Incidentally, I always found the Gamma Bomb to be exactly the opposite of encouraging interaction. Any game I've seen it used, players just hunker down outside of the blast radius and wait for the bomb to go off. Then you attack each other.

I used to be guilty of this(not passing, I always do SOMETHING on my turns), until a friend of mine started playing clix and In Battle Royales, whether by accident or design, started cramping my style at every oppourtunity.(basing my Psy-blaster, or blocking my LOS, outwitting or perplexing down my d00dz so everyone else can have at them, ect..) Now I make it a point to put him out of the game as soon as possible, even if it costs me the win.

This can happen. However, if you're the dude with the bomb, you've likely built with that in mind.

I haven't actually played the Gamma Bomb myself yet, but the couple times I've faced it, I actually used it to my advantage. Not only was it indestructible cover for my Stealth characters, but since rolling to disarm it is a free action, it was pretty easy to rotate out characters and keep trying for the desired roll.

In both cases, it ended up helping me more than my opponent.

A guy played it and Cyborg Supes at my venue on Friday. (It was an event where Star Trek was encouraged, but not required. He lacked any Tactics, so he built a team of all cyborgs to be the Borg.)

He positioned it poorly, giving me a place to stay back out of the radius, which was fine with me since it could give me a chance to advance Negh'Var's Infinity Gauntlet by Warbounding with Master Chief.

He moved up into the blast zone, though, and forced some of my guys out, as he'd also played Darkness. Anyway, when it got down to "1" I had some guys that were going to get blasted. I moved up my Outwitter and countered Cyborg Supes' Impervious and said something like "Well, now you've got the choice of eating that bomb or eating 3 damage."

It worked. He ate the bomb and my guys were spared.

Something interesting about the Bomb: it's the first one of these that doesn't stipulate that the roll can't be PC'd.

And I am totally against a rule against passing in a timely manner, and would stop playing anywhere that had such a rule. I've gone into "why" in detail multiple times in the past.

This scenario is why we always play "Shock the Turtle" type games when we do Battle Royales. That way no one just sits in the back and then swoops in and kills the weakened guys at the end of the game.

Now, encouraging people to go after one person while using an unassuming team? That's perfectly okay where I play, and that I've done, though typically my teams end up not being strong enough to take out the guys that end up living through my "encouragements". I've never won a single Battle Royale, though I'm typically the last one to lose.

That's great if you don't roll a bunch of one's and two's. Eventually though, unless you get a lucky 6, that thing's going off and you're in trouble.

Not necessarily.

I only disarmed the one time. The other game, I rolled 4s and 5s often enough that I was able to avoid having it go off until I defeated my opponent.

Actually, one of the best ways to win a 300 point tourny is to pick a high point figure (superman, phoenix, ganthet), KO 1 figure, then hide and pass.

I do so hope someone tries this against me.

If you are playing a Battle Royal or even a 4 person game some mechanic like Shock the Turtle is a must.

The game is too complicated to really limit passing. Even if the rules forbade passing, you could still perform "actions" like:

• Move of 0.
• Perplex another character you don't intend to use or other assorted free actions of no lasting value.
• Have a character with damage lower than 3 attack an object, wall, or blocking terrain feature.

People can effectively pass without actually passing, so, yeah, might as well just let them pass.

I think most players worth their salt would wait until the bomb went off before getting anywhere near the other team. The point of the bomb is to make people come to you, which gives you the advantage in this game. It isn't doing you much good if the game is over before it even goes off.

Not necessarily. Maybe the other team has an Infinity Gauntlet, or Weapon X/Captain America, or a bunch of Alter Egos, giving me a reason to want to get up in their face as quickly as possible. Or maybe they ALSO have a gamma bomb placed near my starting area, so I don't see a benefit to sticking around.