Feel like everyone around you has a leg up in tactics? Experience may be the best teacher, but we want to help you shape up your strategy. Heroclix has a lot of rules, which also means a lot of loopholes, synergies, and restrictions. Knowing what those are and more tactically practical ways to exploit them can help you see the game in new ways and come up with your own variations. It’s not quite meta, but it’s still Practically Tactical!

Hey guys, I wanted to apologize for a bit about not getting more articles out the last couple of weeks. I went on a vacation camping trip, and I thought I'd have more time to type some articles out, and I completely overestimated how much time I had and underestimated how much time it takes to write things. I'm back on a more regular schedule though, so you'll get less interruptions from me.

Today, I wanted to take a moment to talk about two powers that don't get a lot of love, Mind Control and Incapacitate. Mind Control and Incapacitate are two powers that we see a lot on cards, but less on the actual field. Today, I want to talk about why those powers don't see as much love, and some ways to maximize your use out of these powers if you choose to use them.

The Loss of the Art of Conversation

Mind Control and Incap are two powers that fit in oddly in to the Heroclix Powers card. They both require an action to use, they both require an attack roll, and they both don't directly hurt your opponent despite the first two things. Outwit is useful because it doesn't require an action to use, nor does it require an attack roll; it's just something that happens during your turn. Incapacitate, however, requires an action, then an attack roll with many of the same defensive powers that a damaging attack roll does, and then the best result you can hope for is to give your opponent an action token in return. Boiled down this means that really you're giving your character an action token to maybe give an opposing character the same. So, on the one side, you don't know if this is going to do anything because of the attack roll, and even when it does, it's not damaging your opponent and moving you closer to victory. What you're really doing is hoping to slow your opponent down and move yourself away from defeat, and that's a whole lot less proactive. Worse, even if you give them the token, there's a good chance they can still move anyway.

Look at it this way: If they didn't have an action token before, they have one now, but they can still move if they have Willpower or they don't mind taking a damage for their effort. If they had a single action token before, they now have to clear the next turn, and won't be able to attack you, and if they didn't have Willpower they might take a damage as well. If they had two action tokens, they were going to clear next turn anyway, and all you did was make them take a single penetrating damage as a result. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's also not going to win a lot of games, and it isn't slowing them down either. Breaking that down, it means that usually the best time to Incap is when they have a single action token already because you might deal damage and you probably will be shutting them down next turn (outside of Leadership or Colossals), which happens either 1 in 3 turns or 1 in 2 if they don't have Willpower.

Now, the character using the Incap? Well, they get action tokens too, so if both characters are clear, you're sacrificing an action this turn and hoping your opponent doesn't decide to push next turn. But they can probably push, and if nothing else they can clear, which means you need to give them another token the following turn to keep that up, and THAT means your Incapper will need to push AND that they're not going to be able to do that the following turn, so your opponent can push then without having to worry about taking penetrating damage or that they can at least clear again, and get that third turn Incap free. It gets a little confusing, but the jist is that a single Incapper, even one who can hit reliably, at best can only slow an opponent down for one or two turns before they need to rest themselves, and this kind of creates a rhythm that your opponent is in more control of than you are. And while you can create a team with more than a single Incapper, in most games, you're going to have a limited number of actions per turn (3 or 4 in standard games), and the more of those you use on Incap, the less you can use on things like moving or attacking. And this is all on the best case scenario assuming you never miss.

Mind Control is a lot of the same, with a few differences. Ideally, the idea is to land an Attack Roll, hope they don't Evade or make you reroll, then you get to move them, and then you get launch a vanilla attack that requires another attack roll that might deal some damage. Rather than handing out action tokens, you're attacking someone in the hopes that they can attack someone else, and if that second attack roll fails, all you really got was a chance to force them to move. This is compounded by the fact that your Mind Controller wants a high attack value VS a low defense value to further ensure he hits his target, but most characters with lower defense values tend to also have lower attack values as well, meaning they're less likely to make their own shot. Does your Mind Controller go after the large brick character with the 18+ defense and 11+ attack to punch the less valuable 16 defense and 10 attack guy standing next to them, or do they target the second guy for being easier and hope he can damage the stronger guy? It's a lot of choices, and sometimes it can feel like you don't win on any of them.

That's not to say these powers don't work or can't work, just that they aren't as straightforward and easy to use as Penetrating/Psychic Blast or Precision Strike. They require a bit more subtlety and finesse in a game where a "finesse piece" tends to mean "not as good."


