Imagine you and your good friend have a large disagreement- in order to resolve this issue, you decide upon the most brutal and primal means of resolution ever: a street fight. You agree on a time and spend a week preparing yourself, working the bag, etc. On the agreed upon day, you show up with several friends around to witness. Your friend shows up with a hand gun. Now there wasn’t specifically a rule against handguns. Your friends officiate that this is fair, and in reality you should have prepared yourself for this possibility and worn a bulletproof vest.

Every time I play Nightcrawler I feel like a dirty evil genius. I usually win but it doesn’t feel earned. The most common response I get when stating I don’t like playing against Nightcrawler is that Kid Zoom negates his Hypersonic Speed which makes him much less amazing. I feel like this is wearing a bulletproof vest to a street fight just in case they bring a handgun. It’s an arms race that was never intended. I don’t know what piece represents the armor piercing bullets in this case -- perhaps the Crimson Gem -- but this analogy has gone on far enough.

The statistics to beat him are astounding. Even with your [11] attack against his [19] defense, you have a 41.7% chance of rolling the 8 necessary to make the attack. Making it past the shape change roll will reduce that by 1/3 ( or just 27.5%). Reduce that by another 1/3 for Super Senses and we’re at 18%. That’s assuming you can either negate stealth or somehow get him to finish a move in adjacency or in clear terrain. Even with a [12] attack (which I rarely bring) you only move up to a 25% probability. Twenty Five percent!

To summarize the odds aren’t in you favor, and when I see them spelled out like that I don’t want to deal with it.

I’m not here to teach you how to beat Nightcrawler. I’m not that good at this game, and my track record against Nightcrawler is something like 1-9... with that one win coming against someone who picked up the game for the first time that day (I regret nothing). I’m not here to argue that Nightcrwarler is broken (he is) or that he should be banned (he shouldn’t). I’m saying that he makes your opponent enjoy their day less and I want to find organic solutions for eliminating this plague.

My solution to never losing to Nightcrawler is to never play him. I intend to create as much animosity towards someone playing that piece at the weekly friendly tournament at the local comic book store (WFTALCBS for short, because I love unnecessary acronyms) as reasonably/legally possible (obvious exception for league tourneys where major items are on the line). I just simply don’t want to think about each WFTALCBS scenario in regards to whether or not I need to bring a flak jacket.

Mike Wethington wrote a great article about how he creates a positive enviroment by making people bringing cheesy pieces play the toughest competition (see: How to Build a Successful Venue). I say make Nightcrawler teams always play Kid Zoom or Bullseye (or other Nightcrawler teams) until they quit showing up. If we all know not to bring the handgun to the street fight because you’ll get the bulletproof vest team, it will probably stop. If, however, you can’t pass such drastic WFTALCBS legislation, then I have a foolproof method that I’ve assembled into a handy guide:

(click to enlarge)