Fortunately, I decided against modding my figures, as I saw the value in using them in upcoming events (ROC), and didn't want to get duplicates just for cosmetic reasons.

No need for this kind of response, especially when the poster is correct. Though the game-involved elements are not affected, by the letter of the rule, if you pop off the TabApp portion of the dial, it is, in fact, altering the dial. Reading the rules:

that makes cutting that bottom portion off, illegal.

So a judge or an opponent, can be a dink about it and be well within the rules to be so. Luckily, these things are selling at Ross and at Big Lots for $3.00 a pack so if you have removed that portion of the figure's base, you can purchase them cheaply enough to have extras hand for when the inevitable dink shows up.

A lot of people seem to be conflating "What is the rule?" with "What do you want the rule to be?"

Those are two very different questions, folks, and it's important to realize the distinction.

You're right, man (on both counts). I apologize.

I just got the following ruling from WK regarding broken figures. In short: broken =/= modded.

And with that, playing a tabapp figure without the weird tabapp bottom is now legal. Prove that it didn't break off. You can't? And the dial top, bottom, and card are all legal? Sounds good to me.

Figures that only have broken sculpts are not "modded figures" -
It is nice when WK does something that makes ####ing sense.

What a rule is and how/if that rule is followed are two different things.

Would anyone here actually disqualify someone for playing a tabapp figure with the superfluous bottom piece broken off?

Does anybody here know someone who would?

I don't.

Never assume the absence of dickery.

I assume nothing. I'm asking for it.

SHOW ME THE DICKERY!!!

Okay.

I can't believe this is a question. If you were playing at Origins and GenCon in the WizKids area, a tabapp figure without the extra base would not be considered modded and that is how I would rule it as the head judge for those events.

The mod rule is there because I've seen many players take a figure and put a sculpt from another version of that character on the base because they like the old sculpt better. This serves to confuse the opponent whether it was intended or not so that is why the rule is there.

Well played.

Have you ever read some of the comics those covers are from? He really is an enormous grayson in some of them.

And this is why you are a high level judge but it seems we have some judges on a local basis that read things in a specific way. I always assumed that the extra bottom was a mod, so removing it would be unmodding it.

Taking a deeper dive into the semantics of all of this nonsense, based on the rule book descriptions of the "base", could you not argue that the extra plastic ATTACHED to the character base of TabApp figs does not fall under the rule book definition of "Character base"?

"BASE: The piece of plastic on which a figure is mounted."
"HeroClix is played using collectible miniature figures standing on a base with a rotating combat dial inside. Together, the figure, base, and combat dial are called a character"
"THE BASE
Each character’s base is printed with important information, as shown in Figure 1."