A Little Heroclix Chatting

Two months back, I typed up a list of DC figures I'd like to see in Heroclix, that hadn't made an appearance. #1 on the list was Ragdoll, and good news, he's going to be in the next set! They even gave him a trait that makes him a more effective attacker when combined with The Parademon, since they were such pals in Villains United.

Today they released some more info on the new Sgt. Rock figure. There's been a Sgt. Rock figure before, released several years ago in DC's 2nd set, Cosmic Justice*, but figures that old are somewhat limited in their playability with the newer ones. Plus, the version of it I had gave Rock the defensive power Mastermind, which the designers have fortunately left off the new Rock's dial.

The deal with Mastermind was, if a character's hit with an attack, they can pass the damage off to another character on their team, provided that character's directly next to them, and costs fewer points. There are specialized variations on the power sometimes. Luthor can pass damage off to team members not immediately adjacent, and Niles Caulder can pass it to Doom Patrol members with higher point values (useful since I think the rest of Doom Patrol cost more than Niles). You might see a problem there. Mastermind's typically a power assigned to total bastards (depending on which version of Caulder you subscribe to, I suppose), characters with no compunction about sacrificing others. Viewed that way, the power suggests Sgt. Rock used his men as bullet shields for himself.

The other way to look at it is his men were so loyal they willingly took bullets for him, which has actually been depicted on covers of his comic before. Like the one to the left there. Still, once I started thinking of it as him throwing his guys' lives away, it was a downer. Instead of that, they gave the new version Defend, which means he can share his defensive value with friendly characters, making it harder to hit them, which I think suits Rock's protectiveness of Easy Company pretty well.

I wish they'd given him Probability Control or Super Senses, though. Probability Control lets you, once during your turn, redo one of your rolls, and once during your opponent's turn, makes them redo one of theirs. So if you miss an attack you were sure you could make (cause you only needed a 4), and your Probability Control-user can see it, you can try again. Longshot, Scarlet Witch, they've had that power at some point. Super Senses means anytime an attack would hit your figure, you'd roll a die, and if it comes up 5 or 6, you dodge the attack. Flashes, Spider-Man, Daredevil, they tend to have that power.

You might wonder, "What the Hell you doing giving it to Sgt. Rock then?" I would respond, "Combat Antenna**" It wasn't uncommon for Rock to get a bad feeling there was a trap nearby, or to have a hunch about the approach an enemy would take. As Chris Sims put it, 'Sgt. Rock's been fighting the war so long he developed telepathy.' Call it precognition if you prefer, but it has a certain amount of comic book justification, and it would have been really cool. Either power would work, though PC would enable him to protect his soldiers, so it'd be more appropriate.

Oh well, maybe in the future.

* I know it doesn't make much sense to release Sgt. Rock in Cosmic Justice, but I think the designers like to diversify sets a bit, rather than keep everything in a specific theme. It's how you get Groot in the Web of Spider-Man set.

** Or "Sergeant's Radar".