Avengers Vs X-Men Battle Report: Month Two

Previously the Avengers and the X-Men squared off on the beach of Utopia, the mutant homeland. The X-Men won the day, but Hope Summers ran away from both teams rather than have either one choose her destiny. Both teams were able to track her signal to five different locations, so this time the tournament has the Avengers and X-Men split themselves into five small teams each, fighting in each location as they search for Hope.

TEAM BUILDING

Five teams have to be built for slightly shorter battles. There are some limitations; Beast and Wolverine aren’t allowed on the X-Men’s side as they are filthy splitters. Hope isn’t allowed on either side as she’s on the run. The five teams have to share a team keyword, such as X-Factor or New Mutants. Each team was to belong to a different group and each character couldn’t be duplicated as everyone’s around the world searching at the same time.

The X-Men team would be the easiest to make as most mutants have been an X-Man at some point. Then there’s the recently-released Wolverine & The X-Men set which brought a lot of X-Force and New Mutants characters. A few people share the X-Factor keyword, so the remaining team was a difficult choice. Sadly there aren’t many Generation X characters, so I picked Excalibur, as I could just about make the team.

My teams were as follows:

Excalibur: Longshot to provide probability control and thrown knives. Shadowcat to ferry people around and support them. Warlock to turn into a dune buggy, ram people and be an all-round weird Swiss Army Knife of a character.

New Mutants: Magik from the Phoenix Five who appear later in the series, as a flying death beast. Magma who is like a borderline-psychotic lava Firestar. Shatterstar who is basically a man with crazy massive swords and that’s a good substitute for character.

X-Factor: This was possibly the hardest team to build. 300 points was a ton back in the day, but two massive overhauls later and 300 points is barely anything. I had Layla Miller to resurrect people and use the near-essential Outwit & Probability Control powers. I wanted to use Polaris as her Telekinesis power allowed fast placement of people around the map. Originally I wanted to use Strong Guy as a tank to move into place, but that was heavily veto’d by the X-Men’s captain so I picked three Multiple Men as their replacement. One is the original, the others his ‘dupes’.

X-Force: I wanted to use my limited edition Cable from the last game as he hunts Avengers and damn it, he was my prize. He could phase through things and do two attacks in one go. Spiral is a whirling dervish of blades who can teleport. Then I needed enough points to fill the rest and I decided Wolfsbane would make for something sharp to throw at the enemy, especially if I could make her carry a Phoenix Shard.

X-Men: Cyclops was a must, as the Avengers Vs X-Men version is one of the best I’ve seen. Emma Frost is a great support piece, and with 75 points left after that, I took Professor X. This makes a team filled with Mind Control, Probability Control, Leadership and not a great deal of mobility.

Next, on to the tournament!

Photographing miniatures.

So one of my hobbies outside of miniatures is photography, with that in mind I've put together a few comments and thoughts on how to get the best photos you can of your miniatures. If you've spent hours/days painting them and what to show them off then clearly a quick shaky snap on your phone just isn't going to cut it.

With all photography, there are a lot of factors that go into a great shot. I’m going to go over a few of the basics and so feel free to experiment and play around until you achieve the image you want.

Avengers Vs X-Men Battle Report: Month One

The first couple of issues of the AvX comic event dealt with Wolverine bringing the Avengers to the X-Men’s island home of Utopia; a nation off the coast of San Francisco which housed over half of the X-Men. Captain America came with a demand for Hope Summers, the potential host of the Phoenix Force. When Cyclops refused to give the girl over, a SHIELD helicarrier became visible overhead, with a TON of Avengers. With the majority of both teams facing off against each other, everyone knew that things were going to start big.

And that’s where this event will begin. The Brighton Heroclix Community are split into two factions, Avengers and X-Men. Both sides will play off against each other using teams of 600 points, taken from a selection of 2,000 points each player will bring to the table. If a character is knocked out in a round, they can’t be used again. When people fall, they fall HARD. Everyone will see it all four rounds though, so if you can’t make a team of 600 points you can buy back dead units costing points equal to how many points of enemies you’ve knocked out so far.

Each fight is timed, and whoever can knock the most amount of points out of the other team wins. The amount of points you knock out add up at the end to settle any ties, so a total wipe is obviously the best.

