I have never understood the term "abuse" in HeroClix terminology.

Example: "Skrull Ms. Marvel is used too much, and she's abused by too many players. She's a broken figure." Or: "Cosmic Spider-Man abuse is rampant at my venue. The cheese players use the Airbase map and hide in the tank."

My opinion: Neither one of those figures are broken or abused.

Here is one of the most important teachings from Sirlin below.

I quote Sirlin:

Wall of text crushes you for 1000 damage!

Wow that article is all kinds of stupid.

I think people frequently say they are "abused" when what they really mean is that they are just tired of having to play against a competitive figure on a regular basis. It's a term that is over-used much like:

QFT
FTW
IIRC
IMHO
LOL

And that "all kinds of stupid" has won Sirlin tens of thousands of dollars... because he "Played to win" and refused to be a scrub.

The path of enlightenment is not for everyone.

Attached Images

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Scrubs.....I'm No Superman.....

God How I Loathe That Show...Save Glenn...and Perry...and Sam Lloyd...and

Actuallly You know I just really really hate JD.


That Said...I wonder how much "Controversy" this will create.

Yes, but his name is still Sirlin. Even his name is stupid. I mean with a name like that I guess spending every waking moment being good at videogames is the best you can hope for in your life. Is that his first or last name anyway? Don't tell me it's like a Cher thing? If it is...Ha ha!

I remember reading this back when I was an arcade gamer. Miss those days.

My card name in Tekken 5 was "Mista Scrub." One match against me told why. It would have been really nice, though, to have actually gotten some real skills to make the name more ironic than literal.

My problem, almost to a game, was that 1) I would only ever gravitate to one or two characters in a game to specialize in and 2) said character(s) would either require the most skill to become competent with or they were just straight up lower-tier. And in the rare times I did inadvertently pick an upper-tier character (such as T4 Jin after discovery of the Just Frame thingy), I'd get tired of spamming the same moves or facing mirror matches against the usual shotoclone lemmings.

HeroClix is a little different. Because it's more about the overall game and less about mastering any one character, I don't spam characters like I did in fighting games. But I still have that aversion to the most efficient ("cheap") characters and combos.

So yeah...according to the article, I'm a scrub. Who will kick your FACE with the bottom tier guy like Dan or the way-above-my-skill-level team of Vanessa, Goro and Blue Mary. Or at least lose trying!

Probably much. The lack of "playing to win" by so many players is overwhelming. They use words such as "cheese", "abused", "borken", etc.

Overcoming that mental block is hard for most people. The path of enlightenment is narrow, and most fall to the wayside, beating themselves mentally with their arbitrary rules.

When I play my Avengers issues comic accurate teams... I am not playing to win. I'm purposefully being a scrub for the sake of time-line accurate rosters, issue by issue. But I don't have a mental block in regards to this... as I know I am purposefully being a scrub. I still play as hard and as best I can... but I limit myself on character selection because of an arbitrary rule I set for myself.

If personal attacks against him makes you feel good, feel free. But I must tell you...

"The strongest of words usually come in the weakest of arguments."

But he's also a successful game designer and author.

His full name is David Sirlin.

Oddly enough it does actually make me feel pretty good.

I thought a scrub was a guy riding in the passenger side of his best friends ride who was trying to holla at me? Let me tell you that guy won't get no love from me!

No offense, but if you're going to quote basically the entirety of someone's article, you ought to link to their site: a) it's a heck of a lot easier to read in the original formatting, b) he has funny captions, and c) it's his article, and he put it on his website to generate traffic for himself.

Sirlin's site

Thanks for putting the link up. I have had those articles saved on my computer since around 2001 or so, so that is where I copied and pasted them from.

Great article! Hopefully this manages to spark some interesting conversation.

My thoughts are as follows:
In a tournament setting, you should expect to play in order to win. If you want to play with a comic accurate team or just-for-fun that is not a problem, but do not call foul when someone arrives with a highly competitive team and you lose. In a 400 point match in Heroclix now, you should be prepared to play Cosmic Spider-Man or be prepared to defeat him. It is difficult, but creating additional arbitrary rules (i.e. Cosmic Spidey is cheap and anyone who plays him is a poor sport) is only hurting yourself as it cannot truly affect the game.

On the other hand there are times when outside rules can help to restructure the game in order to keep it competitive and combine "just-for-fun" elements. When a judge sets a build, he is able to include special rules. One judge in my area is running a "No Girls Allowed" scenario where all figures must have facial hair and a "Clash of the Titans" scenario where every team must have one giant. These builds do change the rules of Heroclix temporarily, but competition is still inherent in the tournament. I find these sorts of exceptions to be excellent ways to take a break from the standard 300 point Modern Age scene and to force myself as a competitive player to try new strategies.

This has nothing to do with heroclix. It is being moved.