Learning from Defeat

Hello,

         Three crashes later I'm back. I played  against George Massu the other day. I lost the two games we played. I learned  a lot. I learned that placement is my major weakness. George is a master of placement and map manipulation. The level of skill between a good player and a great player is placement. I may be a good player but it is obvious after playing George that I am not a great player. I will be working on placement in the podcast and in my personal game. I can't count how many world championships have been won and lost on placement.

Placement it is what for dinner,
Darklogos

Hiding in the Shadow of the Thunder Cloud

Limitations:700pts no gauntlet or theme teams

Personal Challenge: Two main attackers the rest is support

Odin 250

Beta Ray Bill 150

Cypher 38 perplex

Dirk Anger 71 perplex

Shadow Assassin 35 enhancement

Alfred Pennyworth 55 support perplex

Howard Stark 33 outwit enhancement

  John Constantine 59 prob stops other prob wild card

Tank Turret 2

 Part of this team was built around Beta Ray Bill. The other part was me just finding what support I enjoyed in theory but haven't played. John Constantine main goal just to limit my opponents chances of retaliating against my main attackers since I only have two.  Now with that said with the induction of the cop car in the meta I can't see Beta Ray Bill being as viable. Give me your feedback on the team design and limitations.

Thanks for reading,

Edward Shelton aka Darklogos

The balance... it is hard to find

Hello,

          I had a great conversation with Dan the 2011 Champ last night about heroclix. He wanted my input on a team he was designing to win The Batman of Zur-En-Arrh. He wanted to win the piece but not in an over powering way. The conversation reminded me a lot of this episode. I wanted to give him some nice Batman, Beta Ray Bill, Cypher combo that would pretty much guarantee that he would walk away with the figure with little to no resistance. 

        Then the rub came in. He wanted to have a strong team, but it had to give everyone a chance to win. This is where, if I had hair on the top of my, head I would be pulling it a bit. I would not be pulling my hair due to Dan, but to the fact that I had to restrain my mind. When you come from a meta where there are 4 other guys that could hand you your clix you tend to be default on "Go for the throat" mode. 

       Dan's main concern was valuing and growing the player base at the venue. Dan wanted not to scare off the newer players at the venue. There were some players, as of this posting, had only played 1 heroclix tournament.  Accommodating that level of skill level is a tough thing to try to do. Valuing a new player base at the risk of a desired figure is at times a tough thing. In many situations venues can only afford one OP kit. This means there is one chance for you to get a figure. In venues like that I can see why it can be tough to put the kids gloves on. It can be even harder if you don't have a lot of money and you are looking at prize support for either income or trade bait. Keep in mind that I'm not saying a person should go around sharking venues. I'm talking about this from a singular venue perspective. 

     In the end we designed a team that had  certain strengths yet gives his opponent a chance to fight back. I really felt good about the team we made. Could we have created a Death Star surrounded by Decepticons charged with toxic waste rays from the 80's? Oh yes we could have. We didn't because we knew Optimums Prime flying in wielding the force was a galactic long shot.

Thanks for reading,
Edward Shelton aka Darklogos

Hello,

           Welcome to the Starting Over Podcast Blog. This is where you will see some of the detailed thoughts and insights about the game of heroclix and myself. To tell you the truth there are just some things that are just easier to type then it is put on to a recording. Some times by golly you just need helpful pictures. Helpful pictures is one thing that I really wanted to have for a while but I soon realized that it just would not work in the format that I have in the show.

         One element that I thought would really help everyone is just pure and simply putting up elements from my personal heroclix notebook. Yes you will get to see the teams I actually play. So it is not just game theory but actual battle tested teams. I will put up the limitations for team building as well. Also I will indicate if it is a going for blood day or a lab day.

         So what can you expect from this blog? I will try to update 3 times a week. This means you will see a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday or Saturday post. I will be *gulp* rejoining the twitter-verse sooner then I thought. When that happens I will try to put blog updates out on Twitter or just simple put brief snippets of info out. I'm not going to lie. Any prizes I do will be based on the blog and the show.

Thanks for walking with me,
Edward Shelton AKA Darklogos