Flash (Barry Allen) (Justice League)

[IAmBatman]

FLASH (BARRY ALLEN)



Card PDF

NAME = FLASH
IDENTITY = BARRY ALLEN

UNIQUENESS = UNIQUE HERO
SPECIES = METAHUMAN
CLASS = PROTECTOR
PERSONALITY = BOLD

SIZE/HEIGHT = MEDIUM 5

LIFE = 4

MOVE = 12
RANGE = 1
ATTACK = 5
DEFENSE = 7

POINTS = 270

SWIFT JUSTICE
During setup, place 1 Justice Marker on this card for each Justice League unit on your team, up to 3. After rolling for initiative, you may remove a Justice Marker from this card to add 8 to your roll.

FASTEST MAN ALIVE
At the start of your turn, do up to X of the following, where X is the number of Justice Markers on this card:
• place Flash on any empty space on the battlefield.
• choose an adjacent object Flash has not yet chosen this round. Inflict or heal 1 wound on it.
• push an adjacent character 1 space with Stealth, or up to 4 spaces with Stealth if it is an ally.
• place an Item within 2 spaces of Flash on an empty space within 2 spaces of Flash.

SUPERSPEED
Flash may move through all figures and does not have to stop his movement when entering water spaces. After Flash's attack phase, he may maneuver up to 2 spaces.

FACTION = JUSTICE LEAGUE
PUBLISHER = DC
KEYWORDS = Science, Speedster
SYMBOLS = STEALTH

WORLDS COLLIDE: As the fastest man alive, the one thing Flash cannot outrun is tragedy!

Resources and Rulings

• The suggested figure for this unit is a Heroclix figure: Rebirth #003/#047 / The Flash
• See this card's wiki page for synergies and strategies!

Credits

• Legacy design: Ronin
• Card art: Arkham
• Comic creators: Robert Kanigher and ‎Carmine Infantino

Updates

• N/A

[IAmBatman]

OK, getting this guy rolling with Green Arrow since he's another likely non-recruiter.

I wasn't sure where to go with his Class if we're ditching Champion. I lean towards Protector as the "hyper fast, gotta save them all" version represented here would have protection at the front of mind. Investigator could be fun, but leans more towards his civilian identity, IMO.

I could see bumping his cost 10-20 points after playing him a bunch. Would have to think about what that would look like for the faction as a whole before doing it, though.

Not too many changes in wording. In Fastest Man Alive I went with inflict or heal language since heal is now a term we can use to say remove wound markers.

Superspeed is trimmed down here after some talk on Discord and the disengage part is obviously split out to the Stealth symbol. That made it a bit tough for him to give people Superspeed when pushing them with Fastest Man Alive, so I went with Stealth instead. I'm open to thoughts on whether that was a good direction or not.

For Superspeed, we thought to make it less quirky with different triggers for each bonus move of 4 spaces, we could just take that restriction out and drop the bonus move to 2 spaces. That should also reduce the kiting on all of them a bit, IMO.

For keywords, I went with Science (as his other version is a Scientist, and it feels appropriate for the character) and Speedster (since folks expressed a desire to bond superspeed/speed force types together without having to reference those abilities).

For symbols, only Stealth seemed to fit the bill.

Not sure if we want to do anything with damage types here. I could maybe see something with the wound he inflicts with Fastest Man Alive being sonic damage to represent how fast he's going?

[Yodaking]

You must have copy and pasted from me some where along the line as World's Collide has the ' that shouldn't be there.

Crime Fighter leaped out at me as an interesting option, but maybe that can be saved for the first Flash card and Protector used here.

I wouldn't do anything with damage types here.

[IAmBatman]

Yeah, not sure where I copied that from. Gonna check all my threads now.

[japes]

Protector feels good.

[Splash]

Flash and Spidey are both in the same vibe of peppy Crime Fighter do-gooder, I'd go with that unless the card goes into his detective skills. It'd be fun for them to pal around. I'd give Wally Crime Fighter over Barry though, so Protector is good too.

[MrNobody]

Is Barry a comics-level Scientist?

