you buy them in booster sets (or packs, whatever you want to call them). If you don’t like receiving figs by random chance, then you can always buy individual figures on eBay. Personally, that takes out all the fun from the game and the excitement of making teams on the spot from random figs you received in a booster.
Now to move onto the meat of the game, combat. Your figure’s base has everything you need to know about his combat values. Listed on the base are the figure’s movement value, attack value, defense value, damage value, and range. If you want to move, you move up to your figure’s movement value. You want to attack? You can make a close combat attack (Attacking an opponent that’s one square away) or a ranged combat attack (Attacking an opponent that’s x amount of squares away with x being your range value). After deciding the type of attack you make, you roll 1d6 and add your character attack value to it. Compare that to your opponent’s defense value to see if you hit. If you hit, the opponent takes x clicks of damage with x being your damage value. It’s fairly straight forward when it comes to combat and there’s no flipping through books to see how much damage a character does or what attack bonuses they get. Everything you ever need to know can be found on their base. However, there’s more on the fig’s base than just their combat values, there’s powers and abilities too. We’ll investigate powers and abilities next week on HeroClix Exposed.
~Mitchell_Henderson
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