Team Builder Series: Titan's Villains

I’ll come right out and say it: I’m a closet reader of several Heroclix forums, I never post but read what people say about specific figures or teams and that helps me learn new tricks that I previously had never considered. There’s something that’s interesting about game specific forums that more general ones don’t have, and that is these forums tend to be more focused on complaining about a specific game. I always find this funny since these people obviously spend lots of time and money on the very thing they seam to love finding reasons to hate. One of my favorite types of complaint threads are the ones that single out a specific figure and talk about how unplayable said figure is -- mostly due to it not having a single defined role in a team or how that figure’s dial isn’t the way the complainer would have designed it.

Terra from Icons is just such a figure. When Icons came out she was flat out the most loathed figure in the set, for reasons that made little sense to me, and I knew I had to get for that very reason. I love to use figures that others deem worthless for one reason or another (usually because it’s not a power-gamer piece). Finding out how the designers intended the figure to be used is a challenge I’ve come to enjoy over the past year or so. I initially was going to make a Titans team using Terra and Nova Blast (you can use their Team Ability to make sure she’s on her best click when ever you want), but didn’t come up with something that worked, so instead I made a villain team with her (fancy that).

The Players:

Name	Rarity	Points	Amount
Princess Komand’r	LE	79	1
Terra	Unique	60	1
Deathstroke	Veteran	58	1
Ravager	Veteran	50	1
Jinx	Experienced	48	1
Total: 295

Breaking down the team:

The LE of Blackfire Princess Komand’r is a good center piece of this team, she’s got front loaded Leadership and Running Shot for 2 clicks and a click of Invulnerability to help make of for her low defense. She has toughness throughout the middle of the dial and ends with Willpower and Pulse Wave so she’s still a danger through her last click. The only disappointing aspect of this figure is her starting defense is only a 15, but it only drops by a total of 2, however she has 2-clicks of 4 damage and 2-clicks of 3-damage with a starting attack and range of 10! Some people prefer the Veteran version of Blackfire to the LE because she’s got one more click of Running Shot, 4-damage and 10-attack, but she lacks the Pulse Wave and Invulnerability. Either one works fine for this team, there’s only a 3-point difference, I just prefer the LE due to the additional powers.

Terra’s got an interesting set of powers on her, in interesting places as well, and it’s the combinations of powers as well as their locations that make people brush her off too quickly. Her first two clicks are very support oriented with Quake, Force Blast and Barrier, and then she gains Pulse Wave (with a nasty 4-damage) then goes back to Quake, Force Blast and has Energy Shield for several clicks before reverting back to Barrier. Stat wise she has this progressive build-up to her Pulse Wave then peters off, which is a cool way to show anger or adrenaline. She starts out with an 8-attack, 16-defense and 2-damage and as she moves in her dial he damage slowly gets higher until she hits 4-damage with an increase to 9 on her attack value with Pulse Wave. Then after that one click goes back down. Her damage never drops below 2, has an 8-range, and due to her powers is always able to confound an opponent.

Until the Icons Start set Batman you really couldn’t get a cheaper combo of powers that Deathstroke has: Stealth, Outwit, and Willpower. He’s also got Energy Explosion for most of his dial, some Leap/Climb in the middle of his dial, and a single click of Regeneration at the end of his dial. He’s got some great stats for the points too, a starting attack of 10 and defense of 17, plus a very deep dial that’s 8-clicks long and 2-damage for half of that. In fact this guy screams Armor Piercing but, sadly, I didn’t have the extra points for it. Though due to his cheap cost his stats drop quite a lot, both his attack and defense drop by 5 by the end of his dial so he ends with a 5-attack and 13-defense, which makes you wish he had more then one click of Regeneration since it’s always hard to land on that last one.

