On my last click...

Hi there,

As I am sure you know I have found it more and more difficult to get down for clix on a Tuesday over the last couple of months.  I have known since finding out that my partner was pregnant that my gaming activities would need to be curtailed when the baby was born as I would have even less money than usual and a severe lack of time.

The baby is due next Friday 16th January 2015 and I am very excited (needless to say).  However, this would seem to be the point where I have to cease some of my game playing and the easiest thing to stop right now is Heroclix.

So I will no longer be coming down on a Tuesday night or arranging formats etc.  I will run the last month of War of Light but that will be my last act as Heroclix T.O.

I'm sure that Jim will sort something else out for you all and I wish all the best.  When James is of an age to come down (may take a while) if he wants to play clix I will be happy to come back and play again but for now I am going to have to put my figs away for the most part.

Thanks for the games guys.

Richard Tinsley January 6th 2015

Changes...

Not actually a blog on David Bowie but there are a number of changes in the Heroclix schedule for September 2014.  So I thought it would be a good idea to post the new schedule up here for everyone.

Please tell me that Bowie is still cool, he should be!

Here are the new dates for things including Month 3 of War of Light and Guardians of the Galaxy sealed!

02/09/2014	1,000 Point Battle Royal	18:00 - 21:00	Free	1,000 points each in a multi player battle royal on the BIG map.
09/09/2014	Comic accurate Theme Team	18:00 - 21:00	Free	500 Point teams which must be both a theme team and be comic accurate - actual comic or print out required.  Will find some old LE prizes for the best team!
15/09/2014	Powers Week - Ranged Combat Expert	18:00 - 21:00	Free	400 point team at least one figure must have Ranged Combat Expert.
23/09/2014	Guardians of the Galaxy Sealed	18:00 - 21:00	£20	2 Boosters of the new Guardians of the Galaxy set, to make 300 point teams.
28/09/2014	War of Light month 3	12:00 - 16:00	£20	Sealed event.2 Boosters of War of Light to make up a 300 point team.  There will be participation and prize figures available.
30/09/2014	DC Vs Marvel	18:00 - 21:00	Free	400 point team all figures must be either DC or Marvel and you will face teams from the other universe.

See you all soon.

Gods and Monster Robots...

Firstly a massive thank you for Ash at Zone out in Doncaster for saving the day by letting us have some of his War of Light Month 2 yesterday so we could run the tournament, I owe you one dude. 

So Nick Johnson asked me to pen a few words about last weeks Night of the Sentinels scenario.  The concept was simple several players fielded Sentinels while the rest of the players had a small number of points to build forces to take on the Sentinels as a combined rag tag team.  The idea was to have a number of Sentinel robots from across Heroclix history fielded against our band of heroes.  There were some basic problems involved in the execution of the whole thing however, and it was not as much fun as it should have been.

Resistance is futile, seriously I have bought a friend, you are screwed...

We know that the Alpha Class Sentinel has an impressive stat line and some bonkers powers on both dials, most notably the inhibitor field where it becomes impossible to have power actions but it was in fact the Threat Engagement Package and some great rolls from Sam Brameld meant he was able to neutralise any threats on the table before they were able to do much and then run away without fear of a counter attack.  There was also a lack of co-ordination on the part of the heroes as one third of the good guys charged the Alpha bad ass while the other two thirds tried to get in position to deliver a crippling blow to the big robots.

We will be trying this again in the future with some alterations to the rules etc for the scenario in order to make it a little less one sided.  For now Sentinels 1 - Good Guys 0.

So that is the "Monster Robots" part of the blog what about the gods?  I have been reading comic books since the late 1960's and am a hopeless fan boy in regards to a number of strange things that Marvel has thought of over the years.  This has included a number of its all powerful villains like Thanos.  Imagine my joy when I saw this little lot this morning:

If you think I'm doing a caption for each of these you must be nuts!

So we have Annihilus, the Beyonder, Thanos and the Black Order in the Guardians of the Galaxy set!  The Beyonder and Thanos can't use resources/relics but make up for it with their stats and abilities.  Annihilus on the other hand starts the game with the cosmic control rod attached if it is part of your force.  However, as much as I loved all of these things, the figure that had me going WOOOOOO the most was the Dire Wraith.  I know, I know you're all going "what the hell is a Dire Wraith?" - These are an evolutionary off shoot of the Skrulls and were the mortal enemy of Rom - Spaceknight.  The inclusions of the Dire Wraith hopefully means we will get Rom as well which would be fantastic!

