It's the end of the year and it's time again for our seventh annual Top 10 list! Spotlighting the ten teams from the funnybooks that can be built using figures from sets that came out this past year!

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For those that may have missed them, here's the lists from the last few years: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Like those previous years, we won't be posting any specific builds and dials. It's all about discussing certain rosters in a Golden Age format, regardless of keywords and team abilities. Though in some cases, the keywords might help.

But I'm going to be honest, folks. I'm not particularly happy with the list I put together as it stands. I think this was sort of a weak output this year. Too many sets that try to cram a whole lot in, which led to some folks getting omitted and thus a lot of piecemeal themes that never went all the way. One DC set out this year and... Well, I'll get into that in a bit. I was really tempted to leave them out of this list altogether, but I pretty much had to since getting to ten spots without them would have been impossible. This year's Honorable Mention is going to be somewhat controversial in its own right, so... Meh. Whatever.

Yes, I know. The Star Trek: Original Series set came out in December 2017. But as I tend to write these articles in advance of their posting, last year's list was written prior to the release and as such, it became a glaring omission. Moreso than Asgardians, Planetary or Wakanda. And the Star Trek set was really good. Between the Enterprise crew, Klingon and Romulan forces, there's some great armies in there. So probably from this point forward, these lists might have a buffer zone covering December of the previous year. Plus, in terms of sets based outside of Marvel and DC, TOS was way better than the lazy offering of the TMNT Unplugged set. Better luck next year, Turtles!

Continuing from earlier, I was tempted to not include either of these. But since DC has such lousy representation in this game lately, it would have been rough to omit two of the more notable teams in the Batman: The Animated Series set. And the problem is, both of those groups left people out. The Justice League made their core roster... except for Martian Manhunter. And in addition to the problem of all the Super Friends as chases, many a member were left out. Sure you can use the old Wonder Twins and Gleek from DC 75th Anniversary, but where's Marvin and Wendy? Where's Black Vulcan, Samurai, El Dorado or Rima? Heck, if they were going to include Firestorm from the Super Powers series, where's Cyborg?

Another entry I sort of forced myself to include. Thing about all these annual Bat-related sets is, they do make it easy to play Batman and his allies. But that's also sort of the problem in that it's TOO easy. You could play almost any version of Batman, throw in Alfred, some sidekicks and maybe a cop or two and you'd probably have the cast of any given Bat story. Like the DC equivalent of playing an old school Avengers lineup, but there's even more versions of Batman, Robins and so on. It's a tad vanilla, but there you are.

A bit of a deep cut this low on the list as the Spaceknights got their numbers filled out beyond just Ikon and the generic from the Galactic Guardians set thanks to the four characters and their not-quite-primes. There's other Spaceknights that have yet to be made, but this particular foursome along with Ikon appeared in the first issue of Infinity (Spoiler alert: Didn't work out well for them). And as far as unique teams to get included in the sets this year, this was a pretty surprising one.

It's probably not surprising that at least one iteration of the Avengers makes it onto this list. This time around is no different. When the Avengers Infinity set covered a lesser known miniseries from 2000, they covered the full cast of the team from that book, making them as a team of chases or just normal CURSR figures (even for some reason going so far as to include Iron Man with the team trait, though he wasn't in the book at all). So whether you want to run them as regular ol' Avengers Infinity or the Virtues of Life/Life's Last Hope, you've got some options.

With the Secret Wars Battleworld set, it was probably inevitable that in trying to cover several of the different realms in the series, they would be leaving out some folks. Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders only had two characters from the comic in the set; Rune Thor was omitted from the Thors; several characters were missing from 1872 (Mayor Fisk and Simon Williams had bigger roles than Bullseye and Doc Ock, and at the very least Grizzly was missing from Fisk's gang). But the Weirdworld sub theme seemed to have a better coverage of its series than the other subthemes. Granted, Crystar made it in over Warbow who was present for more of the series, but if you're using this set to play Crystal Warriors versus Magma Men and the book from the 80's, it's sort of forgivable.

The newest incarnation of an old team, and one of Marvel's latest young hero teams, with the debut of Viv Vision in Secret Wars Battlefield, the initial roster to the Champions has been completed. Granted, the characters like Amadeus Cho as Hulk, Miles Morales and young Cyclops from Uncanny X-Men don't have the keywords, but it's a start. If we can get Snowguard made along with a more accessible Ironheart, we could then play the more recent lineup with Wasp.

