Here's one of the main differences between local MTG tournaments and local HeroClix tournaments. In MTG it's typical to play one or two decks week after week in a given format. But unless you're in a highly competitive environment, in HeroClix it's generally the pattern to build an entirely new team every week. At least that's how it is at the venues I've attended.

Not saying this is necessarily what you have to do, or that everyone at your venue plays the same way as everyone at our venue. And certainly not that you can never play your Venoms again! Just be prepared for possible complaints if you bring variations of the same team all the time--depending on how people at your venue approach the game.

Yeah, Carnage will get you some side-eye, as he's generally considered "meta". Even if it did fit your theme, he's just annoying to play against. Generally, though, people won't hold it against you if you show up with something like that once in a while. Showing up with it every week, on the other hand, will garner you a "that guy" reputation pretty quickly.

Google "Wheaton's Law".

First, congrats on your first tournament.


A dink is someone that uses a community for their own personal gain vs someone who is there to enhance the community.

RE: colossals are very borderline at many venues. They have so many rule bending effects they can sometimes create a negative play experience if not planned for ahead of time.

I'd concur.

Every venue has its own culture. Some only use 3-5% of their collection to build from.

Other venues want to use 75-90% of their collection.

Using the same thing each week forces opponents to build against those pieces, thereby reducing the percentage of their collection that can get used. Hence the pushback.

The bigger the player base, the less it matters, though. If a venue has 4-8 players it will be more of an issue. If a venue pulls in 12-26 a week than it's less a big deal because you are less likely to face the same person each week.

Dink? I thought it was double-income no-kids.

There are a lot of figures that are really fun to play but are just not fun to play against. They don't really play by the rules and depending on what team a person brings there just may not be much of anything they can do about it, other than sit there and tolerate it for whatever portion of 50 minutes their team manages to survive.

Carnage is a fine example.

If someone brings a one-man army(and to lesser extent tent-pole), circumstantially 10 point carnage can single highhandedly shut him/them down. Once he's retaliated and that pog, that free pog, that should be worth 10 points by himself appears, ASSUMING the pog and carnage didn't shred you, you get to choose to go for a 1/6 chance to break away and 5/6 chance of wasting your turn, or go for the maaaybe 50% chance of killing the pog for 0 points, which in effect causes another one to spawn in his place next turn for free to get another attack putting you back to square one. For 10 points.
"Why do you get 0 points for KOing his pogs?", "Why doesn't he have to hit to generate them?"; These are questions I would like answered.

That isn't all or even most games, sure. There are things they can do, sure. But the fact is, when Carnage is sitting on the map(or most any decent retaliator) you will see the entire tempo of your opponent slow to a crawl because now, just about no matter what they they do they have to suffer that jank.


---- two skippable semi-related anecdotal stories I want to share
I've used retaliators a few times, and one of those at least I completely regretted putting them on the team. I wanted to use prime thanos and I had a monster theme or something so I borrowed a surtur. I thought, this won't be a big deal, because all I want is for him to retaliate at the first opportunity and have thanos KO him for that sweet sweet infinity token. Guess what, never happened because every game i played REVOLVED around Surtur, and what to do about Surtur, and rightfully so once i was in the situation it was obvious that it was not as simple as I had thought. One guy wouldn't attack anyone untill I he could get to Surtur. He couldn't, and I couldn't hit so that game went to time. Another game a guy made a B-line for him to take him out right off the bat with TMT Zeus i think. It was a GREAT decision! But he missed. Surtur ####ing destroyed him. I won and had 0 fun and neither did my opponents, thanks to Surtur.
That was several months ago and the last time I played a retaliator until this week which was the first time I used the Mangog i bought way back when at 30 points for some Minions of Thanos Filler. He did not control the battlefield like Surtur but in my first game circumstances where such that his one retaliaton rolled an 11 and he KO'd my opponents entire force except for his own retaliators, second game he retaliated, missed, but then went and leveld up to his 150 line... never did anything useful, but it looked scary, and my third game my opponent B-lined for him with Green Goblin SR missed, and got his team crushed by Mangog, same thing next turn with Goblin King, and then he quit. I don't regret putting him on that team though. That team was awesome and I got crazy lucky all night.

This happened Friday night.

Facing a tri-sentinel retailiator: lost map roll so the opponent chose a mansion with tons of walls and Blocking.

My turn crawled because I had to calculate about 5 different things because I wasn't going to attack until the Sentinel was KO'd. The opponent complained but you brought that team and you put us on that map. Suck it up, buttercup.

On turn 4, Prime Vulture KO'd it, then a suited henchman, then a 65 point Rocket Raccoon using his SP. 100 points on one costed action.

The biggest difference between MTG and Heroclix is that clix has point costs. You can't get too out of hand with a team because you are restricted by point cost, whereas in MTG, there's is nothing stopping you from playing a ridiculously over powered expensive deck.

I see the biggest problem is constantly abusing certain teams. I played King Thor and Mjolnir once and wreaked absolute havoc with it. I could have continued to use that combo week after week and just destroy everything week after week, but where's the fun with that?


And Mangog is soo much fun. First his colossal retaliation ability is so good, and then using that ability to teleport across the field and then upgrade to your next starting line is extremely satisfying.

That's right! They have the unfair advantage of not having to choose between completing their Captain Marvel set and feeding their kids. I mean, we end up with the same figs, but I have to feel guilty about not feeding my kids last week. So unfair.