DEEP DISH THEMES:
By The Slice:

ORIGIN: Approximately 750,000 years ago, Alars, a member of the Eternals of Earth, a cosmic-powered sub-species of humanity, departed from Earth after his brother Zuras became the Eternals leader. Alars journeyed to Titan, a moon of Saturn, where a band of exiled Eternal settlers had slaughtered each other in war. Alars married the only survivor, a young woman named Sui-San, and they transformed Titan into a paradise. Alars ruled the Eternals of Titan as Mentor and created ISAAC, a computer which serviced all of Titan's technological needs. Starfox also known by Eros, was raised on the Saturn moon of Titan and was the youngest son of Mentor and Sui-San. Eros has always had an easy-going outlook on life while his brother, Thanos, in turn has always been obsessed with Death. Eros took it upon himself to find love and sensual pleasures for himself. He spent several years on Earth and became part of Earth's legends perpetuating the Eros and cupid myth. His time on Earth and his time on Titan characterized him as carefree explorative and he developed into somewhat of a lothario. It was when Thanos and Super-Skrull attacked Titan, that Eros returned home. Tension would only rise with his brother from that point onwards and Starfox would have to battle his own blood many times again. Starfox has actually met many a hero this way, by joining forces with them to oppose his brother Thanos, and one such hero he met this way was Kree Warrior Captain Mar-vell. The two would go on to be friends. It was also around this time that Starfox learned the grim truth about his mother Sui-San after Thanos revealed it was he who killed her. At some point Starfox's friend Captain Mar-vell would fall gravely ill with cancer. After the death of Captain Mar-Vell, Eros decided to look after his son, Genis-Vell. Eros soon joined Earth's Avengers and used the code name Starfox. He played a major role in helping to stop Thanos' mad plans in trying to assemble the Infinity Gauntlet and the Shi'ar-Kree war known as Operation Galactic Storm.



PROS: The first thing that I'll point out is that his dial is VERY long (Insert your own innuendo here). At 121 points, he has eight clicks of life and always has at least SOMETHING useful on his current click. He has six full clicks of Perplex on his dial, and though you can't use his special power that grants Perplex on himself, that still leaves you with a TON of targets for your use of it. He's a really good taxi with his large movement, and with all that Perplex on his dial he can provide more than just transportation to the character that he's toting around. He isn't the most powerful choice one would have in his weight class, but he packs enough usefulness in that dial to at least get some attacks in and have them stick. He starts out with top loaded Mind Control so he is as good as any figure you use it on successfully. On the back half of his dial, he has Super Strength which is good if there are still objects on the field. He has a decent amount of damage reducers/evade powers so he should make that long dial last even longer with their use. Good thing to have stamina in his line of work, after all!

CONS: He was an often overlooked figure in the Avengers set. A lot of that is due to lack of recognition of who the character even is by the average player, but some of it was because players looked at his dial and didn't honestly know what to make of it. He is pretty long lived, but he switches his focus pretty drastically around mid-dial and some players don't know how to handle that. It's not the fault of the piece by any means, but a lot of players prefer a figure that does on thing or one TYPE of thing and doesn't really pivot from that function. You can see that by any unit section review complaining that a character has has power combos like Ranged Combat Expert and Charge or Hypersonic Speed and Blades/Claws/Fangs. Variety is the spice of life and a lot of players prefer bland food, apparently. Some would argue that he isn't worth his points at 121 points as well. That's a matter of personal preference. I would be willing to bet that he wouldn't cost anywhere near that these days but I'm also willing to be that he could pull at least most of his weight at his current point value.

Other Players' Comments/Reviews: Using the Inline dial system, just click on the word bubble next to the character's name and it will take you to the units section comments!



PROS: The original Starfox figure weighed in at 121 points. This one cost 79....HOW?! How do you cost 42 points less and end up infinitely better?! That goes to show you how bad power creep can get at times and exactly how costly heavy damage reducers and long stretches of potent powers cost a character. I've also said it before, but I don't think that WizKids accurately new how to assign point costs to figures when special powers first came out. Even ones that worked WORSE than their actual counterparts were somehow more costly back then it seems. Well, this Starfox apparently fixed all of that. His lifespan is only a couple clicks less than his predecessor, and he isn't really any worse for the wear because of it. His "Perfect Seduction" power gives him the use of Mind Control at a 10 range which is crazy good. Beware of this power, though, because you can use it to increase the attack value of Starfox when using it and the attack value of the target of his Mind Control at the same time, but you also heal the opposing character when you're through with them. A savvy player will figure out ways to either make this work for them or to mitigate the potential problem, but it's an awesome tool to have for sure. On the damage side of things, this guy has a healing power that is essentially him radiating good vibes. At the end of your turn you can roll a D6, and if you roll a six, you can immediately heal all other friendly characters within three squares of him by a click. I've never tried it out so I don't know how well it works in practice, but in theory, it's a very good multi-heal that doesn't even require adjacency or an attack roll. A natural six is it's own hurdle, but it's worth trying out for that alone! The rest of hid dial is pretty standard fair, but it's a total package that you owe yourself to try out sometime.

CONS: In what may be a first for me, I love this version of Starfox, but I'm going to list his range for Mind Control as a "Con" because it's just too far. His power has a limited range to it last time I knew, and a 10 range is just not that. I'll chalk this up to yet another time where a character is great as a game piece, but as an accurate representation of his comic book counterpart he just comes up short in this case...errr...I guess long? The only other thing on his dial that I would change would be to maybe give him a click of Invulnerability on his top click. He is an Eternal, after all. Though he may not be as powerful as his brother Thanos, he should at least have a bit more durability than a cop in riot gear.

