Sure thing Baron, here's my top ten. I'll start making that a regular thing in my reviews of your sets.

So, in ranking these and judging dials in general, there are a few criteria I hold as axiomatic to what separates a good dial from a bad one. Beyond the standards of character accuracy and functional ability to actually perform in the game.

1. Does this character lend itself to multiple different play styles? Something I detest in Wizkids is the shortsightedness that is perhaps encouraged by their business model but is more likely attributable to laziness, which leads to characters with long and rich histories being put out with nought but a single keyword. Baron's usual policies of as many keywords and starting lines as possible is great, though not always applied across the board. I can respect that some dials and costumes represent a particular snapshot of a character's history when they were working with one team specifically and the dial should represent that, but I'm never personally quite as excited about them or the hypothetical chance to own them.

2. Does this character do something that we've never seen in heroclix before? All too often new sets are released filled with a new season of the same old staples. Wizkids justifies this primarily through set rotation as well as power creep. Baron's dials often push the limits of what can happen in a game, and that inspires the creative side of a player to start imagining combos and strategies that were never possible before. When you see me reviewing a standard brick character with a "ho-hum, looks functional, next please," it's primarily for this reason

3. Does this character make my existing collection more valuable, or less? This most often shows up when a character is given a power that interacts with a keyword rather than a specific figure; someone like Aloysha Kraven or Animal Man encourages you to dig through your collection looking at every new Animal in a fresh light, sometimes turning a turd into a gold nugget. This is essentially the opposite effect of Power Creep, which constantly devalues my existing property by releasing new dials that are not just different, but outright better in every metric than the last version of the same character.


So, for the top ten:

10. Captain Boomerang - While he won't have a big impact on the game, the charm of flipping out boomerangs until he lands some hits hasn't worn off on me. Equally at home on a Rogues and Squad team and with three more playable keywords past that, Digger is a fun little flair to cap off teams when you've already got an effective strategy and can afford to use your last 50 points to give your opponent the heroclix equivalent of a mooning.

9. Nightmaster - My review might be bias a little by how disappointed I was in the DC7th Nightmaster we got, but I still see a lot of potential for fun with this dial. The two Blades traits are so simple but somehow Wizkids has completely missed out on how fun it would be to duel with swords. It's weird, because we've had plenty of dials for Sif and Fandral and the closest we've got was avas029 Swordsman's "Riposte" which is needlessly complicated and wordy. The other reason that I like Nightmaster is in how open his dial is to be built upon. Most of the time, putting a resource on someone will end up duplicating things they can already do... Giving Batman the Utility Belt isn't actually that helpful because he already has Stealth, Willpower and Outwit. Instead, you should put it on someone like Nightmaster here to really "build your own hero". Jim Rook is appropriately built like a fantasy novel cover character, basically an "Insert Hero Here". So yeah, I can picture Nightmaster + Resource as the basis for a lot of fun combinations to try.

8. Nemesis - In many ways what I'm about to say here goes for Catman, and double for Batman, further down. When Wizkids is doing their job well a character should "feel" like the comic or movie personality when the player is playing them well. In the best case scenario the player is able to feel a twinge of that fun escape from reality that we used to get when we were kids roughhousing with our friends in backyards and it was so easy to imagine that we'd become a Ninja Turtle or Superman whatever. Someone like Hulk or Wolverine is comparatively easy to do this with; their dial works well when they charge forward into danger and punch the bad guys. Someone like Spider-man is a fair bit harder but after years of trying, many people feel that sfsm049 Spider-Man finally achieved that feeling of bouncing and hitting and taunting and webbing just like the cartoon webhead should.

Comic characters whose powers center on being really smart are probably the hardest of all to capture the right "feel" of. So much of the game is about making decisions for the characters on your team, so if the player isn't themselves a 4-dimensional-chess master then odds are poor that your Lex Luthor or Kingpin figure will be able to enact a plan on the game board as brilliant as the ones you've seen them concoct in the comics. Wizkids has made some slow progress (Mystique when from "Stealth + Perplex" to having a Shapeshift token) but it currently exceeds their grasp to make a superspy character like Nemesis who actually plays the way the character should feel. But Baron_Impossible has achieved it.

