Hey all, I've been playing heroclix for a little over a month now and recently i played a game against a friend and beat him with what he said was a cheap/cheesy/unfair team. Being new to the game i am completely ignorant when it comes to this and don't want to tick people off because of it. so i ask, what do you consider cheap or cheesy in terms of tactics and team building? thanks for reading, all oppinions are welcome and helpful.

Competitive play: nothing. Its competitive.
Casual play: sentry void, avengers prime, infinity gauntlet by some. Teams that spend all game avoiding attacks. Teams that are all hypersonic or stealth. Teams with battlefield conditions and feats.
Or really nothing tell your friend to strap up and play harder.

Out of curiosity...what were you playing that he called Cheap? Really that becomes an eye of the beholder type thing. What he or you may call cheesy, the rest of us might not.

Everyone's opinions are different on this, and some will say anything that's within the rules is fair. I think the most balanced thing to say is that it varies from venue to venue and you should rather ask your regular opponents than a bunch of guys on the Internet, but here's what I personally think:

Stalling, as in deliberately playing slow to run down the clock, is a major-league dick move. It's actually against the rules, but I bring it up because it's hard to prove and so it can be easy to get away with. Anyway, it makes the game boring (it's not really a way to play at all, it's trying to play as little as possible) and it's really disrespectful to your opponent. Don't do it.

Playing defensively (i.e declining to engage your opponent except on your own terms, and running away crippled figures to prevent them from being KOed) is something many people think is cowardly, but I think it's just sound tactics, as long as it's not combined with stalling. It's rarely feasible to keep up for a whole game anyway.

I prefer to play comic-accurate teams, and while I don't hold anyone else to that standard, I think they're more fun to play against, too. If not actually characters that appeared in a comic together, I at least try to make teams that seem plausible. I.e not mixing universes, not mixing heroes and villains, and at the very least, not running multiple copies of the same non-generic character (e.g playing 3x Spider-Man or 2x Scarlet Witch just because they're efficient pieces.)

That last one is pretty much the only point I think i'd ever actually be bothered about, honestly. I might sound like a dreadful purist, but I'm actually pretty laid-back about this stuff. (It is after all just a game.) But if you really want to run an all-Batman team, at least run 4 different Batman figures, not OOtS Batman x4. (It's not like there aren't a lot to choose from!)

On the topic of cheese teams, I'm pretty much convinced (again, others will argue this, sometimes vehemently) that no one figure is cheesy in itself. It's all a matter of what kind of team the figure is on. Much vitriol has been spilled about figures like Professor X, Chase Thanos and Nightcrawler, but just because a team has one of these figures on it doesn't make it a cheese team. If you play Professor X on a Scientist "theme team" with Rookie Superman and a bunch of Researchers? Or Nightcrawler on a martial artist squad with Gamora, Diana Prince and two Questions? Or the ever-infamous Thanos "killbox"? That might be a different kettle of fish.

As a rule of thumb, I suppose I would define a "cheese team" as a team that takes no account of the characters pieces supposedly represent, but is put together only with a mind to game-mechanical effectiveness.

Hope some of that helped!

There is not such thing as "cheesy peices" ever peice has a counter. And most of the time a well balanced team can beat out the "cheese."

Their is this guy who plays at a couple of the local venues and he things any good team is cheesy. I pull a dark phoenix in sealed, he says its cheesy. I beat him with a teem of superman allys, its cheesy. I play Morgan le fay with a awesome avengers team, cheesy. really calling stuff "cheesy" is for people who cant play.

i was told by my opponent that playing dupes in a non competitive game is bad form and that using a team with an excessive amount of perplex is cheesy and is a sign of a weak player.
i was using two rookie mystiques from some old uncarded set. she has stealth and perplex. in my defense i was prepping for a tourny- 300pt with at least 50% 10th anniversary pieces with battlefield promotion trait. the rest of your team must be non carded pieces.
dupes are 100% legal at my venue but i dont want to show up with a team that everyones going to think is cheap or cheesy. i also dont want to tick anyone off when im at free play at different venues. i want to get as much input and oppinion on this topic as possible, hence posting this on the forum. thanks everyone

Really? A perplex heavy team is cheesy? Why not just say that you shouldn't be able to use stealth because it makes the game less shooty.

