In case you're interested in such things, you can go and check out the spoiled dials here. Just be sure to tell them that brojase sent you. I carry a lot of weight in that community, I'm somewhat of a big deal. Actually, that's not true. I think that most of my posts get ignored by...well, everybody.
I'm not going to go through each individual dial and analyze it- that would take forever, and I'm pretty sure that most of you have lost interest just in these couple of paragraphs surprisingly not a record for my blog. I'm basically just going to go on a rant about a couple of egregious oversights- because while I'm still excited to get this set and see it on the battlefield, WizKids still made some pretty big bonehead mistakes that need to be poked fun at.
1) Character selection matters:
Since you're supposed to start off with a positive when you're giving feedback, I will say this about the characters that WizKids put into AC clix- at least there was no obvious money-grubbing "alternate" costumes that you usually see on toys and action figures, a la 'Casual Friday' Batman or 'Post-Labor Day White Pants-wearing Batman' or 'Thor in Donald Blake shirt'.
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| Also known as "Chad Kroeger goes to Asgard" |
Brotherhood
- Ezio- Obvious.
- Mario Auditore- Died in the beginning, but a critical player from ACII. Passable.
- La Volpe- Love him here.
- Bartolomeo d'Alviano- Ditto.
- Cesere Borgia- The villain of the story. Had to be here.
- Octavian de Valois- Had to wikipedia him just to see who the heck he was. Questionable inclusion.
- Ezio- Again, it's the Ezio show.
- Prince Ahmet- I guess he's the villain of the story...
- Yusef Tazim- Other than the hot young chick, this is Ezio's only friend in Constantinople.
- The Guardian- Who
- The Bombardier- Is
- The Vanguard- This???
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| Ezio, my eyes are up here... |
Because this are some pretty blatant omissions here.
Let's just get the guards out of the way here. I'm not a businessman, so I can't know for sure- but I would think that when you have a set of twelve characters that you are releasing with a flat rarity in displays of 24 (so far all accounts indicate that each display contains two full sets), there will quickly come a point of diminishing return on a consumer's investment and it will be very easy to complete the set and thus no reason to continue to buy blind boosters in the store (thus potentially costing you money).
But if you fill up some of those slots with 'generic' characters- characters that are desirable to have in multiples- well, doesn't that increase the amount of purchases? It would have to, right? People are more likely to blindly buy something when there is an increased opportunity that the blind purchase will pay off above and beyond what they paid into it. That's not really happening with the set list as it is now. But with a few guards or generic assassins? Seems much more likely.
But enough about the red shirts- let's talk about some of the big name characters that they missed out on. Even non-Assassin's Creed fans will recognize some of these names:
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Niccolò Machiavelli
- Rodrigio Borgia
- Claudia
- Subject 16
- Desmond
- Altaïr
- Minerva, Jupiter, Juno (WizKids has shown that they can do power interpretations for one-off characters or very powerful beings like Uatu who don't really demonstrate their powers...so I would have minimum reservation about them interpreting the First Civilization peoples)
- Caterina Sforza (If Mario gets to be in the Brotherhood set, then Caterina would have just as much claim to it even though she's more prevalent in ACII)
- Harlequin (If they're going to do Multiplayer character figures...how can they not make Harlequin?)
I get it that not everyone who plays Heroclix is a fan of Assassin's Creed, so this was already a niche property within a niche property. But in my opinion (and many others if you are to believe what people write on the Internet), having a da Vinci figure would have completely changed people's buying habits. Because all of a sudden, you aren't just buying Heroclix from a video game that you may not have ever played (or cared about)- you're buying the chance to have freaking Leonardo da Vinci on your team! LEONARDO DA VINCI!!!
That's why I think WizKids making clix based on the super hero movies is such a great idea. I care nothing about Lucius Fox as a Heroclix figure. But you bet your sweet bippy I'm nerding out for Morgan Freeman to do battle with the forces of darkness. And I don't need plain-clothes Tony Stark running around on the map. But Robert Downey Jr.? Heck yes I'll drink to that! Now factor in hundreds of hours playing these Assassin's Creed games and multiply it by- again- Leofreakingnardo da Vinci, and you have quite possibly the most anticipated civilian Heroclix figure of all time.
