Commissioner Gordon was dead asleep when he got the call; there's a disturbance downtown. He arrives on the scene to find his best officers at war with someone calling himself "Constrictor". The freak with the coils is a new face to Gordon, but new weirdos are always crawling out of the woodwork in Gotham City.
"We'll take care of this," a commanding voice reassures him from behind. Gordon spins around to see a man in a black jumpsuit and visor. "I'm Cyclops. Tell your men to stand clear."
Gordon and the others hardly have time to react as a bright red flash envelopes the street. "Constrictor" takes an optic blast to the face and staggers back. Just when the cops and their mutant savior think order has been restored, a massive figures appears from behind First National. It brushes against the third story of the building and sends debris flying.
Gordon recognizes the giant from the news. It's an alien named Sinestro, spotted in battle with the Green Lantern near Coast City every now and then. Within the massive yellow frame is the culprit himself, cackling as chaos reigns down on Gotham's finest.
That is your average game of Heroclix, if you bother to try and cram a narrative into it.
As a young tabletop gaming fanatic, one of the bigger crazes had passed me by: Mage Knight. Derided by some as a "dumbed down" version of the miniature gaming classic Warhammer, MK was a tabletop strategy game with pre-painted figures designed to work on a grid. It was a quick and dirty version of Warhammer in my opinion, and while it was quite popular, the price per booster value and my adolescent income kept me away.
Two years later, the superhero themed successor to MK, Heroclix, appeared on shelves. A friend of mine bought the two player starter set (or two one player sets, I can't remember) and brought it over one Saturday morning. After fiddling with the rules for a mere hour, we were already having 200 point battles with relative ease.
(One hour is hella quick when learning the rules to any new tabletop game and I don't think I've picked up any game quite that fast. This stuff is streamlined, baby.)
Adding to the appeal of Heroclix for me was the comic book angle. By this point, I was an avid reader of pretty much any Marvel or DC title I could get my hands on, and I had even ventured into "indy" books like Hellboy and Usagi Yojimbo. I was at the perfect age to want to reconstruct my favorite battles or even attempt previously unseen crossovers between characters from different publishing universes.
The game's mechanics, between special rules on cards and color coded rules on the figures' dials themselves, allowed for pretty much any superpower, from Gambit's energy-charged playing cards to Superman's flight and invulnerability. Non-powered heroes like Batman could even the playing field thanks to abilities like "outwit", which would allow him to disable another character's power for a turn.
And let me just say, of all the Heroclix matches I won against my friends, there wasn't a single one that didn't involve me abusing the outwit power with the dark knight or Prince T'Challa.
The game took on the life cycle of any fad. It had an intense following for a short period of time and then the competitive scene just sort of dried up. On a national scale, the game did much the same thing, fading into obscurity around 2003. Topps would take on production of the game, but by then, it had faded in my personal rearview mirror.
Six years later, the NECA (National Entertainment Collectibles Association) would snap up the rights to keep the game going, and through some canny moves like unveiling new prize and deluxe figures at prominent comic conventions like SDCC, would inject new life into it.
Heroclix for me represents a transitional state in my personal gaming history. It was with this game, I would come to appreciate the hobbyist side of gaming; collecting, repainting, and building that perfect picturesque army or superhero team. But little did I realize, a juggernaut (not Cain Marko) called Warhammer 40,000 was waiting for me right around the corner . . .
Customizing figures became a pastime of my friend, the same one who introduced me to the game. He even had a local Warhammer enthusiast repaint some of his figures and make some, let's call them "modifications". Lex Luthor's head on a Green Lantern figure? The GREEN LUTHOR is born!
Me? I was trying to put together my very own Justice Society of America, which was a favorite title of mine at the time. But then I got sidetracked trying to build the perfect Gotham City police team, and then there were the giant figures like Sinestro and the mutant-hunting Sentinel. Oh, and then of course I can't forget my Silver Age Avengers led by the Wasp. And then there was--
Well, as you can see, things spun out of control pretty quickly. Thanks for reading!
Twitter: @ChrisBComics
E-Mail: backissuechris@gmail.com
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