Posts Tagged ‘Heroclix’

This was my third year at Seattle’s Emerald City Comicon. And what an adventure it was. To start things off we kicked back in the SeaTac Hilton (courtesy of a friend “in the business”) after an amazing dinner at the Wallingford Pizza House. Board games were played, the air was thick with nerdiness, and due to a shortage of bed-space some serious male bonding happened. After a breakfast of Denny’s we hit the ‘con. And oh what a con’ it was. While the ladies ate exotic cheeses, discussed things of import, and sampled historical nordic culture, we geeked.

After shivering in the 35 degree Seattle weather in short sleeves the doors finally opened. After snarfing goodies at the freebies tables, we rushed the Penny Arcade booth. Gabe and Tycho were a class-act (as usual) chatting amicably with us dumb-struck fanboys (seriously, we were babbling, it was embarrassing… but they acted like it was all cool). Then it was on to visit the endless stalls of comic-paraphernelia-purveyors. Many dollars sacrified themselves in the line of duty to make sure our bags did not come home empty. My coolest find was a limited edition Stan Sakai laser-etched print of Usagi Yojimbo rampaging through Seattle selling for a song! In hindsight I should have picked up a bunch more…

Then I cruised the stalls, buying knicknacks (read: Heroclix), snagging free stuff, and getting artists and writers to sign comics. I picked up copies of Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness and Buffy #8 and had them signed, got Frank Cho and Brian Michael Bendis to sign some comics, and got Civil War #1 signed by Dexter Vines.

And then I talked to David Mack. Author and writer of Kabuki (which I gushed about roughly a year ago). I’ve talked to guests at cons that were not friendly at all (i.e. Scott Kurtz). David Mack is not one of those celebrities. He was friendly, articulate, genuinely passionate about his work and just a really nice guy. He signed all of my Kabuki paperbacks, hooked me up with a bunch of free stuff, and was humble and appreciative of my gushing compliments. I managed to talk almost everyone in our group to see him and everyone came away impressed (and in one of the Matt’s cases, a limited edition signed print!)

Next year I need to make sure I bring a sketchbook; one of our Matt’s ended up with an awesome collection of sketches including a Rabbit-Shark by Michael Gagne and a frameable quality Kabuki sketch by David Mack.

After all that fun, coming back to reality was hard. But totally worth it.

Some idiot I’ve never met text messaged me at 3:00 this morning with a cryptic: “Why are you calling me? What do you want?” message. Nothing beats waking up at 3 am on a Saturday morning thanks to some drunk fratboy/girl typing someone’s phone number wrong.

Luscious by Nature has piquant albeit expensive food. A lunch for two people with hearty appetites can run to $50 without trying. I’ve run into more people from my work there than at the actual office itself.

Speaking of the office… AntiMatt hooked me up with The Office (US version). Being a huge fan of the original BBC series, I had held off on watching the Americanized version. The US version manages to go new and hilarious directions from its predecessor while still staying true to the source material. For those unfamiliar, it is an office comedy along the lines of Office Space featuring deliciously uncomfortable humor. Check it out!

As the first reviews of Guitar Hero II trickle in, word on the street is that Red Octane will be releasing an official wireless Guitar Hero controller (photo on left). As far as I’m concerned, the styling isn’t nearly as awesome as the Xbox 360 X-Plorer Guitar (photo on right) but I’m still very tempted. At $60 this would push my total Guitar Hero II expenditure to $110, which I’m having a very difficult time justifying. I may just settle for the “cheaper” $80 bundle.

Here’s a follow-up to my Sayswap trading adventure. If you sign up through a referral link they will give you two “free trades,” for $7.50. I bit on the deal and was able to score Final Fantasy IV Advance and Brain Age. At this point, I’m dumping it since $5 per trade is highway robbery, but I couldn’t turn away the freebies.

Heroclix SuperNova looks to be a solid set. I’m a fan of battles between big heavy hitters (Legacy was my favorite set) so this should be fun. Bring on Super Skrull!

