Red Son Superman not having the Kryptonian keyword is actually 100% book accurate. It is not a mistake.

And the suze rules really are awesome, I had the chance to use them with Titano. It is so fun.

Keep up the awesome podcasting guys.

the giant rules make super doom a problem!! now he can just shoot you though anything. also, chase wonder woman is AMAZING, forget theme, just put her on ANY team and she is worth the points. i played her last night in a 500 point half constructed/sealed game and she was just crazy. even at the smaller point value she's nasty.

i had fiddler on my team and a bunch of lower point figures including general lane. now everyone had a 19 defense, which was really a 20 with wonder woman, and outwit. it was crazy!! she's the best chase to come out in a while. that trait alone makes her great. playing her at the full points is almost not fair.

Colossals are so big, that I agree with LOF to and from them not blocked by Elevated or Outdoor Blocking.

Giants I am not so sure about.
Giants with zero Range are going to be shot to ribbons even more now.

I would make LOF to and from Giants that goes through Elevated and Outdoor Blocking to be "Hindered".

For every level of Elevation between Giants and similar sized or smaller figures, there is a +1 to the defence of a figure.
Blocking terrain is treated as Level 1.

ie. Two Giants shooting each other with Blocking between them = +1 to defence.

A Giant and a Standard Size shooting each other with Level 2 between them = +2 to defence.

A Giant and a Tiny shooting each other with a Level 1, a Level 2 and a Level 3 between them = +3 to defence.
(Tiny Size would give the Tiny a +4 defence, but Rule of 3 caps it at +3)

Two Giants shooting each other with a Level 6 between them and both standing in Hindering = +7 to defence.
(Rule of 3 in effect)

This would make the most sense to me. And still be easy to remember and use.

I mean, a Giant is somewhere around 10 - 20 feet tall, so different levels must have some effect on LOF.

You guys were talking about somehow leveling the playing field when it comes to tournament team building.

So 1 player doesn't show up with a "championship" team, and another show up with a "fun" team.

To help combat this I have come up with a format that I call, Limit The Cheese™.

Limit The Cheese means that a player has to choose ONE of the following when building their force:

A Resource with 1 Element attached
OR
Only 1 figure using the Possession/Equip Trait
OR
1 Relic auto-equipped to a figure at the beginning of the game by paying it's points
OR
3 Relics placed on the map and paying the points of the 2 highest ones only
OR
The use of ID Cards.

Using this format makes "fun" teams able to be on a much more level playing field.
It is the best way to limit things without banning them.

If I run 4 events in a month, 3 of them will use "Limit The Cheese" and 1 will be "Open".
I think that ratio gives players a good choice of tourney styles.

Try it out. Hopefully your players enjoy it.


ps I also use other scenarios like Color Switch, Infinity Gems, or Team Switch from time to time.

Suggestion for your venue. Do a no-tactics week. This will eliminate the keyword crutch and then you can play your Superman on a Kryptonian team.
It's the only way I get to play a JSA team with the new Power Girl, Star Girl, and Hawkman figs.

Come on guys, read that history and you will get why Superman doesn't have the Kw and he shouldn't have it at all...

Good catch on the Red Son Superman. It has been years since I read the story and I totally forgot that he wasn't from Krypton.

Two things:

Your Sister-in-Law was ECSTATIC for her new Wonder Woman. Thank you again for doing that trade with me. (I used it before she got a chance to, though )

Also, I tried doing the whole Fellowship game, cheese day, scenario day thing so that I could try to make more players happy. IT DIDN'T WORK!!!! It went terribly and my venue is still trying to recover from it. It ended up dividing the players where the competitive people were only showing up on cheese day, the fellowship people were only showing up on fellowship day, and we don't have enough players to divide up that much. I don't know a ton of venues that do. Your mileage may certainly vary, but I did not have a good experience trying to do this kind of thing.

That was my primary fear. Our group is pretty small and we can't afford to lose anybody. I'd like to get our more casual guys to come back and play more often, but I'm not sure what that would require. Not even sure if its possible anymore.

I have found, thru my years of 'clix, that modifying the tournaments can turn things crazy. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

I have two venues 'close' to me that do Heroclix, and they are the opposite ends of the spectrum. One plays variant themes EVERY week (to the point they have not had a standard tournament since AoU ended, and those were all sealed events). The other plays pretty much Golden Age X points. I guess my only real suggestion would be talking with your players. I know some stores have luck doing a 'No Cheese' night once a month. But the No Tactics idea has a lot of ground-pound to it. Just remember, by the No Tactics rule, Equip-Entities are still allowed. So there are a lot of things that can still be done there.

I have noticed that if your venue has only a couple of people that have the power-figs (Entities, Chases, and more difficult to get figures), and those players continually dominate, then maybe it is time to find ways to work with that - maybe one week is no Entities, but the next week is No Resources? Remove a game element or two, and things can change, but if you radically focus on denying what is winning, those that are winning may feel like they are being targeted specifically. And that will drive those players away, feeling that the venue itself is against them.

The problem with some venues (Mine included) is that there are a few players that are just downright AMAZING at the game. It doesn't matter WHAT you say somebody can or can't use any particular week. They WILL still find a way to build competitively and will still likely win. I know not every venue is going to be like this, but it's something to think about. The good players and/or the players with larger collections will always have the edge over the person that has a small collection or a lesser skill level. Restrictions are a double edged sword that are going to make things possibly more fun for everybody, but it could also remove half of somebody's small collection from use while those same people continue to dominate due to more options.

So glad to hear the positive reactions to Size Rules changes. Players have been asking for more simplicity in the rules without sacrificing comic accuracy or game play and these rules modifications do just that.

I think fans of Heroclix (or any product/TV show etc..) are known to be the biggest complainers. I have heard only positive reactions to the changes AND that Wizkids is providing these insight articles.

I love reading the "why" behind these decisions.

Got into this podcast recently & I've been enjoying it! It's interesting to hear about your experiments with event formatting... I'm trying to work something similar at the venue where I T.O., with approximately one "Restricted," one "Unlimited," one "Scenario" and one "Sealed" event per month. Everyone seems to have the most fun at the Sealed nights, but of course you can't do that every week...

I agree with SLVRSR4 that the people who want to play to win will play to win at the maximum constraints of whatever the format may be. It's a thorny problem, to be sure, and probably chronic for any story-based game like HeroClix.