Heroclix?

spookymuffin

Anyone play this anymore?

I was looking around for something that I might get a couple of friends into, nothing that's too "D&Dish", as that tends to scare people away, and I happened upon Heroclix. I've got some buddies that are into comics, and it might work out for us to start collecting and playing. Or, if that goes sour, I was wondering if there was a way to play this online. But I have a few questions.

I'm looking for a starting point, some figures and needed accessories. Are eBay auctions a good place to get figures? I see a few that are bundle lots, and have promises of rare figures and all that, but I fear I'm too new to know if I'm getting a good deal or not. Also, would it be wise of me to throw out my ambitions of creating a "favorites" team in lieu of a team that I hated, but I could win with? Half of the draw to this game would be for me to be able to create my dream team of superheroes, but if I need to use Cyclops and Wolverine every time, it would get old pretty fast.

LibrarianThorne

The problem you'll find with HeroClix is that, if you get competetitive, the system falls apart at the seams. I've played HeroClix for a few months and did a tourney, and it was very unfun. The first turn is so critically important.

If you want collectible and superheroes, I can't recommend the Vs. System Trading Card Game enough. Really, I can't. It's the game that got me to GenCon, and besides having some of the best CCG rules ever printed you can legitimately make a crazy good Superman/Batman deck, an Avengers deck, a Hulk deck, and so on and so forth.

SUPERSUGA

This game is great fun if you're playing with people that aren't too competitive. I bought two bulk lots with a friend a few years ago giving us a few dozen guys and plenty of big names. Had some great fun playing around with them but there were a few figures in there that were sort of a "win button".

As long as you take the approach of "hey, let's have some making Sabretooth fight Parasite with a load of mooks on each side" rather than "I'm going to build such a badass team" you won't go far wrong.

leaf

Why don't you go post on cfh about it?

:winky:

delroland

Clix games are fun as a casual thing, as stated above, but I have three problems with the game:
1) Shoddy construction of minis often means that the combat dial does not click or display properly, and I have seen several damaged minis requiring some repair.
2) I hate random pack collectible games, as you have to dump way too much money on stuff you don't need/want to get the stuff you do. Yes, you can trade, but that doesn't get you too far.
3) The bases are too big. Every other game in existence assumes 1" bases, whereas the Clix games use 1.5" instead. This does allow them to make more detailed models, but conversely you can only play on *Clix maps, and you can't use the Clix maps for anything else. This also means you can't use a particularly cool mini as a stand-in for another game.

The Clix bases, while fun to use, are not very practical. Every mini comes with a full stat card, and I find taking minis off the board to mess with the suspension of disbelief. Look at any other miniatures game, and you will find that the players never remove units from the board unless they are dead. It not only makes for a more immersive experience, but it also makes the game run faster.

[tiny]Unless, of course, you like leaning over a game table and staring at tiny numbers painted on the base of the mini. Not so fun, is it?[/tiny]

INeedNoSalt

I don't think "Heroclix miniatures are only made for playing Heroclix" is a very fair argument.

delroland

No other game uses a 1.5" grid, though. It makes using Clix stuff for other games at the very least difficult, especially if the game uses close quarters combat.

INeedNoSalt

Fortunately you buy Heroclix figures to play Heroclix, not D&D.

delroland

True, but fig swapping is a common practice. I love Confrontation minis for my D&D characters when I can find a good match. Also, D&D isn't the only RPG out there. If they were sized properly, Clix minis would work well for Shadowrun, CoC, SW, Feng Shui, and a multitude of other games. Now, while admittedly those games (besides SW) don't have pregen maps, it can be useful at times to use a blank square grid to represent the battlefield, and 1" squares are both more common and allow more terrain to be portrayed on the table.

It's close enough to being an industry standard in my book that I think they should have gone with it.

INeedNoSalt

Shadowrun and Call of Cthulhu don't have their own miniature lines at all as far as I'm aware, so saying they adhere to that standard as well seems kind of off-base.

On that note, they also made Shadowrun clix figures and they were huge.

delroland

I'm referring to generic battlemats. Those only rarely come in 1.5" grids, and when they do, they can't be used for anything else.