Anyway that is all I have time for tomorrow is 400 point theme team, see you there.

Clix night out at the cinema.

This is a very quick blog to cover details for next Tuesday's fun games at Patriot Games Sheffield.

With a total gross of $1,518,594,910 Avengers is the third highest grossing film of all time.  Iron Man 3 and The Dark Knight Rises are also in the top 10 so it is not a big surprise that heroes at the cinema ha become a big thing.

Daredevil, Batman, Avengers, Spider-man, Superman and Wolverine at the box office.

So next Tuesday as suggested by Nick Johnson we will be having a night of DC Movies Vs Marvel Movies.  Your team must equal 500 points and can only contain characters that have been in a live action DC or Marvel live action film.  In order to clarify this I am posting a definitive list below of all the characters that have been in a movie which can be used to construct your force with.  The figures used do not have to be movie versions of that character however.

Here is the Marvel list:

Whiplash
Crimson Dynamo
Nick Fury
Agent Phil Coulson
Thor
Loki
Laufey
Volstagg
Heimdall
Frigga
Hogan
Fandral
Sif
Odin
Hellfire Club
Sebastian Shaw 
Moira Mactaggert
Emma Frost 
Tempest
Banshee
Havok
Darwin
Azazel
Riptide
Arnim Zola
Dum Dum Duggan
Howling Commandos
Bucky Barnes
Howard Stark
Ghost Rider – Zarathos
Blackout
Hawkeye
Maria Hill
Thanos
The Other
The Chitauri
Flash Thompson – Agent Venom
Aldrich Killian
Brandt
Savin
Mandarin 
Iron Patriot
Silver Samuri
Viper
Malekith
Algrim
Kurse
Tyr
The Collector
Winter Soldier
Falcon
Brock Rumalow – Crossbones
Hydra
Sharon Carter - Agent 13
Batroc
Electro
Rhino
Bolivar Trask
Bishop
Quicksilver
Scarlet Witch
Blink
Sunspot 
Warpath
Apocalypse – En Sabah Nur
Doctor Strange
Clea
Wong
Ancient One
Morgan Le Fey
The Nameless One
Captain America
Howard the Duck
Red Skull
Mister Fantastic
Invisible Woman
Human Torch
The Thing
Dr Doom
Blade
Deacon Frost
Whistler
Wolverine
Professor X
Magneto
Jean Grey
Cyclops
Storm
Rogue
Sabertooth
Mystique
Toad
Senator Robert Kelly
Iceman
Spider Man
Green Goblin
Daredevil
Bullseye
Kingpin
Electra
Typhoid Mary
Stick
Hand Ninja
Kirigi
Stone
Tattoo
Nightcrawler
William Stryker
Pyro
Lady Deathstrike
Kitty Pride
Artie
Jubilee
Siryn
Cypher
Mirage
The Hulk
Thunderbolt Ross – Red Hulk
Betty Ross – Red She Hulk
Major Glen Talbot
Absorbing Man
Zzzax
The Punisher
The Russian
Doctor Octopus
Hanibal King
Dracula
Man Thing
Beast
Shadow Cat
Angel
Phoenix
Juggernaut
Multiple Man – Jamie Madrox
Callisto
Psylocke
Arc Light
Kid Omega
Phat
Spike
Leech
Ghost Rider
Mephisto
Blackheart
Caretaker
Sandman
Venom
The Lizard
Silver Surfer
Galactus
Iron Man
War Machine
Iron Monger
Pepper Potts
Abomination
The Leader
Doc Samson
Jigsaw
Sabre Tooth
Silverfox
Gambit
Kestrel
The Blob
Agent Zero
Deadpool – Wade Wilson
Guardian
Vindicator
Emma Frost
Black Widow
Justin Hammer

And here is the DC list:

Green Lantern – Guy Gardner
The Flash – Barry Alan
Martian Manhunter – J’onn J’onzz
Fire 
Ice
The Atom – Ray Palmer
Superman
Lex Luthor
General Zod
Ursa
Non
Phantom Zone ATA
Swamp Thing
Arcane
Kara Zor-El/Supergirl
Batman
The Joker
Vicki Vale
Commissioner Gordon
Harvey Dent
Alfred Pennyworth
Penguin
Cat woman
Two Face
The Riddler/Edward Nygma
Robin
Nightwing
Bat Girl
Jason Woodrue
Poison Ivy
Bane
Mr Freeze
Steel
John Constantine
Ra’s Al Ghul 
Scarecrow
Lucius Fox
Silk Spectre II
Dr Manhatten
Ozymandias
Nite Owl I
Nite owl II
Rorschach
Silk Spectre
The Comedian
Moloch
Jonah Hex
Green Lantern – Hal Jordon
Star Saphire – Carol Ferris
Hector Hammond
Sinestro
Amanda Waller
Abin Sur
Tomar-Re
Kilowog
Parallax
Guardians of the Universe