I’ve been shopping for replacements for my Nokia 6620 and haven’t been too impressed with what the latest and greatest smartphones have to offer. Basically, my 6620 is 96% perfect for my life: it features basic PDA functionality that syncs with my Mac. If it were a bit faster, smaller, and prettier it would be perfect. The older Nokia 7610 has caught my eye as a smaller and prettier replacement, but finding one of them is almost impossible. (attractive female sold separately, service plan not included).

Phoenix: 2. The so-called Man of Steel: 1. Numbers don’t lie.

As we near Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the safety of the Kochses after their recent excitement.

I own a pair of The Anticorporation’s black spot sneakers. They are super fly. Just say no to sweatshop labor.

Seen in Tri-Cities: a “tricked out” Hyundai Accent with a spoiler, custom paint job, and racing stripe. Sad but true.

StepMania is a good open-source DDR clone. Dancing: all the cool kids are doing it.

Mario Kart DS is reason #4 to pick up a DS. Metroid Prime Pinball is reason #5.

Redheads with laptops are the new Sex Symbol ™ of our age.

Not a Number: worth a trip to Seattle just for the bumper stickers.

After using Windows’s brain-dead windows management interface, the apeal of tabbed browsing finally makes sense.

My first Armor Wars booster held Magnus, the mutant master of magnetism himself: Eric Lensherr. Magneto. My all-Magneto team just grew to 550 points of pure pain.

I played in a fun Heroclix tournament on Sunday and ended up facing Kingdom Come Green Lantern (*shudder*). It was a brutal fight, but Doctor Fate and his Mystics team-mates were able to pull off the win.

I think that to successfully play KC GL, it’s imperative to properly support him early in the game so he doesn’t get left all by himself to get picked apart. Softening up your opponents with a secondary attacker to let GL hang back early in the game also seems like a necessity.

Anyway, it was a great tournament.

If you play Heroclix and are looking to trade some clix, check out my tradelist at the HCRealms.com forum. I’ve got a few LEs and Uniques that I’m looking to trade.

This past weekend I was at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) and had a righteously good time. I showed up in time for the Saturday evening concerts but was disappointed to find that they had given away tickets earlier in the day and that the theatre was already filled to capacity. I watched the concerts on a television they had set up in the lobby; the Final Fantasy piano was amazing, Optimus Rhyme sucked a lot, the Minibosses were insanely good, and MC Frontalot was just “meh.” Ironically, MC Frontalot was the one that I was most excited about seeing; his live set just didn’t do much for me.

Another thing that bummed me out was that they ran out of the official PAX goodie bags before I got there on Saturday. Then as I was getting ready to grab some sleep Saturday night I saw that they had set up a table with goodies for those who hadn’t gotten bags. I picked up a couple of fairly valuable heroclix (more on them later), some GBA SP “skins,” and on Sunday picked up one of the complimentary Soul Calibur II strategy guides.

Even though things started out poorly, Saturday ended up being pretty fun overall. I met some cool guys from South Carolina, hung out a bit and scoped things out.

Sunday started out awesome, and just got cooler the longer the day went on. I arrived early (I learned my lesson on Saturday) and grabbed one of the Halo 2 tickets. I watched a video re-cap of the previous day’s Q&A session with the PA guys and then jumped into the Heroclix tournament. I’ve played Heroclix a bunch with friends and in several tournaments, but this was by far the biggest tournament I’d ever played.

I put together a team built around Veteran Captain America (Ultimates) and he came through big time. I supported him with Brood Warrior (R) to give him some additional mobility around the board and act as mobile blocking terrain/tie up. Veteran Typhoid Mary provided a cheap BCF threat and provided protection for my rookie paramedic.

The gravity game was against Lobster Johnson, Hawkman, Green Arrow and some medics. I was able to score a victory but ran out of turns and couldn’t score a “mighty victory” (the game was limited to 12 turns).