Both teams have a selection they have to stick with, the characters (not necessarily the miniatures) from the Avengers Vs X-Men Starter Sets. The Avengers have to have a version of; Captain America, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Thor & Wolverine. The X-Men have to have a version of; Colossus, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Magik, Magneto & Namor.

TEAM BUILDING

Here is where I begin to suck. I picked X-Men because I’ve been a fan of them since I was five and, ahem, liberated a UK reprint of X-Men #23 from a doctor’s waiting room.

I borrowed a 10th Anniversary Emma Frost and Storm from one player and Bishop, Psylocke & Professor X from another.

My total forces were:

Bishop, Colossus, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Gambit, Husk, Kid Omega, Longshot, Magik, Magneto, Namor, Professor X, Psylocke, Shadowcat, Storm and Sunspot.

My plans were minimal at best. Telekinetics like Kid Omega, Magik and Magneto could move people into battle, as could Shadowcat (who is also able to hide and outwit folk). Colossus, Husk, Namor and Sunspot are bricks who deal okay damage and absorb a lot. Emma, Psylocke and Professor X do mind control, while Bishop, Cyclops, Longshot and Storm are brilliant ranged attackers.

Avengers Vs X-Men: An Introduction to Heroclix

In my introduction to Hooting Into The Abyss I announced that I was The Unpainter, a person who didn’t play miniature games, didn’t play wargames, and didn’t paint miniatures. There is an exception which has happened in the last year, a miniature game which sounds at first like it would be anathema to any other Abyss-Hooter on this site.

I’m talking about Heroclix, a game I have drifted in and out of a couple of times and recently returned to as my local community has been expanding its presence and the scope of its plans. I thought I would write about the four events which will take place monthly in gaming groups worldwide, but in particular the Brighton Heroclix community.

So what is Heroclix?

Heroclix is the name of a miniature gaming system for skirmish-size battles between two or more teams of generally, but not necessarily superheroes. The main two licenses the game carries are Marvel and DC, however the list of past Heroclix includes; Assassins Creed, Judge Dredd, Halo, Gears of War, Iron Maiden and Pacific Rim.

The system is really quite simple. Each player makes a team, places them on a map made of little inch squares, often replicating things like the Batcave or Columbia from Bioshock Infinite and you knock the snot out of each other. To see The Hulk chasing Batman and Ezio Auditore da Firenzi across a rooftop would normally be the matter for a fanboy’s dreams. Here, it’s a little plastic reality.

Each turn is short, players have an action for every hundred points of characters (so 500 points gives 5 actions) and each character can only be given one. If you move, that’s an action. If you punch or shoot someone, that’s an action. If you have Magneto fling a dumpster across a mall into the face of Captain America, it’s a really satisfying action. Really satisfying. Once your turn is over you’ve got little tokens on some or all of your people. The next turn they keep the actions and have to rest to remove them. Or, if you’re feeling risky, they can damage themselves to do another attack. There’s a whole risk/reward system to taking actions which makes prioritising what you can do and effectively budgeting cool superhero moves more tactical than you’d think. Can you afford to have Hulk headbutt the Juggernaut? What if he misses and is so weakened that the Toad can knock him out in one punch?

Dungeon World: Session One

I recently started a campaign of Dungeon World. I thought I’d collect some thoughts about it, as well as a look at the system and the wonderful monsters that are my gaming group.

First of all, what Dungeon World isn’t

I’ve grown annoyed with “old school” style games as the phrase seems to hand-wave a lot of shoddy design in mechanics, art and setting because that’s apparently what it was like when we were younger. Hackmaster was a fun parody of the mood of those games, but the system was unwieldy in its 4th edition and somehow worse in its newer iteration as it removed the ‘fun’ of the previous one. The Free RPG Day reviews I’ve been writing have been a slog because there are so many ‘old school’ adventures and systems and I can only write “hate” so many times.

So what is Dungeon World?

Dungeon World takes the feeling of the old games, the fun, wonder an yes, occasional silliness. Then we get some interesting and simple mechanics in the style of modern games like Fate, which are where my mind’s been at lately.