Talia Al Ghul

Obviously there are more Marvel characters than there are DC ones but there are still plenty of both to allow you to build a playable team.

Don't forget that this weekend see's Patriot Sheffield's War of Light campaign kick off on Sunday 28th June 2014 at 12:00.  We are also doing the same on Saturday at Games Galore in Chesterfield - look forward to seeing you there.

It's all part of the plan...

Are you sitting comfortably kiddies?  Then we will begin...

#

Pick a card, any card.

As some of you may know this time a year ago I was busy quitting Magic.  At the time I was running FNM Relax, which was very successful, as well as helping Jim with PTQ arrangements and being the driving force behind the Patriot Games Sheffield MTG Annual Invitational and various special events like Modern Masters etc.

Mark Smith has done a fantastic job of running Relax since I threw in the towel and it continues to fill Patriot full of MTG players on a Friday night.  As well as this I was doing a weekly blog on the whole MTG stuff which meant that it took up a lot of my time and I was not sorry to walk away from it.

Following my departure from MTG I went back to Heroclix and my outlook on it had completely changed - this may have had something to do with the ridiculous prices of MTG cards on the second hand market (Scalding Tarn is still $80 on SCG) which makes Heroclix very reasonably priced. 

Only £50 - wow that's less than this sliver of cardboard!

I talked with Will quite extensively as having got used to the MTG scene with FNM and multiple other games/tournaments happening each week it seemed strange that there was so little clix going on by comparison.  12 months on I realise that there are just not enough Heroclix players around to sustain the type of schedule that MTG enjoys.  After trying a number of options, first of all with Will and then taking it forward as the TO myself, I decided on a model similar to the Relax model with regards to Tuesday nights; fun games around a theme of some kind often decided at the previous week's game.  Tournaments have for the most part moved to Saturday or Sunday but more about that in a minute.

Patriot Games have now requested that we make a schedule of events, including the casual play on a Tuesday evening, so that they can better inform interested parties what is going on.  After a brief survey of the Elmet Clix group I have taken on board the things people say they want to do and produced a schedule from now till the end of September:

Heroclix Schedule June - September 2014:

Date	Format/Theme	Time	Cost
17/06/2014	Powers Month - week 3 Impervious	18:00 - 21:00	Free
24/06/2014	Powers Month - week 4 Perplex	18:00 - 21:00	Free
29/06/2014	War of light month 1	12:00 - 16:00	£20
01/07/2014	DC Movies Vs Marvel Movies	18:00 - 21:00	Free
08/07/2014	Special Mission - Disarm the bomb	18:00 - 21:00	Free
15/07/2014	Dream team night	18:00 - 21:00	Free
22/07/2014	Night of the sentinels	18:00 - 21:00	Free
26/07/2014	War of light month 2	12:00 - 16:00	£20
28/07/2014	Theme Team Night	18:00 - 21:00	Free
04/08/2014	Special Mission - Hellicarrier Hijack!	18:00 - 21:00	Free
11/08/2014	Powers week - Close Combat Expert	18:00 - 21:00	Free
18/08/2014	Buttery Biscuit Base…	18:00 - 21:00	Free
25/08/2014	Guardians of the Galaxy Sealed	18:00 - 21:00	£20
30/08/2014	War of Light Month 3	12:00 - 16:00	£20
01/09/2014	1,000 Point Battle Royal	18:00 - 21:00	Free
08/09/2014	Comic accurate Theme Team	18:00 - 21:00	Free
15/09/2014	Powers Week - Ranged Combat Expert	18:00 - 21:00	Free
22/09/2014	DC Vs Marvel	18:00 - 21:00	Free
27/09/2014	War of Light month 4	12:00 - 16:00	£20
29/09/2014	Special Mission - Metal Gear	18:00 - 21:00	Free

Where there is a cost for any of the above it is a tournament, only one of which is on a Tuesday evening, the rest are on a Sunday and are part of the War of Light OP event - I'm getting really quite excited about the WoL OP event as I have been reading a whole lot of the comics around it recently (Blackest Night, The Sinestro Corps War and New Guardians) and now that I know who the main protagonists are I can't wait to play with the figs that have been produced

Full details of the events listed will be listed on the Patriot Games website shortly and posted here nearer the time as well as the Elmet Clix Facebook group.  If you live in the area and you are not a member of the group drop me a message and I will add you.

