Hello and welcome back to our blog! My name is Aaron and I am super excited to be writing today’s post as it brings exclusive previews from the upcoming Marvel Heroclix set, X-Men the Animated Series: The Dark Phoenix Saga! This set is designed around one of my favorite childhood cartoons and I can’t wait to see what is in store, so let’s get into it!

The first of our previews is the one and only, self-thought ladies man, St. John Allerdyce AKA Pyro.

Pyro checks in at an efficient 50 points and is pretty obviously a good medium ranged attacker, as made evident by his top dial Ranged Combat Expert and Running Shot. His defense power, Energy Shield/Deflection, is perfectly slotted to keep him where he wants to be at that medium range bringing his defense up to a 19 from ranged attacks. Pyro can also pair his Running Shot with his special power, Too Hot To Handle which gives him Poison (making melee attackers think twice about basing him) and an enhanced version of Energy Explosion. When Pyro uses his Energy Explosion, he can choose to either use it with 3 Targets OR drop a free Barrier after resolutions, which provides him a nice mix of both offensive and defensive options.

If Pyro happens to get knocked off of his starting click, he picks up another special power, Anyone Bring The Marshmallows? which allows him to destroy an object for free or blocking terrain and then remove a token from him. This token removal will trigger his shared trait, My Mutant Brothers And Sisters, which can help heal him to his top dial.

Pyro’s end dial is also fantastic rounding out with a big attack value and Pulse Wave or Barrier to help keep him safe from harm while he limps away to heal himself.

Pyro is a quick-mouthed, would-be ladies man as is evidenced in his flavor text. You can see him use this banter in the episode “The Cure” where he is mostly seen getting beat up by Rogue. This character is well designed and perfectly symbolic of what we see in the show. I especially love the way he can self heal while warming himself up.

While Pyro spent much of “The Cure” looking for his shape-shifting boss, you won’t have to as she is our next preview. Without further adieu, I present to you Raven Darkhome, the notorious Mystique!

Mystique is often looked up to as a leader of The Brotherhood of Mutants, and this reflects well in her design. She has Leadership for two clicks, which she can use to help swarm your human oppressors and take the fight to them, and also trigger the shared trait we talked about with Pyro by removing tokens from her mutant brothers and sisters.

Mystique is uniquely designed to be a mixed attacker who can also do well as a tie-up piece. Her shape-shifting abilities are shown off well on her dial; she has Stealth to keep her safe from ranged attacks, Combat Reflexes to increase her defense when her foes finally do track her down, and she has a superior version of Shape Change that is traited. If played carefully, Mystique will always have a chance to succeed her Shape Change roll on anything except a 1. That’s tough!

Mystique’s attacks are also likely to hit and stick with a top dial 11-attack and Precision Strike. She does have a bit of range, so she can take pot-shots safely from hindering terrain. Later in her dial she picks up some useful powers for dealing damage that range from Ranged Combat Expert to Exploit Weakness, so Mystique always has a way to break through most reducers.

The last figure we have for preview is a colossal one. Literally. We have the colossal living island, Krakoa!

Krakoa has been in the X-Men stories for quite some time. There are many versions of it and each time there is a new twist. This particular one has been mind-controlled by the new Hellfire Club led by Kade Kilgore. He has a lot of awesome powers across many different point values.

To start, many of you are familiar with colossal retaliators, but Krakoa has an updated version of it which he starts with on his 70 and 600 point dials. His retaliation requires that no other friendly character has been placed this turn (an important clarification, placing a character on the map via something like an ID card is not the same as placing a character for the purpose of something like Telekinesis). His retaliation allows you to use Quake, which can be quite a large area. After resolutions, Krakoa also creates hindering terrain markers in the squares he occupied as well as the squares he occupies after. This is super important because it combines with his trait The Flora Must Feed. He can now make close attacks against characters adjacent to or occupying those squares regardless of where they are on the map! Characters also have to break away from those markers as if breaking away from Krakoa, who has Plasticity, Flurry, and Phasing/Teleport as his special speed power.

Krakoa has a medley of different powers that help keep him in the fight; Steal Energy can help heal him and Poison can help with some free chip damage. Not to mention he has reducers on every single click. What a nuisance! I am very much looking forward to playing this figure!

That’s all the previews we have for you this time around. Get your hands on these amazing figures and more at your local pre-release event beginning 9/4 or purchase from your Local Gaming Store when the set fully releases on 9/11. You can also get product by participating at the Heroclix World Championship event at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee on September 6th through September 8th. You can find more details here.

Until next time, thanks for reading, and remember that the real fun begins when you’re Two Clicks from KO!