Clayface is tied for my favorite character from Batman: The Animated Series and I was so excited when I saw how powerful this dial was. So let’s see what kind of trouble we can make for this giant mud-man.

While The Joker’s Wild Clayface wasn’t terrible and had a huge dial that was tough to deal with, he didn’t exactly do anything that warranted paying his cost. He had no aggression. Sure, he was great at holding people down, but it was an awful lot to pay for a brick to do that when you could easily throw a cheaper figure with Plasticity on your team (or the brand new Mud Man from TMNT4: Unplugged). Plus, he didn’t even have Shape Change! How is a dude made of clay that shifts his form NOT going to have Shape Change?!

This new Clayface is what I’ve been waiting for; not only does he have the large dial that’s tough to chew through, he has his namesake power and some fantastic aggression. Let’s go through the character before jumping into the team build.

Clayface clocks in at a fairly large 125 point cost, and has 8 clicks of health. He has 0 range, Indomitable, and has the Batman Enemy team ability. Keywords are pretty good with Brute, Celebrity, Gotham City Underworld, and Monster. He comes with a trait and one special damage power.

Movement has never been Clayface’s game; he’s a big lumbering hunk of earth, so it makes sense that it’s his weakest stat. He starts off with 7 Charge, drops to 6 on his fourth click, and 5 on his last two clicks. Powers-wise, he jumps around a bit with Charge on his first, third, and 6th clicks, and Plasticity on everything else. He likes to get next to someone and then plant himself there. Attack kind of flip-flops as well; he opens with 11 Blades, dropping to a 10, swapping to Super Strength on click three, shifting back to Blades on click five, jumping back to an 11 on click six, and then completely switches it up with 10 Poison on click seven before settling on 9 Poison to end. Defense is strong (as it should be) with 18 Impervious up front, dropping to 17, switching to 18 Super Senses on click five, dropping to 17 again on click six, and then two final clicks of 16 Regeneration. For damage, he has a naked 3 up front, dropping to 2 on clicks five and six, and jumping back to 3 for his last two clicks. The only power present is his special damage on clicks two through six.

Wait, doesn’t he have Shape Change? Yes, but we have to look over his trait:

RENUYU: Shape Change. When Clayface uses it and succeeds, give him a Renuyu token. Whenever Clayface rolls a single d6 for a power he’s using, after rolling you may remove any number of Renuyu tokens to increase the result +1 for each token removed.

Shape Change + Impervious or Super Senses is really annoying to deal with, and Clayface takes things further by powering himself up for every successful Shape Change roll he makes for the game. As for spending these tokens, his dial is chock-full of d6 powers: Plasticity, Blades, Impervious, Super Senses, Regeneration, and Shape Change itself. All Clayface needs is to succeed once or twice and he can almost guarantee that he keeps himself out of trouble. The issue of course is that you have to succeed at that roll in order for him to take off, and there’s no way in the current Modern Age to manipulate your Shape Change roll.

Special note here: A lot of folks have wondered if you can combine Clayface with the Mirror of Mysolljh from The Mighty Thor to give Clayface a much better attempt at Shape Change and pickup Renuyu tokens, but the game doesn’t work that way. When you choose a power to use, you have to pick the source of that power, meaning you can’t chain effects together just because they’re used with the same power. When someone goes to attack Clayface, you have to choose where his Shape Change is coming from; either his trait, or the Mirror. If you choose the Mirror and succeed, his trait had nothing to do with it, so he won’t gain a Renuyu token. So the mirror isn’t a viable option other than if you just want a better Shape Change without the cool effect.

Clayface’s special damage power gives us another benefit for racking up those Renuyu tokens:

UNCONTROLLED SHIFTING: Battle Fury. Giant Reach: X where X is the number of Renuyu tokens Clayface has.

