The release of DC Heroclix : Icons is the theoretical rebirth of Heroclix as we know it, but as with any birth, there's the afterbirth, and if we're like dogs, we'll have to eat it. And that's just gross.

For the uninitiated, Heroclix is the game where you take tiny superheroes and make 'em fight using the power of MATH! Geometry, addition, subtraction, multifraction and diversification. You got 'em all. As if that didn't make it geeky enough, the clatter of dice and declarations of 'THAT'S HINDERING TERRAIN! NEGATIVE ONE MODIFIER!' will send it right over the edge. For the initiated, however, and god have mercy on your soul because you'll never break free, Icons is the redefinition of Heroclix, streamlining its evolution from day one until now into one sleek, precise game.

Heroclix has seen plenty of rule changes over the years since it's been around, but the inexorable draw of pitting Spider-Man against Superman and watching the kidneys fly was strong enough to keep the hardcore players interested, even though their winning strategies were often negated in every subsequent addition and correction to the rules. My 'Iron Man dropping Thing into the thick of battle and clobbering the bejesus out of everything' strategy was no longer kosher with the addition of certain new rules, and I'd never win a game again as long as I lived. The game evolved and I didn't, like an australopithecus at a salad bar, just desperately trying to use those tongs, god bless 'im. I did win once with an odd Teen Titans team, but my glory days had passed.

These frequent rule addendums and errata would usually first surface in an internet-based format, and because of the nature of the internet, probably changed more often than they should have, or ever have in gaming forums in the past. Most of the affected changes have been based on the all-too-vocal and plentiful reactions of players to every subtlety of the game, and those other players who'd take advantage of loopholes to create unpleasant odds in their favor. One can imagine the spittle-flecked diatribes launched forth on internet message boards in the earlier, more raw days of Dungeons and Dragons if these forums existed at the time. We can be sure of one this : the word 'borken' and the phrase 't eh suck' would have been created a lot sooner, and mankind would have prematurely advanced an evolutionary step that we would simply have not been prepared for. The Icons starter set, though, gathers all of these rule changes and additional powers onto one convenient sheet for all to see, instead of scouring over hastily-printed PDFs from the past year to prove a point to an impatient opponent.

The last Heroclix release, Fantastic Forces, was the first set that was produced in the 'new' factory, and the difference in the physical quality of the pieces was quite apparent. The paint jobs were cleaner and more detailed, and the use of translucent plastic was just about everywhere. The omnipresent flight stands had an extra little peg of plastic to keep the figures together, and they all smelled lemon fresh. The Icons figures are the last gasp of the 'old' factory, and while they still show a marked improvement over the earliest figures, all of which used an intense V for eyebrows, it's hard to view these as anything too amazing after what we've seen what WizKids CAN do. The figures in the starter set are, alas, an abomination. Truly, painfully bad, and this is really unfortunate. Take a look at the Robin as an example of this - the poor guy is missing an eye. Not even a 'white dot left off of his mask' loss of an eye. This is a huge, fleshy mass overrunning his face and completely obscuring his ocular cavity, and also apparently creeping up over his glove. His boy-shorts don't connect and only about 50% of his shoes are painted on. These figures are supposed to be the strong, exciting audience grabbers, but they end up being repellant. Therein do we end up wading through the knee-deep afterbirth of Icons. I completely plan on repainting these into something acceptable. I could have waited for the new factory to handle these, because getting both a Dick Grayson and a Jason Todd Robin (to complement the Tim Drake Robin in the first DC Heroclix set) in the same set is something special.

So the main theme of this set is to give a rebirth to the more iconic, or simply the more prominent, of the DC characters. This means that Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman figure in prominently, as well as Robin, a few powerful enemies of each of the big three, and the Teen Titans. We've had a few Supermen, and Wonder Women, and Batmen, but these are the re-defining pieces, re-adjusting all of the math and adding and subtracting abilities where they're due, reflecting the most balanced and fair incarnations of the characters. We're still missing Metamorpho and all manner of Green Lanterns from the game, as well as the rest of the Crime Syndicate, but we can remain hopeful that they'll appear in the next DC expansion. This set is more about revisitation that exploration. The Icons starter set comes with 6 game pieces, three good guys and three bad guys, which add up to even 100-point teams for each side. We also get a map, a handful of tokens to represent various tossable items on the playfield, and a couple of Battlefield Condition cards, which a player throws on the table to change the dynamic of the whole round of play. This particular mechanic is one of the later additions to the game.

One of these Battlefield Condition cards, or BFCs, is 'Madness', wherein a critical hit is a critical miss, and vice versa. Critical hits, as in most games, are denoted by that magical confluence of double sixes on the die (or on a d20, a 20). Of course, the odds of getting double sixes and double ones are EXACTLY the same, mathematically, so the probability within the game is unaltered. Sure, it's wild 'n' wacky when your double sixes suddenly cause you to poke yourself in the eye instead of decapitate your opponent, but honestly, who cares? In addition to this, the card has other functions that cause certain characters to lose some of their healing abilities, but with ambiguous enough wording to leave you questioning exactly HOW. Still, we're left running to the agonies of the message boards for clarification. The rulebook has tripled in thickness since the early days, and maybe I'm a purist, but I'm more interested in laying an epic smackdown than trifling over new rules and complications. If I have to stop and say 'Oh wait... yeah, no, section 75.2a of the new rule clarifications specifically states that your mom doesn't love you', my internal fun-o-meter drops by 5 points, and my supply of glee-oline becomes tainted. Honestly, I couldn't even adjust to the addition of THACO rules in D&D. Keep it simple.

Is Heroclix worth picking up at this point? This new set is designed to be much easier to collect, with only about 60 figures total instead of the much larger sets that have some previously, and WizKids DID make it easy for the newcomer to the lowdown in one convenient package. There are only 6 rare 'unique' figures in the set (representing characters that existed in one particular incarnation for only a short time, such as Crisis-styled Brainiac) instead of a dozen, and mini-figures of the iconic DC superheroes are always fun. If you don't mind having missed out on a dozen previous waves of figures from both DC and Marvel, sure. Heroclix can be tons of fun one you absorb the rules and with the right opponent. There's a good chance that there'll be a re-make of your favorite character before too long, as mostly every popular figure in every universe has been made 2 or 3 times by now. I've always preferred theme teams, like a JSA or Sinister Syndicate grouping, instead of a strategically honed and incongruous team for fun. Pairing the Hulk with the Joker might seem advantageous against your opponent, but where's the comic narrative in it? We don't need another one of those 'Stan Lee creates the DC Universe' disasters. God, what were they thinking? WHAT? This is not a cheap hobby, so be forewarned, because these things run about 2 bucks per figure.

So, theoretically, play has been improved. Physically, the figures are not up to standard, and some don't even come with complete statistics printed on their dials (see : Veteran Cheetah, who lacks a damage stat on her final click). We do get a Jim Lee-based Batman sculpt and a new Joker, albeit a Joker who is giving us the finger. Also, it'll be nice to have a Starfire that doesn't look like she's attached to something the cat left in the kitchen. This is the last 'rebirth' that heroclix can face before it totally disintegrates, after 'Marvel : Universe' ended up being an unfortunate flop (mostly because it contained repackaged figures from undesirable sets), so get it while it's hot. It can really be many evenings of dorm-room fun.

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