Gizmo and the fun to be had

Hello,

             I've been putting in job resumes all day so sorry for the lateness. The figure to look at for today is Gizmo. Gizmo is by far a figure that will be awesome  in the new meta.

First up we have TINY TINKERER: Gizmo can use the Flight ability. Give Gizmo a power action and place a light object from outside the game in an adjacent square.This ability is awesome because you can fuel your super strength characters damage and also give cover to your stealth figures. Think of this the feat rip it up on a non-super strength character.

The second thing we need to look at is INSANE ENGINEER: Give Gizmo a free action and remove an adjacent standard object from the game. If that object was a light object, choose a standard attack power; if that object was a heavy object, choose a standard damage power. Friendly characters within 4 squares can use the chosen power this turn. This power will be great for characters that have 3 targets and no psychic blast or energy explosion. You can also remove heavies so that your whole force can get prob, perplex, or outwit for a turn. Most importantly your whole team within 4 squares can use support. The attack power element will be the biggest strength since you will be able to give figures powers like tk.

Gizmo over all is sturdy starting with toughness and ok stats. I would say you have to look at him a deus ex machina sort of figure for your games. I would also say tracking how you are going to move on the battlefield is essential.

Hope you had a good break. I will have a new show up soon.

Check you later,
Edward Shelton aka Darklogos

Memorial day and Superman

Hey all,

             It's Memorial Day. I hope everyone is having a great day off. If you got to work sorry to hear that. Superman set is out in target. I got to say it is a bunch of crap. It doesn't do much under current or future rules. But if you want to round out some more Kyrptonians then go ahead and make your purchase. New show coming soon.

Check you later,
Edward Shelton aka Darklogos

Justice League has burned me out.

Hey,

        I got burned out on testing team dials, but mainly the Justice League. Show coming this weekend. I will be taking a minor break from heroclix. Updates coming soon.

Check you later,
Edward Shelton aka darklogos

The Perfect Cell

Hello,

          Sorry for the late blog post. I've been play testing for 8 hours. Yes I kid you not. I have fought the Justice League team base at 300. I know at this stage I actually despise the piece. It is like Dragon Ball Z cell saga. When Cell had all the androids absorbed he became perfect. That is the Justice League. After over 50 games, each around 10 minutes, Justice League has lost 5 times. That is a 1 in 10 games. Justice League lost to solid teams. Cop cars couldn't stop them. Mighty Master Mold went 1 and 1. I think we are going to see an errata.

      I'm working hard on some more teams but man I'm a really frustrated.  AHHHHHHHHHHH! I'm not a sky is falling guy but man the ground is getting really wet and foggy.

Check you later,
Edward Shelton

I am the darkness. I am the night...

Hey,

        I had a tough weekend. I played my Friday nights tournament for the Batcave. I went through 3 rounds undefeated. My team was Red Star x2 and Robin. Sadly I didn't win the Batcave. I lost on points. On Saturday I played 600 and 3 boosters. My team was Centerhall, Aquaman, Omen, Brother Blood Acolyte, Leash, Jinx, Robin at 50pts, and Solstice.  First round was tough. I lost my Robin. I got into a ok position but Aquaman won me the round. Second round I played the person with the buy. Omen's mind control and perplex are crazy good. Those elements frustrated my opponent. I won on time only getting a few points. The last game was the toughest I fought in months. My opponent had GL, Rose Wilson, Shimmer, Grymm, Jinx, Lil Lobo, and Kid Flash. The battle was epic. I captured his GL but he crippled my Solstice. I put in some work and scored a kill on Lil Lobo using Omen. Last action Centerhall kills Grymm. I go 3-0 and win a batcave.

I'm happy I got it. I haven't had this much stress and fun at the same time. Jay beats me out on Friday due to points. I beat him on Saturday. Overall it was a blast. In the future I don't know how I will feel when Fear Itself month 6 rolls around.

Two shows coming  out soon. Be on the look out.

