For earlier articles in this series please click here.
Reminder: These rules are not finalized yet and will not replace the current rules until sometime after the 2017 HeroClix World Championship at Origins Game Fair. Email gamefeedback@wizkids.com with feedback on this topic. We will try and read everything on topic but can only respond via articles we write addressing shared concerns.
Hey HeroClix fans,
Objects have always occupied a rather strange place in HeroClix. On the one hand, though you are not required to, the vast majority of players bring and place their 3 allowed objects every game. On the other hand, unless a character on your force has Stealth or Super Strength, they don’t do much for you. They don’t do absolutely nothing because of a decision made when they debuted to “count as hindering terrain”, but other than that, they don’t do a lot. You can’t bash someone with them or throw them at someone or basically do anything fun with them. As recently as 2013, the rulebook considered them Tactics that weren’t even part of the core game of HeroClix, just an optional addition.
Well, we’re excited to confirm that objects are here to stay and definitely part of the game of HeroClix.
For a lot of teams, if you decide to place objects, you first make three separate decisions on their placement, and then often end up ignoring them unless your opponent uses them against you in some way. This may make you second guess the decisions you made placing them or bringing them at all. These play patterns can tend towards “unfun” or “not worth the hassle” very easily. Some players prefer to never place objects, and for a short time we explored what the game would be like without standard objects. On the plus side, it would be simpler. Super Strength would have to change, obviously, and a few other effects. But ultimately that’s not the direction that most players wanted, and we firmly agreed.
Instead, like keywords, you wanted them to be more of a part of the game. You wanted more strategic depth (to be able to interact with them more), without adding more complex rules. Well, strap in, because some big changes are planned that should greatly increase their utility.
For light objects, all characters (except Vehicles) can now pick them up, hold them, put them down, and use them in object attacks.
Yeah, this is huge, and we know it. Essentially, all characters now have Super Strength, but only for light objects. Getting to make close object attacks for +1 damage will definitely increase the value of some characters and play styles. Getting to make range object attacks will also give characters without range a chance to damage weaker ranged opposing characters, and help balance the inherent tendency of range attacks to be more useful than close attacks. It’s been exciting to see in playtesting how this has opened up different strategies for players.
Fortunately, while the artwork on light objects has varied over the years, they are often depicted as objects like gumball machines or shields or cinder blocks or empty garbage cans that a physically fit person could reasonably use as a weapon. This is not to say that every light object ever made will perfectly fit the flavor, but we and the players we asked don’t think it will be too much of a stretch.
Let us introduce you to “inherent abilities” to show you how this is being implemented. One way you can think of inherent abilities are as “traits that everyone has”. We’re going to cover two of them today. The others we’ll get to soon.
Object Pick Up
Once per move, this character may either pick up one light object (holding it) or put down one held light object in a square it moves through or adjacent to.
So, yeah, that’s one new way that characters can interact with objects.
Next up, objects as hindering terrain.
We tried, we really did. It’s one of those concepts that’s simple to say, but devilishly difficult to put into clean unambiguous rules. There’s a lot of corner cases involving moving and then the square you’re in or next to suddenly becomes hindering or is no longer hindering. And then how it interacts with things like water markers. And then how it temporarily redefines “areas” of hindering terrain. And a lot more.
HeroClix already has something that does exactly this: hindering terrain markers. And they have their own rules. ‘Objects as hindering’ duplicated a bunch of their rules while adding a bunch of unique interactions. It was almost a full page in the rulebook just for this (and the attendant sidebars explaining it.) That page is going away… but that’s not the whole story.
‘Objects as hindering’ wasn’t really what was foremost about objects in the minds of players we talked to (which was, unsurprisingly, mostly “bashing characters with them”). It reasonably gave a player something to do with an object if you didn’t have a Super Strength character but wasn’t their key feature.
So initially, the plan was just to remove the connection between objects and hindering entirely. It seemed simplest. But then we heard an idea that we tested and checked with some players. An idea that will preserve the best parts of what ‘objects as hindering’ did, but in a way that doesn’t add pages of complex interactions into the rules and is much more flavorful.
