So, you started playing Heroclix and are having trouble remembering what all of the abilities do, you are overwhelmed with all of the things you have to keep track of, and you just don’t know where to start. I was in your shoes once, and I know how it feels. This series will focus on things a beginning player would need to know to transition into the next phase.

Today we are talking about game setup and action timing. How to set up your game, and how each player preforms the basic actions. Future articles will be on combat abilities, building a team, picking a map, combos, and more.

Heroclix Dial:

Each Heroclix dial will have a collector’s number, point value, speed, attack, defense, damage and range stats.

Speed is how many squares you can move on the map (you can move diagonally as well as horizontally and vertically). Attack is your base attack value that you add 2d6 to get your attack value each time you attack. Defense is what you compare the attack value, if your roll is equal to, or greater than the target’s defense value it takes damage equal to the attacker’s Damage value.

Range is the number of squares (including diagonally) away your ranged attacks can reach, and each lightning bolt is how many characters you can target with a single attack. The point value is how many points a character is worth. An average Heroclix team will have a maximum team point value of 400 points, and you will have 4 actions per turn (1 action for each full 100 points the teams are worth).

Game Setup:

You have a team, dice, tokens, objects, and a map. Each player will reveal their team, and roll two dice and add the values together. The higher roll (rerolling ties) will decide the map that will be played on, and go first. The other player will chose which side to start on, and go second.

After the map is chosen and starting areas are selected the first player places their team and any objects they have (1 light, 1 heavy, and 1 special object per team). Then, the second player does.

Each player has first turn immunity. Until a character is given any action, or targeted by any action, it is immune to ALL effects from the opponent until the first players second turn.

Game Turn Actions:

Each turn you will have a maximum of X non-¬free actions (where X is equal to the point value of the game divided by 100 rounded down. Even if you don’t fill out your 400 point team, and only have 398 points on your team, you still get 4 actions). A character is given a token when he is given any non¬-free action each turn. The most common actions are; Power Actions, Ranged

Combat Actions, Ranged Combat Attacks, Close Combat Actions, Close Combat Attacks, and Move Actions. If a character is given an action token for any of those actions, it takes one of your actions for the turn. If a character is given a second action token, it takes 1 unavoidable damage for Pushing. A character may never be given a third action token. At the end of your turn, for each character on your team, if they were not given an action token, you may remove all tokens from that character.

It’s now the beginning of your turn. The beginning of your turn only ends when a character is given a non-free action. Typically, you will want to use your Leadership ability, and your Poison ability before anything else, because they can ONLY be activated during the beginning of your turn (I will be going over the abilities in detail in an article very soon).

You may give any character that does not already have 2 tokens on them, and hasn’t been given a non¬-free action this turn already, an action. A Move Action lets you move up to your speed value in squares. A Ranged Combat Action gives you 1 Ranged Combat Attack. A Close Combat Action gives you 1 Close Combat Attack. Or, a Power Action (these will all be explained in an upcoming article as well).

After you have done your all of your actions, or as many as you want to do, your turn is over. You will then Clear Tokens by removing any tokens from any of your characters that we’re not given a non¬-free action that turn.

This will go back and forth between players until either the game timer goes off, one force is defeated, or in a very rare circumstance that both player’s teams are defeated. If time has been called and neither team has been completely defeated, the team the kills the most point value worth of opposing characters will win.

New Player Tip:

You can use almost anything to show action tokens. The most common are either colored glass stones, or poker chips. I don’t like glass beads because they slide around, and on a cluttered map it is difficult to tell which character has the tokens. I like poker chips for many reasons though. You can use them to count out your movement before you actually move your character. After you figure out when you want to go, then you can just place your figure on top of the chip. If you have two stacks of different colored chips, you can use a number of chips for each stack equal to the number of actions you have a turn. That lets you not forget how many actions you have per turn.

Lastly, it can help you greatly with remembering which characters will clear their tokens that turn.

For this let’s say you have yellow chips and red chips. On one turn, use your yellow chips for each character that takes a token. Next turn place a red chip under a character that doesn’t have a token, or on top of the yellow chip if they do have a token already. Then at the end of your turn, if a yellow chip is on top you know for 100% certainty that they have not taken an action that turn and can clear their tokens. The next turn you will use yellow tokens again, and clear the red tokens. If you keep with the pattern, you will always know who can clear and who can not.

Thanks to everyone for reading my first article. The next set of articles will focus on all of the standard powers, and how to use them. Good luck in your games!

by Xicidis

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