Hit by a brick!

Take two –

I had this article mostly set up and, other than a few final touches, ready to go, at work this morning. Then I took a call and the participant had a few different questions and one of my programs locked up, which locked up everything else I had open on a Windows tab, and I had to partially shut down to free it up, and… oooops… the mostly finished file went away.

Thankfully, Windows did save a partial, earlier version, so, here I am again –

I got my final birthday gift, a brick of Supernova from the collected SuperKids, yesterday. We were hoping for it Friday, expecting it at the latest on Saturday; naturally, it didn’t show up until Monday, a day when I was working until 8 p.m. (And that conspired to cause all of us to forget about HEROES last night, resulting in SuperFiancee and I only managing to catch the last half hour, goddamit.)

Anyway, at long last, I tore into the brick, with the enthusiastic help of all the SuperKids, last night.

Now, if I weren’t mentally deficient (you know I am, so just pipe down) I’d have used one of the handy check list inserts from all those boosters last night to keep a running tab of what I pulled. But I did not do that. So the following list is recreated from memory, while using the Supernova roster list at the WizKids site as a recall crutch.

Feel free to go through, count everything up, and advise me the numbers don’t make sense. Honestly, it won’t bother me. I mean, my God, I’m anal, but it’s always validating to meet people who are even more so than I am. ;)

So, here’s the haul:

REV Hyperion
REV Raza
REV Ant-Man
REV Jubilee
REV Sunspot
EV Justice
E Badoon Guard (2)
EV Destroyer
REV Nova
EV Vance Astro/Major Victory
E Aleta
V She-Hulk
RE Night Thrasher
R Weapon Alpha
Shi’ar Admiral (Vet Shi’ar)
Skrull Warrior (Rookie Skrull)
Super-Ape: Mikhlo (E)
E Vision
R Nocturne
RE Mantis
Unique Red Ghost
Unique Power Princess
Unique Majestrix Lilandra
Unique Captain Mar-vell

“Pug” Plugliese
Shalla Bal
Space Phantom
Rick Jones
EXTRAORDINARY DAY (2)
SUNDER
LOYALTY
MENTAL SHIELDS
POOR TEAMWORK
SATELLITE
METEORITE

QUIRKS: Rookie Mantis has an Experienced Badoon Guard’s dial. There may well be other dial insert mismatches, this is just the only one I’ve noticed to date.

High points: Vet Ant-Man, Experienced Mantis (the one with the Avengers TA), Vet Major Victory, the last Super-Ape I needed for a complete set, Experienced Justice (to go with the Experienced Firestar who is hanging around with the Spider-Man Allies team), REV of Hyperion (for both my Squadron Sinister and Squadron Supreme teams), Vet Raza for my Starjammers team, Experienced Vision, Unique Captain Mar-Vell… and, yeah, the Vet She-Hulk, both for my Avengers Squad and because she has an interesting dial.

In the ‘Who cares’ column -- Jubilee, Sunspot, another REV of Nova, GODdam Night Thrasher (he’s got a skateboard on his back – nuff frickin’ said), the two duplicate Uniques (I have a feeling Power Princess is going to be as big a drug on the market as Iron Monger).

Under ‘disappointments’ – no Thor, no Silver Surfer, no Bulldozer, no Dr. Spectrum, no Starhawk, no Vet Kang, no more Kree, no Vet Badoon, no Vet Skrull, no EV Vindicator/Guardian, no Marvel Boy, poor showing on the Vision, two duplicate Uniques (and one of them is friggin’ POWER PRINCESS), one of the new Uniques is Lilandra – she’s okay, and yeah, I wanted her for my Shi’ar Squad, but, still, in a brick with 4 Uniques, I couldn’t get a Binary, a Graviton, a Jack of Hearts, a Machine Man, or a Super Skrull? Puh-LEEZE.

And, of course, no Marvel Zombies. But I’m pretty much resigned to not even getting a whiff of one of those; I just don’t have that kind of luck when it comes to random pulls.

Continuing notes on SuperNova: I think a bad misjudgment was made in giving Squadron Supreme and Guardians of the Galaxy a Defenders TA. First, obviously, I’d prefer WizKids simply created new Team Abilities specific to those teams, and put new, unique icons for those TAs on the figure’s dials. Accepting, however, that they don’t want to add any further to the list of TAs currently in existence (which sucks), well, both these new teams should have had Avengers TAs. Why?

Well, because the Squadron Supreme needs a Speed Demon, and Speed Demon came out in the last set, and because the mainstream Marvel Speed Demon is now a Thunderbolt, so the Vet Speed Demon has an Avengers TA (as well as truly wretched stats, but never mind that) because WizKids decided to give all the Thunderbolts an Avengers TA, for reasons I’ve already disparaged above. This means that while you can certainly stick a Vet Speed Demon in your Squadron Supreme line up, you can’t give him an actual Squadron Supreme alt-TA, and it ain’t right, and I don’t like it.

Guardians of the Galaxy should have an Avengers TA because, well, they’re all honorary Avengers, dating back from the original Korvac storyline, when they were hanging around in the 20th Century guarding a teenaged Vance Astro and Tony Stark issued them Avengers ID so they could get pay bills on the Avengers charge account and, I guess, so grown up Vance could take Nikki to an adult theater if he wanted to. (This was back before home VCRs, and way before that jackass Guiliani ‘cleaned up’ Times Square.)

Now, I can use my House Rules to put a Defender’s TA on a Vet Speed Demon’s dial, but the thousands of players out there who have tragically never heard of same, or who want to play in authorized tournaments, or who are just too frickin’ stubborn to use my House Rules even though they KNOW they’d dig on playing the game a whole lot more if they did, well, they can’t do that.

Although I suppose they could Thunderbolt Speed Demon to the alt Squadron Supreme TA. And, of course, this is the real reason why WizKids didn’t give the new teams an Avengers TA… because clearly, the current game design guru hates the Thunderbolts TA and can’t wait for retirement to roll it off the active list, but in the meantime, he just straight up refuses to give any more teams the ability to access it. Which is petty and sad, but, then, so is this annoying and unacceptable refusal to just give us more frickin’ original TAs, so, well, that’s just something we’ll have to deal with.

Or I will, anyway, and how I’ll deal with it is by coming up with my own House Ruled Team Abilities for the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Squadron Sinister, and, while I’m at it, the Flash Rogue’s Gallery, too.

Although I have to admit, at the moment, I'm baffled as to exactly how to go about doing that. Hmmmm... maybe Flash Rogues automatically add +2 to their Defense when attacked by HyperSonic Speed... yeah, that would work. Or +1 to Attack when attacking a HSS figure, and +1 to Defense when being attacked. Okay.

Guardians of the Galaxy... errr... Well, they travel around in space a lot... maybe they can start anywhere on the map? Probably much too big an advantage. Still... hmmmm... I like that. Let me think about it.

Squadron Sinister are basically a buncha Roy Thomas JLA-doppleganger wank-offs. Howard the Duck could probably beat them, so they shouldn't get anything too cool. Hmmm... maybe, when they're adjacent to each other, they can modify their movement values by +1. That's minor enough, but occasionally handy.

I see I'm going to have to update my House Rules again...