Feel like everyone around you has a leg up in tactics? Experience may be the best teacher, but we want to help you shape up your strategy. Heroclix has a lot of rules, which also means a lot of loopholes, synergies, and restrictions. Knowing what those are and more tactically practical ways to exploit them can help you see the game in new ways and come up with your own variations. It’s not quite meta, but it’s still Practically Tactical!

More guest article goodness from DrEpidemic this week. This time around, we're going to be talking about Blades/Claws/Fangs. Specifically, this should help round out when Blades/Claws/Fangs is a good idea and when it's a less good idea. This is a power that tends to work better on lower point characters to make them more dangerous at a cost of reliability. The result can either be completely useless, or game-breakingly awesome. So let's get started with DrEpidemic!:


This week, we’re going to dig into a single power who’s strength is determined by a single d6 roll: Blades/Claws/Fangs, that red attack power on your dial.

How intimidating is this power? Especially when it is on a low cost figure that would seem weak (per its point value), but has the potential to hit you with 6 points of damage every turn…look at the new Uncanny X-men Wolverine (006) that is 50 points and has BCF on all 5 clicks of his dial (not only that, he has Flurry on 3 of those 5 clicks, so he can hit you with BCF twice each turn)!



The tricky part of BCF is knowing when it benefits you to roll for the damage as opposed to just using your printed damage on your dial. The table below (Table 1) summarizes some basic probabilities and calculations for BCF:


The first thing to keep in mind is that there are 6 possibilities of damage rolls on a 6-sided die for BCF (1 through 6) and the average damage value is 3.5 points of damage. While you will never do 3.5 points of damage (just isn’t possible in Heroclix), you will do more than 3.5 points 50% of the time (4-6) and less than 3.5 points 50% of the time (1-3). You should also remember that you have an equal chance of rolling any of the 6 damage results (16.67% chance) on that 6 sided die (despite many that would say they always roll the 1!).

Table 1 highlights the probability that you’ll exceed your printed damage if you opt to roll for BCF. The first column notes a printed damage value on your figure’s base dial. Column 2 shows what the probability is of rolling for BCF and exceeding your printed damage (nobody wants to intentionally replace their printed 3 points of damage with a 1, right? So what are the odds of successfully INCREASING your damage over your printed value?).

Column 3 highlights the average difference from your printed value when rolling for BCF. As expected, you are more likely to benefit from BCF when you have a low printed damage. Heck, if your printed damage is a 1, there is absolutely no reason NOT to roll for BCF, the worst case scenario is that you roll a 1 and have no change. Vice Versa, if your printed damage is a 6, you’d be a fool to use BCF since you could only equal or decrease your potential damage value. The table shows that if your printed damage is 3 or less, it is in your favor to roll BCF. If your damage is 4 or more, then it is likely to your advantage to keep your printed damage and NOT to activate BCF.

The last column of Table 1 incorporates the fact that since you are rolling for BCF on your turn, you CAN use Probability Control to re-roll your BCF roll. As we’ve seen in previous articles, knowing that you have two rolls get the result you want, your odds of getting that higher number with 2 chances are higher than with a single roll. In fact, with Probability Control at your disposal, you have a 75% chance to roll higher than a printed 3 and almost a 56% chance to roll higher than a printed 4. Thanks PC! Heck, if you’re playing with a figure like Black Cat (DP023), she can use PC on her own BCF.



Table 1 is nice to know the base probabilities, BUT, of course, those pesky defenders also tend to have silly powers too, such as Toughness, Invulnerability, Invincibility, and Impervious that could muck up your decision making. Hence, Table 2 gets at this issue a bit.



The first column of Table 2 shows the printed damage on your figure’s dial. Then for each defensive power, the first column shows the damage being done after application of the defensive power and in the 2nd column of each defensive power, it shows the average damage per BCF (assuming an average of 3.5 damage points as we stated previously). For impervious, we calculated damage for printed and average BCF based on a 33.3% chance of getting 0, and 66.7% chance of reducing damage by 2.

