Here's another 'in progress' piece meant to get the A/B dial treatment...

Awesome.

And chance you have a preview pic of the 'buy it by the brick' fig?

I've been excited about it since I first heard of it.

P.S.: Oh, we're still good for my Factory set, right?

I prefer the Battle Fury trait as a basis for feat use but your simple reword gets the point across more clearly. That's a good idea, especially since WizKids has really been emphasizing Traits and it seems special powers + feats is creating some insane combinations.

Plus back when this began there was no Modern Age / Golden Age so Feat options were always needed.

Looking forward to more.

Regarding the Battle Fury trait, I do think that saying he can use Battle Fury is a bit confusing since he has to not use it to use his special power. I would do it in one of two ways. As you suggested, simply saying "Wolverine ignores other characters' Mind Control" is closest to how it is now. The other option is saying "Wolverine uses Battle Fury" or "Wolverine possesses Battle Fury" and making his Mind Control special power ignore his Battle Fury. But of course, that changes the effects quite a bit from the way it is now.

See by saying, "Daken can use Battle Fury" it makes it optional. Use it when you need it and declare it off when you don't. Its very simple.

The power may be non-optional but the trait providing access to the power is.

I decided to make the debate null and void by reverting his trait back to an earlier playtested version. Re-reading his history and where he was as a figure/character during Dark Reign, it seemed to make more sense.

"During Dark Reign, Norman Osborn puts together a new group of Avengers, recruiting Daken as his own Wolverine, letting him wear a version of his father's brown and tan costume. Cyclops sees him as a liability and plans to kill him with the Muramasa Blade to protect the image of the X-Men. It is revealed, however, that he agreed to join the Dark Avengers as a way to draw out Cyclops to take the Muramasa Blade from his possession. When the X-Men attack him, he takes a piece of the blade and brings it to the Tinkerer, who then bonds the metal to the claws on his wrists."

I'll save the Battle Fury trait for a future Daken mod,

That's true, but being able to choose not to use Battle Fury is unintuitive. It's not really all that simple in play, especially compared to "This character ignores other characters' Mind Control," which is basically what it boils down to barring one or two feats.

Welcome to another look at Dark Reign. Today we will be exploring the 4th member of the Dark Avengers (Lester, Karla, and Norman… who is still crazy) in Dark Reign and the second to not have a second dial to show his counterpart. This preview is a bit different since some of you have already see this dial, but the previews will get back to normal soon. So let’s look at what we have, Osborn’s very own 'Dark' Wolverine - Daken.

What’s this you say? You don’t know who Daken is? I don’t believe you at all.

But lets take a look at his background first anyway.

First off, yes, he is Logan’s son. Yes, he has 3 claws (although similar to X-23, his middle claw has moved a bit, to the underside of his wrist for him). This Wolverine's claws have not been laced with adamantium like the some of the ‘claw brigade’ (more on that in a bit), but even so his claws have been shown to penetrate Iron Man-armor on at least one occasion. Healing factor? Yes. And yes, he and his father don’t get along... at all. In fact, that was shown to be one of Daken’s motivations in joining the Dark Avengers - to get under his father’s skin just a little bit more. You see this Wolverine, whose father didn’t know of him for the first 60-ish years of his life, is holding a bit of a grudge. Most of the time in order for Logan to even have a moment to talk to Daken, he has to have some one (Bucky or Deadpool) play some part in subduing him for long enough for that to happen.

Trained by Cyber, Daken has been called ‘a better and faster fighter’ than Cyber himself (who is usually quite full of himself to begin with). In order to deal with more difficult threats, Daken has augmented his under claws, now bonded with metal from the Muramasa Blade - a mystically powered weapon that can inflict wounds greatly nullifying superhuman healing factors.

One other ability of this Dark Wolverine that you should know about is his pheromone manipulation. Coupled with his mind games (that even his teammate Karla would be proud of!) he has been shown to be capable of many varied effect to suit his needs at the time.

That should be all you need to know about him for this dial so lets take a look at that;


#DR046 E Wolverine
Team: Avengers
Range: 0
Points: 95
Keywords: Dark Avengers, Martial Artist, Warrior

9 10 17 3

8 9 16 3

8 9 15 3

8 8 15 2

7 7 16 2

7 8 15 2

6 9 14 2

6 10 14 3

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

First we see a return to Team Abilities (Avengers) and traits,

Muramasa Bonded: Opposing characters may not be healed while adjacent to Wolverine.

Wolverine's team ability lets him play well with the rest of his Dark Avenger teammates and his trait can really put a damper on your opponent... especially against figures who last longer through self healing instead of just typical damage reducers (Zombies and Black Lanterns… I’m looking at you). What’s that? WoS Deadpool is on your opponent’s team and you’re worried about him healing through his trait? The WoS Wolverine healing trait is turning out to be more of an issue that you thought? Send in Dark Wolverine… he’ll make things like that much less difficult to deal with.

