Giant Man.  For those of you that missed the Ultimates storyline, he is the one that beats his girlfriend L and then gets totally punked for it by Captain America J

 

He regains some of his lustre in the Heroclix platform.  His physical attributes are decent but what sets him appart is the brand spanking new game mechanic for giant figures.  A short rundown here will help some of you that are unfamiliar with these rules.

 

-          Regular figures do not block lines of sight to or from a Giant Figure.

-          Giant figures are considered adjacent to characters up to two squares away.  Regular figures that are two squares away cannot consider a Giant figure to be adjacent (more on this later).

-          They cannot be carried, are immune to knockback and Telekinesis.

-          They fail to break away only on rolls of 1 or 2.

-          They ignore hindering or elevated terrain for movement purposes.

 

The stats of Giant-Man have the potential to be used to good results by a player who plans his strategy right. He starts with 4 clicks of damage, a 16 defence with Inv. and Super Strength. Those can be good stats for a standard brick.  But he’s got something more.  Remember, characters do not block line of sight to and from him.  This means that your Con Artist can be anywhere with 10 squares and still be able to Perplex his natural 4 clicks damage.  His 12 speed will help him cover large areas to try and control the board.

 

The great way to abuse the new mechanic is to place Giant-Man 2 squares away from a character and attack.  The victim is going to have to break away to enter the square right next to Giant-Man to land his attack and the great thing is that Giant-Man can just move two squares away and have the victim go through that all over again.  The is not fool proof as you will still be subject to attacks from characters with flight, phasing, Leap/Climb, etc. who will not need to break away to come all the way into your 2 square sanctuary.

 

Not everything is perfect when you are a Giant sized figure.  Against ranged attacks, Giant-Man is very easy to hit (or Outwit) because characters do not block line of sight.  His defence is low enough that even scrubs can try and take shots at him. Giant-Man is going to be a sitting duck for ranged attacks but he’s a great control piece against earthbound characters with no ranged attacks (Wolverine, Sabertooth and Colossus for exemple).

 

His stats are ok but the potential to play the game in an all new way is well worth the character in my mind.

 

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