Back in 2012, Generation X topped the Unclixed list for figures to be made the following year. Didn't really happen in 2013. But in 2018, we finally got not just the full roster of the original Generation X, but all in a single set. And complete with a shared trait to give them a little bit of a move and attack. And if one wants to mix and match the debuts of Synch, Skin, Mondo and Penance with older versions of Jubilee, Husk, M, Banshee and Emma Frost, the better. Just not the old Chamber from Mutations and Monsters. That one stinks.

Another X-team gracing this year's list is one that went through several different permutations. X-Factor has gone from the original five First Class X-Men posing as a Mutant hunting force to Government task force to detective agency. The Xavier's School set gave us a little from multiple areas with different builds for the O5 First Class X-Factor and also filled out the detective agency version by making the sole remaining member to that group with Darwin (also remaking M). Not to mention in the Mighty Thor set we got a Pip the Troll with the X-Factor keyword for the time when he worked as the team's receptionist. As an added bonus, the X-Factor subtheme rolled out all the kids the OG X-Factor took in that ended up becoming the X-Terminators! I doubt we'll ever see the 2002 lineup of normal humans investigating hate crimes against Mutants, but for now, we got the big rosters.

Last year, The Runaways were on the list on a lower spot, primarily because they were the versions from an alternate universe where they became the Young Avengers. This year, in Secret Wars Battleworlds, we get the main 616 versions. And not just as a subtheme, but also in a Fast Forces. And with the Clix debut of original member Alex Wilder and later recruit Klara Pratt, fans can now play any variation of the roster from the book. As long as one has Xavin and one of the versions of Victor Mancha.

With the subset in Avengers Infinity devoted to the Infinity Watch, remaking Adam Warlock and his friends with their mastery of the Infinity Gems at perfectly rounded point costs is terrific. Now is that (and including the debut of lesser known member Maxam) the reason they're topping this year's list? It's a start, but the Infinity Watch coming in at #1 is also partially due to the comics themselves. This year's big Marvel event Infinity Wars has rolled out not just one new iteration of the Watch, but issue #5 comes up with an ad hoc alternate version and the new year promises another version led by Wolverine. Now whether you want to play these new versions of the watch with the Gauntlet assembled or house ruling it so each member can play with one of the old Gem relics equipped, it's a good time to play 'em.

Well, that's it for our annual look back at this year in comic-y Clix! If you're not happy with this list, join the club. Whatever the forum equivalent of "Don't @ me" is, there you go. Next week is Unclixed, and in two weeks, it's an all new Comic Accurate!

It is impressive that Maxam even got made. I don’t think he made it out of the 90s comics.

From the 2018 list, I've taken a swing at playing:

Super Friends - It's hard to be disappointed when a set includes ten 'unmade' figures, but I won't fault anyone for trying. Making them as chase figures stung, but since they were essentially 1-per-brick the secondary market was somewhat depressed for these. I went into heavy trade mode to complete these figures, and I've played a large team of them and had fun. They can do well, but they are swarm team and must be played as such. I will also admit to including a few of them as non-thematic 'Troubalert' call-ins.

As far as the missing members: I feel that the Super Friends will be stepping into the inevitable 'Convention LE' slot currently occupied by Kingdom Come and Age of Apocalypse. We can easily come up with a potential roster of 10 more Super Friend figures, but it seems much more obvious to trickle out two-at-a-time as convention exclusives.

Finally: I think it is funny that the old LE Gleek is the ultimate nemesis of the Super Friend Batman!

Spaceknights - First, everyone should check out Roderic_Cliche's "Thugit, Inc" thread. Here is another group of unmade HeroClix that ought to have challenged collectors, but because of the nature of the Avengers:Infinity set the complete set (including primes) ended up being very easy to acquire through trades. I put the rare prime Terminator on my 'best of 2018' list as the representative of this very strong team.

