Reminder: These rules are not finalized yet and will not replace the current rules until sometime near the release of DC Comics HeroClix Batman: The Animated Series later in 2018.

Hey HeroClix fans,

Thanks for all the comments you sent in regarding our first article. As we stated there, this year was more about polishing out a few remaining bumps than making fundamental changes. The rules are still new enough that we want players to have a firm and consistent grasp of them before we adjust any standard powers.

Based on your feedback, we rewrote a few sidebars in the Core Rules to be more clear and helpful, and we added several new sidebars and clarifying rules to the Comprehensive Rules, to be published online later this year. You also pointed out one or two characters (looking at you, Kor from Star Trek) that need some clarifying errata because of these changes.

Someone pointed out that we didn’t have a rule governing what happens to held objects when a character is replaced, so we added a rule specifying that the object is dropped into one of the replaced character’s squares. Thanks! That ruling is posted in the Rules Forums and in effect now and has been added to the upcoming Core rules.

One thing that we felt repeatedly when reading your emails was the tension between “this rule covers a broad range of cases in a clean and concise way” and “that same rule doesn’t fit the flavor in this particular case.” HeroClix is already a pretty detailed combat miniatures game. There needs to be a limit on how deep the rules get so there aren’t special exceptions for every different situation. One of our primary jobs is to draw the line between “this rule is easy to comprehend” and “this situation allowed by the rules is so absurd that it takes me out of the game.” Different people will draw that line in different places, but we need to look at the big picture and decide what’s best for the game overall. A perfect example of this is last year’s elimination of the rule that “flyers” don’t take knockback damage from falling.

The most common request among several of that kind was to make it so that Improved Movement: Hindering didn’t “ignore” Water terrain. While that would add to the flavor of some non-flying characters, it would require Water to be a separate type of terrain (not a subset of hindering terrain) with its own rules and restrictions. Many characters would no longer function as originally intended, so we’d need changes to several other powers and abilities in addition to some character-specific errata. Flavor-wise, we understand where this is coming from, but we think the cost is higher than the benefit in this case.

We wanted to share with you our “to-do list” for our playtesting team over the next year. Some standard powers still underperform our (and your) expectations, and others possibly overperform. There may be tweaks to powers (or abilities) that address that without significantly adding to the game’s complexity or disrupting game balance.

  • Force Blast
  • Earthbound/Neutralized
  • Leap/Climb and Phasing/Teleport
  • Super Strength
  • Charge and Combat Reflexes
  • Mind Control
  • Battle Fury
  • Pulse Wave and Quake
  • Outwit

We’re not going to mention exactly what tweaks we’re looking at right now, because that’s certainly going to evolve over the next year. This does not mean we are definitely changing any of the above, and there almost certainly will be some things not listed above that we’ll take a look at, but it’s our starting point for 2019.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to write in. Thanks to Brett M, Chad A, Marcus J, Derrick C, Antonio G, Glen S, Dusty K, Stefano D, McConnell L, Rob W, Malcolm R, Patrick I, Alexander R, Eric S, Davids B and C, Matthews C and S, Nates C and W, and the many other players who shared their feedback.

Keep on Clixin’!