Welcome back to Chase or Pass, a series that talks about the expensive pieces from sets and whether or not you should chase these pieces down or pass them up. We’re back to normal with a strong Chase theme, and the addition of a new Ultra Chase which is more closely themed with the set.

I’m digging that WizKids keeps pumping out these specialized sets like Earth X and Battleworld. Rather than typical vanilla Avengers sets or another damn Batman set, we’ve been getting some seriously specialized themes and that’s pretty cool. I’m sure another Avengers Assemble would bomb if it was released today. We’ve also transitioned back to solid themes for Chases and like most sets, this theme doesn’t relate at all to the main set.

These guys (and single gal) are all related to Venomverse, a comic series from 2017 where Venom appears in an alternate dimension in a war between the Venoms and the Poisons and included alternate versions of the typical Marvel 616 heroes enhanced with symbiotes. Like many Chase themes, these guys are pretty sought-after as Venom is a huge fan favorite and giving any character his abilities on top of their own usually makes for a fantastic dial (maybe not for Frank Castle, though).

If you’re new to Chase or Pass, I’ll chat about each of the pieces in-depth and highlight their strengths and weaknesses, and whether or not you should get them. Each Chase will have two different ratings: casual and competitive.

Also, each of the regular Chases (read: non-Ultra Chase) have the same two traits: Alien Symbiote which is a resurrection from Superior Foes of Spider-Man, and Call In Help From The Venomverse!, also lifted from Superior Foes, but changed so that any of the Venoms can summon another character with “Venom” included in its name. These are both incredibly good traits, and the Call In Help trait will make each one of these exponentially better based on how many you own. To save time on each of the Chases, I’m going to refer to them as if we all know what they do. In case you don’t, here you go:

75 Points, 6 Clicks, 0 Range (Single Target). No Team Ability. Avengers, Wakanda, Monster, and Ruler Keywords.

Two sets, two T’Challa’s as the first chase. It seems that Hollywood money is paying off well for Black Panther. Most of these Chases are melee-oriented, and Black Panther has one hell of a bruiser dial. There’re so many levels to what you might think are your run of the mill close combat piece, so let’s take things one step at a time. T’Challa is fast for someone without Hypersonic Speed. He never dips below a 7, has Sidestep on most of his clicks, and ignores Hindering and Elevated terrain, something every Black Panther wishes they had to offset the Stealth that’s trademarked to the character. Defensively, his numbers aren’t great, but look at all the tools he has to stay safe; Stealth TRAITED. Shape Change TRAITED. Super Senses on top, Combat Reflexes on a lot of clicks, and Regeneration at the end. Unlike a lot of bruisers and most Venoms, Black Panther retains his tactical power with Outwit on half of his dial. The best part though is his offense capabilities. He only packs Blades up front, but come click 2 T’Challa goes ham with Blades, Poison, Quake, and Steal Energy. On his middle four clicks, T’Challa has access to 10 different powers, not too shabby for a melee figure. Four clicks of Steal Energy and Regeneration at the end give him much more than 6 clicks of health, and his lack of Willpower really isn’t bad as you’ll want to push onto click 2 anyways once he’s engaged into the fight. Finally, Monster is one of the best Keywords in the game as is Avengers, so he’s easy to put on any team, and his 75-point cost means you can easily add in another Venom character to call in either Black Panther or other said character.

Unlike the Battleworld version, this version of Black Panther isn’t all glory; he does have some flaws. His defense values aren’t all that great, so he 100% relies on his powers to keep him safe. Stealth-busting or Pulse Wave are going to make him much easier to deal with, although he’ll still have Shape Change against Steal-busting. He might not be that slow, but only two clicks of Charge make him a bit harder to play once he takes any form of damage. Speaking of which, Panther has no reducers, so Poison or any kind of lucky hit will gouge his dial and instantly make you feel a lot less powerful. He has the capabilities to heal back up pretty well, but it’s slow unless he hits Regeneration. Leadership is a much better power now, but it’s not nearly as good on a bruiser when they’re on the back half of their dial. I didn’t read Venomverse, but if that version of T’Challa is anything like his 616 counterpart, Perplex would have been much better here and would be true to the character.