[IAmBatman]

Fun snippets I found while researching that answer:

Barry is also immune to telepathic attacks and control as he can shift his thoughts at a speed faster than normal thought. Through "speed-reading", he can absorb large amounts of information into his short-term memory, which remain in his mind just long enough for him to make use of it. Using this technique, Barry was able to learn enough about building work to rebuild a destroyed apartment building.

Looks like he should thematically have Mental Shield!

I know he applies scientific principles to how he uses his speed all the time, is a forensic chemist, and has the ability to learn about and apply just about any concept (for a limited time), so I guess it depends on what "comics-level" means to you. I was mostly going off of OG Barry being classed as a Scientist for us.

He also made

this list

this list

.

[Ronin]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

SWIFT JUSTICE
During setup, place 1 blue Justice Marker on this card for each Justice League card on your team, to a max of 3. After rolling for initiative, you may remove a Justice Marker from this card to add 8 to your roll.

FASTEST MAN ALIVE
At the start of your turn, do up to X of the following, where X is the number of Justice Markers on this card:
• place Flash on any empty space on the battlefield.
• choose an adjacent destructible object Flash has not yet chosen this round. Inflict or heal 1 wound on it.
• maneuver an adjacent figure 1 space, or up to 4 spaces if it is an ally, during which it gains the Stealth ability.
• place an item within 2 spaces of Flash on an empty space within 2 spaces of Flash.

Hmm. Not too late to tighten up "destructible object" as a term, is it?

Wouldn't mind doing something mild here to curb the mechiness - honestly not like a big issue for me for him to have some synergy there, mostly just want to make sure he's not something that dedicated vehicle people will have to compete with. Like if we ever had JL pilot people (are there characters like that?) I wouldn't want him to put them out of a job or make them work super hard to be the best pilots for their vehicles.

Not sure if it's needed, just figured I'd mention while the hood is up. Also fine w/a point bump.

SUPERSPEED
Flash may move through all figures and does not have to stop his movement when entering water spaces. After an activation with Flash, he may move up to 2 spaces.

Would it be a good idea to express "not being stopped by terrain" more broadly? Or do we want to be strict about water here? Molten lava also stops movement and we could invent new terrain types that do that also.

(Barry probably is not running across lava but across the broad spectrum of speedsters I assume some of em are heat resistant)

Could we put the bonus movement after his attack phase instead of after his activation to keep it 'inside' the activation?

....

Not digging Mental Shield, doesn't feel iconic for him.

[Arch-vile]

Barry's definitely a big science guy. Flash gets mind controlled by Grodd all the time, so I'd avoid Mental Shield.

Going broad with "not stopped by terrain" for Superspeed makes sense.

Surprised JL Flash has felt strong to people, he's felt worthwhile to me but nowhere close to broken, especially after his once-per-round nerf to the DO power. His offensive output is low for his cost so you're paying a lot for support.

[MrNobody]

Agreed on skipping Mental Shield.

I guess I'm mainly thinking that if Science synergy ends up letting a character make a Teleportation Belt or creating clones or whatever, is that going to feel weird for Flash?

My immediate thought with characters like him, Spidey, or Bruce Banner is that certain designs will feel more at home with the Science-y stuff than others. Like FF Spidey? Definitely a Science Spidey. But that doesn't mean every Spider-Man has to have the tag.

So to rephrase the question, do we feel like "SCIENCE!" is important to Barry within a JL context?

[IAmBatman]

Barry built the Cosmic Treadmill, which has to count for something.

Sounds like Mental Shield is out.

For the cost portion, Flash has incredible utility. Pushing folks around that easily and passively can really help your allies and mess with enemy plans. And of course he's strong inside a mech and good at taking down mechs or hitting enemies with trees, etc. If folks don't think he needs a boost, I'm OK with that, I've just had a fair amount of success with him in competitive environments.

That said, I do feel like the JL need at least one or two pretty strong figures to keep up with the Avengers. Also, keeping cost as is makes this thread easier to move forward.

I'm good with the not stopping on terrain and idea for how to time the extra move.