Comic Book Battles - Episode 9: Avengers Vs. X-Men #4 pt. 2

Hello again!  This week, we take a brief tour of Tabula Rasa with a few of our friends from the X-Men and Avengers.  As you may recall in last week's episode, Captain America gave everyone assigned locations to have really cool battl...err...to find Hope.  He then took Wolverine with him to the Savage Land and kicked everyone's Canadian little person into the middle of the antarctic.  But we'll talk more about that later.  For now, let's enjoy some mindless violence!

The Comic Book

"Avengers Vs. X-Men (Part Four)"

Writers Jonathan Hickman

Pencilers John Romita Jr.

Inkers Scott Hanna

Colourists Laura Martin

Letterers Chris Eliopoulos

Editors John Denning, Lauren Sankovitch, Nick Lowe, Tom Brevoort

This episode is going to be short and sweet.  There's not really much exposition or story to cover.  It's all action this week!  We'll get back to the Hope saga soon enough.  For now, let's just enjoy watching Benjamin Grimm punch Namor in the face.  Really hard.

Also, I've got some gaps in my X-History, but I would love for someone to explain to me what Hepzibah's doing hanging out with the X-Men.  Last I saw her, she was a Starjammer making outer space whoopie with Cyclop's space-pirate dad.  I have a knowledge gap from about '95-'12, so...yeah.  Space-cat!

On a side note, for those of you who aren't familiar with Tabula Rasa, it was introduced during Rick Remender's run on Uncanny X-Force, in Uncanny X-Force #15.  In Beaver Lake, Montana, the mutant named Genocide basically blew the whole town up.  Dark Beast (Beast from the Age of Apocalypse dimension) used one of the Celestials' Life Seeds, which created a domed structure with a ten-mile radius.  The dome collapsed the next day, but inside of it, 130 million years had passed.  It's an unforgiving and deadly alien environment in the middle of Montana, basically.  That run of X-Force was great, by the way.  You should read it.

The Battle

The map for this battle is Krakoa again.  Yes, I realize that makes two weeks of Krakoa in a row.  Sue me.  It was the only map I had that contained both jungle terrain, and a way for the map itself to beat the crap out of both teams.  In case you missed last week, it's a giant jungle with a face.

Now let's take a look at our X-Men:

X-Men

avx011 V Namor

Team: X-Men

Range: 0 :bolt:

Points: 225

Keywords: Atlantis, Defenders, Illuminati, Ruler, X-Men

(Improved) Boiling Rage: Improved Movement: Ignores Characters

(Special) Imperius Rex!: When Namor is hit with an attack or given a second action token, put a Rage token on his card. Before Namor rolls for an attack, you may remove a Rage token from his card so that the attack deals penetrating damage.

(Defense) Entrenched Recovery: Namor can use Toughness. When Namor occupies water terrain, he can use Regeneration and, when it's not your turn, opposing characters can't draw a line of fire to him.

cm018 V Hepzibah

Team: No Affiliation

Range: 6 :bolt:

Points: 27

Keywords: Martial Artist, Starjammers, X-Men

wxm018 V Sunspot

Team: No Affiliation

Range: 0 :bolt:

Points: 76

Keywords: Fallen Angels, Hellfire Club, New Mutants, X-Corps, X-Force, X-Men

(Damage) Secondary Mutation: Sunspot has "Wing Symbol" and a range value of 6.

Boy oh boy, that Hepzibah is garbage, huh?  We really need modern remakes of about half of the Starjammers, to be honest.  I'm shocked that they weren't in the Guardians of the Galaxy set that was just released.  Hopefully, Namor and Sunspot can pick up the slack.  The total point value comes out at 328.

