In November of 2008, the popular collectible miniature game Heroclix was pronounced dead.
Heroclix was, and remains, the only published game where you can effectively and officially make teams of your favorite DC and Marvel heroes and bad guys and pit them against one another on a battlefield, using tiny figures that display a wide array of numbers and symbols to describe each character’s attributes. You could make DC’s Superman fight Marvel’s Hulk – and not only that, but you could make at least six or seven different incarnations of each do battle.
(Of course, Superman’s flight and ranged combat ability would give him the upper hand, but the Hulk could probably do some serious damage if you get him angry enough, or if you use ’smart’ Hulk with the giant gun.)
Over the game’s evolution, WizKids released over two dozen different sets of characters from throughout the universe of comic books. I was a pretty dedicated player from the moment that the game was released, and introduced many, many of my friends to it. We staged battles in my dorm room, over the internet, and anywhere we could find the time and space. We ran to the WizKids booth at ToyFair and got sneak peeks at production samples and asked prying questions. In short, we were fans.
The game evolved, the rules changed, and eventually, things got a bit too complicated for me to casually enjoy anymore. I gave up the game itself when I lost the ability to fly in Iron Man carrying The Thing and have him destroy everything in his path in one big move – but I kept on collecting the figures. Tiny superheroes are keen. Topps purchased WizKids, and before too long, Topps decided to very, very suddenly kill off WizKids, stunning the gaming community, as well as employees who were sent scrambling for new work. Just like every high school in the US, they were deciding to put all of their available funds towards sports-related things and leave the artists and nerds in the gutter. I’m not making this up – this was in the official statement. They did, however, decide to keep such wholesome, intelligent, and not at all alarming things as ‘Baby Bottle Pops’.
I kept my Heroclix. They were still useable, and almost every major and minor comic character had been made already – from Captain America to Zombie Colonel America, Frankenstein to MODOK – and even a gigantic Fin Fang Foom piece. There were talks of small gaming companies banding together to keep the game alive, but nothing came to fruition. Licensing Marvel and DC characters is not cheap.
In September of 2009, NECA quietly displayed a Heroclix piece at one of their convention booths. This was enough to stimulate hope and interest throughout the entire gaming community once again. Almost a year to the day of Heroclix meeting an untimely death, NECA released the ‘Hammer of Thor’ set, based on the titular Marvel Comics superhero – and still using the reconstructed WizKids to keep things in order.
While I don’t know if this ranks among the great comebacks of popular things pronounced dead, like Polaroid film, Justice League Unlimited action figures or Futurama, it’s certainly something that we gamers can all appreciate. Now, we can pit ‘Thor, Frog of Thunder’ against, oh, let’s say Ambush Bug.
If that last sentence made you at all excited, you’re a nerd. Welcome home. Let’s game.