So starting out, Wolverine starts off with 9 charge, a 10 attack, 17 willpower and 3 Killing Blow (Exploit Weakness). There are a few things from a playability stand point that is worth pointing out about his first click. Remember with the new timing interpretation of ‘replace then modify’ Wolverine will be able to charge farther than before if he has his move perplexed. Previously Wolverine would have a normal charge of 5(9/2) and you would need +2 from perplex to be able to charge even one more square (11/2 for 6 charge). Under the new interpretation the modification from perplex (or other modifiers) apply after the modification (9/2 +1 for 6 charge, or 9/2 +2 for a 7 charge). The second thing worth noting is that he starts with willpower, which many players look at and see a target. So you might have to protect him from being shot from range until he can get into the fight. Of course, the Dark Avengers have fliers to carry him up (into his charge range, preferably) and even Lester would make a nice piece of mobile terrain for Wolverine to hide behind… and let's be honest, that is exactly what he would do! But when he does get into the fight his 3 Killing Blow (Exploit Weakness) will ensure that his hits count against almost everybody. And if you can protect him from an attack or two he can attack 2 out of 3 turns with no pushing damage.

But if you’re not just fighting some random ‘tentpole’ that needs to be cut down a few pegs you might consider turning off his willpower and voluntarily pushing in order to get to his second click. Here he trades out Charge for 2 clicks of Ruthless Aggression (Flurry) and base 3 damage and only minor stat drops. His willpower is traded for 3 clicks of Trained to Kill My Father (Combat Reflexes) so in close combat his effective defense actually goes up on click 2. The loss of Exploit Weakness isn’t that much of a loss as you will more often then not be wanting to take advantage of they flurry now anyway. But on click three we see the first of three special powers Wolverine has,

Pheromones: Wolverine may use Perplex, but may only target other characters.

Perplex is rarely something that isn’t welcome and despite the fact that Wolverine will individually benefit from this power himself (perplexing down opponents will benefit him, of course) he will make his team better and more adaptable to different situations. And he has it for 2 clicks to make it twice as much fun.

On click 4 we see Blades/Claws/Fangs which is usually a staple of any Wolverine type dial and we see Wolverine’s second special power which is definitely not a staple on a 'standard' Wolverine…

Master Manipulator: Wolverine can use Mind Control as if he had a range of 6.

So now you have some options.... you can just slash away as normal or you can use your opponents figures against him. And for people who don’t know enough about this Dark Wolverine, they are going to ask to see the character card when you say you’re going to mind control. But as an added benefit if you were to take some damage from pushing or say… mind controlling someone over 100 pts (but less than 200) you could tell them to walk right up to your flurry and blades click. The 7 attack is the low point of the dial but the potential very impressive… besides you were helping the team a few clicks back, maybe someone on the team will return the favour. Remember Blades and Flurry work together and so do Blades and Exploit Weakness but EW and Flurry do not… so you will have to choose which is the right tool for the job. We also see the last of the special powers;

Healing Factor: Wolverine can use Regeneration and Toughness.

And that will be for 4 clicks. If your team has done it’s job so far your opponents team should be a bit dinged up and toughness will play a much bigger roll that it does at the start of the game… also looking at your opponent when you roll 6 for your regen roll after you told them that his characters can't heal in any way because of Wolverine's trait will be fun. But try not to laugh, that’s not very sporting… Daken would probably laugh though, but he’s a jerk.

Wolverine's defense will steadily drop to a 14 but attack and damage will both revert to their higest numbers of 10 and 3 respectively on the last click.

The new designs in heroclix have presented us with new tools and challenges to handle - this Dark Avenger can be both if you plan ahead… or don’t know what’s coming.

That’s going to do it for this preview/post-view/review. Next time we might just have to look at something a little sinister… maybe something amazing… or maybe one of the rarest figures in the set! :speechles[/quote]

I know I mentioned this in another thread, but I wanted to take a moment to thanks a few people;

Thanks to traitorarmor for doing his fantastic WK-style write-ups. There's a new one one post up! You don't even have to ckick anything (how convenient is that?!?)!

I also have to thank all those who help me flesh out the dials - both the guys here at home who help me playtest and those Realmsers who offer their valuable insight (thank you tyroclix!).

You all rock!

Man that Dokken is awesome. You should send it to me...

Great. Now I have Dream Warriors stuck in my head...

you da man!

Soooooo - when will we see one of your mods in this set?

Is there a place to see this sculpt in all of it's mohawk-y glory yet?

I should get on that... I didn't really like the lighting in the first batch of pics. Need to take another batch soon!