Greetings HeroClix Masterminds!

Our previous articles (Article 1, Article 2) have touched on vehicles, fire (ouch!), and the themes we used to capture a Ghost Rider feel for the set. As we wrap up preview season, we wanted to step away from Ghost Rider to look at another feature of the set: Monsters! Zombies, Vampires, and Mummies stretch back to some of Marvel’s earliest comics and most beloved stories, and all can be found in Wheels of Vengeance, but most of all the full moon shines on WEREWOLVES!

When designing a HeroClix set, one of the things the design team likes to do is look back through older sets to find ideas to riff off. The team isn’t just revisiting the mechanics players loved, but also to revitalizing the ones that have room to grow. With a little retooling, those so-so mechanics can have the fire of excitement!

The “near miss” we picked out for Wheels of Vengeance came from the Werewolves of 2017’s HeroClix: Undead set.

Undead’s Werewolf and Werewolf Alpha had a really cool, flavorful Lycanthrope trait. At the beginning of the turn, a shared die roll would determine how transformed they were. In practice though, we identified two issues with this mechanic. Firstly, if you ran a team of Werewolves it could be frustratingly time-consuming to change the click number of all your figures every turn. Secondly, when your Werewolves were at their strongest, they were also at their most fragile, and a single click of damage would KO them. The old mechanic was interesting, and balanced, but wasn’t as much fun for players as we had hoped. Wheels of Vengeance was the perfect time to reimagine what lycanthropy could mean.