Even with these flaws, Black Panther still has potentially the best dial gameplay-wise out of the bunch. Had the Infinity Gauntlet-wielding Panther not come out just 3 months prior, the Venom version might have seen more hubbub.

Casual: Almost all of these Chases are okay in casual play because none of them are overwhelming in power. Black Panther will feel like a god if your opponent doesn’t have Stealth-busting, Precision Strike, Battle Fury, or Pulse Wave.

Competitive: As much as I like this dial, he doesn’t make the cut. 75 points is a lot to pay for someone that doesn’t accomplish anything unique. He’s great at getting into the fight and sticking there, causing a good chunk of damage from Blades, but he doesn’t do much else.

75/50 Points, 6 Clicks/4 Clicks, 4 Range (Single Target). No Team Ability. Avengers, Monster, and Soldier Keywords.

Cutting right to the chase, Captain Venom is easily the most sought-after Chase because of his amazing trait Eddie, You’re Just The Man We Need, which converts Monster to a named theme team. This is huge because Probability Control is not something Monsters do very well, and with a good chunk of cheap retaliators, you’re basically getting 5 uses of Prob by adding Captain Venom onto your Monster team. The question becomes is his dial worth his points?

The Captain has all the hallmarks of your typical Steve Rogers: Charge, Combat Reflexes, and Indomitable (which is very refreshing compared to the other Chases). He opens a little differently with Quake, although it’s not a completely alien power for Steve, and ages very differently than normal with Flurry, Blades, Super Senses, and a dash of Regeneration. His stats are honestly pretty good, another staple for Steve with big attack values and a nice 18-defense to kick things off. But wait, there’s more for your Monsters! Cap also has a special version of Leadership on his first three clicks (or his top click at 50 points) that gives other friendly Monsters +1 to attack if Cap has attacked in the same turn. Now you’re getting two big buffs for your Monster theme team, which adds more to his value.

Cap is a dangerous play though. At 75 points, he only has 18 Combat Reflexes to keep him safe on top of his Shape Change, making him easy prey for ranged characters. Like T’Challa, the lack of reducers make him terrified of Poison or any damage that breaks through his one roll-out. At 50 points, he’s an easier pill to swallow, but he’s still dangerous to play since he loses that Leadership power with just 1 damage and his defense is now 17 with the same Combat Reflexes. If he had started with Super Senses at 50, I could see him being a bit more playable. The problem that I have with Steve is he must risk his hide to buff your Monsters and you have to choose whether you’re going to gamble with a 75-point dial that is a tiny bit harder to KO, or a 50-point dial for more efficiency and terribly easy to one-shot KO. Thankfully that Regeneration at the end of his dial at 50 points will be a life saver.

Casual: Most casual players don’t have a strategy that can KO a 4-click or even 6-click figure easily, so he’ll be quite playable and abusable in casual. With the right Monster team, he might tip the scales to overpowered in this setting.

Competitive: The only Chase of the group that I could see making his way into the competitive scene. Tylor Spees Monster team would have been a hell of a lot scarier with Probability Control and a potential +1 to attack on all his characters, but the question becomes what do you cut for 50 points?

100 Points, 6 Clicks, 0 Range (Single Target). No Team Ability. Assassin and Monster Keywords.

Gwen starts the trend that we saw in early spoilers of 100 points with no Indomitable and a shallow dial. This formula has given half of these Chases a bad rap, and Gwen is potentially one of the best of the lot.

