[Lazy Orang]

Okay, I just wanted to post a quick rundown of some of my thought processes with this design:

1) He has Amateur Insect Control off Eric because he thematically needed to be able to do it, but giving him full Radio Insect Control from Hank would have cheapened Hank’s role as the primary Insect commander, something I was unwilling to do, especially since Hank is the original and, to many people (though not myself), still most iconic, Ant-Man.

2) Small but Mighty is intended to be this guy’s signature power, my attempt at giving him a role that’s distinct and different from the other Ant-Men available. Hank’s, as I said, the insect commander, Eric’s the flying, disappearing irritant with Agent synergies, so with Scott, I wanted to explore a direction the other Ant-Men haven’t yet - namely, I wanted to represent the combat potential afforded to him by his tiny size, how it makes him hard to see coming, tricky to hit, and how it allowing him to put his full strength into a punch on a point the size of a pin prick makes him a surprisingly effective fighter. As such, opponents roll 2 fewer attack and defence dice against him - he is, basically, the combat Ant-Man, and hopefully a fairly useful filler unit.

3) Tiny Thief, as well as incorporating Tiny Stealth, is meant to represent one of the more distinct differences in his role and character from the other Ant-Men - the fact that he is, well, a Thief. As such, he is able, like Black Cat, to steal glyphs from enemy figures he passes through. I didn’t want to make this his main thing, which is definitely Small but Mighty, as I don’t want him to feel restricted to matches where someone’s carrying a glyph or there’s one on the board, but it should hopefully be a helpful, fun and thematic touch in those matchups.

4) His class is Thief for fairly obvious reasons, given Point 3. This will give him synergy with Amanda Waller and the Crime Alley Crooks (and Ventriloquist, but... yeah, no). I don’t mind these synergies in the least, in fact I like them (given the fact that he was a former master thief who was given the choice to be Ant-Man by Hank as a last chance to redeem himself, I don’t feel him being drafted into the Suicide Squad is too far out there) but I don’t want him to feel like his Thief synergies are necessary or fundamental to playing him effectively - if the Suicide Squad is a fun and viable build for him then that’s great, but I don’t want it to be at the expense of seeing him run with the Avengers, which is honestly the primary build I have in mind for him. I doubt this will be the case, especially given that Amateur Insect Control requires you to reveal an OM on his card to use it, but I thought I should clarify my thoughts on his synergies.

With that said, I know he’s not ready to undergo any official playtesting yet, and I know that I’m not allowed to do the initial playtesting anyway, but I ran an unofficial, preliminary test for him a few weeks ago and thought it might be helpful to post it.

Name Of The Playtest Unit: Ant-Man (Scott Lang)

Preliminary Test
Map: Conflict Chernobyl (no glyphs)
Armies:
Ant-Man (Scott Lang) (70 points), Captain America (C3G), Bucky, Iron Man (Hulkbuster), Giant Man, 3x Killer Bee, 4x Fire Ant Swarm (995)
vs.
Red Skull (C3G), 2x Hydra Agents, Black Adam, Titanium Man (1,000)

Spoiler Alert!

Overview of Ant-Man’s performance:
Damage inflicted through normal attacks: 1 HYDRA Agent taken out, 2 wounds on Titanium Man.
Extra wounds thanks to Small but Mighty: 1 on a HYDRA Agent, 1 on Titanium Man.
Wounds blocked through Small but Mighty: 4 from Titanium Man.
Insect Heroes activated through Amateur Insect Control: Killer Bee five times.
Glyphs stolen through Tiny Thief: None
Engagements left through Tiny Thief: None

Round One

HYDRA claims the initiative, and Red Skull and four agents advance.
Cap and Bucky run forwards, and Steve throws his shield, knocking out one HYDRA Agent.
Four HYDRA Agents advance, one engaging Bucky, and they open fire, achieving nothing. Schmidt advances and unloads his Dual Lugers to no effect.
Giant Man runs forward, knocking the HYDRA Agent engaged with Bucky out with ease.
Four HYDRA Agents open fire on Bucky, gunning him down. Red Skull charges Steve, but is swatted away by Hank Pym, and the Cosmic Cube is knocked from his hands. Recovering and on his knees, he fires his dual lugers at the giant, inflicting two wounds.
Steve charges Red Skull, punching him from height for a wound.