If you're seriously worried, ask your events organizer / judge. If they have no problem with it then you're set. If he continues to be an arse, then make a complaint to the organizer. Chances are he's bugging other players.

As long as the rules allow it, and you're not playing the same team as at least 45% of the other players are using, don't worry.

Case in point: We had this problem with a player who was a "pro" at Yu-Gi-Oh, but he insisted on preferential treatment because of his cred, and that meant he thought he could get away with really cussing out other players decks (some of them being around 12 years old).

We now actively discourage him from turning up to free play events and any other game format.

It sounds like your friend was just upset that either he lost or couldn't target the Mystiques. Without knowing the rest of your team I can't really say this is "cheesy". It's certainly not a "meta" team. I'm not a big fan of playing duplicates of the same person unless it's a generic figure or thematic (like Madrox) but if it's legal at your venue then I wouldn't worry about it.

I agree with asking your judge. He would know the players better than anyone (or at least he should) and will know what they will think.

I think what most people consider cheesy are highly competitive teams that require other highly competitive teams to defeat it. Granted, pieces have their weaknesses, but when certain pieces are combined, it gets absurd. When a casual scenario that requires that your highest point piece have stealth and that piece being the only one allowed to use it and someone walks in with Sentroid, Sharon Carter, and Scarlet Witch, that's cheesy and it seriously pissed other people off, because its an abuse of the scenario. Sure, its allowed, but its not fun in casual. Another example is bringing the Watchmen collector's case Dr. Manhattan when he's feated. Stuff like this that not very many average players have access to without dropping wads of money are considered cheesy because it turns the game into a show of wealth rather than skill.

The bolded part only. Disregard everything else. Play what you want, man, so long as it's legal.

Tell your friend to cowboy up. He won't get better 'til he has to face things he doesn't know how to play against.

Cheese is in the eye of the beholder, but to anyone that says there is no cheese, well I don't know what to tell you.

In the end, my best advice would be to know your audience. In other words, if your venue is a highly competitive environment, and everyone comes out every week with teams that consist of Sentroid w/Gauntlet etc etc, then be prepared to play that type of game, and don't expect your Nextwave team to do very well.

On the other end of the spectrum, if your venue is much more laid back, and people tend to play comic accurate theme teams like Agents of Atlas, then don't expect to win too many (or any) friends if you are showing up every week with the aforementioned Sentroid sporting a Gauntlet.

And to the guy that asked if a Perplex heavy team is cheesy, yes it can be. My buddy used to play a metric #### ton of Perplex on his teams, like 5+ Perplexers on every team. I finally got so sick of it, that I built a team that had like 8 Perplexers on it one time. He blew a gasket over it, but it taught him a lesson and he stopped playing such Perplex heavy teams.

Everything in moderation IMO.

I'm sorry that you've all been duped, because I know the person who started this thread, and to be honest, he's kind of a jerk. We play together in tournaments and free play all the time, and he's always rage quitting. He comes to almost every event completely tweeked out on drugs. When he's not lashing out on other players, he's usually going on about his idea of a "pure aryan race", and one time he slapped a 14 year old player because he "didn't like the cut of his jib".

So okay, if you've read up to this point, I hope you've picked up that I'm completely joking. I met this guy a few months ago at a tournament and today, I am honored to call him a friend. He's an honest and laid back guy and it bothers me that someone who is more of a vet in Heroclix is pulling rank over him and trying to sour the game by telling him who he can and can't use on a team.

I agree with a lot of you, especially with Zerohero with the comment on "strap up and play harder." I've played against certain teams that have just handed me my arse before, and if I get mad, it's honestly at myself for not using my brain in battle. I took out Chaos King and Genis Vell with the worst team I've ever played. I've also played teams that I thought would run the table, only to be slaughtered. That's the beauty of this game. A team is only as good as the player, and it's sad that there's players out there blaming other people for their own shortcomings.

Q: What is Cheesy and Cheap?

A: Nacho Mother!

Its like a "your mama joke" only the double entendre is a compliment? Hey the thread is getting out of hand, so why not?

Very very true. I was once told that a 600 point team of Iron Patriot and Hammer Generics was cheese.

Why was it cheese? Because I used the shield TA of the Hammer Grunts to bump iron patriots range.