DEEP DISH THEMES:
By The Slice:

MORLUN

ORIGIN: In the distant past, Morlun and his family took part in a battle against the Master Weaver and succeeded in capturing it and using its power to travel between dimensions and hunt all Spider-Totemic avatars. At some point in the past, Morlun travelled to Earth-616 and hunted a Spider-Totem named Ezekiel Sims, who managed to elude him. Ezekiel would go on to compile research on Morlun and take measures to protect future generations of Spider-Totems, such as Cindy Moon and Peter Parker, explaining the totemic side of their powers, warning them about Morlun, and attempting to take them into protective custody.






PROS: One look at this dial and you know you want to stay FAR away from Morlun if he is on your opponent's team. A slightly closer look shows you that he has traited Steal Energy and that when he uses it on you, he can find you...nearly ANYWHERE. He has the raw power to back up his abilities too. Some characters that have game mechanics that work like this don't have the goods to make them work, but Morlun is the exception here. With Indomitable to make sure that he can get in a maximum amount of attacks in and incredibly consistent (And good) stats, he is likely to cause some trouble. He has a dial full of heavy damage reducers so he isn't going to go down easily. Coupled with his Steal Energy, he will live even longer. As a last resort to keep him in the game, he has Regeneration on his last click to heal potentially larger chunks of life and start the process over again.

CONS: I'm not usually a proponent of giving every character a move and attack power, but I really feel that Morlun should have had Charge. He was portrayed as an almost unstoppable juggernaut of a character. His tracking power does help that out quite a bit and you could THEORETICALLY traverse the entire board to find your prey, but that requires having first damaged the character and by having used Steal Energy. It would also require a clear line of fire across the board and that is not always going to be an option. Morlun was still a fairly new character in comics when this set came out. Therefore he didn't get very developed as a character or a concept before getting made. Overall it is still a good dial, though. I just think that it needs some tweaking to be a more accurate and/or great dial.

Other Players' Comments/Reviews: Using the Inline dial system, just click on the word bubble next to the character's name and it will take you to the units section comments!

KEYWORD THEMES: (Named Keywords are in bold)

ANIMAL: Animal is one of my favorite keywords. I'm not entirely sure why Morlun has this keyword as he hunts down characters that using animal totems as a source of power, but he does and I have a good theme team to use him with. Using Morlun, Alyosha Kraven (Prime), and the 30 point Loki from Fear Itself, you will have a team full of Animal Hunters that will help to shore up Morlun's shortcomings. Alyosha brings his own lion to the fight, and if given any non-free action, he can allow either Loki or Morlun a move action as a free action. This would allow Loki to use Phasing/Teleport to carry Morlun into/out of the fray or just move Morlun himself up to his prey. Either way, Morlun is going to get more opportunities to attack with this plan.

BRUTE: With the Brute keyword, I had a little bit of a harder time trying to find characters that seem like they would work well together both thematically and from a visual standpoint. I also am trying to make a somewhat competent team too, so there is an added degree of difficulty there. I'm picturing a team of monster type characters that would once again be focusing on increasing Morlun's chances of getting his licks in. I teamed him up with Animus from the Deadpool set and Menace who also comes from the Web of Spider-Man set. Menace takes a couple of clicks before she can effectively taxi Morlun, but she can do some attacking in the meantime since Animus will be hurling Morlun around with Telekinesis anyway.

MONSTER: With this keyword, I'm going straight up Vampire. That is essentially what Morlun is, and there is so many options for that these days. For nice even 400 point team, you can play him and Fear Itself Dracula. The two of them would be quite deadly together. Both have traited Steal Energy and an impressive amount of damage reducers. Should you want to expand the team to a higher point level, you have characters like Vampire generics, Morbius, Vampire Wolverine, Prime Jubilee or Vampire Batman that you could get in there to increase the blood lust. It would be a feeding frenzy that Morlun and Dracula would make great Generals for.

NON-KEYWORD THEMES:

Being around for only a short amount of time and having such a singular goal has made for very little options for him to have people to team up with. With a little more fleshing out of the INHERITORS, maybe we'll see them in clix form some day. they will likely have that as a new keyword, but until then, Morlun doesn't really belong in any circles outside of his own.

DEEP DISH DO-IT-YOURSELF:

In this section, I share with you my own homemade dials for these poor characters that have only ever had one or two versions of themselves realized. I'll try not to get too fanboyish with them, but I'm not making any promises! I also invite any of you who like to make fan dials to please share your versions of these characters as well by using the DIAL GENERATOR in the units section on HCRealms.