See you all soon and get ready for the War of Light!

Flying the Flags

My plan was to write a blog last week about the meta for the Heroclix Nationals which happened yesterday at the 2014 UK Games Expo in Birmingham.  Yeah, so that didn’t happen.  So then I thought, I know do one of those blah blah blah then I beat him with blah, insert witty comment, blah type tournament reports, but they are pretty dull and only really have any meaning to the person who played in the tournament in the first place.

It says "Insert random image of Deadpool here", really not sure why...

So after careful consideration I thought I would go with a kind of hybrid “this is what I thought and experienced” type of thing – I have no idea if that will work at all but here goes.

Robert Tinsley and I travelled to Birmingham on Friday and arrived around 1pm.  Having checked into our hotel near the airport we found our way to the venue by walking through a very quiet National Exhibition Centre.  We got our tickets, looked around, talked to Dave Salisbury, talked to some old friends, had very expensive drinks in the bar and nipped back to the hotel via the shuttle bus to pick up some clix before joining the Scottish contingent of the UK nationals in the bar for some games.  The guys were really cool and it was a pleasure to make their acquaintance, look forward to seeing more of them at future events.

Rob had a game with Superior Spider Man in the bar.

Saturday saw the last chance National’s qualifier, which started in a less than optimal way.  I opened my two boosters to find Lady Deadpool, Deadpool and Bullseye along with Domino and others.  When I opened up the cards I found I had the card for Evil Deadpool and not Deadpool!  As a result my boosters were taken away and I got new ones.  This time I had T-Ray and GW Bridge as my rares as well as Domino and Lady Bullseye as uncommons.  My final team was T-Ray, Domino and Lady Bullseye.  T-Ray did some good work but Domino was outstanding and I think she may even creep in to the odd constructed team on a Tuesday night.

I went 4 – 1 and finished 3^rd overall, playing some great games against brilliant people, including killing Zombie Doc Ock 3 times, and Domino shooting my own Lady Bullseye in the head when she was reanimated by the aforementioned Zombie Doc!

A pub meal and a pint made me feel a little more human.  The Black Queen with a head in one of my prize support boosters made up my mind to play Hellfire Club in the Nationals and I was ready for bed.

Sunday morning, having checked out of our Hotel, saw Rob and I at the event and ready to go.  The meta was somewhat different from what I expected to see – less M10 Iron Man and Shuma teams, more hammers than expected so M10 Iron Man would have been really good, and a few more team bases that were not Hellfire Club, including Gold Team and New Mutants.

I guess I should really do a quick round up of what happened;

Round 1 – Sam Grieves, Sam had a good team against me with White Witch to ruin my day.  Unfortunately White Witch found herself facing a powered up Sebastian Shaw who promptly punched her through a wall and the team base closed in for the kill.  I never managed to kill Phantom Girl though.

1 – 0

Round 2 – Tino Cazzato; From White Witch to Agent 13!  An unfortunate Agent 13 hovered round the wrong doorway and found most of the Hellfire Club behind it.  With Agent 13 gone copycat and Black Bolt followed.

2 – 0

Round 3 – Joe Lewin; I had been hanging out with Joe all weekend as we know each other from the Peterborough play group and he is good friends with Rob.  This was a mirror match and after many shenanigans we beat each other to a bloody pulp.  Slightly better dice roles got me the win.

3 – 0

Round 4 – Elliot Weights; Mono Bizarro, well that’s a tough cookie to crack.  I realised half way through this that there was no way I could kill Bizarro so it became a game of chase me round the map till the time runs out.  Time ran out, I threw a 6 and Elliot threw snake eyes.

4 – 0

Round 5 – Alex Crowe; The final (-ish, sort of).  We were the only 2 guys on 4 and 0 and we both play at Patriot Games Sheffield (in fairness we both play at Zoneout in Doncaster and Games Galore in Chesterfield too) so we played and Alex’s team were very effective against team bases especially mine as he used Brother Voodoo to make Sabastian Shaw go on a lot of healthy walks!