Legacy is my favorite Heroclix expansion; it’s also the first time I bought any large amount of figures (I split a case with Fell and Kije). And I’m glad I did considering it sold out in a few weeks and I got many great figures, like Ravager. She’s one of those “hard to believe she’s only 50 points” types of figures with a click of Stealth that turns into in Leap/Climb for the rest of the dial, 4-clicks of Blade/Claws/Fangs, 3-clicks of Super Senses, 3-clicks of Willpower, and 2-clicks of Perplex at the end of her dial. That’s a lot for your money. She’s also got the stats to go with the powers, a starting 10-attack value, 16-defense and 3-damage coupled with a 6 range.

Experienced Jinx is a figure that gets a lot of playtime from me; heck this is the third team builder article with her in it and it probably won’t be the last either. For 48 points you’re getting a very nice Probability Controller, sure most people prefer Rookie Destiny but Jinx isn’t a one trick pony. She starts out with Phasing, Probability Control, and Psychic Blast and then, on her 3rd click, moves to Pulse Wave and Energy Shield and ends her dial with a single click of Energy Explosion. She may not have any damage reducers but she’s got a 9-attack, 16-defense, 2-damage and 6-range on her first click so she can hit most figures if they decide to get close. Plus she’s a wildcard so there are a lot of additional possibilities there.

The Plan:

First off is to have Jinx copy the Titans Team Ability from Terra, it’s the only one you can, without using a feat card, and you want to take advantage of this ability to move both their dials around. If Jinx gets knocked off her Probability Control you can use Terra to heal her back up while moving Terra down into her 4-damage click, there’s a lot of dial memorizing involved but you can use these two figures to make sure that they are where you want them to be. The only other thing to remember is that this Team Ability requires an action and the figure doing the healing, i.e. taking the click of damage, gets an action token. If you want more advice on how the Titan Team Ability works then I suggest you read Fellfrosh’s article on the X-man Team Ability that he wrote a few years ago. The figures may be out of date but the rules and principles are still the same.

Terra and Blackfire are the main attackers on this team they’ve both got long ranges and good damage, each have at least one click of 4-damage, but while Blackfire is pretty straight forward (move and shoot), Terra has a lot of options. While she should be attacking at range, she’s also a great defender piece; you’ve got both Jinx and Deathstroke who you don’t want some melee attacker to run up and attack. If you keep Terra near them then you can use Force Blast or Quake to get rid of them and keep your support safe. Remember that Force Blast doesn’t require an attack roll so it hits automatically, unless the opposing figure has Super Senses, but doesn’t deal damage. But Quake does, and both powers can deal knock back damage if you can push the figure into a wall.

Ravager is your harasser/melee attacker; she deals great damage and has Super Senses to frustrate your opponent, so moving her next to a ranged attacker(s) is a great way to negate those figures. But she’s also got a 6-range with 3-damage and Stealth on her first few clicks, so she can fill the role of a sniper if she needs to as well as the Stealth providing added defense while you move her across the board. As mentioned above, both Jinx and Deathstroke are your support figures. Jinx should be kept near Terra, who can carry her, so she can use the copied Titans Team Ability. And while you’ll want to keep Jinx as far out of combat as possible it’s very important to make sure she has a line of sight to your figures, and some of your opponents, so she can use her Probability Control whenever possible.

Deathsroke is your outwitter, and while he has a very good attack and decent damage he doesn’t have any damage reducers, so you’ll want to take advantage of his stealth and keep him out of the main fray. Since he has Outwit he’ll be one of the first targets of your opponent, so you’ll want to keep him back enough that he can Outwit but not be easily attacked for the first few rounds. Then once you’ve got Ravager based to any snipers your opponent might have you can bring him closer so he can attack. Don’t forget that he’s got Willpower for most of his dial so he can attack twice in a row without pushing.

Summation:

This is a good ranged attack team and has all the elements needed to take down just about any non-stealth team. It’s adaptable too, with many figures able to play more then one role, which can be key to winning.

Discuss it in our forums.

Written by Spriggan on January 22nd, 2006