Masterful

Erik here (don't know who the Max character Wizkids refers to on the back of his card is) has done OK dial-wise in the past. Sure, his Infinity Challenge versions haven't dated too well (whose have?) but since then he's been a force to be reckoned with. But even those versions pale into insignificance before this fella. Lets take his dial one row at a time:

Movement: pretty much what you would expect – a little bit of running shot. The biggie here is the trait that allows him to carry four of his mates with him.

Attack: great numbers, never dropping below a nine – and also boosted by a wonderfully thematic trait that makes him more dangerous when he's standing on a pile of rubble. And that white power rocks in so many ways.

Defence: now we're getting silly. With the benefit of that trait once again, you'll be looking at 21 defence in hindering. Make that hindering a rubble token and his attack is up as well, of course. Oh, and he has toughness for those rare occasions when a shot gets through. And did I mention that opponents halve their ranges when attacking him?

Damage: nice numbers at the top, RCE and Perplex.

Personally, I pretty much lost interest in Magneto some time last decade when I lost track of whether he was a goodie or a baddie (though this figure's keywords make it clear this is the baddie version). That said, I really want to play this figure: on top of being pretty crazy powerful, this dial really feels like the master of magnetism.

The final word must be for that glorious, glorious sculpt. One of my favourite sculpts is the Rampaging Hulk and his little bits of debris jumping up from his fists. This takes that idea and cranks it up to 11 - though I do worry how many will make it into the hands of players intact or whether we'll be opening boosters to find something akin to a boiled sweet that's had a close encounter with a hammer.

And look, Erik's nicked the girder from the DC 75th Alan Scott Green Lantern!

Apparently Giant-Sized X-men will include a figure of "Wolverine as Death"

Is this what we can expect?

DC 75th post-release

This Sunday brought the Brighton post-release DC 75th tournament, held in an upstairs room in a café kitted out to resemble the bedroom to a teenage boy circa 1980 (I kid you not; among the many wonderful features are a mono record player, old-school Action Man, Back to the Future poster and assorted boardgames including Buckaroo. It's wonderful, and I keep meaning to pop up there when we aren't playing 'clix so I can have a proper look around).

Having scared off the last few non-Clixing café patrons in the room (to be fair, we did have it booked for our use), the ten players in attendance cracked open two boosters each. The format for today would be or usual pre-release method - first round at 300pts, then 400, 500 and finally 600.

My first booster was good, and included Hal Jordan SR, Deadshot and Cheetah Beast Boy. The contents of the second were beautifully colour-coordinated in pink and purple: Carol Ferris, Queen Aga'po, Ruling-cast Dominator and whatever other purple figures the set includes. It was as if Trinny and Suzanna had assembled a booster.

Round One
Hal and Carol fitted together so nicely at 295pts how could I not play them as a team? Round One was against Matt: comic-geek-without-peer, Heroclix judge and excellent player. His team included the Golden Age Batman (great sculpt, even if it does look a little like Batman's waving a walking stick above his head), Deadshot, Bart Allen and a Dominator. My already slim chance of a victory weren't helped by the fact that I based Deadshot, forgetting that Sharpshooters can use ranged attacks against adjacent figures (in my defence, I get to play rarely these days): four clicks of penetrating damage later, that was pretty much game to Matt.

Round Two
Refusing to be deterred by their previous poor performance, I stuck with the Hal and his girl, and teamed them up with Deadshot for Round Two. I was facing Greg; a true gent and a darn fine player; I didn't rate my chances too highly. My apologies to Greg, but I can't remember what he was playing or even too much about the game. Except that I lost.

Round Three
I still hadn't given up on my star-crossed lovers, and was pleased with how Deadshot performed in Round Two, so added the Dominator and his Ruling Class boss to the pack. The Outwit they brought the the team proved very useful in Round Three, which was against Michael - a lad who shares my passion for giant transforming robots. Against a background of talk about Samurai tanks and G2 Primes, I managed to clock up my first victory.

Round Four
My final match of the day was against tournament organiser Lamp who, fortunately for me, was on a rare losing streak. Not that it wasn't a close game - my victory literally came down to the final action of the match, when Hal KO'd Lamp's Captain Comet. I had added Black Alice to my team for this outing and, while she didn't to too much, more Outwit and her PC came in useful. Overall, I finished fifth out of the ten players.

It's hard to deny that many DC 75th sculpts lack a certain dynamism