by Pedro Rocha
Hello distinguished and esteemed members of this prestigious heroclix court, allow me to declare the court in session as we are about to go over some recent rulings in order to keep you all up to speed and refreshed on what some of our creative minds are tinkering with the rules.
Some of the decisions might already be common knowledge for the most avid and meta oriented players, others might bring distinct advantages to existing pieces or allow some crazy interaction not foreseen. Regardless of the reason, the truth of the matter is, whether you are a beginner or a veteran competitive player, on top of knowing the rules, you need to be up to speed with the rulings. There is nothing more frustrating and potentially game ruining than finding out your team cannot do what you thought it could, or that your opponent´s team was able to do something you could prepare for but did not, because you thought it was impossible.
So, rather than copying the rulings here, which would add you all no value since most don’t have time to go through them, I will do a brief summary from the recent rulings of February 19th and 26th, just for the core information and if there is any potential implications we can explore it a bit.
Without further ado, from latest to oldest:
1 – February 26th – EX052 Captain America – When you use his +1 plot point ability, that allows you to move up to 1 square and make a close attack, you have to respect the text order, so you have to move up to 1, even if you chose to move 0, and that choice necessarily means an attempt to move, so if you are adjacent to an opponent and fail breakaway you cannot make the close attack it allows you to after moving. You can NOT elect not to move and make an attack, and moving 0 is an attempt move, so be mindful of positioning if you are playing him or if you are facing it, basing him with Plasticity gives you great odds of nullifying that ability.
2 – February 26th – AIW G012 Tony Stark´s Car – In short; (i) if a character is knocked back into it you treat it as a knock back into blocking terrain and (ii) the extra +1 to Defense against ranged attacks if the line of fire crosses the spaces occupied by the car is NOT lost to attackers that ignores hindering terrain. You would lose the standard +1 hindering bonus, but not the extra +1 because the power looks for crossing the car’s squares irrespective of the hindering condition. A small boost confirmation there for this special terrain that has slowly been proving a very effective anti-ranged tool.
3 – February 26th – TMT064 Malekith – The concept is simple. If an opponent´s character is within range and line of fire, you apply Malekith´s GATHER SUPPORT FROM MY PEOPLE power (rolling a d6 for each token given to an opponent´s character and on a roll of 4-6 generating a Dark Elf bystander) for each token given. This means that if a power like Ymir´s retaliation gives a character 2 tokens you would roll for Malekith´s power twice (once for each token) for every character hit by said retaliation that is within Malekith’s range and line of fire. A very specific combo, using less common figures, but still an interesting interaction.
4 – February 19th – EW014 Batman – Here is an example of what I mentioned earlier regarding gauging what some creative minds are looking for. It was ruled that, in order to comply with THERE MUST ALWAYS BE A BATMAN power, which requires you KO´ing another friendly character of 25 points or more to prevent Batman from being KO´ed and turning him to click 1, you CAN NOT pick charters that have a power/trait that prevents them from being KO´ed, like EX054 Daredevil for instance. You have to effectively KO the friendly piece you choose, so, if in KO´ing the piece it triggers its powers and avoid the KO, you cannot trigger Batman´s ability. Quite ingenious, but Wizkids stopped that one.
5 – February 19th – EX055 Hulk – Now for an example of potential optimization in power interaction. I will try to simplify it as much as I can. The trick is, when Hulk generates its Bruce bystander it gains an ability that allows him to receive soul tokens instead of actions tokens. This means that the big green can act every turn for as long as he and Bruce are alive and he can be kept free of tokens (or be kept with 1 or even 2 if it fits “combo’ing” with another interaction which requires him having 1 or more tokens) and never needing to clear. The downside is that, if Bruce is KO’ed, after resolutions, Hulk’s take 2 unavoidable damage for each soul token on him. What the ruling determines is, that if both Hulk and Bruce are within the area of a Pulse Wave and take 1 damage each, if Bruce is KO’ed you do NOT trigger the soul token damage because the ability was shut off during such pulse wave. This could be a clever, although delicate trick to pull, to clear you of all soul tokens for the cost of 1 damage alone as opposed to many. A specific but very powerful tempo tool.
6 – February 19th – Elevation – This one is the only one I will recommend looking into the forums for. It’s a long list of interactions and responses that are very specific but for the purpose only of not letting anyone curious, this latest answers, in summary, says that when you draw line of fire from one elevation to the other, all other characters or terrain in lower elevations than the ones being considered to draw said line of fire, cannot affect such drawing, e.g., if you draw from elevation 2 to elevation 4, you don’t have to worry about characters or terrain on elevation 1.
7 – February 19th – MP17-007 Pym Pocket Tank – Talk about a regular piece in the forum, this guy has been here more times than he can change sizes. This time is more a clarification and most of it is known, but it is not without its impacts, and its worth checking them out:
A – Confirmed he can be used with Mind Control;
B – Confirmed he can be used in a multi target attack;
C – Although you can pick who to drop the tank on, during a multi target attack, you can NOT deal normal damage to the remaining targets because all of the normal damage was replaced by the tank’s effect;
D – Damage dealt for dropping the tank is considered dealt by the attacker who used the tank’s effect, so it DOES trigger colossal retaliation; and finally
E – Although damage is considered to be dealt by the attacker it is NOT damage from an attack. This means this great piece of clix can be used to bypass effects that require damage from an attack to be triggered, the most known one being STOP clicks, so yes, if you get Starfox or any double STOP with mastermind chase to their first STOP click, the tank can finish the job in one swoop.
8 – February 19th – EX056 Iron Man – I will close in style, I already had my eyes set on this guy because I think there is something there to be developed. His ruling is not necessarily it, alone, but it certainly helps improving this figure by a fair bit. The main topic of the ruling falls within the rule that says that when effects happen simultaneously the active player can choose the order in which they occur. What this means here is that, when you choose the Stark Tower map and pay for its location bonus, if Iron Man is on your team, he has to be picked as the target of such bonus. That choice though, as per the maps text, would prevent him from generating any Iron Avengers bystanders other than through the FREE action the map gives him (as opposed to a POWER action for anyone else). Since both effects trigger at the beginning of the game, i.e. (i) generating the 2 bystanders from Iron Man himself, and (ii) losing the ability to do so to gain the FREE action to generate more, the active player has the option to choose to FIRST trigger Iron Man’s effect of generating the 2 bystanders and SECOND, give him the FREE action ability which then, and only then, and for the rest of the game, would be the source of more bystanders and prevent him from generating Iron Avengers from other sources.
Please note that none of the interactions above would allow Iron Man to have more of the same Iron Avenger, so if you roll for one that is already on the map, you do not get to make a second of the same.
This is a great way to maximize the use of the Iron Avengers generation and specially good to give Iron Man the initial protection and mobility he needs (picking Steelbow for flight an sidestep comes to mind), not having to rely on the map roll to get you the right initial bystander.
Finally the rulings says 2 things about placing the Iron Avengers bystanders in their respective portals; (i) you can still generate a bystander if the portal you rolled for is occupied, but the Iron Avenger bystander is placed, by your opponent, in the nearest legal square, and (ii) if all portals are occupied than Iron Man cannot be given the FREE action to generate bystanders.
I truly hope you enjoy this article, I tried to make it as practical and friendly as possible given its understandable that most if not all of you, find it boring. It is not a flashy topic but certainly one that will contribute greatly to your game. It’s like leg day at the GYM, basically.