7. Catman - Catman is a bit less of a challenge than Nemesis because the game is built to support the sort of fights that Catman is good at. But I'm impressed because of how Baron has used several new tools at his disposal to their utmost potential. ClixFX are supposed to help the players keep track of ongoing effects, and I've been very disappointed that most of that amount to "deal one extra damage the turn AFTER you hit them". The Prey marker on the other hand is how FX should be used, to cut down on the "at the beginning of the game, choose:" powers, and especially ones that can change during the course of the game. On top of that we have the lovely Lioness tokens, which are just so much fun. While Wizkids gives us generics taking up space in our boosters, Baron does the sensible thing and just packages them with the relevant figure at no extra cost or space.

6. Poison Ivy - Three different Ivy dials to play, with six named keywords, means 18 different teams I could field before repeating myself. That's a good start. On top of that, I have a fun "plant people" team that I'm always looking for new recruits for, and Ivy is now the star of that team thanks to her Flytrap-spawning abilities.

5. Animal Man - While there are a lot of teams that Ivy can be a part of, there are now a hundred different Buddy Bakers that can hit the board. He's still got flexibility to adapt to what's on your opponent's team, but right out of the gate Animal Man can be a gorilla, or a dolphin, or a Dinosaur, or even Ms. Lion. That is a ton of fun.

4. Oracle - What Animal Man does for himself, Oracle does for her whole team. A plethora of theme team build options like Poison Ivy, but now we also get to look at every character that shares a keyword with Barbara and consider how much they would be improved by having her peeking over their digital shoulder. Add on the "Uplink" FX marker and we have a piece that checks off all three of the criteria I judge dials by.

3. Parasite - He's a favorite villain of mine to start with, but even looking past that "power theives" like Rogue and Parasite have been a problem for Wizkids for a long, long time. Likely motivated by not wanting to open the floodgates to powergaming that could come from combining powers from multiple characters, the best attempts we've gotten to date have been some sort of conditional Outwit and Steal Energy. And meanwhile, or course, they have no qualms about introducing Entities and Resources and Equipment that can turn Frank Castle into Bazooka-Parallax-Batman.

I don't believe that cutting our characters off from their potential is a way to make the game fun. You can make it HARD to achieve, sure, but that stands as an open challenge to players to rethink what a good build looks like. Characters with unconventional strategies built in like avm016 Red Skull or gotgm016 The Collector make the game feel all-new again. Parasite here has a long road ahead of him to get to click #1 but it will feel so good when you reach it.

2. Batman - Thanks for clarifying the poison, and when you take a step back and see the whole dial as an epic string of free actions it does make perfect sense. I said most of what I needed to say in my previous post, and above. This dial challenges a skilled player to play like Batman, and for that reason it is the best kind of Batman dial anyone can make.

1. Amanda Waller - You can't have a Suicide Squad without the Wall. She's already had a few very useful dials in the game so it set a high bar to overcome, but this Amanda is packed to the gills with features. So much so that she feels more like a walking, talking resource than a character. Personally I am not opposed to resources being in the game but I was delighted when the Power Batteries set the precedent of putting them on the map where you can actually do something about them. Amanda feels like that.

