Greetings HeroClix Masterminds! 

Welcome to our second look into the design behind DC HeroClix: Notorious! Last time we touched on Goons, “Go Second” abilities and DCeased characters, and if you missed it you can check it out HERE. Today we’ll dive into team abilities, terrain, assassins, and a little something Clix has never done before… To start with, we’re tweaking two favorite team abilities. 

Players who have followed other recent HeroClix sets are likely unsurprised by the change to Justice League, as it mirrors the change made to another similar team ability. Players have long noted that Justice League's previous incarnation was one of the weaker team abilities, and that a buff was overdue. We hope that this new ability will help to see DC's flagship team become a more prevalent part of the metagame. We expect players to reconsider the Justice League figures already in their collection, whether they're brewing a team for Modern, Pulp, Theme, or a casual format among friends.  

Crime Syndicate is the other team ability (TA) getting an update. Last seen in 2015's Justice League: Trinity War, the Crime Syndicate TA has received a mostly minor update with more modern rules language. It's also no longer Uncopyable. With the last rules update removing the benefit of free Probability Controls from Themed Teams, we felt we could allow Crime Syndicate to grow to fill that gap. 

One of our design goals across HeroClix is to make themed team play more frequent, interesting, and satisfying. The introduction of the Theme format being a notable expression of this goal. Notably, some keywords have received extra attention which have helped separate them from the rest of the pack. Celebrity and Detective keywords have helped teams achieve novel, powerful, and flavorful play patterns. We hope to ultimately make each keyword distinct and meaningful in gameplay. Joining the distinct flavor (and power) of those teams, is Assassin! 

(Electrocutioner from Batman: Arkham Origins)  

Going back to 2014's Batman: Arkham Origins, we knew there was a gem in the "Hired Assassin" trait. There are a handful of HeroClix traits and powers that players will reflect on when we speak to them in person or in community created content, and "Hired Assassin" is among them. We wanted to refresh the mechanic for the 2023 game. 

If your team has any Assassins with the "The Target" trait, you'll choose an opposing character that'll score an additional 25 points if KO'd by an Assassin, even if that Assassin doesn't themselves have a "The Target" trait. Not all Assassins will have this trait, but many will; both in this AND upcoming sets. Using this sort of keyword-centered bonus allows us to tie a keyword together. It both gives a flavorful in-game mechanic that encourages themed teams and rewards splashing keyworded character into other teams, like an Assassin-centric Suicide Squad. We'll be implementing more of these gameplay-focused keyword rewards in upcoming sets. 

Building further off the recent rules update, Notorious gave us an opportunity to explore new ways of interacting with terrain. EVIL WAYS OF INTERACTING WITH TERRAIN! Several characters in Notorious will have the ability to generate named terrain markers, like Captain Cold and Ice terrain: 

Captain Cold is just one of the characters generating Ice, but all Ice works the same: blocking terrain that adjacent characters have to break away from and chilling them to the bone. Akin to the Assassin's Target ability, Ice and generated terrain will recur as a motif across upcoming designs, and will retain the same functions. Not all named terrain comes with a special effect, however, some will tie to effects on characters. For example: 

The Darkness Grows as All Light Dies… Lanterns are back in black. The Black Lanterns in Notorious all generate or interact with Graves, having both a way to generate them and an effect that applies to any friendly Grave, regardless of who generated the Grave. This is design space that we’ve explored  before, but have never  fully committed to because there was little counterplay to heavy terrain generation prior to the last rules update. Now, however, with Quake, Super Strength, and Destroy Actions offering frequently appearing in-game opportunities to answer terrain-generating teams we were freed to build terrain out as significant theme for a keyword. So get ready to dig some graves for your opponent’s team, because once Notorious arrives the dead will rise! 

Finally, as promised in the intro, you’re about to see an entirely new mechanic HeroClix has never used before in its Clix-story. It’s a pretty big change to gameplay, and we think players will FLIP when they see it. 

Like Harvey Dent, we'll never apologize for coiny jokes. Notorious was a set where we really wanted to put flavor first, and what better way than a Two-Face that can flip coins? To get some rules questions out of the way: 

  • The coin used must have both a clear Heads side and a Tails side. 
  • Effects that reroll dice cannot be used to reflip coins, even if that coin flip is replacing a roll. 
  • Effects that numerically change die results or that trigger off certain numerical die results don't apply to coin flips, even if that flip is replacing a die roll. 
  • If a player doesn't have a coin to flip or if they choose not to flip a coin, they may roll a single die instead, where an even result is Heads and an odd result is Tails. If a die is rolled in this way to simulate a coin flip, it is still considered a coin flip and cannot be rerolled by reroll effects or have its result numerically modified. 
  • If your opponent has brought a coin to flip, you may choose to borrow it when an effect of yours causes you to flip a coin. 
  • Hopefully it goes without saying, but just like a player's HeroClix dice must be unbiased, the same must be true of any coins they wish to flip. 

There are plenty more villainous delights to dig in to, but we're not so dastardly as to spoil everything early. You can see for yourself how good it can be to be bad when DC HeroClix: Notorious releases this September! Additionally, we'll have our first ever "Quick Hits" article for you closer to release day, in which our team will discuss some of the details and behind-the-scenes creation stories that went into making our first-ever MEGA SET.