At our venue, as long as the dial and the dial sticker match, then you can play the figure regardless of the sculpt or card. Just as long as you can verify that "Batman" is 75pts, even though it may have a Merlyn sculpt.

this is a good point my venue is the same way when i judge, as long as you make it VERY clear what the figure actually is (top plate and sticker/dial match) then it don't matter the sculpt, there are a few customs floating around and i also of a podo on a flight base that i used to put on my IC supes when i would play it lol

Here ya go Chris, directly from the WK Approved Play guide:

5.10d Cheating
Cheating will not be tolerated at sanctioned tournaments. The head envoy reviews all cheating allegations
and may expel the player from the tournament or assign penalties at his or her discretion. The head judge
reports all expulsions to WizKids for review, at which point additional penalties may be assessed.
Cheating includes, but is not limited to, the following intentional activities:
• Colluding to alter the results or outcome of a battle. Players may not “make a deal” to alter the
outcome of a battle in any way.
• Misrepresenting figures or abilities (including intentionally misaligning figure arcs, intentionally
misplacing a figure on the battlefield, modifying a game piece’s stats in any way, or clicking the
combat dial in either direction more or less than required by game effects).
• Receiving outside assistance or coaching (such as reference materials on the statistics and abilities
of figures, also known as “cheat sheets”).
• Stalling the length of a turn to take advantage of a time limit.
• Intentionally failing to inform an opponent that he or she is taking an illegal action.
• Misrepresenting damage inflicted or received.

Reminds me of the time we allowed people to use a dial sheet for Firelord during CoG event. While he wasn't errated yet, nor technically legal, I printed out some sheets of the actual dial, and we had a vote on allowing players to use the sheets. The only flipside was that you had to allow your opponent to view the sheet as well. We did this mainly to encourage players to try out the new piece, otherwise they might not want to play him due to missing abilities.This really boosted the game usage of the figure to over half the players.

In the same tourney, we also had one guy who colored in his missing abilities. Since we were allowing the correct dial usage, we simply verified his coloring, had him use a sheet (so every one was one equal footing), and let him play.

Like I said while technically not legal, it was fair for everyone, and we all had a blast. And I think those two things are the most important aspects of the game. So I think there are some rare times for some excepts (house rules).

Cool...
I guess I was getting confused with the fact that at the major tourney people had 'cheat sheets' but could not use them during the game...
Thanks all...

Chris

You were not "confused", you just outright CHEATED!! You CHEATER!!! Cheater, cheater, sugar-free pumpkin eater!!

Then again, I suppose the only way you CAN win with the Brotherhood would be to cheat, so I'll forgive you ... LOL.

And that is fine.

The sculpt is ornamental. The incorrect sculpt may cause some confusion among players, true, and judges may decide at their discretion not to allow that, but the sculpt itself has no real bearing on the game.

The card, too, is not entirely necessary. However, if you were to play a fig sans card at sealed, as a Judge I would not allow you to use any SPs or keywords unless someone was nice enough to loan you a card from their pulls. There is just too much of chance for shennanigans otherwise.

A defective figure, as referneced by that rules document, means mismatched dial/base. That's why it is always a good idea to check the figure number on the base versus the figure number on the dial. And for those of you who may not know what I am talking about, turn your dials to the last KO slot (the one right before the green start line). You should see a little number in the dial window and that number should match the figure number on the base. If it doesn't match you've either got the wrong dial (most likely) or one of those odd misprints that occur every now and again (like Positron and Manticore from the COV set... their dial numbers matched the other ones base number).