Incapacity

Incapacitate requires a Close or Range Action to use, which means that it won't work with powers like Hypersonic Speed, but would work with powers like Charge or Running Shot. This also makes it a little flexible in that it can work with either Ranged Actions or Close Actions. It can also stack with powers like Precision Strike. Now, when it comes to Range Actions, it's important to note that since you're not (usually) dealing damage, there's little reason not to split your targeting between multiple characters. This makes characters with more s more effective at Incap because they can both hedge their bets by targeting high and low defense characters, AND have the ability to use their action token to place action tokens on 2 to 4 enemies at a time.

Now, because Incapacitate requires an attack roll, it works better with characters who have high attack values, and it also helps to have someone around to Perplex or use Probability Control your attacks. Additionally, while I said earlier that Incapacitate uses up precious actions, Leadership can help compensate for that by giving you an extra one to use per turn, and while I said that Incapacitate needs actions which means you'll eventually have to stop every 2nd or 3rd turn, Leadership can help draw that out as well by allowing you to remove tokens from those characters. There's other, more complex, synergies as well, so if Incapacitate is something you want to use, be sure to keep your eyes out for things like:




Incapacitate works better against smaller teams, such as Tentpole or One Man Army teams because if you can keep their primary characters clearing action tokens, you can slow down a counterattack. One idea is if you have a couple of Incapacitate characters attacking the same One Many Army character, you can effectively take your opponent's entire team out of the fight for a turn or two, and that's a very large effect while you toss another character or two at them to attack. If they have a large amount of secondary attackers, a firing squad, or even some Colossal Retaliators or something, it won't tie them down as well, and they'll be able to reroute their attacks though the characters that still don't have action tokens. It'll still have an impact, just not as much of one for the effort being put in.


Mind Control Freak

Oddly enough, a lot of the same things that work well with Incapacitate also work well with Mind Control, which is part of the reason I grouped these two powers together in an article because otherwise I'd feel like I was writing most of the same article twice. It's also a Range or Close Action, so it can work with powers like Running Shot or Charge and retains about the same flexibility. It also benefits from powers like Precision Strike or having more targets or just generally having a better chance to hit. A lot of it is about the same

Contrary to Incapacitate, Mind Control tends to work a little better if your opponent has at least a mid sized team. If they're using a One Man Army, you CAN Mind Control them, and you might find some use out of moving them off to a killbox or out of their threat range for the following turn, but you won't be able to make them attack. With a tentpole team, you can try to target the tent pole, and use it to take out the supports, but the supports might be less useful in damaging the tent pole, and late game once all of the supports have been knocked out, the Mind Controller will have less to contribute. With a larger team, you can move the characters around, and having multiple opposing characters make attacks against their friends creates a much more devastating effect. Having multiple targets really helps here, so it's a very useful thing to look for in a Mind Controller.


Psychological Bumps in the Road

There's a few things to watch out for with these powers. First of all, Battle Fury will prevent opponents from being affected by either of them. Secondly, remember that Incapacitate now give penetrating damage if they already have 2 action tokens, but it's not longer unavoidable damage, meaning that powers like Invincible will block it (though it won't block Pushing Damage if they only have one action token before you use Incap and don't have Willpower). Additionally, if you're planning on using the powers are range, remember that powers like Stealth will block line of fire and anything that makes them harder to hit normally will probably also affect these two powers. In the same vein, remember that they can always base your character, and while that won't eliminate the powers from being used, it will likely disable your ability to use them at range/against multiple targets, so be on the lookout for that.

Well, that's all for this week. I hope this was helpful in explaining the nuances of these two powers to you. Until next time, Stay Tactical!

[This post was deleted after a self-destructive wave I did on my own posts. I was not banned (at least not at the time of this edit); I just made a fool of myself. I apologize for any confusion this caused.]

Good write up. I love using both powers because people don't expect them. One of the first clix I ever owned was golden age prof X, 10 range mind control! Anytime you can token some piece or move an opponent you are gaining tempo. There are some good pieces for giving tokens like that super sweet sculpt Ice Man. He can token 3 clix in one turn. Not quite incap but super effective.

Recently ran this all Professor X team and can attest, that with strategy and dice in your favor, Mind Control can be sickening.











Opponent's clixed were MC'd into killing one another. Only one clix was actually killed by one of my guys.

My suggestions for revamping the 2 blue powers ...

Mind Control: Controlled clix can attack and damage themselves. ("Why are you hitting yourself? Why?")

Incapacitate: Hit characters receive an action token that cannot be removed by clearing tokens, and must be removed by Free: Roll a D6, 4-6 remove the action token, 3-6 if character has Super Strength.

[This post was deleted after a self-destructive wave I did on my own posts. I was not banned (at least not at the time of this edit); I just made a fool of myself. I apologize for any confusion this caused.]