Introducing Hide, another inherent ability (Vehicles also do not have this one).
Hide
At the end of your turn, if a heavy object is in this square and this character has 
or 
, you may place a hindering terrain marker here. At the beginning of your next turn, or immediately when no heavy object is in this square or no character occupies this square, remove the marker. (You do not need to physically place the marker. The heavy object serves as a reminder of it.)
Now, one goal of this rules update is to remove a bunch of fiddly rules, not introduce them. And we recognize that Hide, at first glance, would definitely qualify as having some fiddly-ness. We do not want players to have “feel-bad” moments because they forgot to say “my character is hiding”. So the tournament rules will get an update along the lines of “unless a player specifies otherwise, a player’s characters that can do so always use the Hide ability.” You won’t need to say “my guys are always hiding” at the beginning of the game, and you won’t need to physically lift your guys up and place the markers, the heavy objects will let you know where the markers are. For the rare time that it will matter, you can explicitly say “my characters aren’t hiding.” But the vast majority of times characters will want to Hide, so that’s the default, and you’ll know that in terms of the rules it’s a hindering terrain marker in that square. And since it is a hindering terrain marker, you’ll be able to figure out how that properly interacts with all other effects in the game, without an additional page in the rules.
Essentially, the rule is now “Heavy objects in a character’s square are hindering terrain when it’s not your turn”, but because of important rules interactions, we’re using hindering terrain markers to do this.
This also nicely gives light objects and heavy objects different things to do in a game, that should make deciding which type of standard object to add to your force more of a real choice. Light objects can be picked up and used in an object attack by anyone. Heavy objects can be hidden behind, and picked up and used for bonus damage by Super Strength characters.
Flavor-wise, this played a lot better too. Having a stealthy character hide behind a “light” manhole cover or a cinder block or a gumball machine was pretty nonsensical. Having a speedster character not able to move their full speed value or have to stop because of an unmoving object (of any size) that they can see also seemed less than ideal. Now, the stealthy character can only hide behind larger, heavier things, and the speedster can, you know, see light and heavy objects and not be tripped up by them.
Giants and colossals? Well, no matter how big and heavy the object, hiding doesn’t seem very realistic, so they can’t. Also, it already would be less useful than with other characters, considering how few have Stealth and how hard it is to get every square of their bases in hindering at once.
This does change some strategies – you can’t “block off” a hallway with objects anymore (even heavy ones) to slow an opponent down, they can find the gaps and step right through them. But we and players we’ve spoken to feel that the changes in total will definitely improve both the flavor and use of both types of objects.
Notice that we said “both types”. Yes, from now on, there are only 2 types of objects: light and heavy. Ultra-Light (white ring) and Ultra-Heavy (purple ring) are no longer standard objects, and are no longer legal in Modern Age. Ultra-Light and Ultra-Heavy objects are now special objects legal only in Golden Age. We aren’t planning any for the future, and if we ever do something similar, it would be its own individual special object, not a category.
Ultra-Light ended up being almost a test run for the change to Light objects, and are no longer needed. Ultra-Heavy has definitely seen play. In fact, more than it probably should have. It came from good intentions, but it has been used to increase damage to somewhat ridiculous degrees. We’ve heard all kinds of stories from players about it, and most seem to feel that normal heavy objects are enough to get the point of “enormous beatdown” across.
We know this article has been a long one, but there’s one more thing to cover today. Super Strength. It’s clear that Super Strength has lost a lot. It used to hold exclusive rights on doing all the fun stuff with objects, and now everyone gets to join in. After talking to players, we think there’s a simple and flavorful tweak that will increase its capabilities without changing it too much.
Super Strength
KNOCKBACK. This character can pick up heavy objects.
KNOCKBACK is our keyphrase for what used to be “attacks made by this character generate knockback”. It’ll work almost the same as rolling doubles (or having Force Blast) does now, but you always will get the choice about whether to knock them back or not.
Now, if you have Super Strength, you really CAN punch someone into a wall!
That’s all for today. Keep on Clixin’!