Except, no. Somebody somewhere thought that it'd be better to have Octavi-whatever de Valwhogivesacrap in the set that now fewer people are going to buy.
As for Altaïr...he may not be an actual historical figure, but to those of us who have played this series since its' genesis he will always be the one that took our Leap of Faith virginity. And that's a special, special moment in a nerd's life. The frustrating thing here is that it's not like it'd be a stretch to include him- he's on the freaking cover of Assassin's Creed: Revelations!
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| Granted, he's like a shadowy ghost standing behind Ezio |
While there is no direct correlation between sets themed around one figure (think Hammer of Thor, Web of Spider-man, Hulk, Superman, etc.), the kick-assness of that figures dial, and how well those sets sell- the popular perspective is that in those character-themed sets, the main character should kick ass. It's their set, after all.
Assassin's Creed clix gave us two versions of the main character; unfortunately, neither one of them seems to truly capture what makes Ezio great.
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| Pictured: What makes Ezio great |
This is what they gave me.
First of all (again, really trying to be kind of positive here), I'm glad that the grenade mechanic is making a return in this set. It's a wonderful way to replicate the bombs from Revelations, and it's just an all-around cool tool to have in the Heroclix tool box. Of course, WizKids screwed it up and gave him only 1 grenade to use- the smoke grenade. Smoke grenade??? That's like going to an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet and just eating salad. I know we're not talking about smoke grenades.
Plus he's already got the power to make smoke. He's got that power in spades. It's called 'Smoke Cloud' and while it's largely a useless power, at least Ezio has it on every click. Every. Single. Click.
Ugh.
They couldn't have given him a click or two of energy explosion (caltrop or datura bomb), pulse wave (splinter bomb), quake (wielding a pike), incapacitate (throwing knives), penetrating/psychic blast (pistol/crossbow), or poison (poison blade)? Apparently Ezio, after years of fighting against the Templars, somehow thought it would be okay to sub out all of his awesome weapons and just load up on mini-fog machines. Oh well, at least he can lay down a smoke cloud on turn one and then push to attack next turn without fear of pushing damage because he has indomitable.
Wait a second- he doesn't have indomitable?
OH MY GOSH!!! How can Ezio not have indomitable? It's an essential component of the character. Geez, Prince Ahmet gets it. Even Yusef Tazim gets it. But Ezio doesn't get it? Come on, WizKids.
You could make an argument (that I would laugh at) against Brotherhood Ezio getting it. But in Revelations, he's like 52 years old and still running around on roof-tops and jumping into hay piles. In the beginning of the game he actually gets captured and is just about to get hanged when he turns his execution on his captors and escapes. LIKE A BOSS.
I'll spare you my diatribe on his defensive powers. Suffice it to say that in my humble opinion, the dial designers have never played a game of Assassin's Creed and instead decided to purposefully sink the flagship character of my favorite video game series.
Despite my frustrations I'm still buying the set, which I realize means that I'm either a hypocrite or an idiot. As consumers, our words mean nothing to these corporations- but our wallets mean everything. It would be a million times more effective for me to voice my displeasure with some of their choices by just abstaining from the product entirely. Unfortunately, that's not how I'm wired. Here, in America, that's not how we're wired. We want everything now, the way we want it, and...well, we'll still buy it even if it's late and not really what we were thinking...but we're going to take to the airwaves and let everybody know that the Powers That Be sure did slap us in the face in their giving us what we don't need and taking our money all the way to the bank.
PIC- Thor- http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5270/5651772371_a1d5a36a79.jpg
Sofia- http://guides.gamepressure.com/assassinscreedrevelations/gfx/word/1751616812.jpg
Ezio- http://www.totalvideogames.com/img/uploaded/www.totalvideogames.com_69738_AC2_S_052.jpg
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