by Amber Collins
New Scoring Rules
Welcome to the Rules Corner, the place where we talk more in depth about the rules you need to know to play Heroclix competitively. The convention season is upon us. With only a few weeks to go before National Tournaments start we’re going to be focusing on the rules that will impact those tournaments the most – the New Scoring Rules.
As of May 11th 2019, the updated Tournament resources came into effect. Most notable (the ones we’ll be focusing on) are the Point Cap, the new Victory Condition, Byes and Zero Point Ties.
Point Cap
Back in 2013 Team Bases were introduced into the game and with them a new precedence for being able to score more than the Tournament Build Total. This has carried on even until today with the advent of ID Cards and sideline characters. It became common for players to score hundreds of extra points causing balancing issues when it came to seating a tournament. A player could full wipe round after round and still end up placing lower than another that was able to score extra points off of these additional elements.
This imbalance has led to the New Point Cap Rule, which reads: Scoring & Point Cap: Win/Loss and victory points are recorded on a player’s Team Build sheet. A player’s maximum recorded point total can be no more than the build total (typically 300). Note that a player can score more than the build total during a game and that score will be used (if needed) to determine the winner, but the maximum total that can be recorded is the build total value.
This means that during a game if you end up scoring extra points – KO’ing an ID Character, Troubalert, or ‘Popping’ Uni-Mind – the most points you’re going to be recording, on your build sheet and in the WIN, will be the Tournament Build Total. For the sake up the upcoming National Tournaments, this will be 300 points.
I do want to stress my use of Tournament Build Total here. In the Tournament Resources document the term Build Total is used and while it is fully defined in the rulebook, this term has caused confusion amongst some players. More than once I’ve seen players assert that the most you can score is your opponent’s Force Total, which could be less than the Tournament Build Total. If you defeated 560 points worth of game elements and your opponent’s Force Total was 295 points, in a 300 point tournament you would record your score as 300 points. This will keep Swiss seatings from becoming imbalanced while still recognizing that a player scores the maximum amount of points for that round.
New Victory Condition
In the past Heroclix has had two major Victory Conditions: Completely Defeat your opponent’s Force before time is called or have the most points when time is called. With the updated Tournament Resources a third Victory Condition has been added:
When, during the game before the time limit is reached, a player’s victory point total is equal to or more than the build total value plus 100 after the most recent effect resolves (for example, if the build total is 300, the game would end as soon as a player scores 400 or more points).
So far I haven’t seen any confusion come from this new ruling. This one is pretty straightforward and a welcomed addition into the game. Especially in conjunction with the Point Cap Rule. There’s no point in continuing to rack up points when you’ll only be able to score 300 of them anyway.
Byes
Previously when a player received a Bye, it was recorded as a zero point win. I don’t believe I’ve come across a single player who actually liked this rule. While you are getting a win out of it, scoring zero points puts a player at a distinct disadvantage. It is this dislike that led the ROC to implement a 50% Bye instead. Thankfully now that it is only ever possible to score the Tournament Build Total, Wizkids has adapted this 50% rule as well.
Byes: A bye is issued when there are an odd number of players in a Swiss event. A bye is considered a win. First round byes are assigned randomly. In subsequent rounds, the bye is given to the lowest ranked player who has not already received a bye. The Bye player receives a Win for the round with a score of half of the build total points (typically 150 points).
Zero Point Ties
The final new Rule we’ll be looking at is another that has been adapted from the ROC: Zero Point Ties. In the past if, when time has been called to end the round, neither player had scored any points, they would each roll 2D6 to determine the winner. Now, this will result in a loss for both players.
Ties: During the Swiss rounds of an event, if a game ends with both players scoring 0 points, both players will receive a game loss.
There are two important things to keep in mind for this new ruling. The first is that this is only in effect during the Swiss portion of a Tournament. During the Top Cut (Single Elimination) players that have a zero point tie will roll off to determine the winner. Secondly, this only applies if at the end of the round neither player had scored any points. While that sounds rather academic, it’s still important to remember that a regular tie will result in a roll off.
A Strange Corner Case
Before we leave off for the day I wanted to bring light to a strange corner Case that has a possibility of coming up in the upcoming Nationals Tournaments. This comes in the form of the new definition for a player being “defeated”:
A HeroClix player is “defeated” when they have no characters on their force with a point value of 1 or more points and nothing is resolving. Until then, players are “undefeated.”
there is no distinction regarding where the character is, though generally a character who has moved to the sideline, KO zone, or has been removed from the game ceases to be part of your force at that time.
However characters off the map or on character cards are still part of your force until an effect either says otherwise or they move to one of the aforementioned zones.
This gets strange when you consider the Ultra Chase Captain Marvel, who has the following trait:
I NEED THREE YEARS TO FULLY RETURN: Once per game when Captain Marvel would be KO’d, instead give him 3 Resurrection tokens and place him on this card.//At the beginning of your turn, if Captain Marvel is on this card, remove a Resurrection token. When the last one is removed, place Captain Marvel in any square along the edge of the map on click #3. Protected: Pulse Wave
Since Captain Marvel’s trait is a Would Be KO’d effect, he isn’t moved to the KO zone, instead being placed directly onto his character card. In the past if Captain Marvel was the last character on the player’s force, this would have caused the game to end. However under this new definition, the game is still in play.
That’s it for this edition of the Rules Corner. For those attending their National Tournaments, Good Luck!
