Absence Does Not Make My Skills Greater

It's been awhile since I last went and played any Heroclix, so having nothing else of any particular importance on the docket for today, that's what I did. Small turnout this week, only three players, which I actually kind of prefer. It seems less frenetic when there's fewer people there, though only having three does mean everyone gets one bye. So four is better, everyone plays each round, and everyone plays everybody else.

It was a 500 point game, unrestricted, Cloud Map. I'd never seen the Cloud Map before, and it's a completely white map, with grid lines so you know how many squares you're moving and such. No blocking, elevated, or hindering terrain, just open space. I opted for a New Warriors squad of Firestar* (52 pts.), Darkhawk (56), Justice (72), Kid Nova (66), Night Thrasher (73), Speedball (77), and Namorita (98)**. I drew a first round match with Tim, who trotted out Dr. Doom (200 pts.), Mr. Fantastic (100), and Iron Man (188, plus 12 points of feats which proved irrelevant). Hey, it's a Triumvirate of Evil! No seriously, I can vaguely conceive of something so dire Doom would work with Reed, but I can't imagine it involving fighting the New Warriors. All of Tim's characters had Perplex, and they used it to great effect, amping up each others' Attack and Damage values and mowing through my team. I did manage to smack Iron Man around a bit, but I knocked him onto his Pulse Wave clicks right as I had swarmed him with my entire team. In the span of three rounds, he probably did a cumulative 14 clicks of damage to my team with that power. Suffice it to say, Tim took out my entire team in short order, and I got none of his. My best moment was using Justice to TK Thrasher close enough to Charge Iron Man, but not before Thrash Outwitted IM's Invulnerability. Without that, I wouldn't have fazed him, with it Thrasher punched Stark right in his stupid face for 2 damage. Sometimes, you have to take the little victories.

Afte that mercifully brief disaster, I faced Jack. Jack opted for the Fantastic Four released in the recent starter set (each character worth 100 points***), plus Nick Fury (also 100 points). We basically met in the center of the field, and split into smaller skirmishes. Nita and Firestar went after Reed. Thrash, Justice, Nova, and Darkhawk were trying to corral the Thing. Speedball got in Fury's face, and Jack kept Sue and Johnny in the background, taking potshots as they appeared. I tried my "TK Thrasher, he Outwits target's defense power, then Charges" on the Thing, but I missed. And I missed when I used a theme team provided reroll. Then Mr. Grimm attacked Night Thrasher, and scored a hit. I made him reroll. He rolled double sixes this time (that's bad for me), so I used my last reroll to make him try one more time. He hit, but 4 damage is better than 5 with 4 knockback (which would have smacked me into the edge of the map, causing another click of damage). I sent Thrasher back up there again, this time hoping for Close Combat Expert to help, but he missed again, and was finished off shorthly thereafter. Sue dealt with Firestar pretty quickly as well. Between Darkhawk and Justice, I managed to chip 3 clicks off the Thing, but it wasn't looking good for me.

Then things turned around. Nita hit Reed a few times. Both Fury and Johnny had been failing to hit Speedball, but Speedball finally got a shot in on Fury. It could have done 3 damage, but Jack used the "LMD" defense power, which reduced the damage by 2, but moved Fury into a corner on my side of the map, taking him out of the fight for a bit. That left Speedball free to go after the Torch, and 3 successful attacks later, I'd knocked him out (without taking any damage, I might add). Also, Jack had moved Sue to get a better shot at Darkhawk, who was undamaged up until then, but 'Hawk was able to get a shot in on her and knock her off her starting click that had Invulnerability. It's much easier when she only has Barrier for a defense power. Nova was decked by this point, and Justice saved himself by Force Blasting the Thing away from him, though it only bought him a couple of turns.

Still, Namorita defeated Reed (who was having some real trouble attacking successfully, which was fine with me). Fury shot Darkhawk in the back and finished him, and the Thing finally hurt Speedball a little. I Charged Nita at Sue, and managed to knock a couple clicks off her, and by this time Nita had Poison****, so I chipped away at Sue a little with that. She hit Nita, but didn't finish her, then Jack pushed to try and finish the job, before Poison could kick in again. Except I hit my Shape Change roll, so he had to reassess. He tried to break away and failed, took a click for that, and the click from Poison at the start of my turn finished the job. So I took the opportunity to Charge at Nick Fury and smack him, and used Speedball's movement power to get the hell away from Ben Grimm (I didn't like the odds of hitting his 18 defense with an 8 attack) and over by Fury (who had a more manageable 16 defense). Perhaps miffed by this, Ben marched right over to Justice and smacked him out of the game (way to treat your trainer from your Unlimited Class Wrestling Days, Mr. Grimm!). At that point, time was up. As it turns out, that last KO was the turning point. Jack got everyone on my team except Nita and Speedball, and I got everyone on his save Fury and the Thing. He got 319 points, I got 300. So yeah, I lost again, at least this one was competitive. To be fair, it helped me that Jack kept forgetting to use the FF team ability (whre if one of them gets KO'ed, the other heal 1 click), but I forgot to roll one of Nita's Shape Changes and he hit with the attack that followed, so neither one of us was perfect.

So Jack played Tim for winner. Jack was able to use his Outwitters (Fury and Reed) to keep Tim from Perplexing up Iron Man's stats the way he did against me, which helped. Also, Jack's attempt to swarm Iron Man went much better than mine did. There was a moment, as I was watching, where Tim pushed Doom to retreat (In other words, Doom took a click of damage just to move back a couple spaces). I didn't understand until he did the same with Reed (also pushing him). He did the same against me - right before Iron Man Pulse Waved my team. And that's what he tried, pushing Iron Man to do it. Didn't work as well this time. He only hurt Ben and Sue (1 click each), as Johnny and Fury's defenses were too high, and Reed was out of range. Iron Man fell shortly thereafter, and things looked bad for Tim. But Jack had taken some hits focusing solely on Tony Stark, so he lost Reed and Ben in the next few rounds, and Sue as well. But Tim was pushing enough - and Jack's pushes were working out often enough - that Jack did eventually put Doom and Reed out of commission.

So two of the three games were interesting at least, which is a plus. Blow outs are just unpleasant for everybody. Except maybe the person winning, but even they might be bored by it. I couldn't really tell you.

* Let me take this opportunity to request a new Firestar, because they one we've got, in addition to having been retired for a while from restricted play, does not have very good stats. I considered using the Rookie Vance Astro for his Defenders team ability instead, but when they changed the rules last month, they kind of screwed over Defenders team ability for working with wild cards. Yes, but let's make Perplex and Outwit more powerful! That was certainly necessary!

** Something I noted: Tim and Jack both pronounce it "Nah-more-it-ah". I say it "Nay-moe-rita", probably because I think of Rita as being a girl's name.

*** And can I say, Ben Grimm seems far too strong for only 100 points.

**** I'm not sure what power of Nita's that's meant to reflect, but it means I can hurt a character who lacks damage reducers automatically at the beginning of my turn, and it costs me nothing, so I'm not complaining.