Other Players' Comments/Reviews: Using the Inline dial system, just click on the word bubble next to the character's name and it will take you to the units section comments!

KEYWORD THEMES: (Named Keywords are in bold)

Avengers: This is literally one of the easiest theme teams to make in all of HeroClix. Since the "Embargo" on Fantastic Four and related characters is a thing and since the Marvel Movies all essentially orbit around the Avengers, we've had a TON of them in the last several years. At this point there are a lot of players that say that there have been TOO MANY. It's because of this that there is almost an "Analysis Paralysis" that goes on when I try to make an Avengers team so I almost never do. What that means is that there are so many different ways you could make that team and so many different directions that you can go with it that I just kind of shut down and play the Defenders again instead
I'm going to give it another shot, though, and I'm going to use a trick that has served me well in the past. Pick a specific team/line-up that has existed and make that as closely as you can. Using Starfox as a point of reference and the base idea, here is what I came up with:

Force Build 8803026 0
Set	#	Name	Team	Pts	Value
GOTG	032	Starfox		79	SELL
CWSOP	008	Wasp		70	SELL
AOU	034	Spectrum		77	SELL
CWSOP	006	She-Hulk		90	SELL
CWSOP	003	Vision		80	SELL
UXM	055	Scarlet Witch		75	SELL
AVAS	042E	Sersi		125	SELL
Force Total:				596	$0.00

Eternal: The Eternals (As their name suggests) are a very old and very powerful race of beings. It's kind of hard to make a low point team with them by default. It can be done, but you're also left with only a small amount of characters or the weakest versions of them. I figured I would go as close as I could to a "Family Reunion" team featuring Mentor and his progeny. They wouldn't likely work well together in the comics, but I think they could topple a lot of teams in their weight class in the game.

Force Build 8803026 1
Set	#	Name	Team	Pts	Value
GOTG	058	Mentor		150	SELL
GOTG	032	Starfox		79	SELL
GOTG	045	I.S.A.A.C.		88	SELL
AVAS	042E	Sersi		125	SELL
GG	045R	Thanos		150	SELL
Force Total:				592	$0.00

NON-KEYWORD THEMES:

Avengers Infinity
Titans

DEEP DISH DO-IT-YOURSELF:

In this section, I share with you my own homemade dials for these poor characters that have only ever had one or two versions of themselves realized. I'll try not to get too fanboyish with them, but I'm not making any promises! I also invite any of you who like to make fan dials to please share your versions of these characters as well by using the DIAL GENERATOR in the units section on HCRealms.

#052 Limited Edition Starfox
Real Name: Eros
Team: Avengers
Range: 6
Points: 100
Keywords: Avengers, Cosmic, Eternal

9 11 17 3

9 10 17 3

8 10 17 3

8 9 16 2

8 9 16 2

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

Seduction: Starfox can use Mind Control and is not dealt unavoidable damage from it. Modify Starfox's attack value by +1 if all targets of his Mind Control are within 3 squares of him. When he uses Mind Control, choose one hit target to and place a seduction token on their card. If an opposing character spends an entire turn outside of Starfox's range and line of fire, remove all seduction tokens from their card.
Head Over Heels: Starfox can use Mastermind. If Starfox is within 6 squares and line of fire to a character that has a seduction token on their card, he may be given a power action to remove all the seduction tokens from a chosen character's card to use either Outwit or Perplex on the chosen character. If he is within 3 squares of the chosen character he can use both Outwit and Perplex.

This wraps it up for this installment of Deep Dish Themes: By the Slice. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to read it and thank you to for nominating this character! Feel free to post what you think about the article and just like regular Deep Dish Themes, feel free to nominate a character for an upcoming edition of Deep Dish Themes: By the Slice! Join me on 2/22 when I think outside of the Alpha Flight character: BOX! (Step one is NOT to cut a whole in the box)

That Starfox is such a scamp!

I bought the GotG Starfox with lofty ambitions, since his point cost is pretty darn cheap. Alas, I have yet to use him. He has sat in my box wondering why his seduction powers don't work on me. Poor guy.

Also kudos on the Avengers team being all ladies.

Vision is sad that you neglected his manliness

An Avenger I've never played or seemed to care about. I always though of him as a wasted character in the comics and I guess it carried over in to clix. It had been quite a few years since I looked at his dials or even considered him for a team.

At least his original dial has a better defense, but I still doubt I would try him. Decent write up about him but he's just one fig I always said no to.

Starfox!!

I was sooo happy when the first figure came out!

Never saw the dials for the new ones, let's see if I keep the classic one or I choice the new one...

I just used the new Starfox on a 300 point Avengers team this week. Paired him up with AoU Herc at full points in a bout of God vs Science. My buddy had The Grid on a CSA team and just completely locked down Herc. He couldn't hit thanks to a healthy combo of Grid's 3-6 shape change (after outwitting Herc) and CSA prob causing me to miss the few times he could attack.

But ol' Eros here held his own. Of course, the time I rolled a 6 for his "Stimulate your Brain" SP, it took Herc off of one of his 18 defense clicks. C'est la vie!

I'll definitely give Starfox another go, though.

Racist! Jarvis would be hurt