This is an absolutely terrifying melee dial that also gives your team a lot of help. She’s fast, has great attack values, and a decent amount of Probability Control which is very helpful to Monster or Assassin teams. Gwen has a stunning defense power that gives her Energy Shield/Deflection (making her a huge 20 defense from range with both Super Senses and Shape Change) which also gives her adjacent buddies ES/D if she hasn’t failed a Shape Change roll that turn. She’s basically the anti-Energy Explosion giving your team a massive boost against the power or any ranged damage for that matter, making her the safest of the Chases on her approach. She might lack Willpower, but Gwen has a lot of different ways to heal with Stealth Energy on the back half of her dial and climbing attack values, Regeneration on his last click, and a terrific version of Exploit Weakness that lets her use the older style of Poison (at the beginning of the turn), but she can deal penetrating damage to an enemy or unavoidable damage to an ally to give her 1 click of healing. Like Black Panther, all this different healing gives her a much longer dial than she seems, even more so than T’Challa since she has ways to heal on every click passed her starting line, and a couple clicks with different ways to heal up. The Probability Control is just delicious no matter which team she plays on.

What’s really strange about Gwen is that she abandons the improved movement that her Venom brethren possess, so she loses out big time almost cancelling out the benefits she has on the approach. The key with Gwen is getting to the fight and not getting gunned down by a lucky shot on her way in since she’ll need to stick to one elevation or stay close to the rim. Like the others, Poison or any damage hurt her hard, although she can cancel out the Poison damage once she gets a chance to go. My biggest problem with Gwen is that she’s 100 points. It’s not the lack of Willpower, it’s that she’s a third of your team with such a slow dial. Gwen will be among the absolute best figures to call in with the Venomverse trait though.

Casual: Absolutely a killer in this format. This is where Gwen will see all of her play. Some teams will be able to merc her fast but most won’t be able to cope with 20 defense from range with Shape Change, Super Senses, and Probability Control

Competitive: Not a chance. Gwen is just too damn expensive for the lack of utility she brings to the table. Shared ES/D is terrific and some may look to build around that to protect against figures like Starro who can target characters anywhere on the map, but 100 points isn’t worth that protection, even with her Prob.

100 Points, 6 Clicks, 6 Range (Double Targets). No Team Ability. Stark Industries, Armor, and Monster Keywords.

This is a very mediocre dial, but damn is the sculpt gorgeous. On the good side of things, Tony has some fantastic exceptions to the other Venoms with Flight, Indomitable, some great reducers, and a preference for ranged assaults. This is a cool dial in that Tony isn’t your regular point and click figure. He’s a finesse figure that wants to target characters that have action tokens and gets even better against characters that pushed. His attack values might not be great, but attacking tokened characters will make them much better. Invincible up front with Shape Change and his range will keep Tony quite safe and a bit of a pain to deal with. While he only keeps Running Shot for one click, it’s okay that he shifts to Sidestep so that he can double up as a great taxi. His Steal Energy isn’t going to help him as much as the other Chases, but it’s nice that he has it, and the shift to Charge certainly helps. Tony also keeps reducers on every click as well as picks up Super Senses when he’s about to go down, giving him a lot of protection.

The problems with Iron Man is that he comes up short in every regard for that huge 100-point cost. Unless you’re targeting tokened figures, his attack values are crap. His Pen/Psy will help to get through reducers, but he’s only hitting for 3 damage with a very narrow margin of increasing that, which only goes up to 4 if he can leverage the field properly. His healing is nice and the shift in how he fights is neat, but what then he’s in close for plenty of follow-up attacks. The biggest problem with Iron Man though is that you don’t get to decide who he targets. In order to get his full value, you have to go after figures that have action tokens or you’re going to feel that 100-point cost even more. In inexperienced players hands, Iron Man will be very easily baited and quickly gunned-down.

Casual: Absolutely give him a go. He’s certainly not bad, and if you don’t take easy bait, you can do some damage with him. The Shape Change will probably throw people off as they most likely won’t think about it with Invincible up front.

Competitive: Not a chance. He’s too weak and doesn’t do enough damage to come anywhere near that point-cost.