#011 Limited Edition Morlun
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 0
Points: 200
Keywords: Brute, Inheritors, Monster, Mystical, Past

10 13 19 5

9 12 18 4

9 11 18 4

8 11 18 4

8 10 17 3

8 11 17 3

8 10 18 3

7 10 17 3

7 9 16 3

6 8 15 2

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

Tracking: Movement: Ignores Hindering, Ignores Blocking and destroys it as he moves through it
Absorb Totemic Power: Morlun begins the game on click #4. Morlun can use Steal Energy. Morlun may use Steal Energy to heal beyond his starting line. Morlun heals two clicks instead of one if he uses Steal Energy on a character that also has the Animal Keyword, The Spider-man Family Keyword, or the Spider-man team ability
Constant Hunger: At the end of every turn, put a Hunger token on Morlun's card. When Morlun has three Hunger tokens on his card at the beginning of your turn, remove all of his Hunger tokens from his card and deal him one click of unavoidable damage.
Unstoppable: Morlun can use Charge and Flurry. If the target of his second attack using Flurry is the same as the target of his first attack, he may use Precision Strike on the second attack

This wraps it up for this installment of Deep Dish Themes: By the Slice. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to read it! Feel free to post what you think about the article and just like regular Deep Dish Themes, feel free to nominate a character for an upcoming edition of Deep Dish Themes: By the Slice! Join me on 6/10 when I rock the word in Deep Dish Themes: By the Slice: Major Disaster as nominated by Ignatz_Mouse.

morlun was and is still in my top three zero range bricks in the game. he has the dial to live and in todays game with hammers it's not even FAIR! i hope him and his whole family get made/remade. i would love to run that team. good write up. think i'll play him this weekend!

I have been a big Morlun fan for years now and even l was unsure about the animal keyword. I think l might remember him being related to the cockroach?

I think you're thinking of Noh-Varr. Actually, come to think of it, Animal does KIND OF make sense as his DNA is made up of all kinds of different animals.

Excellent character choice and an excellent article!

I agree. If I need a brick he's usually the one I like to field.
I seem to remember it being said that Morlun's physiology contains bits of the DNA of all animals, or something like that.

It's funny you say that because I fielded a 600 point Insect themed team a while back, and it was terrific!

180 WS052 Morlun w/Lunge
99AW086 Shathra
60 MU016 Miek
44 HA001 Bug
141 WS038 Noh-Varr
68 OR088 Mister Mind (Any opportunity to play the "Bug in a Jug" makes me a happy camper.
Not so Special - 3 points
600 points

Morlun with lunge was devastating. I felt a little dirty playing that. He one-shotted a couple of figures that game.

You beat me to it! Yeah, Noh-Varr has insect DNA.

Awesome. Here's to hoping we get a set that is Spider-verse heavy in the future.

Morlun... I loved JMS' run and thought Morlun was a total boss. I haven't read any of the Spiderverse stuff, so I donno what new stuff they've done with him, but I love him for just being a force of nature. He has to have my favorite close combat dial and I always thought he was more of a Hulk than any Hulk dials we'd gotten until AVM.


A while back I made a custom 'modern' Morlun and I guess here is as a decent place to share it as anywhere else.

Morlun
Team: Mystics / Power Cosmic
Range: 0
Points: 275
Keywords: Animal, Brute, Monster, Mystical

9 13 19 5

9 12 19 5

9 12 18 4

|

9 11 18 4

8 11 18 4

8 11 17 3

7 11 18 3

7 11 18 3

7 10 17 3

7 10 17 3

7 10 17 3

KO KO KO KO

Relentless: Improved Movement: Ignores Elevated Terrain, Ignores Hindering Terrain, Ignores Outdoor Blocking Terrain, Ignores Characters
Totem Vampire: Morlun begins the game on click #4. Morlun can use Steal Energy and may use it to heal beyond his starting line, up to click #1. Whenever Morlun is healed using Steal Energy, you may place a tracking token on the targeted character's card.
In Pursuit Of Prey: Give Morlun a double power action. You may place him in a square adjacent to any opposing character with the animal keyword or who has a tracking token on their card, then target that character with a close combat attack as a free action.
Overflowing With Power (Hypersonic Speed)
You Will Run (Charge)
I Will Pursue (Sidestep)
The Kill (Flurry)
Mystical Strength (Super Strength)
You Will Tire... (Quake)
Indomitable: Once per game when this click is revealed due to damage taken from an opponent's attack, stop turning the dial, remove all action tokens from Morlun and he can't be dealt damage until your next turn. This power can't be countered or ignored.
Power Unchecked (Impervious)
I Do Not Tire (Invincible)
I Do Not Grow Weary (Invulnerable)
I Do Not Give Up (Toughness)
Years Of Planning (Outwit)
...And Then You Will Die (Exploit Weakness)
It's Nothing Personal (Close Combat Expert)

Really enjoyed the article, didn't know much about Morlun...traded or sold him off and never even played him. Now I have to re-obtain him and give him a whirl! Thanks again SR4.

You won't be sorry! That character is a hoot!

Morlun is one of maybe 4 super rare pieces I straight up bought as a single when a set hit because I wanted him and didn't pull him/didn't buy any of the set. The others were CW Kang, Flash set KC Flash and Professor Zoom. I regret none of them. Morlun I regret the least though. WoS Morlun is just one of the most awesome and solid figures I've played. He is a monster, but not cheap or unbeatable. Grad A fun that piece is and this article did a great job showing off why