Battle Fury is good so that we don’t have to worry about opposing Shape Change, and the Giant Reach will really help with his miserable movement values. Since Giant Reach isn’t a combat value, it isn’t limited to the rule of 3. Theoretically, if your opponent spends turn after turn plugging all their attacks into Clayface and you somehow beet the odds of probability, Clayface could reach all the way across the map! (Don’t plan on this happening, that’s a horrible strategy)

This is a much better representation of Clayface. He’s got a lot of tools to put on the hurt and while Outwit can cause him some problems, he has quite a few layered effects that you have to peel through to put the hurt on. There are so many options to help him stick around that he’s worth that rather high price.

Tools for Success

Without a doubt, Clayface needs some sort of maneuverability to help him engage in fights. If he’s left to slowly approach, chances are he’ll get taken down very quickly. That makes TK and taxi’s very important for him, with TK being the better option (as it usually is) since it allows him to basically have a 10 square Charge. Another way to work around his low movement is to go with a Theme Team to be able to pick your map. Something with lots of corridors like the ROC Labyrinth map is a huge boon to the man of muck.

Outwit and Probability Control are of course very good for Clayface as they usually always are, but Perplex is going to be his better friend. Perplex is another way to offset that low movement and each use will get him that much further in his Charge (remember, replace then modify). Outwit is honestly probably better with him than Prob as you’ll want to use it defensively so that Clayface doesn’t have any powers countered via Outwitting their own Outwit.

For backup players, anyone that can bring a support power is his friend. Characters that have Perplex or Outwit and have a strong dial themselves work very well with him. Another good option is bringing characters that don’t really pull threat like Clayface will. Clayface is an amazing tank and if he’s left unchecked, he’ll cause chaos, so your other characters should be relatively safe. Snipers with Improved Targeting that can see through characters are an excellent option so that Clayface doesn’t block your shots. Finally, just like any team, retaliation is a great pick. This dude has a big dial, so it’s going to take a few shots to possibly take him down, meaning retaliation has a much better chance of continually triggering.

Going back to the taxi portion, keep in mind that Clayface does pickup Battle Fury for most of his dial, so it might not be a good option since you’ll only be able to utilize it during the first couple turns and you can’t bail him out if he needs it.

Today is 300 Modern, as are most of my builds, and since the only legal resources anymore are the Punisher Van and the new insanely powerful Blackbird, I don’t really have an issue making my builds just open-ended and including them.

300 Modern Clayface Build – 18/19 Modern Age

I went with a Monster theme team because that’s a really strong keyword right now and by far Clayface’s best. This gives me a good chance at picking a map that isn’t wide open for snipers to pick Clayface off and make it dangerous for Outwit characters to come near him.

Goblin King is still one of the best figures around right now, especially for Monster theme teams. While he isn’t nearly the figure he was last year, the ability to pick any two standard powers every turn is frightening and he provides tons of support for our main guy while still being a scary attacker himself. Need TK and Perplex to give Clayface an all-in play? Got you covered. Sidestep and Ranged Combat Expert to slam some big damage out? Sure. Running Shot and Pulse Wave to take out that pesky quadruple defense dude? I’m your guy. Invincible and Shape Change to keep myself alive? Yep. There’s so many tools that Goblin King can bring to the table that he’s my pick for Clayface’s MVP, regardless of what game your playing.

Next up is Jeanette as our primary TK character and WAITAMINUTE! She’s a Monster?! Yep! This gal has a pretty great dial in that she opens up with a single click of TK with Sidestep to get Clayface out there, and then shifts to Running Shot + Pulse Wave on her second click. She also has a fantastic defense power that makes her take only 1 damage unless the attack roll is doubles, so you’re almost guaranteed to get this off at least once per game. While our team does only have 5 characters, it’s not too difficult to make another thanks to our retaliator, making Jeanette a surprise tertiary attacker. +1 to all stats will really help her leave a mark (11 Pulse Wave for 4 damage? Seems good!).

Dr. Frankenstein is our flex pick; he does a fantastic job at healing up Monsters (seriously, +1 to the result AND it’s FREE?!), and he also has Perplex for our guys as well. Clayface is already a beast to kill, so how about we add in some free healing for the big guy? Or dock him next to Goblin King at all times, pick Invincible so he can’t be one-shot, and then heal him back to full literally every turn. I’ll cover the flex pick in a minute.