I had actually never calculated these before and always rolled BCF based on gut-feel of whether I had a better chance of exceeding my printed damage. The results actually surprised me here – it didn’t matter what the defensive power was, it seemed to always make sense (on AVERAGE!) to roll for BCF if your printed damage was 1-3 and to stick with you printed damage when your printed damage value is 4 or higher. Obviously, things could change a bit as you combine your damage with other powers (e.g., exploit weakness, outwit, and probably most importantly Probability Control, since Table 1 shows it to have a noticeable effect in helping to attain a higher BCF roll), and this is a simplistic look, but results are striking on both tables. All evidence, points to maximizing your damage by using BCF on printed damage of 3 or less and keeping printed damage on 4 or more. Interestingly, just running a quick search on the Units section of HCRealms, there are about 70 figures that have BCF and a damage value of 4 or more somewhere on their dial. A quick look found that most of these had BCF on their dial with a damage value below 4, a handful were figures that have traits/abilities where they can pick any standard attack/damage/move power types of abilities, and only a handful actually had BCF on dials with 4+ damage on the same click. Hence, it would seem that most times we encounter BCF, it will likely occur with a damage value of 1-3 and in most situations, you’ll benefit from activating BCF on your attacks. So Wolverine, looks like you need extend those claws, it is blades/claws/fangs time! What are the odds?

Thanks so much! Really liked the table for throwing an extra prob in there.

I wish it was chances of rolling printed damage or higher, instead of just higher. Because right now the chance of you rolling the same is actually calculated as a negative occurrence.

I think the idea is to get more out of the roll then you normally would. That's why rolling your natural damage is considered negative.

A little bit off topic, but, as a defender of properly using punctuation, I appreciate the proper use of parenthesis and exclamation marks in this article.

Anyways, I love reading these guest articles, keep it up!

No, the idea is not to lose out by rolling B/C/F. I don't think that anyone is really complaining if they roll at least their base damage.
They may not be dancing in the aisles, but they aren't crying, either.

But you can just move one space up on the column for those chances with a 100% chance if you are showing 1 damage down to a 16.67% chance if you are showing 6 damage of doing at least the same as your base damage.


With a 1 damage you should always roll, with a 6 you should never roll, with 3 being the only real question mark.
At that point you have a 66.6% chance of doing at least as good, but the chance of doing worse is not insignificant at 33.3%.
Enough for some people to balk at taking their chances. I usually look at the game situation as a whole before rolling there.

How much time is left?
Do I think that 3 will KO the character?
Do I think that the character can KO/cripple one of my characters if they survive 3 damage)?
And finally, do I specifically want to avoid dealing them 3 damage (say, I know that 3 will put them on a really powerful click)?

That last one can come into play for any character with the option, no matter their base damage. If I knew that hitting someone for 6 damage would put them on some monster click I may decide to roll for blades in the hopes of avoiding that.

With the exception of what I just said above, if I had a 4 or 5 base damage I would have to be desperate for a 6 in order to roll.

This describes my play for everything. Whether to roll, or not to roll has been a question from the very beginning. Admittedly, I hardly ever rolled as a new player. Now I'm seasoned and smell funny so I roll all the time!

Great article!

I think the glass is half full. No, I think it's half empty.

Yep, this is the first thing I noticed. Instead of focusing on when BCF increases your damage, the article should instead be showing the probabilities of when BCF doesn't lower your damage.

Thanks for the feedback - I definitely was looking to see when you could increase the damage from what you already have. Definitely see where you're coming from and good point. I could easily recalculate these if folks want to see them.

I'd love to see more numbers on this. On a side note, I should have titled it What Are the Odds (that you'll stab someone).

I will aim to get them in this week as an addendum. May not be until Wednesday so keep an eye out...

Thanks for the article, guys

I'll be looking forward to table 3. I've got a friend that never wants to roll bcf with a printed 3 and I'm glad to empirically prove him wrong

Personally, with an average of 3.5, if I have a printed 3, the only reason I won't roll is if I'm sure that they're near the end of their dial, or if I really just really need to get them off their current damage reducer click.