Clix O’ the Week – Kyle Rayner LE – Tiago Pinto Da Luz

by Tiago Pinto Da Luz

Hello once again! It’s another edition of Clix O’ the Week this time with the stomping machine, Kyle Rayner! This 180pt Green Lantern should always find room in the top 8!

1 – Sculpture: It isn’t the best sculpture in the world. His face is badly painted. The only two things that I like is the “construct base” and the left hand to slap enemies faces.

2 – Point Cost: We’re talking about a heavy weight here! In this game a character that costs 180 points needs to be very strong, because he is costing more than half of the team build. That means he will have to hit hard and survive to make his points worthy

 3 – Keywords: Green Lantern Corps and Justice League of America, only two keywords, and not so easy to use, especially in the ROC Limited format where you can’t use the Ion to give the Green Lantern Corps to other character. So using these keywords will be near impossible, because you will lack some important powers, like probability control (that isn’t the themed one). The other Keyword can be more used, it does have a good ATA, some good characters, like Atomica and the Green Arrow from gravity feed. The biggest problem it’s to find synergy between them and Kyle Rayner to make a good themed team.

4 – Team Ability: This character doesn’t have a Team Ability, but can use the Justice League (Silver Age) ATA, in case you’re using him in a Themed Team, this ATA allow you tp: once during each game, you can choose any team ability or opposing character. Each friendly character using this team ability modifies its attack value by +1 when attacking the chosen character or a character possessing the chosen ability. Like I said before, it’s a good ATA, the problem it’s to make a Themed Team with Kyle.

5 – Values: This is where it starts to gets fun! Kyle has really good values, high speed, good attack, good defenses, good damage and awesome range! This combination of high speed and high range gives him an awesome reach for a shot. With a 10-Movement value on click one, and 9-Range he has an easy 14 squares for an 11-Attack doing 4-Damage. He drops every value by one on the second click, but then in the third click he becomes a green monster with 12/12/19/5 values (!), nobody wants to fight him at this point because he has ridiculously high values for the point cost. After the third click his numbers starts to drop again, and in the seventh click he ends with an 8-Movement, 10-Attack, 17-Defense and 3-Damage.

6 – Powers: Lots of players forget about Kyle’s first click and want to go quickly to the third click, but look at the first click powers, Running Shot, Energy Explosion (with two bolts) Super Senses, and Perplex. Combine those with his good numbers and he has a really good first click. He has a move and attack, some splash damage that will make your opponent think twice about their positioning. Super Senses will give him some protection, and Perplex will give boosts to allies (usually himself) or weaken some enemies. He has the same powers on the second click.

When he takes damage the third click monster appears, the power called ION that says “When this click is revealed due to an opponent’s attack, stop turning the dial. Kyle Rayner can use Impervious and the Quintessence team ability. This power can’t be ignored.” First thing to note here, it only triggers with an opponent’s attack, if Kyle took damage from other way, like a Poison with more than 1-Damage, the stop-click won’t work. The other defense powers are Invulnerability from the click 4 to 6. Before I said that he have high mobility, and this fact isn’t only because he has a high speed value. On the third click, another special power appears, the speed one called “I can be everywhere I need to be” and this does something near the power name. It gives Kyle Duo Attack Ability. And when he does, before making each attack, you may place him in a legal square up to half his speed value (6 squares). No break away required, no Line of Firet from to the place you will jump, just count squares and go! He has this power on click 3, 4 and 5. And together with all those good powers, Kyle has Outwit on clicks 3, 4 and 5! So, after click 5 Kyle is useless, right? No! Far away from that, in the 6 click he has Running Shot with Pulse and Perplex, and on the last click he has Pulse Wave and Regeneration to bring him back to the jumping power!

7 – Trait: He has an awesome trait that allows him to start with a construct attached to his base, and you can give him a power action and replace the construct with any other, up to 2 points higher than the original one. If this character has no action tokens and the new construct is a lower point value than the original, this is a free action. It’s a very good trait, sadly in the Limited format Constructs aren’t allowed, so this trait is useless.

8 – Allies: Since Kyle usually hits alone, he loves good supporting pieces, like Atomica or Mr. Mxyptlk. I really think that we will see some Kyles with Superman Blue for Pulse Wave protection. And even 056 Nick Fury SR can be a good option, since Kyle can leave Nick in a good position, start fighting and jump around the map. While the enemies try to fight Kyle, Nick Fury turns off powers and KOs them. Two other great allies that you can play with Kyle is Rainbow Raider, to lower enemies’ values to make Kyle even harder to hit, or Nighthawk Prime that will prevent your enemies from raising their values.

 9 – Enemies: The first threat to him its characters that can remove his mobility, like Nick Fury removing the jumping power or a Jenny Sparks that can prevent his stop-click from triggering. Another problem for him is Mystics characters, which make him go off of the third click when he hits them. Characters like Gluttony that just doesn’t take damage. Some people talk about Blue Devil being a hard counter, but he usually gets KO’d before he even gets a chance to hit Kyle.

 10 – Final Consideration:  It’s an awesome character that we should see in tournaments. The biggest problem he have is that some players just forget about his first click and how good this click can be, Energy Explosion hits tiny characters well because theyare usually carried (like Mr. Mxyptlk, Atomica, Ant-man and Despotellis)! It’s a heavy character and if you make a mistake against him, you will lost the game, he can easily stomp an entire team in just one turn.

That’s it for this week’s edition of Clix O’ the Week. I really hope you enjoyed the article, leave what you think in the comments and what character you want to see here next week in the current format!