4 – 1

Due to scoring no points in round 4 I ended up in 4^th place but got some nice con exclusive prizes for my trouble.  A big thank you to all of those involved in the running of the event particularly Dave Salisbury and Dave Schofield it was a great weekend and we need to do it all again soon.

We have just been given the details of rotation for 2014 and these are below:

On July 1, 2014, the below sets will rotate from Modern Age to Golden Age.

5 Figure Booster sets

DC HeroClix: Superman

Marvel HeroClix: Incredible Hulk

Marvel HeroClix: Galactic Guardians

Marvel HeroClix: Chaos War

OP Sets

Marvel HeroClix: Infinity Gauntlet

Micro Sets

Marvel HeroClix: Avengers Movie

DC HeroClix: The Dark Knight Rises

DC HeroClix: Justice League New 52

Fast Forces

Marvel HeroClix: Giant Size X-Men

DC HeroClix: War of Light

DC HeroClix: The Dark Knight Rises

DC HeroClix: Superman

Marvel HeroClix: Incredible Hulk

Marvel HeroClix: Galactic Guardians

Marvel HeroClix: Chaos War

DC HeroClix: Justice League New 52

That’s all for now, it is Penetrating Psychic blast for powers week next week and I will get a new blog up soon.

A return to arms.

I have not published a blog since July 5^th 2013 when I put in my goodbye post for Magic the Gathering after 72 blog entries and many, many posts of epic proportion on Facebook.  I felt that it was way past time to get back in the saddle and turn my meager literary skills in the direction of Heroclix.

I was ready to come at this with “all guns blazing” after Christmas but my personal circumstances changed and that was sadly not to be.  I have now deleted that original blog as I just never got back to what I wanted to do with it and the look was just all wrong – I hope you like this one.

First picture on a blog about Heroclix?  One big G coming right up!

I am a hopeless fanboy when it comes to Heroclix but 4 years of competitive MTG and a career in Vs and Raw Deal before that have nurtured in me a degree of competitive zeal and a desire to play “good things”.

I hear this guy is good...

I’ve been involved with Heroclix since it started but just brought the figures that I was a fan of and then did little with them other than play games with my son Rob.  When I gave up MTG last year the No Man’s Land OP event had just finished and Fear Itself was just about to start.  I sold my MTG stuff and invested some of the money in some Clix product and began going to tournaments.  Many things had changed since I last played Clix around the time the Hammer of Thor came out.  There were Team bases and resource dials all over the place.  The figures not only looked much better but they had more traits and powers on the cards, this was a whole new ball game.

Since Christmas Will Adams has stopped playing and given up the TO duties he did a great job of for several years.  I have now taken over the TO duties and I am trying to build on what he did and enhance the Heroclix scene in Sheffield, taking it in new directions and building an environment that everybody can access and enjoy.

In this first blog I thought it would be a good idea to look at some of the things which are coming to Heroclix in the next few months.  The next big Organised Play (OP) event starts in June and features the various Lantern Corps from DC’s Green Lantern comics.  We will be running the OP events for War of Light on Saturdays and will try to liaise with Alberto at Gamers Galore in Chesterfield and Ash at Zoneout in Doncaster so that we do not have our events on the same Saturday to allow players to play as much War of Light as possible.  The full schedule for War of Light in Sheffield will be available here soon.

Prepare to pick a side for the War of light.

Tuesday’s are now our fun casual clix nights where people can learn and improve their skills ready for the competitive events at the weekends.  In June we will be doing a “Powers Month” where your force will have to include at least 1 figure which has the power of the week.  Here is the schedule for that:

·         Tuesday 3^rd June – Hypersonic Speed.

·         Tuesday 10^th June – Penetrating/Psychic Blast.

·         Tuesday 17^th June – Impervious

·         Tuesday 24^th June – Perplex

The build total will be 400 points in each case.

Bizarro no do that...

Deadpool and Days of Future Past are now with us, with Guardians of the Galaxy and Flash sets due later in the year – more on those as we get the details.  The UK Nationals are at Expo in Birmingham on the 1^st June 2014, don’t forget there is a Nationals Qualifier this weekend on Sunday 25thMay 2014 at 1pm in Fan Boy 3 Manchester!

With Nationals almost upon us I will post a blog next week looking at the movers and shakers in the current meta now that Deadpool has joined the mix.

See you then.