100 Points, 6 Clicks, 6 Range (Double Targets). No Team Ability. Guardians of the Galaxy and Monster Keywords.

This is a peculiar Rocket dial. Typically, the trash panda isn’t the fastest or the most agile, but this dial throws that out the window with the shared improved movements, a click of Hypersonic Speed, and some Running Shot afterwards. Shooting through walls is a huge advantage as his range is quite small, especially for a Hypersonic harassment figure, and his mechanic to give himself a weakened Perplex makes him hit potentially harder than any of the others here. Rocket does share something with previous versions though; great stats and powers. His attack values do dip somewhat, but two 11’s is quite nice, and his defenses are actually pretty good. 18 Super Senses with Shape Change with his mobility and Outwit give him a good setup to keep himself somewhat safe. The lack of Willpower is perhaps the most frustrating thing on this dial, especially at his cost compared to what you’re getting, but you do get rewarded with a superb second click. Save up those tokens, pump him to 12 attack and 5 damage, and then Pulse Wave someone through a wall, which can’t be probed (as the wall is destroyed after) and racks up more tokens for another hit. On the right map with lots of walls to protect him, Rocket can do some serious work.

Of course, if you aren’t on the right map, Rocket will have a pretty tough time. Hypersonic is great, but with only 9 movement and 6 range, you don’t that much of a swing game with him. This is going to fee more like Running Shot with Sidestep afterwards. The Outwit is great to keep him safe and be more offensive but losing it and going to Enhancement right after hurts and at 100 points, you might not want to push off that click so quickly. Once Rocket hits click four, he becomes a massive paper weight and unlike the other Chases, his only way to get back in the game is on his last click, and even then, the best he can do is get back to click three. The Rummage tokens are neat but Rocket ideally needs as many as he can get to make that 100-point cost feel worthwhile, which means he has to prioritize targets that won’t leave him in jeopardy and hope he can rack up three tokens in possibly 6 turns before making a big play. If Iron Man hurts characters with action problems, then Rocket is his perfect target because the raccoon is horrible at tempo. And why the hell does he lack the Animal Keyword?

Casual: Yep, a purely casual piece. He’ll feel quite strong on a Guardians team that lacks big mobility, but other Rockets have more Outwit and tend to be more of a lynch-pin for the team. He could be decent on Monster teams.

Competitive: Just like Iron Man, this is purely a fun and casual piece with some teeth. There are too many weaknesses for Rocket to ever see the competitive scene.

75 Points, 6 Clicks, 0 Range (Single Target). No Team Ability. Spider-Man Family and Monster Keywords.

Did Peter get to the Kool-Aid before everyone else, because damn this dial is legit awesome. HUGE attack values, great defenses, consistent damage, great mobility, scary damage potential, INDOMITABLE, all at 75 points. So why are three of these Chases so bloated when Spider-Man shows that Indom isn’t as expensive as WizKids seems to think? There are going to be two types of people who run Spider-Man; those that are horribly lucky at Blades and make him feel like he’s 125 points or more, and those that have horribly bad luck with Blades and question if 75 points is too much. For those that roll well with Blades, this guy is a ham and puts out so much damage so easily. Peter is stronger and faster than pretty much any other Chase, and he’ll perhaps see the most use out of the Alien Symbiote trait as he can potentially move 15 squares in a turn with two attacks. Even with the Indom, he’s incredibly push-friendly as he lands on Flurry with his special Blades power which pumps his potential damage up to 15 in a single turn. Battle Fury on most of his dial is a welcome addition cutting down on the number of defenses his targets can have, it picks up a power similar to Gwenpool; Peter can use a POWER to either hurt an ally or make a close attack against an enemy and potentially heal 1 click and deal 2 penetrating damage. Unfortunately, he has Flurry on two of these clicks, so you’ll have to choose between dealing a lot of damage or trying to heal, but that’s a nice choice to have.

This is legitimately a strong dial but it’s not without its flaws. As I mentioned above, players who don’t roll well with Blades (like me) are going to have a tough time with Spider-Man as he needs to roll a 5 or 6 to pull his weight. He’s still an incredible nuisance to fight against, but he won’t feel as strong if you can’t roll high damage. Peter also lacks any substantial healing like the rest, and misses that last click of Regeneration, electing to only try and eat other characters to heal up, which costs him a POWER. That makes things much harder to Peter actually heal up. Parker is also a total one-trick pony. This guy is all about running into the fight and staying there, which isn’t bad (especially at this point level), but it’s rather lacking for a Chase since he’ll only do one thing ever. He’ll do it well but won’t do anything else.

