Can you still "plug" up the other end of Spiral's gate with one of your own figures? Meaning they cannot pass through the gate as long as I have a figure on there?

Yes. The rule of occupancy will prevent a character from being placed on the other gateway marker if there is allready a character occupying that square.

This is why with the changes they made to her trait they basically removed her trait from her, but kept her point cost the same.... It is why people were so upset with the change. It was the worst possible change (from a playability stand point only) they could have made.

Power gamers wept and everyone else rejoiced.

Thats a bad thing?

You can now, originally you could not .

Well, you could stand on them, but the way she was written would allow her entire team to come through and destroy you before you could move a figure onto the gate. So anything you'd be plugging the hole with would have been crippled and half-dead at best.

Iron Pharaoh and locally, Fantomex are competitive because of the change to Spiral.

Power Gamers are doing plenty of rejoicing, too...

IMO yes and no. I love both sides of this. I love casual play and I really enjoy no holds bard give me your best shot competitive play.

Spiral Pre Errata > Iron Pharaoh and Fantomex

Seriously she was just stupid crazy. Just imagine her with Agent Sitwell who gives all adjacent friendlies Side Step

It is just terrifying to think of what she could do...

Fixed that for you.

I still say every Origins and GenCon should have an "As Written" event at, say, 500 points. And record every match and force the play-testers/game designers to watch.

I would pay just to watch the designers watch this.

That would be funny.

I still think Spiral's trait should have stayed the same, except the portals had to be within her range. Could still work from 6 behind her to 6 in front. At least then she's be in harm's way and the reach wasn't all the way across the map.

But she still has a great dial for 106 points.

As someone who straddles the line between between power gamer and casual player, I can tell you that pre-watchlist spiral was unequivocally bad for the game in a way that has never been seen before and probably will never be seen again. Maybe the eratta took her too far in the other direction, I have no comment on that, but her trait before the watchlist would have shaped the meta in ways we havent seen since the introduction of resources.

I know it is anecdotal, but the only major tournament I went too while she was modern age pre-errata was Clixathon NY and 7 out of 8 teams in the top 8 had her. The event was 400 points no tactics. The only reason it wasn't 8 out of 8 was because I didn't want to play her so I made a joke team with 10 werewolves on it.

Ah thanks for clarifying that. Never really played her or against her much, before and after the Watch list.