Round Two

The Avengers claim the initiative, four ant swarms tunnel forwards, and Steve punches Schmidt for a wound.
One HYDRA Agent charges Pym while another opens fire from his sniping position, but neither hurt him. Two more HYDRA Agents take their knives out against Captain America, but achieve nothing. Schmidt breaks engagement from Steve, being winged on the way out - reeling and nearly unconscious, the war-criminal uses the Tesseract to displace Rogers into the water next to him before smashing him from height with a deadly blow, inflicting three wounds, inspiring Black Adam to fly to the front lines.
Pym breaks engagement from a HYDRA Agent, taking a bullet on the way out, in order to charge Schmidt. He punches the Nazi, and while the blow itself fails to knock him out, it does knock him into a pool of water and against the bank at the other side, which he his his head against, redering him unconscious.
Four HYDRA Agents open fire on Giant Man - while three find their bullets just bounce off, one hits just the right spot, killing Hank Pym, whose massive form collapses to the ground.
Stark flies forwards.
Four HYDRA Agents open fire on Steve, but their bullets bounce off his shield.

Round Three

HYDRA claims the initiative, and Black Adam punches Steve from height, but his blow is absorbed by Cap’s shield.
Steve moves to equal height with Black Adam, punching him for a wound.
Once again Black Adam’s blow is absorbed by Cap’s shield.
Stark barrels into Theo, hitting him with a massive attack, which, fortunately for the antagonist, only inflicts a wound.
Black Adam finally breaks Cap’s skull open.
Tony punches Black Adam for a wound.

Round Four

The Avengers claim the initiative, and the ants advance, two swarms into melee with Black Adam, one engaging a HYDRA Agent. Stark hits Black Adam for a wound.
Black Adam smashes Stark for two wounds.
Stark hammers Black Adam for two more wounds, leaving him reeling.
Black Adam pounds Stark for three wounds, leaving his suit’s systems’ breaking.
Stark knocks Black Adam out.

Round Five

The Avengers claim the initiative, and the Fire Ants tunnel to engage as many HYDRA Agents as possible. Stark engages and knocks out a HYDRA Agent.
A HYDRA Agent on height shoots Stark, but his bullet bounces off. One in reserve runs up, firing wildly - a bullet enters one of the holes in the armour made by Black Adam, and severs a vital cable, shutting his suit down. Two HYDRA Agents spray bullets at the ants swarming them, killing many and forcing the rest to scuttle away.
Scott rides a bee to the front line, before dismounting, leaping at a Hydra agent, and... blanking.
Titanium Man advances, shooting at a Fire Ant Swarm since he can’t see Ant-Man, incinerating the swarm.
Scott commands a killer bee to fly at Titanium Man, but it fails to sting him. Scott knocks a HYDRA Agent out without him even seeing him.
Titanium Man escapes the bee, engaging Ant-Man and trying to take him out, but Ant-Man evades.

Round Six

Titanium Man tries to strike Ant-Man, but is again evaded.
A bee flies up and fails to sting Titanium Man. Scott also fails to harm him.
Titanium Man fails to kill the Ant.
The bee doesn’t sting. Ant-Man gets between the mercenary’s armour plates and hits him for a wound.
Titanium Man fails to achieve anything.
The bee gets its stinger between the Russian’s armour plates, stinging him for a wound and dying in the process, and Ant-Man hits him for a wound.

Round Seven

Titanium Man kills Ant-Man, taking out the Avengers’ entire round - there are only two Killer Bees and one Fire Ant Swarm left, so I’m leaving it here. I wouldn’t in an official test, but this is an unofficial preliminary, Ant-Man is dead, and HYDRA ain’t losing from here, probably isn’t even getting hurt anymore, so... that is all.

HYDRA victorious, Titanium Man 3 wounds, 4 HYDRA Agents.

Overview: I'm happy with him, thus far - he's a pretty damn fun filler. I'm not sure how much he really should be, as I'm not so good at judging filler units and his 1 Life nature makes him inherently swingy, but 70 points seems like a good starting place. Titanium Man was a good match-up for him - low enough attack for Small But Mighty to be fairly crippling, and no special or multi-attack - he’ll probably go down a lot easier to a lot of other figures.
One thing I noticed here is that a small number of figures (mostly lower level common squads) are literally unable to kill him unless they have height or some other bonus, since their attack would be being reduced to 0 - this should probably be fixed, but that should be fairly easily done.