Casual: Spider-Man will thrive in casual play and depending on how well you roll at Blades, he could be on the cusp of overpowered for casual games. But that takes a lot of luck, so you shouldn’t have any problems.

Competitive: I don’t think Spider-Man is good enough to warrant competitive play. A reoccurring theme on these Chases is that they don’t bring anything new and exciting to the table for their massive point costs for this environment and Peter is no different. He might be the most efficient of the lot, but he still doesn’t have enough weight to pull a competitive showing.

100 points, 6 Clicks, 7 Range (Single Target). Power Cosmic Team Ability. Avengers, Earth X, Kree, and Cosmic Keywords.

I’ll admit, I read a portion of Mar-Vell incorrectly when I first saw him. There’s a huge wall of text to this guy, so it’s easy to get lost in the details. There are some good aspects to this dial; Power Cosmic to keep him safe, 6 clicks of Probability Control, Pulse Wave up front with Pen/Psy in the back, ignoring everything except characters for targeting, and a mechanic that forces opponents to KO him twice to score him. Not a terrible set for 100 points. But that’s not why people will want Mar-Vell. They’ll want him for his ability to resurrect every standard figure that was KO’d during the game (and for his legit beautiful sculpt). This is where I read his trait incorrectly with this segment: “This game, characters with Spirit tokens can’t be replaced, can’t generate bystanders, and aren’t scored.”. That changes things drastically as it basically gives you your entire team back to try and rack up the last bit of points on an opponent’s force. If you had a character that’s a god on their top-click, this is even better as you have a great chance of pulling out a victory. You’ll have to work hard to keep your own figures that are still worth points (like the newly resurrected Captain Marvel), but this could turn the tide of a game and give you a surprise victory.

But let’s be honest; this dial might have some strengths, but it has an awful lot of weaknesses. There’s no Running Shot, Hypersonic Speed, Sidestep, or even Charge anywhere on the dial. His attack values are low requiring Perplex to give him a shot at hitting his target. Even if he does hit, he’s most likely only going to deal 3 damage which is low for his cost. He’s incredibly easy to take down quickly as Super Senses and Prob are his only defenses. His trait that can resurrect him? It needs three turns to go off which can take up a lot of time. Most players will just ignore Mar-Vell, which they should, and let him flounder about. Even if you do pull off the resurrection, your opponent will have had to KO Captain Marvel, have three rounds pass, and then place everyone on the field before time runs out. What are the odds that you get more than a single turn with all those pieces back on the board? Even if you do manage to pull this out, you’re still giving your opponent everything they started with to clear your team. That’s suicide. Why would you ever want to give your opponent their figures back? If this was an optional trait, Mar-Vell might actually be an okay figure for point denial teams, but as it’s mandatory, he’s just bad.

Casual: Sure, play him in casual. He’s so gimmicky that you might be able to pull some occasional shenanigans, but don’t count on anything. He’ll be a neat piece that your friends “Oooo” and “Ahhhh” over, but then they’ll realize how ineffective he is.

Competitive: I can’t believe I’m saying this; with the Cosmic keyword and his unique mechanic, there’s a minute chance that someone develops a crazy team with him that could possibly work one day. There, it’s out of my system. Personally, I don’t think he’ll ever see the light of competitive play. Taking up a third of your team for this dial is not a smart move.

What are your thoughts on these Chases? Do you think I hit the mark or did I make a complete goof? Let me know in the comments below!

Before signing off for the week, I wanted to remind everyone about the Winter WKO’s coming up next month. We don’t know what the equipment do yet, but we know that there’s some more Black Order goodness for participation and winning, so I highly suggest making it out to your venue. I would even book your seat ahead of time.

See you all next week on Clix Fix, and remember, the real fun begins when you’re Two Clicks From KO!

Two Clicks From KO!