Waaaay back in 2002, apparently there was a game called Mage Knight which had tiny miniature characters on top of a base that could turn; inside this base, was a sticker or piece of quality paper that had numbers and colors on it that would correlate to a game system where you would use these figures to build teams and play against other such teams of characters. WizKids, a toy and collectible company, created this game utilizing comic book characters at that time and it’s still going today!

Since I started playing with the 3rd official set (Clobberin’ Time) I’ve been collecting and playing ever since. I’m going to go back in time and all the way to current day and rank my top 5 favorites from each time period or set. In the first calendar year of releases, 3 sets were released : Infinity Challenge, a grab- bag of the most popular Marvel characters; Hypertime, the DC equivalent; Clobberin’ Time, a set based around Fantastic Four characters.

A massive total of 476 characters were released in these series so it’s not easy to boil it down but one interesting thing about this game is it’s constantly re-aligning it’s power level so anything older than 3 years is usually almost irrelevant, so this stuff from 16 years ago is quite useless (mostly.) Without further ado, let’s do this!

5) Infinity Challenge #149 Wolverine (64 points, Unique)

I do not own this figure anymore (early on in the game’s history, my car was stolen which had my whole collection of clix in the back , never to be seen again.) but I really, really liked having a Wolverine to play. One of my favorite characters so I was instantly drawn to him. The cool thing about him was getting into Stealth if you needed to sneak up on people then being able to attack with that 12 attack value. Probably one of the highest in the game at that time, for a figure of his point cost. That was the main draw, and getting to use it with Blades/Claws/Fangs. Plus, I just loved having this unmasked Wolverine Ninja character.

4) Hypertime #043 Riddler (39 pts, Experienced)

Current players will look at this and laugh heartily. This is a joke today. But, believe it or not, an 8 attack value could hit things in these early stages. Nothing I liked more than building whole massive armies of Batman Enemies and doing work. I just loved having his Perplex as it was pretty uncommon in those first sets and even if he took damage, I would always have some (even more) awful figure ready to Mastermind damage to keep him in the game. Perplex, like today, was very strong at this time.

3) Clobberin’ Time #078 Doctor Octopus (Veteran, 66 points)

I’ve always been drawn to Doc Ock as a character, and in Clix, he’s usually just the perfect mix of attacker and enhancer. This early version of him was no different. He had a spectacular movement that could go anywhere and starting with 11 attack, Perplex! That was perfect. I loved going up to the lower elevation of a building and being able to attack guys that were sitting on the edges shooting down with him. And Willpower was new to Marvel (I believe) so his top dial was just perfect. But, if you did get knocked down then he could lift heavies which was a bonus. A great piece all around in those days.

2) Hypertime #121 Parasite (Unique, 107 points)

A lot of longtime Clix players are going to be shocked at this pick as he’s notorious for being GAH BAGE! (thanks Darth Harloff) but this guy was a gateway for me to so many things. He gave me my love of my favorite power in the game to this day, Poison. “Hold on I can just run up to a guy and deal him 1 damage?” Yep. You could at this time. And you’d be surprised how many guys just did 1 damage back in the day so they’d knock me right onto Impervious. If I managed a hit, I would heal back to click # 1 and give them another Poison damage. He worked great for me, super effective figure in all the games I used him in. Plus, the sculpts was sickly detailed. Even though I never used him again, I made a point to go back and pick this guy up after I started restocking my collection.

Infinity Challenge #093 Pyro (Veteran, 42 points)

Again, this isn’t going to look like much but I got so much work out of this guy so many times. I played a lot of Brotherhood teams back in this time (Brotherhood and Batman Villain teams) and he was just a staple. If I could get the hit with that 9 attack, 3 damage from 8 squares away. Pretty darn good for only 42 points. Pyro was always my favorite Brotherhood guy too so I just loved using him and always getting more out of him than his points showed. He was deceptively dangerous.