Reminder: These rules are not finalized yet and will not replace the current rules until sometime after the 2017 HeroClix World Championship at Origins Game Fair. Email gamefeedback@wizkids.com with feedback on this topic. We will try and read everything on topic but can only respond via articles we write addressing shared concerns.

Hey HeroClix fans,

There’s a new inherent ability to introduce today. It says (essentially) “Characters can carry a smaller character.”

This ability shouldn’t come as a big surprise. We took the existing rule about giants and colossals carrying smaller characters and the existing rule about tiny characters being carried and formed a new inherent ability out of them. An ability that makes carrying a more fundamental part of the game, which cleanly implements something players have wanted.

Here’s your third inherent ability:

Basic Carry

Before beginning movement, you may choose one adjacent friendly character of smaller size that isn’t a Vehicle or holding an object. If you do, modify speed -1 for each character chosen (for this move). When movement ends, place the chosen character adjacent if possible. If you do, the chosen character can’t be given a costed action this turn (and has been ‘carried’).

SIDEBAR: “for each character chosen” – Normally, Basic Carry only lets you carry one character, so this is just a -1 to Speed. But Passenger (see below) or other effects may allow more than one character to be chosen to carry.

SIDEBAR: When you choose to carry, at the end of movement, if you can’t place the chosen character, you will still have modified your speed -1 (and can’t have picked up an object, see below). But the chosen character stays where it began and is not considered to have been “carried” for any effect.

SIDEBAR: You may move 0 squares and “carry” an adjacent character by placing them into a different adjacent square.

All characters can now do this! Well, they mostly all could before, but it was in two completely separate rules.

There are a few small tweaks here. First, carrying changed from a -2 to -1 (per character). This will let a character carry 1 square farther, which for some characters will be a big deal. Players thought this was more fair and sensible than a “blanket” -2 for everyone, and we agreed.

Secondly, and this will be a lot more important when we talk about Hypersonic Speed soon, movement now can’t be interrupted by an attack in the middle of a single move. Once you stop moving, for whatever reason, that move ends and resolves. You may be able to soon after start up another move, but it’s not the “same move” as before.

What does that mean for carrying? Characters that are carried no longer leave the map and hang out in a ghostly limbo somewhere off the map while being carried. When movement finishes, you place them from where they are (adjacent to a square the carrying character started moving from) into a square now adjacent to the carrying character. They are just instantly placed. If you can’t, they just stay where they started and you’ve lost speed for no gain.

There’s another part of carrying we’re still missing, the ability to carry characters of the same size and more than one character at a time. After talking to players, it made a lot of sense to use the same symbol here that we use for vehicles: :X (called the Passenger symbol).

:X means “This character can use the Basic Carry ability to carry up to X characters that are either the same size but don’t have or are smaller size.”

: X may be either printed on a character’s base or granted by an effect. Characters with multiple symbols can carry as many as the highest number allows, unless one of the symbols is :0. A character holding an object has :0 (and can’t later pick up an object in the same move that they’ve decided to carry, per the object rules.)

SIDEBAR: Note that the modifying speed -1 for each carried character is limited by the Rule of Three to -3.

SIDEBAR: The Rule of Zeroes tells us a character with :0 can’t carry.

SIDEBAR: Older game elements may reference the “Carry ability”. This is assumed to be :1 unless the effect specifies a different number of characters.

So, it shouldn’t surprise you to see that now looks like this:

Flight, :1.

Flight is of course another keyphrase, with the same definition you’re all used to.

: , , , .

Basic Carry, , Flight, and will all be defined on the PAC (as they are now) though a bit clearer. These rules are together shorter than the current Carry ability (one of our longest abilities) and clean up a ton of corner cases that often needed individual answers.

There is a small downgrade or two here worth noting amongst the upgrades. You can no longer carry a tiny character in addition to your “normal” carrying. Tiny characters will count against the limit set by your Passenger the same as any other character. This was not seen by players as a big loss and was necessary to make Basic Carry and Passenger work together cleanly.

You also can’t hold an object while carrying. Now that everyone can carry light objects, it was seen by players as both not very flavorful (how many hands does the character have, exactly?) and it wasn’t necessary to give carrying characters that additional boost in power-level.