by Amber Collins
Welcome to the Rules Corner, the place where we talk more in depth about the rules you need to know to play Heroclix competitively. Today we’re going to be looking at a rather interesting Week One Errata.
Erratas are nothing new in the game of Heroclix. There are typically two types of errata that we see, release day/week errata and game correcting errata (typically following the Watch List). A few weeks ago we saw one that was both.
On July 24th 2019 Star Trek Away Team: Resistance is Futile officially released and it didn’t take players long to notice one particularly powerful figure.
Uncommon #13 Thomas Riker
UP UNTIL THAT TRANSPORTER ACCIDENT, THEY WERE THE SAME PERSON: SIDELINE ACTIVE: When a friendly character with the name “Commander William T. Riker” is placed with Telekinesis, after resolutions place TREK:RF #013 Thomas Riker from your Sideline adjacent to that character on click #1, 2, or 3. This game, Thomas Riker can’t: be carried, be equipped, be given DOUBLE POWER actions, replace, or be replaced. This game, Thomas Riker returns to your Sideline: at the beginning of your next turn, immediately if no square he occupies is within 5 squares of the friendly Commander William T. Riker, or he is removed from the map by another effect.
The thing that made this figure so exciting was that there was no limit to him. You could have multiple Thomas Rikers on your sideline and potentially bring them all out on your turn with the amount of characters out there with free or double TK. Keeping in mind that a single character can be TK’d multiple times in a turn. This would allow you to surround Commander Riker with Empower, Enhancement, Probability control or any combination of the three. Combined with the fact that the figures returned to your sideline on your next turn, you could accomplish this multiple times in a game (assuming your opponent doesn’t KO them all in between)
Dreams of Riker Swarms danced in players heads for all of a few days before the usual Release Week Errata was posted. Now typically these erratas are used to fix spelling errors, fix missing symbols or general printing errors. The Errata for Thomas Riker on the other hand added a full sentence to his trait and managed to dash everyone’s dreams in the process.
013 Thomas Riker
[E]UP UNTIL THAT TRANSPORTER ACCIDENT, THEY WERE THE SAME PERSON– SIDELINE ACTIVE: Once per turn for all characters on your Sideline with this trait, when a friendly character with the name “Commander William T. Riker” is placed with Telekinesis, after resolutions place #013 Thomas Riker from your Sideline adjacent to that character on click #1, 2 or 3. This game, Thomas Riker can’t: be carried, be equipped, be given DOUBLE POWER actions, replace, or be replaced. This game, he returns to your Sideline: at the beginning of your next turn, immediately if no square he occupies is within 5 squares of the friendly Commander William T. Riker, or he is removed from the map by another effect.
By adding in that simple phrasing of “Once per turn for all characters on your Sideline with this trait” the possible Riker Swarm was stopped dead in its tracks.
It’s interesting to see such an errata pop up without much fanfare. Usually it takes something like The Watchlist to see such a change be made. On one hand it’s nice to see Wizkids on top of this but it is a little sad that we never got to see the full glory of Commander Riker, especially this close to Worlds.
