WOW.................*Shakes head in dismay and disbelief*

WHAT I LIKE:

BETTER SCULPTS
HAVING BIO CARDS

WHAT I HATE!!

HIGHER PRICES FOR BOOSTERS
THE CARDS TELL YOU WHAT VERSION OF A FIGURE YOU HAVE
NEW INDIVIDUAL POWERS
ONLY 2 BRICK PER CASE
DOING AWAY WITH THE OLD STYLE COLOR RINGS

The 5 figs a booster for 9.99 is cool. And the look of the boosters is great! Also, it's good to hear we'll be getting SOME better skulpts. I don't know about the new rarity system. It may take a while to get used to... The only idea I KNOW I don't like is the cards. That's a real pain. But overall, I THINK I like the changes. Even if I don't, I'm pretty sure they're not big enough for me to want to quit. Before you guys go out, I think you should at least wait until the set comes out before you decide. It's never good to lose fellow Heroclix players.

some good some bad

I am not fond of the Clark Bar Marketing trick though

To me, the special powers are essentially Theme FEATS. Instead of adding 5-25 points in a Feat, a character has a built in "Feat" only he can use.

Imagine if they had this on the Birds of Prey characters instead of In Contact with Oracle as we have it now...

It will be interesting to see if you can get a full set out of a case. Its 60 figures and a case should hold about 100 figures. So for 200 dollars you may have an entire set - that is 'about' what it is now - so really it may not cost us any more money - except for the fact the sets will be coming out a lot faster. I mean by this time next year we will have had Avengers, JLA, Mutants & Monsters AND Teen Titans - that's a lot of sets!

Little info on Approved Play. I wonder what that means.

Also, it will be interesting to see how these figures mesh with the current batch. I really hope cost-wise they fit.

Guess we'll see.

Color me anxious, yet hopeful...

Great articles as always!

As far as the upcoming changes....Sorry, but I am starting to smell Mage Knight 2.0. It's all fun and games now, but just wait until the new rules and cards come out. I will wait until the Legion and Avengers sets are revealed more, but right now color me unimpressed with these changes. Combine it with the whole distributor issue and I am really starting to get turned off. Sorry, but I was one of those who got hosed with 2.0 and I don't want to see it happen again.

I'm not nearly as freaked out by this announcement as I thought I would be. The idea of more characters but less versions of each character in a set seems fairly good to me. I don't mind the character cards at all as long as green on move will always mean charge, etc, etc. I thought it was one of the best things they came up with in HrC. The sculpt thing sounds good. It'll be atleast the same quality we're getting now and the rarer the figure the prettier the figure. I can take that.

So, the only thing I'm worried about now is the ability to collect a set through buying a case. If I buy a case will I get a set? Close to a set? No where near it? Are we going to be flooded with tons of common generics that you'd have to buy 2 cases to complete a set? If so I'm going to have to drop HC like I did SWM or my wife will divorce me.

So, I guess we'll see how it all pans out soon enough.

Thanks to Rock and everyone else who worked on this issue!

Wow, I'm highly weary about these changes.

One of my biggest issues with current Wizkids products is Quality Control, and it got a 1 sentence mention (which was no different from what we've been told in the past).

No REV progression means that when that Guy Gardner figure comes along, he'll only have one TA (or none) when he should have JLA/Green Lantern... among a host of other figures.

The rarest figures are going to have the most effort put into them (sculpts and dials), which means they'll be very expensive on the secondary market.

More cards with more errata to keep track of.

Different looking dials. Hmmm... I stopped buying the Simpsons DVD's when they went to different packaging, because they didn't fit in astetically with the rest of the set (call me crazy, I'm a collector).

Price increase. I'm somewhat less likely to impulse buy a $10.00 product then I am to impulse buy 2 boosters @ $7.99. Maybe that's just me.

I also notice he mentions how he feels Approved Play is "bribing" players to come out. Sounds like LE's are going bye-bye.

No more "generic" figures. Probabally one of my biggest purchases for each expansion on the secondary market (by volume). They also add a great element to the game. I'm sad that there won't be REV Mindless ones (for example).


I...I just don't know. Am I the only one feeling a little queasy?

Dont be fooled by Clark Bar Marketing math

right now MSRP is $2 a fig

Its still $2 a fig

Only now that extra fig will be guarenteed to be a common.

So now you will be paying more for less since 1-in-4 was rare, now 1-in-5 is rare.

I wish they would just be honest about it instead of disguising it like we are too stupid to figure it out.

