As I understand, all cardboard elements can now be printed off the HeroClix website and used in standard play.

Is this rule just in place for Hammer of Thor, or does it apply to all previous feats / BFCs also?

(Just wanted to know if the coin I spent on acquiring a few Protected feats was completely wasted...)

Yes those pretty pennies have been wasted. BUT you can still show off the REAL DEAL! so I guess it's not a total lost =) sigh... who am I kidding...

Yep, you definitely wasted your money. I've wasted well over $100 last year, on expensive Feats and BFC's that are now completely worthless. Why is Wizkids/NECA trying to ruin the secondary market? Troll and Toad has spent thousands of dollars on Heroclix cardboard, and now it is all worthless.
I doubt T&T and others liked that too much, and I'd think that'd discourage them from doing business with Wizkids.... ARE THEY TRYING TO GO OUT OF BUSINESS AGAIN?? In conclusion, yes, they are worthless... I feel your pain 10 times over...
PS: Also, all the cardboard prizes that judges give out are worthless too. They do that to provide a more satisfying victory. You also get your money's worth this way from the entry fee you may have paid.:knockedou

Look at it this way B. You have the originals in your hands, not printed copies. So there is still some prestige in it.

:D How's Vancouver? Miss ya in Edmonton.

I feel bad for those secondary markets as well, it's a shame to lose value like that, but WK/NECA is in business to make money for itself and the print and play policy must have been a decision deemed profitable by the company or they wouldn't have done it. In the end, it's all about staying in business and making money for the company. I know that sounds cold hearted, but it's really not. WK/NECA has employees and they have to make a living, and they do that by making the best decisions to stay in business and make a profit. Besides, if they don't make a profit, they will go out of business and then we will be right back where we were a year or so ago. No new Clix

It is to laugh.

Look at the prices they offer on their "buy" list compared to what they charge. They pay pennies on the dollar, so don't cry for them -- they ain't out much.

Well, at least now I feel completely justified in using Protected, esp the M&M one I won.

As for Print n Play, I hope size isn't a issue when printing these cards. I actually prefer them to be large and fill the entire page. If they were printed to scale the paper would be to flimsy and then I would want to paste them to actual cardboard. I prefer printed pages in a folder.

I think it's a smart policy to help KEEP them in business. With the mess the original WK created by making some of the most powerful feats LE, there was really a disincentive for folks who didn't have such feats to play competitively. The situation is very different than for LE figures, because while some of the harder-to-get figures are pretty good, you can build very competitive teams without having to think about LE figures (or chase figures for that matter). Even as bad-### as he is, KC Superman doesn't automatically improve every team build he's added to. Protected and Warbound, however, pretty much do. You can add Protected to pretty much any figure out there and it improves that figure, without any thought. Warbound has to be built around more, but it still greatly improves teams it's added to.

Until those feats were retired (which makes them even more "worthless" than P&P every could), they were destined to dominate tournament play, and give an automatic advantage to those with more money to burn. That's bad for the playing environment. Then the company would eventually retire them, and folks that paid big bucks would still be complaining, unless they were smart enough to dump them before retirement hit (which would obviously leave another player even MORE pissed...).

Going forward, P&P obviously saves the company money, but it's also worth noting that making the policy retroactive actually costs the company nothing as well. Sets with feats are all sold as far as WK is concerned. The only potential financial impact is with prize support kits, but those are priced so fairly that even if you took all the "worthless" cardboard out of them, stores would still buy them. This is why I've tried to convince my venue to use the cardboard (and event dials) as participation prizes. A feat you can P&P may not be a big incentive to play in a tournament, but an official copy that is given to all participants would be a cool "thanks for taking part" for the players, and would most likely boost attendance.

Our venue got 2 prize kits, so plenty of copies of the cardboard (and if attendance soared, pull out two different feats and have each player choose which he wanted), but I still haven't convinced our judge and store owner that it's a good idea (even though tournament attendance is nonexistant on days with cardboard prizes. Why pay $3 to participate in a tournament when you can play at the venue for free, with less stress, and use that $3 to actually buy something you want at the venue? Of course, i haven't really tried very hard to push my idea since proposing it before the kits actually arrived. I've been hoping they'd eventually realize I was right...

And FWIW, yes, I have a binder full of feats, including an LE Protected. I prefer to use them than printouts (though I'll do that as well), so they're far from "worthless" to me. But YMMV.

...and they're still getting my money for Heroclix, SWM, and the occasional D&D Mini...I think they'll be fine.

Does Print+Play also apply to objects?

All cardboard elements, including non-3D objects. Yep.

un freakin believable!

Kinetic Accelerator just became SUPER affordable

I've printed out all the feats. Not yet gotten around to the BFCs and Objects but let me put something in perspective for you guys who think printing them out is a cheap way to get the cards, and that it makes your expense in getting the originals "a waste."

I wanted my feats to be durable and playable, and I wanted access to all of them. I previously had put little effort into collecting the cardboard for reasons I'll leave out of this discussion. I went to kinko's with my PDF file, that contained all the feats. I got them printed in Color on cover stock laser paper to get the best quality print on the heaviest stock I could. Then I carefully cut them out and bought three packs of Identical sleeves to slip them all into (the file I had downloaded from this site, was resized by a thoughtful realmser {edit: it was Blue Atoll} so that they fit in trading card sleeves)... the entire process cost me $45. that gives me ONE copy of every feat... except for the originals that I have, which are now all duplicates of my complete feat set. I STILL DON"T HAVE THE BFCS and OBJECTS.

just because you can print them out, doesn't make them FREE.

And that's your choice... When I print them, I used the cheap, standard printer paper and the fast draft print setting. And that's it; no covers or laminating. If they tear, I'll just print them again.

Just because you spent a small fortune printing them out, doesn't make them EXPENSIVE