Did you ever want to take a crummy diamond and compress it into something as valuable as coal dust? You might just have to do that if your 30th-century friends find themselves at the mercy of Bizarro!

Follow the link to see a 500-point Bizarro-Legion of Super-Heroes force that can be surprisingly effective when played in a Bizarro scenario.

Synopsis: Every once in a Silver Age story, Bizarro would start to feel a little jealous of the things he didn't have, so he would use the 'Bizarro Ray' to make a Bizarro-version of somthing from the Superman mythos. In this Jerry Siegel-penned tale, Bizarro ended up making an entire Bizarro copy of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

HeroClix doesn't have have Bizarro version of the Legion of Super-Heroes, but the counterparts of the original batch of Bizarro Legionnaires is:

150 Rookie (Smallville Fast Forces 001) Superman
88 (Superman 008) Brainiac 5
70 (LSH 001) Lightning Lad
60 (LSH 002) Saturn Girl
58 Veteran (Unleashed 039) Chameleon Boy
53 (Superman 024) Invisible Kid
+ 12 Additional Team Ability Legionnaires

= 491 Points


It is mildly frustrating for me when working through the 'Longbox' and I find a story concept so wacky that I want to build a HeroClix force to represent the story...but then realize the force isn't going to offer much difference between itself and other forces I've presented. This particular force looks as if it would fall right into this pitfall, up until you consider playing it in a Bizarro HeroClix scenario!

At its most simple, A Bizarro game of Heroclix has a few simple alterations to the core rules:

1. Figures start on their last click and end on their first click.
2. A HeroClix game effect that normally causes the dial to click to the left causes it instead to click to the right, and vice versa.
3. All other rules play as normal.

The Bizarro scenario can lend itself to degenerate force builds if players try to take advantage of peculiar last-click dials, so it can be interesting to try to build a comic-inspired force that is still fun to play and play against. I've re-arranged the dials of this force from back-to-front, to demonstrate the sort of play you can expect in a Bizarro game.

The tentpole of this force, like many other Legion of Super-Heroes forces, is the nicely keyworded Superman from the Smallville Fast Forces set. The 'starting' () Champion of the Oppressed and 19 means that Superman can make all his adjacent teammates *very* annoying to deal with, even if an opponent brings a figure with an incredibly high last-click attack value. This dial isn't as game-changing as you might expect, because with no damage reducers, and a few clicks away from much lower defense values, this figure may not be so difficult to defeat.

R Superman Points: 150 Range: 8
Team: Superman Ally
Keywords: JLA, Justice League, Justice League of America, Kryptonian, Legion of Super Heroes, Metropolis, Reporter

6 11 19 3

7 9 18 3

8 10 17 3

8 10 16 3

9 10 17 3

9 11 18 4

| | |

KO KO KO KO

Champion of the Oppressed: Superman can use Defend, but only characters 100 points or less can replace their defense values through this use of Defend.

Arctic Breath: Superman can use Incapacitate. When he uses it and hits, he may also give an action token to each opposing character adjacent to the hit target.

For Tomorrow: Superman can use Super Strength and Willpower.

You could of course opt to use the 150-point Bizarro from the Smallville fast Forces...but remember that he doesn't qualify for the proposed ATA, so you get 2 extra build points. Using the 153-point All-Star Bizarro from the Superman Set would just be cruel in this scenario. However, this force has a few tricks that can deal with such a figure, including Brainiac 5.

The 'Bizarro' Brainiac 5 dial from the Superman set isn't as useful as the regular dial because the best stuff is no longer available at the beginning of the game. However, Brainiac 5 does still 'start' with Outwit, which is going to be useful for both slowing down opponents' offense and softening up their defenses. The Energy Shield / Deflection paired with Superman's defense values should keep this figure from getting easily sniped by ranged attacks as well.

E Brainiac 5 Points: 88 Range: 0
Team: Legion of Superheroes
Keywords: Future, Legion of Super Heroes, Scientist

5 8 15 1

5 8 15 1

6 9 16 1

6 9 16 1

7 9 16 2

7 9 17 2

KO KO KO KO

Force Field Belt: Brainiac 5 can use Invulnerability. Give Braniac 5 a free action and choose an adjacent character with the Legion of Super-Heroes keyword. That character can use Toughness until your next turn as long as it is adjacent to Brainiac 5.

Twelfth-Level Intellect: Brainiac 5 can use Outwit. Once during your turn Brainiac 5 can use Perplex or Probability Control.

This force has another figure that will start with Outwit thanks to the scenario: Saturn Girl from the Legion of Super-Heroes starter set. The first click looks a lot like Brainiac 5's but notice that this figure can also make ranged attacks. The low-damage values will be very frustrating in a Bizarro scenario, so I recommend trying to keep these two figures on Outwit as long as possible to keep opponents under control. This scenario offers one of the few chances to reliably have opportunities to use her Telepathic Coordination special white power, and with this force's attack values it will come in VERY handy.

