Karl "Hair10" Markovich was one of the earliest HeroClix rules arbiter for Wizkids for many years. He's since left the world of arbiting, but his legacy still stands. We sit down with Karl to get his thoughts on HeroClix, and more.

The Le: You mentioned the Special Powers that Ghost Rider and Firestorm needs. What's your opinion of the amount of figures that are being given Special Powers these days?

Hair10: You're opening a can of worms with this one. :-p I'll try to keep my opinion on it short...

We have special powers now so it would be impossible to remove them from the game. Personally, I'd like to see special powers be truly "special". Do we need every fifth figure to have some version of modified Perplex? No, not really. Giving them the standard Perplex would usually accomplish the desired result. Did we need Avengers Quicksilver to have HSS, but only option 1? Not at all. Almost nobody used HSS option 2... and it went away anyhow! There's a bunch of special powers that aren't special at all. They're just some rehashed, remashed, redone version of something that would have been just fine on the figure in the first place. Special powers should be really special... something that you just can't represent without it. Figures like Deadman come to mind. He simply couldn't be made without the special power and been 'character accurate'.

Basically, I don't think every fig needs 3-4 special powers. It needlessly complicates and slows down the game. They should be used sparingly and only when absolutely needed. As an example, I played a game this past weekend that was a figure draft event (you and your opponent each brought figs and then drafted them before the game started). Just for kicks I broke out a bunch of the Indy figs... the dark Judges, Angelus, unique Hellboy, etc. It was a breath of fresh air to NOT have to continually stop the game, refer to a card, and say "now what does that character's attack power do again?"!

I would be all for "split color' power slots on the dial to represent those times when a special power just represents two powers, such as "This character may use Leap/Climb and Stealth". Just split that power slot with black and orange like they did with the original Batman promo fig from Hypertime.

The Le: Do you recall any ruling changes/clarifications that you fought for, and won?

Hair10: There were many, but nothing I can recall off the top of my head. It probably wouldn't make a good story even if I could think of one. You may want to throw this question out and ask me about keywords or something instead. HA! :)