Check you later,
Edward Shelton aka darklogos

The PULL

Hello,

           I pulled a Justice League. I'm really happy about that. I played midnight sealed and in all TT is not that fun. Now here is the kicker. We willbe buying TT for Fear Itself for at least 2 months. This means rushing to get a lot of after market product is not a good idea. Also it means that there are not going to be a lot of standard constructed games that will be coming out in the next few months. All in all I say don't burn out your wallet on this set really early.


Show coming some time this week. Weekend show possible as well.

Check you all later,
Edward Shelton aka Darklogos

Killing the Justice League

Hello,

          I feel a bit like Batman right now. Not because I want to wear all black and haunt the night. It is due to the fact that I've been pondering with others how to kill the new Justice League Team Base (JL TB). The JL TB has just about every counter to the stuff that haunts one man teams (oma). So far I came up with some of the following tech. Credits to Silent Scream and rorschachparadox for some of the ideas.

First thing we need to look at is stopping their first strike ability. This will mainly come from map choice. JL TB has a +7 to map roll so you are pretty much guaranteed they will get map selection. This is where Nightmare comes in at. The JL TB can pick map and have a -1 attack or let map choice go. Thing I found is that a lot of narrow spaces that stop JL TB normal movement is needed so they are limited in placement or have to waste turns blowing up walls.  Nightmare the main issue comes in is having and selecting the right map to screw over JL TB.

This is will work but will be really unfun. Stealth suit Iron Man, the Infinity gauntlet or batcave. Just run around until you get godhood. Nothing they can do.

Next up comes something very experimental. I call this the burn out tech. Pretty much you play the Batcave with the Bat Computer only. The rest of your points are dedicated to aggressive attackers. You deploy those attackers with one goal. That is to knock at least 7 clicks off JL TB. Some how some way you got to do it. Since JL TB can auto break away from figures there is nothing that can time them down. So range or a move and attack option is needed. Once you burn out your offense the Bat computer kicks in. It can psi-blast for 4 damage on click 1. If you land this 1 attack and you have done 7 or more damage you win. If not it becomes very nasty. This tech is expensive and very 50/50 right now. Remember the Batcave gives you the Utility Belt. That leads into the next element.

Handcuffs are going to be most accessible way of locking down the JL TB. Handcuffs reads as follows: Give this character a close combat action that deals no damage. If it hits, the target character may be given power actions to roll a d6, but cannot be given any other actions until it rolls a 4-6 for this effect. This one effect can give you a turn or two for a breather. The only problem is is that the 4-6 roll can be probed.

Gas Pellets, Flash Grenades, Batarangs are also interesting tricks that can mess with JL TB. The only problem that came to mind is do you actually put the utility belt on your prime attacker or not?

The last bit of tech is the Hand and League of Assassins ATA. These ta's mess with their line of fire. It forces a melee fight. That means that combat reflexes becomes very useful. There are some figures I'm looking at that would be really awesome for this. One of which is Hobgoblin Prime and Collen Wing and Misty Knight. Both figures have Hand keyword and can really do some damage on their own. Combine in the fact that JL TB will have some major problems taking an extra token a turn from Hobgoblin this may be in fact the main element to kill JL TB. Also we can stack wild card abuse on top of all of this to make this tech very viable.

Teen Titans will be out soon. I think we are seeing a transformation in the meta to something I don't quite like with the team dials. I'm all for high end meta but most of my solutions I've offered are crazy expensive. If you don't win a Batcave then you can't use the Batcave tech period. You will notice that we are not limited to principles but figures. That is a sign of a bad meta. All 3 world champs I've talked to said that JL TB is unfun. That means something. I think we can have a united front on this issue. Sadly I know wizkids will not ban JL TB . So the only hope we have is a mechanic nerf coming.

Thanks for reading,
Edward Shelton aka Darklogos

Mothers day.

Everyone I hope you are having fun on mothers day! 

Golden...never mind lol trolled myself.

Hey all,

              I'm sad to inform you that there will be no show this weekend. Mainly due to the fact that I have to work on this upcoming Monday, do a final clean out of my apartment in Topeka, and figure out something for Mother's Day. I'm still working on content so you will see something next week. I just don't know when.

