Heroic Efforts.

Listen All Y'all: Last week we took a third, more concerted shot at playing Heroclix, absent Easy. And, pardon the pun, this time things just, well, clicked.

After fueling up with an appropriate dinner (Hero sandwich, Super Red Gummie Berries, Win A Superpower Oreos, and some nuclear coloured sodas), Kozure, the Unnamed One, and I tried a 200 point basic goal game, which went swimmingly - I guess we finally got to the top of the learning curve on this one. What was different this time? I think the following:

1) Having only three players instead of four reduced the lag time between moves. Since individual moves take some time to resolve, and the strategy of the game is fairly rudimentary, there is less time for the mind to wander, and one stays more involved in the play.

2) More familiarity with the rules sped things up, also resulting in less distracting lag time.

3) I think that this is the first time that we consistantly applied the rules for "breaking away" - at least, this is the first that I remember of it. Doing so intensified the consequences of getting into close quarters type combat, and kept characters with more points of "move" from being at a great advantage.

4) More familiarity with the game (and with the characters in Kozure's possession) allowed us to form more effective teams with our 200 points. We could form a rough strategy while selecting pieces, and not leave ourselves with any glaring weaknesses.

Anyhow, the first game went well, with the Unnamed One pulling out a well deserved victory.

Due to time constraints, our second game was a 100 pt, themed team, capture the flag-type event. Kozure used all characters w/ bladed weapons (Typhoid Mary, the Silver Samurai, and Blade?), the Unnamed One went with unpowered heroes (Captain America and Hawkeye), and I used Team Poor Body Image (the Blob, Mr. Fantastic, and a Skrull). This game was for 20 rounds, and went really quickly - my favourite go at Heroclix yet, because everyone was in play until the end. It has seemed that in standard games, a winner becomes clear quite a bit before the end of the game, and then you just need to play out the string. Not the case with this "capture the flag" style game at all. I think that after last Wednesday, I will need to revise my rating on this game upwards.

Now, in my opinion, HeroClix is a 6. I still hate the color coding, but familiarity mitigates a lot of the trouble that we faced straight out of the box ~ we will have to try again w/ Easy at some point, and see if his opinion of the game changes.