The teleporter scenario was the most frustrating scenario I had ever played. It was against Black Panther, Storm, a bunch of snipers, a medic, and Fury. I snagged the teleporter and brought it back to base and then everything got stupidly horrible. For 4 turns in my characters were teleported out into the middle of nowhere. I ended up winning in the last round by taking out two support pieces. A cheap win, but a win nonetheless. I think that if I had read the rules more closely the teleporter would have been less frustrating; I have a suspicion we weren’t playing it correctly. As it was it was horribly frustrating.

The final game was against Deathstroke (V), Hawkeye (V) from Ultimates, and experience DEO agent. My opponent started out with the hostage and played very carefully, leaving Deathstroke alone against Captain America. After a long and brutal battle I took out Deathstroke and then finished up with cat and mouse on the remaining two characters for a mighty victory!

The prize support for the tournament was awesome! WizKids was an official sponsor of PAX and had given a TON of fairly valuable unique heroclix to give away as prizes. I picked up a bunch of Convention Only LE “Atom” figures and “Plastic Man” figures. Hopefully I can trade these for some other uniques and/or sell them on eBay. I also picked up a fairly valuable Veteran “Thing” figure.

After the heroclix tournament I grabbed a Catsby and Twisp T-Shirt, sold my Halo 2 ticket for $20 (sweet!) and hit the Q&A session with the PA creators. I laughed for about an hour straight; suffice it to say that the PA guys are awesome. They are very “real” people who appeared to really be enjoying themselves and hadn’t gotten the “big head” syndrome yet.

I can’t wait until next year!

I play a large number of video games and board games. Currently I’m playing R-Type Final (PS2), Knights of the Old Republic (PC), Doom 3 (PC), Super Metroid (SNES via emulation), Carcassone (board game), Heroclix (board game), and Age of Mythology (board game).

R-Type Final: This is a great game; I recommend anybody with even a vague passing interest in sidescrolling shooters check it out. It is also “cheap as free”–MSRP is $20. Unlock up to 99 customizable fighters, blow up thousands of varied aliens, all in glorious graphical splendor.

Knights of the Old Republic: a “traditional” role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe. It has an very immersive world, great plotting, and a dialog system that actually is worth paying attention to. Usually I just click through dialog in games without reading or paying much attention to it, but in KotOR your responses to dialog determines how you are “leaning” in the force. Act aggressively and rudely to a merchant and you will begin to lean more towards the dark side. Highly recommended, and very cheap: $15 at Best Buy after Gamer’s Gift Card discount.

Doom 3: dark, scary, very fun. It makes my gaming PC grind to a crawl. The Radeon 9000 is just not burly enough for it.

Super Metroid: I’ve played through both of the GBA Metroid games (Fusion and Zero Mission) and loved them. I dug through my archive and pulled up Super Metroid for the SNES. It’s a phenomenal game and holds up extremely well 10 years after its release. I definitely see that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night “borrows” game play elements.

Carcassone: This is a very fun board game that is unlike any other I have played. For those who enjoy the Catan series of games, Carcassone is worth a look. You build a sprawling metropolis piece by piece, attempting to gain control of the city with your knights, robbers, monks, and farmers. I have yet to find anyone that does not like this game.

Heroclix: This is a collectible miniatures board game by Wizkids Games. You collect different super heroes like Captain America and pit them against each other in a game that is somewhat like chess but totally different. I’ve played this in local tournaments and with friends in casual games and it is ridiculously fun and dangerously expensive. Game pieces are bought in randomly-packed “boosters,” so you never know what you are going to get. This keeps you interested since you might end up getting a rare “unique” piece, but most of the time you end up getting the same crap pieces. I have heard this described as “my little plastic crack addiction.”

Age of Mythology: This is a board game loosely based on the computer game of the same name. I’ve only played this once but it was very enjoyable and I look forward to playing this more.