Monday, June 30, 2008

Lost and Found Heroes

When the SO and I were cleaning up a few weeks ago to make room for our expectant arrival. I came across my old collection of Heroclix figures. About five years ago, I was a total fiend and bought tons of figures from the first two sets of both the Marvel and DC versions of the game. I even picked the Indy Heroclix starter and some boosters. I had to have the Judge Dread guys after all.

I quit getting them for several reasons, the biggest being that I wasn’t really gamming with Heroclix all that much. I was also annoyed that the paint jobs were terrible considering the price, and like all “collector” games you never knew what you were gonna get and thus duplicates abounded. So I threw what I had into a container and forgot about ‘em.

When I “rediscovered” my figures recently, I got curious. What had Heroclix been up to these last few years? Well, by going on line, I was surprised to find out that the quality of the paintjobs had improved. But what really got me, though, was the fact that many of my favorite, b-lister characters had been made into figures. I found the Supernova set particularly appealing with its Guardian of Galaxy and Squadron Supreme figures.

Two weeks ago, I dropped by Cosmic Monkey while on the eastside and noticed they had old, loose, Heroclix figures for 50¢ each. I bought several and this wet my appetite for more. So this last weekend, I swung by my usual comic store and purchased two sets of Marvel Supernova, and a set of DC Crisis. The figures in the Crisis set weren’t all that special except for a batgirl version, but I was really happy with the supernova guys. The best thing is that I got a Colonel America Zombie figure! It’s my understanding that this dude is very rare. Considering the fact that I’m not even interested in the other marvel zombie Heroclix characters, it was an amazing thing to rip open the package and just find him there. I lucked out this time. It kinda’ made up for all those lame duplicates I wasted my money on years ago… …OK, not really, but it was nice to get a “hard to find” character that I actually wanted.



I plan on buying a few booster sets here and there, but mostly I think I might try hunting for individual figures at stores and conventions. I feel this could actually be sorta fun, like antiquing for geeks. Too bad I didn’t shop for anything at Emerald City Comic Con though; I bet I could have found some good Heroclix deals. Regardless, I’m happy with the Zombie Colonel. I have him next to my computer between Papa Smuf and No-face.


-Swinebread

7 comments:

Thomas Fummo said...

the couple I went to the Torino convention with that time are Heroclix experts. They said it's a fun game...

now I see the zombie colonel...
my nerd glands are vibrating.

i checked the site and saw the galactus figurine.

*drools*
the power.... the power....

Don Snabulus said...

Zombie Colonel is good one to have by your side in the War against Gargamel.

Dean Wormer said...

You know the game sort of left me short. We have a bunch of that stuff around here somewhere as well. Next time you're over remind me and I'll dig it out.

Arkonbey said...

Never got into heroclix. I was too much into painting the lead minis to buy something with a terrible paintjob. It seemed a bit lazy to me.

Of course, I now officially have more minis than I will ever paint.

Steve said...

very cool!

Dr. Zaius said...

I thought at first that this was perhaps a level of geekyness that is even too geeky for me, but then I went and looked at my tiny robot collection and all of my other toys. I am indeed geeky enough for this. **sigh**

Swinebread said...

Doc S – Heh heh, it can be a lot of fun but the “collector” side of it gets annoying.

Snab – He’s hard to control though, lol

Dean – Well, it can be if you don’t have enough figures to put together lots of different teams, plus I find the more scenarios you can collect the more fun the game can be.

arkonbey – Hey, I got into collecting hordes lead figures ( are they still made of lead?) too. Most of them are at a buddies house that likes to paint figures… like he’s really gonna paint ‘em.

Heroclix are mass produced things that are game piece rather than something artistic. That said the painting job still could have been much better on the first few sets.

Dr. Zaius – Lucky you don’t like gamming, doc, so you merely have to display ‘em!