Honorable mentions:

Star Trek - This has been a favorite set at my venue, although I haven't played them as often as others. As far as successful themes go, it's been the Federation followed closely by the Klingons. The UFP has so many potential bonuses that they can quickly overcome opposing forces. The Klingons have to play as a tight swarm, and only fall to highly mobile teams that focus on ranged attacks. The Romulans have had some success but they need things to go their way; I've seen their force suffer a cascading failure.

Runaways - You should have mentioned adding 'Doombot' for the potential lineups. There are a couple of figures I still want: 'Gib' hasn't officially joined the Runaways in the current volume, and I want a stand-alone Old Lace figure. Her solo 2018 adventure was fun, and the current book shows that she's more than capable of acting without Gertrude Yorkes. It may be a while before I play a Runaways team again (our venue plays short rounds which works against large teams) but I'm glad to have these figures in my collection.

Disappointed they didn't get a mention:

Marvel's Cosmic Abstract Entities: The abstractions all have cameos in 1991's Infinity Gauntlet, and with their low point options it is possible to play them as a team at a point value not wildly different than some of the more recent "Comic Accurate" builds (ehem, Asgardians of the Galaxy).

Here I was about to say I've had success with the Spaceknights this year (21-9 win/loss in 30 games so far!), but it looks like Tidge has seen fit to give my efforts a shout out!

Here's the corrected link to the thread, though!

In addition, of the teams listed, Starfleet is a definite favorite of mine, performing even better than the Spaceknights on average, and I was pleased to see the original X-Factor get multiple variants (All-New X-Men, early X-Factor, mid-run X-Factor) to pad out my First Class selection.

Agreed. One of the major crimes of set lists in 2018 was including most of a given team, but not all of it.

Justice League Animated. No Martian Manhunter, Hawkgirl sharing a base with Hawkman - when the later was not on the show until the last season of Unlimited. Strangely, we got Zatanna instead.

Super-Friends. First time character Apache Chief as a chase. Unfair. Not including his compatriots Black Vulcan, El Dorado, Samurai.

I know the article mentioned both, but I felt they needed to be emphasized.

Concur. Apache Chief as a chase makes me sad......

I played him about five times. He does some serious damage when he sits back and grows. Excellent chase for the points. Samurai, El Dorado and Black Vulcan should have been included. The Hawkgirl Chase could have been sacrificed. She makes good tie up pods but that's it. A very disappointing chase to pull. Apache Chief on the other hand was a very nice pull.

I think that puts it very well. The selection of characters to represent the Super-Friends was all over the place.

Hawkgirl piece even makes a point of her barely being on the show. I barely remember the Atom being there. We got Firestorm from the last two seasons, but no Cyborg who was central to the last season to go with him.

Black Vulcan, Samurai, and El Dorado should have been included instead of Hawkgirl, Atom and Firestorm.

Played Champions at the last competetive event I was at (granted I had to use Iceman and Angel from XXS to have a modern theme team), but Viv and Ms. Marvel are amazing. I look forward to remake of the others w the keywords so they can play together.

I pulled both Apache Chief and Hawkgirl. I've used Apache Chief, and he is super-effective for my play style. On Turn 1 he uses Inuk Chuk! to help deploy the team, after that he just grows while the rest of my force closes ranks.... and the low-cost Super Friends swarm very well. After a few rounds of back-and-forth, he's coming in full-force...and heaven help any opposing giants or colossal figures!


Hawkgirl on the other hand... I was happy to pull her as Shayera has been neglected for so long. However, her dial is one of the Super Friends with the least amount of synergy. The actual dial powers and her occasional weakness really negate whatever utility she might have as a combat figure, IMO.



Hawkgirl a less efficient BST generator than Aquaman, even though her BSTs are better (they don't have terrain limitations and can fly/flurry for more Troubalerts!)... it's just that positioning her to be able to summon two autonomous Average Birds (without pushing) is very unlikely unless you specifically start her apart from other teammates, and then leave her in the starting area! It's not a terrible way to try to make her work, but it is definitely not the best use of 50 (or even 30) points.

This year was so terrible for HC in my venues that people started to play Magic! again.

Wait? What? Am I missing something with his powers? What do you mean he deploys the team on turn 1?

He can Inuk Chuk to become , which lets him carry any of the non-giant teammates.

Oh OK. I usually keep him as far away from my opponent as possible to let him grow to a massive size and then go on the attack.