The last character is well known for Monster teams; Carnage. Yep, he’s pretty much the best 10 points you could ever spend. I feel like everyone knows what Carnage does at this point, but just in case… Carnage serves as our extremely brutal retaliator with an 11 attack and spawns out Symbiotes that have Plasticity, Blades, Super Senses, and Shape Change. He’s terribly efficient for 10 points and on an enclosed map, he’ll be very hard to snipe out at the beginning of the game. Once he does retaliate, we have our 6th character and Jeanette will turn on the hurt.

For the final 10 points, I went with the Bloodaxe as it gives Clayface Steal Energy on his entire dial, but more importantly, Exploit Weakness. These two will make Clayface even harder to take down since he’ll always be healing back through that massive dial and with the Battle Fury to get through opposing Shape Change, it makes it to where only Invincible can stand in his way. But to be fair, if Clayface is holding his own against someone with Invincible, he’s doing a damn fine job.

Now, the flex pick. Dr. Frankenstein is very good, but one could argue that he’s a bit passive for 30 points. Instead, you can swap him out for AIG025p Groot for 20 points and add a Symbiote to your starting force for the other 10 points. This gives you 6 characters off the bat (you probably don’t want to spawn a Leslie Evans for your opponent since Outwit hurts Clayface so badly) so Jeanette is fully powered from the get-go, and you get Leadership for more action economy. It’s really up to you and what you have at your disposal, although I personally like the Dr. Frankenstein pick as he adds so much value.

This team is fairly nasty in that it dishes quite a lot of surprise damage and has so much damage avoidance (if the dice are in your favor). If you’re not feeling lucky, you have access to lots of support powers like two Perplexes to raise defense, Prob from the Goblin, and two different TK’s if needed to get in and get out. I feel that map choice will really make or break this team.

How about one more team for the road? This team is rather silly and expensive, but what the hell, right?

300 Modern Clayface Team – 18/19 Modern Age

If Clayface is so hard to take down, why not make your entire team hard to KO!

Backing up Clayface are two, yes two, SR Wolverine’s on their 50 point line. While they do only have 3 clicks of health, they have STOP clicks at the end of their dial WITH Regeneration. They also have Sidestep, Leadership, and Perplex, although only for each other. If we swarm up and bring them closer to the opponent’s starting area, they pick up Flurry with Blades, so they’re putting out a ton of damage. Lastly, they bring student ID’s to the party, and yes, I forgot to add them to the team. Oh well, this is a fun one, so you’re choice! I would probably opt for bigger call-ins since Clayface is 125 points.

Next up are two Mud Men from the fourth Turtles set. These things are so insanely difficult to KO. I fought one the other weekend at our ROC event and good lord was it a nuisance. Shape Change + Super Senses and having to hit them 3 times makes it very difficult to score them, and they actually have pretty decent stats to boost, so they can do some nice damage too.

TK isn’t going to work on this team since we have a lot of small characters, so let’s go with a taxi that’s also difficult to KO. Overdrive seems like the perfect fit, and he’s literally perfect in cost. He can carry up Clayface, both Wolverine’s, and a Mud Man while the second Mud Man creeps up. He also has Empower, so he’ll help the Mud dudes deal more damage since they’re our only non-Blades figures.

Again, this team is super-fun and it’s rather difficult to score big points on. Wolverine’s both require a double tap to take down (which the other can then ‘retaliate’), Mud Men require a triple tap to take down, Overdrive needs a double tap, and Clayface is just gigantic. It’s slow and there’s no guarantees you’ll actually deal a lot of damage since there’s virtually no support, but I feel like this team could be unassumingly good.

What are your thoughts on these rather muddy team builds? Is there another figure that you think would work wonders with Clayface, or a different strategy that would be better? I’d love to hear about!

I’ll catch you guys next week on Two Clicks From KO when I talk about my other favorite character from the Animated Series in a rather different team build. See you then!