Clix O’Clock: Possession Obsession

Hey everybody! Welcome to Clix O’Clock, a new weekly feature here on We the Nerdy! Assistant Editor Henry has been playing Heroclix for a very long time and wants to spread his love of the game with everybody who’ll listen! This week he talks about the constant obsession people have over the War of Light Entities, and why he is perfectly okay if he never has one in his clutches again (Other than to trade it away for some sweet Clix swag!)

So this weekend my school ran a small convention where we hosted a Heroclix event. We were very fortunate that we were able to play with some War of Light boosters and play a miniature Month 4 event. A friend of mine, newer to Heroclix, was able to buy his first War of Light boosters and pulled Proselyte. I was really happy for him and tried to hold back my secret envy, since Proselyte has a great value on the secondary market. But I got over this quickly and realized something. I really don’t care about the Entities anymore.

Proselyte, on the left, is one of the many Entities introduced in War of Light

I’ll admit that there is a part of me that does want the entities, but for a much simpler purpose than most. I just like the idea of adding people to certain theme teams. How fun would it be to make Superman a Blue Lantern with Adara, or for the Joker to be inducted via the Butcher into the Red Lantern Corps? But apparently, most people seem excited by them because they have the potential to be so deadly via the possession trait. For a mere 25 points, you can make any piece objectively more awesome, something that anybody can get behind. People quickly gravitated towards this incredible mechanic, and the prices of the already rare pieces (1 per case) skyrocketed.

Here’s the thing. Paying upwards of $100.00 for a Heroclix is kind of insane for me. I’ll admit that I’ve bought expensive pieces in the $70.00 range, but those are few and far between. Entities have been heralded as game-breaking pieces that can ruin the spirit of Heroclix. They’re not.I was lucky during my Month 3 Event and I pulled Ion, the Green Lantern Entity. I used him, equipping him to my Black Lantern John Stewart (Which I later realized wasn’t necessary), and went to town on opponents. But when the event was over, and I had won my prizes, I quickly traded him off. His initial value of $280.00 was too much to pass up, and it got me a slew of Marvel Zombies and convention exclusives. I was very happy to do that, because it allowed me to get a bunch of pieces I had wanted for quite some time.

Are you so greedy that you’d pay over $100.00 for one piece?

The very moment where I stopped caring about Entities came last week, when I played against a team that had three of them in a 300 point game. It was a pretty nasty team, with an overall worth of over $400.00, but it didn’t demolish me. It beat me, yes, but even with all of the crazy nonsense that it gained from the Entities, it didn’t break the game.  I felt like I held my own and had my opponent shaking in his boots a few times. Ultimately, a good player can go toe-to-toe with an Entity based team. They are good, but they cost a lot and the cost becomes more apparent with the more they use. When you think about how little you are really facing, you don’t have nearly as much to worry about as you’d expect.

Despite this, people are obsessed with collecting them all. And there is nothing wrong with wanting them all, but I really hope people can keep things in perspective. They aren’t going to automatically give you victories, and even for all they can do, there is so much else you can do for 25 points in today’s age of Heroclix. You can add some tokens, an ATA, or change a resource entirely. I think that though the Entities are good and have their value, the obsession that people have with equipping them to other characters and using the “Possession” ability is a bit absurd. At the end of the day, they are nothing more than the current new hotness, and in a few months there will be something else that completely negates them. The band-wagoners will move on and fawn over something new and exciting. And the cycle will continue.

The Entities should stay background to the wonderful figures in War of Light

Thanks for checking us out! Be back here next week at the same time, Clix O’Clock!