              I could go into how unity in Heroclix cultures is not possible. I won't. But I do see that we have to extremes in the culture that will lead us to some very bad places. I recognize that there will always be power pieces. There will be those that play them to their full might. There will also be those that go out and just want to have fun. Out of those there will be people who don't care about what is on the other end of board.

             I've learned a lot from my time dealing with general discussion on the realms. I think that biggest lesson I learned is that we are only going to see more and more thinkers leave the community because they can't state their opinions. Currently we see only a handful of meta thinkers that post on the strat forums. If not for Johnidschultz that forum would be dead.

           I think the bigger problem is that there are no verbal creative minds out there stating how to make clix better with actual ideas. I had my problems with a cat named ULTRDRGN in the past, but he was a player who posted on the wizkids boards and hcrealms. He had radical ideas on how powers should work. He talked about his home games and his various rulings. It made things interesting because with every 5 or 6 "wtf" moments you get 1 solid "This man is right!" moments. I really miss that in the community. There is no real public tinkering to make things ideally better.

         I want to see how things play out. I tried communicating the idea of unity in a hippie lovey dovey way in the past. That didn't work. I tried this time to present the dirge in prose form. I don't know what else to try. I talked with a player in a pm he said the game doesn't need missionaries it needs players. With the currently level of disdain why would players not just play with their own camps.

         Evaluating some stuff right now with the podcast. I got to figure out some directional stuff.

Thanks for reading,
Edward Shelton aka darklogos.

The gun is only as good as the slinger.

Hey,

         Back at work. Things are a bit interesting. I was delayed in posting due to this and this . I seek Puuka story as something we will see more of. With that being said I got an awesome email question from Ray Anderson. Pretty much he asked me is tech limited by the person using it. I will tackle this in two ways. The first is looking at what tech works for you. The second is what tech doesn't work for you.

Briefly lets define skill in how it relates to heroclix. Skill is the application of knowledge, placement, and selection that moves toward apply specific ends in the game of heroclix. You can have lots of skill and still lose. Skill doesn't mean you will win. It means the chances of you winning are increased.  Dice can screw up everything.

Where is the tech coming out of? Did you make it up or did you find it on the internet? Do you tinker with or adapt what you play. Usually tech we make ourselves nine times out of ten shows what we can handle. The next thing to do is a simple number game. I want you to write the number 1-15 spaced out. Then I want you to cut up those numbers into little squares the exact same size. I want you to spin the around then stack them up. I want you to look at the top 5 numbers then put them face down. Wait a minute and then write down the order those numbers are in. Keep going up in the number of numbers until you get two of the numbers incorrect. How many numbers you can remember is how many elements you can juggle without really pushing your mind to hard or without prompts.

How do you know if the tech is in your skill level. First off can you explain to me why the team on the map you are selecting works? If you can't answer that then the tech is beyond you. It doesn't mean you can't play or win with an advance team it is just you don't understand fully why you won. The second issue that comes up is that some people get caught up in the moment of the game more often then other people. So I would say that internal distractions can cause us to have a break down in our level of skill. We can be a great at home but at loud venue we are horrible.  This can be fixed with a little bit of training.

If you want any expansions on the thoughts above let me know.

Check you later,
Edward Shelton aka Darklogos

Stars went black

Hello,

          I'm back. Sorry for the lack of content. I hope I made up for it with a bonus episode on the channel. I have some cool stuff in my head about some future content. Depending on my time here is what you can expect this summer.


         I'm going to get Alex,Dan, and George on the show. Talking about what...not saying.
  
         The training series will start rolling out this summer.

          A live show with myself and a special guest.

         Maybe a give away...maybe.

I have to go back to Topeka today. So I know I will be working this week, I don't know about next week. It is not the blog post you are looking for but there will be something there Wednesday.

Big crazy summer,
Edward Shelton AKA Darklogos

Big BLog post this weekend

Working on a big show concept wise. So no blog post today. Earliest  will be this weekend.

Sorry,
Edward Shelton aka darklogos