Back by, well, our own executive decision, it's another hometown rivalry primer with saturnflight and JRuffing!

You can expect a more volatile Primer as JRuff and I share our opinions on Battleworld. JRuff loves his swarms, while I'm a sucker for a combo. On top of that, this set hits on a few of our favorite themes: JRuffing's a Spider-Fan, while I run with the Runaways.

Also, we're bringing back the Fantasy Booster Draft (maybe this time we'll make it happen). After each rarity, we'll pick our favorites and use those rosters to build our own 300 point 'sealed' teams- then pit them against each other during a Clix night at the House of Heroes in Oshkosh, WI. That is, if our pulls allow it; last time it took us a month to get an A:I Thanos to test against Hulk (if memory serves, JRuff's Hulk did take that grudge match).

Welcome to the Primer! Hope you survive the experience!

Part 0: The Intro

About the Marquee Primer Format:
□ In accordance with the WizKids standard format, these figures are rated for a 2-booster, 300-point sealed event. We recognize that not everyone follows that guideline. 400 is often requested by readers, and seems to be a common alternative. We see 300 as placing important 'loss of opportunity' costs on one-man armies and high-cost tentpoles, which makes for a more well-rounded assessment of the set.
If you really want to adjust your thinking for 400 while reading, as a general rule of thumb, I'd add 1 shield to anyone rated or .

□ The rating system is as follows:
saturnflight hates this like a Hammer Drone.
saturnflight will probably use this figure anyway.
Jruffing will get 4 results from these.
Competitive, yet won't draw hate.
Very competitive and will draw hate.

□ There are only a few 1- or 4-shield ratings, based on their usefulness in sealed play. There are 2-shield figures who play like 4-shield figures in Constructed. There are 4-shield figures who fall flat in Constructed. If your favorite character didn’t get 4 shields like you think it should, the ratings are only the writers' opinions. If you really like a fig, by all means play it.

□ Everything written here is intended to be very broad in order to give a general idea of what may or may not work - these are not specific suggestions ordering, “you must play this!” These are just recommendations, and the combination of figures on a team can drastically affect a specific fig’s overall effectiveness.

□ Once again, this review is just the opinion of a couple HeroClix fans volunteering their time. These are a lot of work to write - so we ask you very kindly, please don’t get angry at us for our ratings. We give reasonable explanations for each choice. If you disagree (and you are welcome to do so), please try to do the same.

■ If you like what you read, or if you don't, or if you appreciate having original content here on HCRealms, please add to the discussion! As a writer, this is the most rewarding part of crafting an article!

■ Special thanks go out to Jruffing for offering up a second opinion on all of these guys, all the dial coders in the Battleworld Evidence thread, and to the House of Heroes judge tkoloseik for pairing Jruffing and I against each other for the 3rd round any time we're out of the running for first place anyway.

WizKids returns to alternate realities with Marvel HeroClix: Battleworld, the middle of 3 Modern-Age Marvel sets to explore this content. Thankfully, the set feels more ambitious and focused than the scattershot What If?, giving us hope for a strong Earth X set next year.

Alternate realities provide welcome variants on the staple characters that long-term collectors feel inundated with. The various Territories of Battleworld get fully-developed collections of characters, while the recurrent Baron trait encourages crossover battles in a neat way. As my biggest personal beef with alternate takes on characters is having no appropriate team-building options, this set is a welcome change of pace- even those who are stranded from their theme (like the many Battleworld:Other characters) are justified in crossing over by virtue of the storyline.

Battleworld also revisits the Runaways for the second time in Modern Age. It's a luxury for fans of minor comic teams to have options in team building, and as a huge fan of the comic, I'm thrilled that WizKids noticed everything going on with that property and re-featured them. (Shameless plug: besides the compelling TV series, popular YA writer Rainbow Rowell has been producing the best Runaways stories since BKV, so go check that comic out!)

Alright, time for some stats...

Let's start out with an overview of keywords. This isn't a comprehensive list, but instead hits on some prevalent or important keywords.

• Past has a huge showing at 17.
• Avengers and Mystical occur 13 times each (largely in upper rarities).
• There are 11 Rulers in the set (again, at higher rarities).
• 10 Monsters and 10 Police. No Monster Police.
• There are 7 members of the Runaways.
• The Spider-Man Family, in contrast, is a close-knit 4 who are literally family.
• Battleworld keywords are both a boon and a liability. They're distributed as follows:
  Regency: 4, The Valley: 10, Asgard: 6, Weirdworld: 9, Spider-Island: 8, Other: 10

Attack values (on click 1):
0- 1
9- 3
10- 24
11- 35
12- 7
Defense values (on click 1):
16- 2
17- 30
18- 29
19- 5

15 characters have a range value of 6, and another 11 have range greater than 6. These are countered by 13 instances of opening Stealth. 21 characters have access to the Carry ability.

Probability Control has a major presence in this set, showing up on the 1st or 2nd click of 15 characters. Perplex is easily accessed on 14 dials, with many of those coming from the Baron traits and none of them on Commons. Similarly, Outwit does not appear below Uncommon rarity, and shows up only 10 times. Telekinesis has an astonishingly low 2 appearances- on Common Iron Man and Rare Nico.

Watch for the reviews to start tomorrow!

"competitive and will draw hate"

It's sealed! RNGesus does not play favorites, just accept your luck ha ha.

Here's a challenge for the readers: How many 4 Shields and 0 Shields will we get that they BOTH agree on?

Haters gonna hate!

I'm gambling that Nico Minoru, Thanos SR @200, and Destroyer Thor will get the double 4 shields.

The only figure I could see pulling 0 Shields is Chase Stein

Nice intro post! Appreciate the statistics on the keywords and stats. Interesting that, yeah, we're creeping up to 11/18 as the standard opening numbers from the longtime 10/17 (someone should do some data visualization on that over time... not it, haha).

Runaways and Spider-people have me in for a full case of this set, so Jruffing vs Saturnflight is a win-win for me!

Thanks for the breakdown! With outwit being difficult to come by, it sounds like damage reducers will be more useful than normal.

Thanks for the opening breakdown. Nice to see the status on the powers and combat values.

I find that 11/18 has been an acceptable high mark for sets over the past, oh, 5 years? based on the theme. This is definitely a high powered theme, so the 11/18 feels appropriate here.

Most of our venue would disagree and tell you I'm definitely his favorite

My Thorus, Boar Thor, Thor, and Ultimate Thor was a pretty good team! So....much...synergy.....

This is truth.

I can verify.
On topic, I like the introduction this time with the stat, power, and keyword breakdown. Really looking forward to this set, I like the primers in general, so this will be an especially anticipated read for me. I'm excited to see what you two think of certain figures and if we will agree on some or not. But i especially look forward to when you majorly disagree on a figure. Maybe Witch Queen La Fey for example,she could easily be rated very high or middling.