E Saturn Girl Points: 60 Range: 8
Team: Legion of Superheroes
Keywords: Future, Legion of Super Heroes, Psychic, Teen

7 8 14 1

7 9 14 1

8 10 15 2

8 10 15 2

9 9 16 2

KO KO KO KO

Telepathic Coordination: Once during your turn (but not during another action), as a free action Saturn Girl modifies by +2 the attack value or defense value of any other target friendly character for the duration of an action. Saturn Girl must be within 10 squares of and have a clear line of fire to the target.

The reversed dial of Lightning Lad from the Legion of Super-Heroes starter doesn't look very impressive (especially the attack powers), so I expect that you will want to push him as much as possible to eventually get to the good stuff. Keep in mind that Saturn Girl's Telepathic Coordination can turn that 'starting' 7 into a 9 !

E Lightning Lad Points: 70 Range: 10
Team: Legion of Superheroes
Keywords: Future, Legion of Super Heroes, Teen

6 7 15 1

7 8 15 1

7 8 14 2

8 9 15 2

8 9 15 3

8 10 16 3

KO KO KO KO

With the HeroClix of 2012 it is hard to believe that 60-point dials like the Veteran Chameleon Boy form Unleashed existed, yet they were sadly all- too-common. This dial looks even worse when reversed! The only thing I can suggest is to try to position Chameleon to get to Poison while adjacent to both Superman (on a good defense value) and an opponent without a damage reducer. You have to be careful with the Poison, because you don't want to advance opponent's to powerful clicks while your force is on weaker parts of their dials.

V Chameleon Points: 58 Range: 0
Team: Legion of Superheroes
Keywords: Future, Legion of Super Heroes, Spy

7 5 13 1

7 6 13 1

8 6 14 1

8 7 14 1

9 7 15 2

9 8 15 2

KO KO KO KO

Invisible Kid from the Superman booster set isn't as useful when his dial is reversed, but the figure does have solid stats for his entire dial, even reversed:

E Invisible Kid Points: 53 Range: 3
Team: Legion of Superheroes
Keywords: Future, Legion of Super Heroes, Spy

5 8 14 1

6 8 15 2

6 9 15 1

7 9 15 1

7 9 16 2

KO KO KO KO

Full Invisibility: Invisible Kid can use Stealth. Any line of fire drawn to Invisible Kid is blocked if he has no action tokens.

Shared Invisibility: Give Invisible Kid a free action and choose an adjacent character with the Legion of Super-Heroes keyword. That character can use Stealth until your next turn as long as it is adjacent to Invisible Kid.

This force build does not allow the use of the Legion Lost ATA, but the alternate Legionnaires is not a bad choice since opponents will be gunning for Superman anyway:

LEGIONNAIRES Cost: 2 per character Prerequisite Keyword: Legion of Super Heroes

Whenever the friendly character with the highest point value that’s using this team ability is KO’d, remove one action token from each other friendly character using this team ability.

I've never played a game using the bizarro rules but it definitely seems to force you to think 'outside the box' when trying to build a team and develop a good strategy when starting from the figures last click.

Not really because everyone jsut brings all star bizarro, Maelstrom and Thor the reigning.

But if you want to build a comic accurate team, then yes, for sure.
Great article! As always a fun read Sunday morning.

Some jackanapes use The Flashes too. They use that Speed Force power to rearrange the whole table and then stomp face on whatever they shifted around. Not fun to go up against.

In our bizarro world scenario, we didn't reverse the dial like most people, we did hits were misses, and misses were hits. So boxcars became a crit miss and snake eyes were a crit hit. For one day the worst figures with high damage ruled the roost.

Oh yeah, that's no fun. Forgot about them.

Actually when coming up with tournaments for my venue, I personally prefer to say "Special Scenario" and once everyone is there announce the specific rules we will be playing. Keeps people from bringing a cheese team specific to the scenario.

So you have them build like, say a 600 point team, but don't tell them the rules?

Pretty much, but if is something generic like Bizzaro World every figure can theoretically play in that just fine. We are doing a Avengers Vs. X-Men tournament this week, and everyone knows to bring either an X-Men team or an Avengers team.

Saturn Girl with the aid of Superman Defense will be so awesome to play.

I just used the Smallville Superman last night. It's a different Superman.

I will rarely do this as well, or most recently make an 'unkown' scenario available as an option if the players are willing to try something different. I'm hopelessly biased (because I tend to build comic-inspired forces that end up being more balanced in scenario play than min-max forces) so I can't say that such an event is for everyone.

Just to further explore my own bias: I have much more fun with the HeroClix game when players see how their forces do under all sorts of different circumstances than I do when just battling it out for a strict 30-50 minutes. This is just my opinion, but the game's material is far too rich to simply live in the meta.

nice twist on with the format