The whole "You'll still get REVs but not REV sets" seems kind of odd. The whole "rarity" thing never bothered me but hey. Higher price per booster but more figures? Eh. Pans out to me. Seems like a total case will still come out to around the same thing but with fewer boosters making up an entire brick/case. So in the end the price will still be pretty close to what it is now. Although it still seems to lean more towards brick/case buyers than single booster buyers. Hoping quality is seriously ramped up for the bump in price though. Extra fig or not.

More sculpts/figures = HUGE plus

Cards = more storage issues but was expected and pretty much necessary for evolving the game without a Mage Knight redesign of the dials. Plus Horrorclix "explanations" of some powers is a good thing. Special powers makes for more thematic gameplay and better representation of characters. All good in my book. People can still have powers (Super Senses) but characters like Spider-Man can still have better versions of said powers (Spider-Sense) if it calls for it. Not as streamlined but IMO a necessary "evil" on the way to make the game more about thematic and accurate and less about power-gaming at higher levels. And the cards and new dials look snazzy.

Surfer, Terrax, Firelord, and Stardust = Galactus herald figs. Interesting.

Starro tourney = expected. The figures we're getting Starro-fied are not.

EIGHT sculpts for the Legion of Super-Heroes starter = another HUGE plus. Hopefully we get Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Brainiac 5 (needs Impervious and/or Defend with HIGH DV), Timber Wolf, Phantom Girl, Bouncing Boy, and round it off with some Superboy/Supergirl figure.

More thematic tourneys = plus. The Civil War thing was pretty fun. Anything that stops players from bringing Supernova Thanos, Kang, etc. week after week is a good thing.

Avengers booster art = REAL nice. I wonder if the bigger boosters means that we'll occasionally get 4 figures with one of them being a giant figure (see Giant-Man on booster art). Much like they occasionally do with other games like Star Wars Minis.

It's all a "wait and see" approach but it all certainly looks interesting and I'm hoping it all works out. I'm certainly on board for at least Avengers.

Well its not that bad at all. Its definately not NAAT. Its actually pretty decent, actually. Its not the greatest news but its FAR from bad news.

Interesting stuff for sure. Lot of information here and I'm going to need some time to wrap my head around it all. It will definitely take a set or two to see how these changes will affect the game as we know it. My only real worry is the character specific cards. Not a huge fan of the cardboard now and this will only increase the amount.

Kudos to Rock and the gang for another great issue of Critical Hit though. The product just keeps getting better.

"Generics" been a favorite selling point of extra booster sales for me since Infinity Challenge. I'm guessing we'll get occasional "REV"s (now maybe spread over many sets?) but I will really miss the grunt forces.

Well, if nothing else, it'll be a great jumping on point for brand-new players.

There’s a lot to digest here.
Some early thoughts:
The cards will only get annoying to some if every single one has a power on it, or if there’s some sort of non-optional power. If the power is optional, the complainers can just chuck the card and not use any extra, theme-related bonus. I’m seeing it as ICWO done right – a really good feat designed to help specific teams out, and it allows for some control in the design of it. Elegant, really.
Overall, the dial change doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Is it still a sculpt of a comic book character tracking his stats and powers with a click dial? Yep. The unique rule still exists, and LEs still exist. But it looks like we’re in for some smaller sets now.
The booster size change is coming with a change in the sealed tournaments – it’s now back to two boosters. $20 for a tournament, I could go for. But cracking out $24 just got a little old. It’ll be interesting to see this effect on the metagame (or with luck, the sets might get tighter balance to them).
But BIBTB is now costing $100, up from $96. Wonder if the S&H will change, too.
On the Galactus tournament – did the junior circuit get scrapped?
And a “DOH” for me personally – the Galactus tournament is tentatively scheduled the same weekend as WW Chicago.
Noticed that the World Championship is now at GenCon Indy. While WizKids is shooting to add more conventions as part of their budget, they’re slowly distancing themselves from the Wizard World. Honestly, it’s smart business from where I’m sitting.
On the marketing side, there’s a lot of hyperbole there and not a lot of content. But yes, the company does need a revamp of advertising, including on sites that promote heroclix in a forum style.
And then, just for good measure, BAMN. Iron Spidey. Nice.

But what, no Johnny Thunder? Slackers.

If I read Seth correcetly, using Guy as an example, he might have 2 figs in the set, diff sculpts each with a diff TA. Or the card might mention how he can use either TA somehow.