Critical Clix is a brand new series of articles that asks a simple question: is this good or bad? If it's good then it's a Critical Hit. If it's bad then it's a Critical Miss.

May 2011 brings us a brand new PAC and rulebook. Let's take a look at the standard powers and figure out what's a Critical Hit and what's a Critical Miss.

CRITICAL HIT: QUAKE
Give this character a close combat action; this character’s damage value becomes 2 and is locked. Make a close combat attack that targets all opposing characters this character can attack with a close combat attack. Each character that takes damage from this attack is knocked back.

What a nice change to this power. The change here is subtle but important -- when using Quake, the character's damage is locked at [2], even if that character's natural damage is less than 2! So all those [1] damage characters have a reason to use Quake!

CRITICAL MISS: BATTLE FURY
This character ignores Shape Change, can’t make ranged combat attacks, can’t be targeted by Mind Control or Incapacitate, and can’t be carried.

I've read a lot of comments praising this change, for making it more useful, but that's far from the truth. The addition of ignoring Incapacitate and Shape Change is yet another situation where Battle Fury is completely useless if no one is using it... and so Battle Fury becomes a "situational power" that's dependent on the oppsing team build... much more so than with any other power. And even if your opposition has one character with Incapacitate or Shape Change, it won't make up for the heinous restrictions that is incurred with this power.

Battle Fury should really be something akin to Wolverine's Berserker Rage, and this just isn't reflected here. Keep the restrictions if you must, but Battle Fury should also come with some sort of Move + Attack ability, or maybe even Charge.

As such, this current change is a complete Critical Miss.