Heroclix Sunday: The Pension Building

There's an exciting new set of Heroclix figures coming out this month in honor of the 80th Anniversary of Wonder Woman.  The figures are more detailed than ever (thanks to SCIENCE!), there's a neat new mechanic for empowering sidekicks, and lots of characters are being made for the first time (e.g., Angle Man, Ferdinand the Chef, and Wonder Woman's brother Jason). If you are new to Heroclix, there's even a Wonder Woman-themed starter set to help you learn.

In preparation, I created a new map of Washington DC indoor location: The Pension Building.

The exhibit rooms are empty so you can put object tokens in there for the characters to throw at each other.

Build in the 1880s, the Pension Building is an imposing building inside and out. 

It's monumental. Even for DC.

Even if you ignore the exhibits, the building itself is a thing to be seen.

Originally a government office, it's housed the National Building Museum since 1980.  I call it The Guy Museum, because male visitors who aren't keen on art or history still eat up exhibits on architecture, city planning, and building construction.  

Although it's too large to accurately represent on a Heroclix map, my scaled down version comes close (although it doesn't capture the second story).  The bespoke element is the rug which is a scanned version of the ACTUAL iconic rug at the museum (and I almost fell off the balcony!).  

The Pension Building is known for holding prestigious events, like the Presidential Inaugural Ball, in its Great Hall, or wacky large-scale interactive art projects:

The Beach

The Hive

The Maze

The Lawn

In fact, it was at the National Building Museum's indoor kite exhibition that I got the idea for the Flying Robot Zombie Shark of Christmas Future. But that's a story for another time.