HelmAverse Supers - Reinforcements Arrive

[Matt Helm]

I can still hear him say it in that arrogant tone, "Retirement will never happen for you, it's not what we do in this business".

Mac never pulled any punches. He seemed too enjoy reminding me that a professional only leaves this business in one of three ways. One was laying on the floor in puddle of your own blood, another was breathless in a plastic bag or large body of water and the the third was scattered in more pieces than you can count. Either way, Mama Helm's little boy was just fine avoiding all of the above.

It had been over a year since my last mission. I could lie and say I was stuck in some alternate timeline, a subatomic quantum realm, or another reality in the multiverse but that just sounds silly. The truth is, there were many things that this old agent needed to take care of in 2022 and none of them involved picking up the old tools of the trade.

I found my old zippo and flicked on the flame. Checking the the other pocket, I suddenly remembered that lighting up was no longer a thing I did. I smiled, shook my head, and wondered how am I supposed to give the competition any fair notice that I was there.

It looked like the old gang was continuing to grow in membership. New blood was filling the ranks and the entire group was evolving into a new 2.0 version of themselves. I was happy for them. Despite my old cold war sentiments, I do believe in allowing everyone to be their authentic selves.

With the news of their new direction, coupled with the failure of the relaunch from a certain corporate lab, I knew it was only a matter time before Mac came looking for me again.

"Retirement is for those who no longer choose to breath," he said, "your country needs you to get back to work".

I stared at him for what seemed like an eternity. Maybe it was actually close to that as it could explain why I had been missing for the past year.

"Well," he added, "can I count you in?"

"Not sure if I still got what you're looking for, Mac." I offered, "the back hurts, the knees are always sore, and the little blue pill may be added to the Amazon cart sooner rather than later."

We stared at each other for a second eternity, if that's even possible. Then I broke the silence with cough and said, "I'll give you a solid maybe... what's the first mission?"

[IAmBatman]

Heh. Nice to see you saddling up again, Matty.

[Tornado]

Do you write professionally?
You got skills.

[Matt Helm]

Originally Posted by Tornado

Do you write professionally?
You got skills.

The only writing I do professionally is emails, instant messages, texts, and every other program used for nonsense work chatting. I don't think you'd enjoy those as much.

[Matt Helm]

I still cannot believe a year has past so fast. Not only have I not been around here reading and posting but I didn't even get to scape much at all. I think we only played two times in the entire year.

First there was the annual Helmsgiving Tournament. We had 4 maps set up as we expected 8 players but only ended up with 7 so we had 3 maps in play each match with a rotating player sitting out. The maps from left to right were.. Asgard, Swamp, Buffalo, and Atlantis.



My nieces boyfriend... well now fiance' ... was the big winner. I cannot remember many details other than the amazing prediction Lil'Helm wished into existence in first match. In this tourney we have a rule where figures/squads that are destroyed in any single match are eliminated from future matches (it helps us see more units in play). On the swamp map, with every other first match done, Niece's Fiance' had Thanos battling Matt's final Green Lantern Corp figure. Since both are hated by opponents, Lil'Helm said, "What we need here is for Fiance' to resurrect Grundy and then have Matt kill Thanos followed by Grundy killing the last Lantern. Well, wouldn't you know that is exactly what happened and the crowd went wild knowing that both Thanos and the Corps were done. Only Grundy advanced.

The second game was the second annual Betty White Tournament played on New Year's day. We heard the news that Betty passed last year while we were playing so she now is memorialized in our annual game. Anyway, this game is on one large map with 6 players so we decided to have 2 teams of 3. At the end of the night, Matt, Nephew and Nephew's Wife bested Helm Jr., Lil'Helm and J-Strikes (who won the Betty White Trophy the year before).

[Matt Helm]

You know, I really need to get my priorities straight and find time for Heroscope. It's been far too long since I've even read through some of the great threads on this site and even longer since I actually broke out some plastic. With Helm Jr. doing his thing at college and Lil'Helm living the HS senior life, we just can't seem to find the opportunity for a match.

Now it is November so that means we will hopefully have our annual Helmsgiving tournament at the end of the month. Fingers are crossed that we can align the schedules of our usual players as my nephew has a new baby, my niece's husband has work obligations, Helm Jr. has to drive to Danbury, CT for his job the day after Thanksgiving, and J-Strikes is working hard finishing his undergrad work while applying to grad school. Ugh, scheduling the tourney is not going to be easy.

With that said, I've commissioned additional custom terrain pieces to be 3D printed by another nephew, purchased a few more perfectly scaled plastic vehicles and looked through some of our old heroclix with Lil'Helm in hopes of igniting some design ideas. I have some traveling to do over these next two weeks and he has colleges to apply to but in our spare moments, we hope to get some ideas together and fit in some playtests (wouldn't that be something). Meanwhile, I should really head over to A3n's card design section to see if we can move some of those along.

Hopefully, more to come.

[Tornado]

Thanks for the update. Hope your holiday plans work out.

[Matt Helm]

Thanks, Torny, glad to see you are still a staple on the site. Some day I fear I will pop in here for a fly by and the community will have turned over with a completely new generation.

[IAmBatman]

The old dogs are holding fast for now. Glad to see you still walk among us!

[Sherman Davies]

Damn life, getting in the way of Heroscape.

If finding players is getting harder, you could always try setting something up in Long Island with Grishnakh, The X Marker, mogrebla, etc... A bunch of us all had a little reunion last year and it was fun.

[Matt Helm]

With the annual Helmsgiving Tournament coming up next weekend, Lil'Helm and I spent all weekend trying to finalize some of the designs we've had floating around. Some have been in the process for years while others have been newer ideas. Hopefully we can get a few up here in the next few days and weeks.

Over the last 48 hours, Lil'Helm has been trying to play around with graphic design to see if he could come up with temporary cards that are usable in time for next weekend. While he was experimenting we heard from A3n that his computer hard drive died and he is not currently able to work on any cards for the foreseeable future. In popped Sherman to give us a temporary card for Avalanche as shown in A3n's thread (thanks SD, you are awesome times a million).

Since we want A3n to recover at his own pace and we did not want to rely on Sherman's charity work for other cards, Lil'Helm got a little psycho with the self teaching and produced his first official art production for a Matt Helm design. And I must say this papa is darn proud of Lil'Helm's darn good looking card.

Let us know what you think:



Feedback is definitely welcome as we love the community collaboration.

[Tornado]

Damn that is pretty sweet from scratch. Never attempted a.classic card as I had no idea how to make the hit zone.