Thursday, July 07, 2005

Plotclix!

There's some big Heroclix announcement today, so (whatever it is) I'll celebrate by imagining:

Plotclix, with its new starter set "DC Writer Icons"!

Morrison.

Perplex, down the dial, since that's all he does to readers. Hypersonic Speed, because the ideas hit and run away so fast that you almost don't haven't enough time to recognized how half-baked they are. Almost.

Johns.
Outwit, because, although so many of his solutions seem obvious IN RETROSPECT, I've never yet figured any out in advance! He also has Support (better known as healing) because he can take characters that have been essentially kayoed and put them back on the board strongly than ever.

Loeb.

Energy explosion, because every action has lots of splash that touches lots of figures but without much impact; and Green Lantern Team Ability, because every plot carries along at least 8 unnecessary adjacent characters.

Rucka.
Mastermind, because the damage in his plots always gets passed along to lots of low-cost generic figures whose names you don't know.

Winick.
The Legion "wildcard" TA, because he has no plot of his own, only plots copied from someone else.

Kirby.

Charge! Close combat expert!! You ask, oh faithful reader,why?! Because his stuff has a fast punch up front, but if you take only one step back it becomes meaningless.

Greyson.

Exploit weakness. She grabs on to a character and wears them away by picking at their defenseless "inner selves", click after click after click.

Jimenez.

Imperviousness. No one, but NO ONE, can get through that prose and even if they did, he'd elude your understanding with his "im-probability roll".

Pfeiffer.
Long-range combat expert. It takes him a while to set up the shot, but when it hits, it's dead on and devastating!

Byrne.
Poison. If you let him get close to your character, he'll poison it slowly from within until it's an unrecognizable shadow of its original self.

11 comments:

Scipio said...

Oh, does he write, too?

I thought he confined himself to torturing characters visually...

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez said...

Brilliant! Winick was my favorite.

Anonymous said...

This is great stuff.

The ol' 70's Marvel Bullpen might have had something like the Batman Villain ability -- none of them stood out, but shared each other's lowest-common- denominator level of competence.

Me, I've always thought Morrisson had Stealth -- unassailable from a distance, but once you get in close and take a good look, it starts to fall apart.

The only explanation for Kirby's ravenous slavering fans?

Mind Control.

Julio Oliveira said...

Now this as RPG would be probably even better then as Heroclix... imagine playing a game where you have comic writers/artists as opponents depicted like they are in their works, their online personas and what can be glimpsed by the interviews... would be excellent.

layne said...

I also have trouble with the text; it hurts my eyes almost as much as Scipio's distaste for Morrison and Kirby hurts my soul.

Anonymous said...

Semi Offtopic:

Would a bright almost-6 year-old be able to play heroclix, if aided by an adult?

Scipio said...

Hmm.

Perhaps. But not well.

Focus on playing for fun.
Use lower point characters.
ONly one or two figures per team.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tip!

I hope I can get him playing it, if only to make my brother (his father) have to chase down the characters. Bwah ha ha.

(Plus, it might help crack the boy's unhealthy Jesus fixation.)

Scipio said...

Jesus?

He's okay, but overcosted. Some Support, some Regen, some Leadership, but no Damage-Reducing or -Avoiding powers.

Only the Veteran's playable, and it's too much investment for what's essentially a well-sculpted support piece. I'd only use him in a theme game.

Amy said...

Are you going to hell for telling that joke, or am I for thinking it's the funniest damn thing I've heard all morning?

Scipio said...

Guess I'll see you there, and remember in Hell there's no set retirement or NAAT rule. But I've heard that when it freezes over, WK sends down a Lobo clix, a playable Penguin, and under house rules Jay Garrick gets the JSA TA.