Official X-Men: Rise and Fall Previews
As someone that read this run of the X-Men (I was a huge Brubaker fan) and loved the 90s cartoon, this set has some characters in it that I've been waiting forever for. The fact that we're getting a D'Ken alone makes this a cool and different set. Even if we're getting some repeats from House of X. But enough of this palaber, onto the previews!
Impulse is the first of our Imperial Guardsmen today (but not the last). He will look more familiar to long time fans of the Guard (and Legion) but has always been a bit player. He's even died a few times and, presumably, been replaced by one of the Subguardians. He is among the Guardsmen that help build the Nega-Bomb during “Operation: Galactic Storm” and help decimate the Kree Empire. Even though he goes by Pulsar these days, he's a fighter by any name.
Magneto. We all know Magneto. He is the yin to Xavier's yang, some times the peanut butter to his chocolate. As I said, the 90s cartoon gave me a life long affection for the Master of Magnetism (“Charles, no, uh, uh.”) And as a small tyke I even had the action figure with small magnets in his hand so he could “summon metal to him.” So. I love Magneto.
This Magneto is our classic, villainous terrorist recruiting version of the character. He is looking for “good” and loyal mutants that are willing to achieve mutant liberation by any means necessary. This isn't the Magneto that taught the New Mutants or currently leads Krakoa by Xavier's side. This is the Magneto that attacked Cape Citadel.
And then we have the last Imperial Guard of the day, but most certainly not the least. The Praetor of the Imperial Guard, loyal to whoever sits on the throne of the Shi'ar Emipre. The one, the only, Gladiator. While the prime is almost certainly Emperor Gladiator, yeah folks, the guy that lives to punch tried his hands at ruling, this is the classic Gladiator.
I think it's interesting that they tied Gladiator's “confidence” powers to steal energy this time. For those that don't know, Gladiator has been defeated in the past with the appearance of being weak. It's not played up as much, because it's an odd power, but it's possible for him to actually lose strength if he doesn't think he's the toughest one in the fight. And we've had other Gladiator clix that used tokens and stat modifiers to accomplish that in the past. Giving him steal energy to accomplish the same mission is a fun, different way to do it that really leans into what the clix dial can represent.
In my opinion, at least.
And finally we get a weird mash up character from the Warp World event. A combination of Pyro and Toad, Fire Belly can generate fire from his throat and seems to have all of Toad's regular appearance and powers.
Warp World, for the uninitiated, resulted from a break down of Soul World (the reality that exists within the Soul Gem). Gamora is able to gather the Infinity Gems together and pull the universe's inhabitants inside of the Soul Gem, “folding” their combined souls on top of each other so that only half as many beings would exist inside this “Warp World.” And that's how we get a weird character like Fire Belly.
Because it's always the Infinity Gems.
Once again, big thanks to Wizkids for the opportunity to share these previews with you all. Be sure to use their shop locator if you want to support your local Friendly Neighborhood Geek Shop. And if you don't have a local FNGS, you can always buy directly from Wizkids on their own site or over at their Amazon store.
And if you want to catch up on all the dials from X-Men: Rise and Fall, just click right on over to Units.
Do good.