She's so integral to this set that every character can only be judged on their merits with the caveat that they can possibly be pulled into the Squad at the start of the game to surprise your opponents. She's also got her cannon fodder, Leadership powers, and squad-mobility powers... why would anyone build a Suicide Squad and leave Waller on the bench?? She is indispensable.

thanks, man. I try to give it me a-game with each dial (even the vanilla ones )

I think it's cool waller made the top of your list. I gave her the 001 spot for a reason, she should be the centerpiece of any suicide squad set. she was one of the first designs for this project and really set the tone for everything else that came, trying to focus on utility but not at the expense of character. I wholeheartedly agree that the dial should play like the character.

i'm also glad digger snuck his way onto the bottom of the list, skullduggery and all. the catching boomerangs mechanic of his always gives you a reason to hail mary with him, especially if his trick boomerangs have an extra oomf (at least until new rules hit). it seems like he should be an emphasis on a squad set, too. can't have the squad without digger, either. so them bookending is cool

batman and catman both seem to have struck a strong cord with the community, and i'm super pleased, especially with them closing out the set. but the one's I'm most excited to see on your list are parasite, nemesis and nightmaster. they're less popular characters but personal favorites of yours, which validates my mantra that every dial deserves the best interpretation you can give it, because everyone is someone's favorite. parasite was given all the potential I think he should have, but needs to work for it. nightmaster was streamlined to maximize his strengths. and nemesis was designed to try to play differently than the usual gaming style. I tried to capture the character of each of them in their dials and your approval makes me think I've reach that goal.

ha! that morrison review was great and also suckered me into a wiki walk. tv tropes will ruin your life.

i'm also most glad to see g'nort make the list. mr. g'neesmacher was always a sleeper design, never intended to be a front-runner, just a humble teamplayer that knows his place and isn't trying to be anything else. I, too, thought his selling point would be the bargain-basement gl ta and his high mobility.

i'm also glad my take on the perennially clicked poison ivy, bane, waller, and especially batman were sellers for you, too. it can be hard to take a crack at characters that have been made thoroughly. well-trod material can lead to burnout and make it harder to come up with a new take on them. especially if they have what is considered a definitive version out there. on the other side of the coin, I can turn my own disappointment on designs that are missing something and aren't quite there as inspiration. one tactic I took up with this set, since it's got more remakes than any I've made before was to read up on unit section comments on previous takes of characters to hear popular strengths/weaknesses, missed opportunities and tactics to try and feed them into my design

another common motivator for some reclixed was sculpt opportunities. detective chimp needs to be remade for the deerstalker alone, and i'm glad I was able to parse a useful take on him that wasn't a retread of an75.

rip hunter has quite the meanstreak, and being more meta than morrison? terrifying! .

catman was a love letter for me, dark_knight's awesome pic on the frontpage (and showcasing two of his favorites) just shows why it's baffling that he's absent from carded clix. my fingers are crossed to the breaking point that'll get remedied in 2017 with harley's secret six subtheme. I don't know if he'll have his pride with him, but he should at least be a close combat monster if there's any justice in the world of clix

thanks for the feedback, jay, and your top 10 list, like the others kindly contributing to this thread, made my day

Don't fall into the Wiki Walk trap, Baron...he who browses TvTropes may become a trope page himself.

Here is my top 10 list of favorite dials:

#10
Simple but I would love this guy.

#9
Best Bane design I've seen.

#8
This guy really pushes the envelope with the 25 pts trait.

#7
This trait alone makes this guy awesome.

#6
This would be my go-to Animal Man.

#5
The 25 pts version is exactly the type of figure I like on my team.

#4
Seriously good designs on both dials.

#3
Truly a masterwork.

#2
That leadership power is genius.

#1
Free action Incap? What more do you need?


Love this set. Any plans on a new set?

i'm truly flattered by bane and deadshot both. they're tall orders to compete with the strong dials we've gotten for them. immortal man's flavorful became my favorite part of his dial, too, as a clean way to just show he's been-there-done-that for everything.

animal man, oracle, batman and rip hunter seem to be some of my most popular designs, populating many top10s. and i'm not in the least bit surprised why bruce made your list .

i'm excited to see blockbuster making your list. he was a basic prime, by which I mean he was an experiment in being very uncomplicated with mild yet potent adjustments, so it's cool to see that it paid off. faraday also had a deliberate meta rookie line built around a play on words with how the game uses the word "counter."

but I am over the moon that javelin made someone's list javelin! nothing flashy, but quietly doing his job of throwing pointy sticks at superheroes as well as he can