Dungeon World uses the six basic stats of most d20-based games; Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma, then puts a modifier going from -3 to +3 on each one depending on each score. To make an action you roll 2d6 and add a stat, translated in the system as Roll + Strength, if you’re climbing a rope, for instance. Roll + Bond to call on your bond with someone to help or hinder them. Roll + Dexterity to roll through the blade traps. You get the gist, but it gets so much better from there.

You roll 2d6 + a stat, and if you get a 10 then you succeed. If you get a 7-9 you succeed at a cost. If you roll a 6, you fail miserably but get an XP from the experience. Not just that, but rather than having 100 pages listing all the detailed things skills can do, you simply describe what you’re doing and the GM determines what move you’re using. The key rule to this game is that the narrative comes first. Before anything else, you describe what you are doing and then the GM says if this is an attack, they say if it’s a Charisma roll instead, or an Intelligence, or if you don’t actually need to roll at all.

There’s more, but I’ll get to that when I describe the session.

Zombie Dice Review

A dice-risking game about eating the most brains, for two or more people.

Zombies are pretty much over as a thing now, right? The zeitgeist peaked a few years ago and now a game with zombies in have to be pretty damn good to get anyone’s attention. Last Night on Earth is thematically interesting but really imbalanced and not towards any particular side. Zombies!!! is a good occupier of time but not a very good game. Zombie Dice is thematically very light, but that might be its saving grace.

In Zombie Dice each player is a zombie trying to chase survivors who are represented by six-sided dice. The first one to munch on thirteen brains is the winner. Although really you’re all zombies, so you kind of lost at life already. It’s still a win in their books, I guess. It’s also a good time to practice your zombie noises, which I’m sure will be essential in the Unlikely But Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse.

The contents of Zombie Dice are thirteen six-sided dice, a rules booklet and the short cardboard pot they’re all contained in. Compared to board and card games it sticks out from the collection, but don’t throw away the pot, it’s necessary.

Each turn the active player shakes the tube and blindly draws three dice, they roll them and separate the results into brains, feet or shotgun blasts. You roll again, taking any feet dice you have and adding more from the pot to make three dice. If you choose to stop, you score every brain dice you’ve rolled so far. The thing is, get a total of three shotgun blasts and every brain you’ve rolled so far is gone, your turn is over and you score nothing.

So far so simple, but why the blind-drawing from the tub? Well, there are three colours of dice in the pot; red, yellow and green. The red dice have more shotgun blasts and green have more brains. The yellow are pretty average. This helps you predict what’s left in the pot to draw from.

As example turn goes as such:

You draw three dice from the pot, two red and a yellow dice. Damn. You roll them and get a single kablam on a red dice, and feet on the red and yellow. You scored nothing, so you may as well roll again because you’ve got nothing to lose. The red and yellow dice with the feet on have one more added from the pot. It’s green! You roll all three and get three brains! It’s not likely, but not impossible. With one shotgun blast and three brains, you decide that you’ve got most of the bad dice out of the way, why not roll another? But should you? The smart decision might be to bank the points and walk safely away with your three points, but your in last place so you let ambition get ahead of you. Two of the dice need to show up as shotgun blasts this time, so the odds may be in your favour if you draw well. There are five more green dice in the pot after all. What do you do? It’s a tough call. When I was in this position I drew a red and two yellows. Three shotgun blasts and all my points for the round were rendered worthless.

This is a very fast and simple game, but the use of risk and reward can make things tense as people eye up the pot, hoping they made the right choice and fate smiles on them. It’s also loud. Sure the people are loud but that might be group-specific with brain-eating noises and yells of excitement or disappointment with the dice rolls, but I mean the actual game. The dice clatter loudly in the pot, satisfying unless you’re a nearby family dog or a person who’s not joining in. I think the noise actually helps get people animated. I still remember the game designer saying to me that rolling dice = fun, so rolling more dice = more fun. Hence Zombie Dice, I guess.

Zombie Dice is so thematically light that you don’t need to give a toss about zombies to enjoy yourself with the game. I view this as a great gateway game for people who aren’t used to mechanically heavier games. It’s also a good start for an evening of gaming to get people in the dice-rolling mood, all excitable and ready for when the other players turn up.

WHW Weekender

A quick Hoot just to shout out and say this weekend is the biannual Warhammer World trip for me and my fellow bloggers.  Not much to report now other than we are very excited, there will be photos and reports post this event.

Good Gaming.