Avengers

ca014 V Luke Cage
Team: Avengers
Range: 0 :bolt:
Points: 98
Keywords: Avengers, Heroes for Hire, Marvel Knights, Thunderbolts

(Defense) Bulletproof Skin: Luke Cage can use Willpower and Toughness. When a character attacks Luke Cage with a ranged combat attack, he can use Invulnerability instead of Toughness.

m10a003 E Thing
Team: Fantastic Four
Range: 0 :bolt:
Points: 128
Keywords: Avengers, Brute, Celebrity, Fantastic Four, Soldier

(Damage) Lemme Grab Somethin': Thing can use Super Strength.  Give Thing a move action when he has no action tokens and is not holding an object; after actions resolve, give him a standard light object from outside the game.

ih007 V She-Hulk

Team: No Affiliation

Range: 0 :bolt:

Points: 105

Keywords: Avengers, Fantastic Four, Heroes for Hire, Lady Liberators, S.H.I.E.L.D.

(Special) Breaking The Fourth Wall: When She-Hulk makes an attack, after actions resolve you may destroy one square of blocking terrain or one wall that is adjacent to a targeted character.

And that also comes out to 328 points.  Hooray for point symmetry!  Luke Cage is one of my favorite characters in comics and I love this clix of him as well.  We saw Thing tear it up in AvX #1, so we know he can dish out the pain.  I've never used She-Hulk before.  All in all, I would say the X-Men have their work cut out for them.

The X-Men win the roll-off for first turn.
Namor moves to C15 and picks up a Super Heavy object
Sunspot moves to J16 and picks up a Super Heavy as well
Hepzibah moves out to I14
The Island doesn't do anything

Thing moves to H8 and grabs a heavy object
Luke Cage moves to L8
She-Hulk moves to L9
The Island does nothing

Sunspot moves to K9
Namor moves to I9
Hepzibah clears

Luke rolls a 1 for his leadership
Everyone clears
The plants come alive on the island, but no one is in hindering terrain.

Hepzibah moves to J8
Everyone else clears

Luke punches Sunspot and hits on a 17 for 4 damage, reduced to 3 by Sunspot's toughness

She-Hulk hits Sunspot on an 18 and deals 4 damage, KOing him.  Ouch.  I was way too aggressive with my X-Men here.  

Thing punches Namor and hits on a 18 for 5 damage.  Namor rolls for his impervious and fails, taking 3 damage.

The Island comes alive and shoots at Namor, missing on a 14

Namor punches Thing with Imperious Rex!  Thing fails his Shape Change roll, and Namor hits him on a 16 for 5 damage. 

Hepzibah shoots with Ranged Combat Expert pumping her damage by +2, but misses Luke Cage with a 15

The Island comes alive and shoots at Thing, but misses on a 15

She-Hulk charges Hepzibah, moving to K8.  She hits on a 17, but Hepzibah makes her Super Senses roll on a 5, so she takes 0 damage and She-Hulk takes 1 push damage.  She now has Outwit, so Namor can kiss that Impervious goodbye

Luke Cage charges to K9 and hits Hepzibah on an 18.  She makes her Super Senses roll again, because I'm the best ever at Super Senses.  Again, 0 damage to Hepzibah and one damage to Luke for the push.

Thing punches Namor and hits on a 16, dealing 3 damage since Namor's impervious is gone thanks to She-Hulk   

The Island does nothing

Namor tries to flurry Thing, using Imperious Rex! for the first attack, which misses on a 14.  He then misses the second attack on a 13

Hepzibah clears

The Island does nothing

All our Avengers clear
The Island does nothing

Hepzibah uses Ranged Combat Expert to target Thing with +2 damage, but misses on a 15
Namor clears
The Island does nothing

Luke hits Hepzibah on a 14.  Yes, a 14.  She fails super senses and takes 3 damage
She-Hulk hits on an 18, dealing another 3 damage which KOs poor Hepzibah.  Better luck next time, space-cat.
Thing finishes things up by hitting Namor for 3 more damage, KOing the fish-man.

Boy, space-cat, fish-man and sun-spot all had it pretty rough, huh?

Winner: Avengers

This one went way faster than I would have expected.  I honestly think the X-Men never stood a chance.  All the heavy lifting would have had to come from Namor, and if rolls didn't go his way (which they didn't), he wasn't long for this world.  Meanwhile, the Avengers had 3 big bruisers, all of them credible melee threats in their own right.

Next week, we have another round of senseless violence!  Stay tuned!