The box contains everything you need to play basic games: various tokens, including two "Battlefield Condition" cards; a large map; a ring to assist in clicking the figures' bases, and two six-sided dice; an instructional booklet and powers reference card; and last but not least, six prepainted plastic figures. When I say large map I mean it. I don't have a lot of free table space at home, so the only way to get the entire thing spread out is to play on the floor.
Like many more-traditional miniatures games, Heroclix uses a point based system. Players have a force worth X amount of points, with each character they wish to use having a cost based on power and usefulness. The six figures in this starter set are broken into two forces of 100 points. On one side you have Batman, Robin and Hawkgirl (why not Huntress or Batgirl I've no idea – I guess they wanted each side to have a flying character). While the other pre-calculated force is made up of Joker, Harley Quinn and Man-Bat. The quality of the figures varies. Batman is probably the best sculpted and painted, while Robin's face looks like it was added as an afterthought; Hawkgirl was inexplicably sculpted with a crossbow, despite being incapable of ranged attacks.
The basics of the game are simple enough. Each figure has a slot in its base, through which you read its statistics for Speed, Attack, Defense and Damage. Attacks are performed by rolling 2d6, adding it to the attacker's Attack value, and comparing it to the defender's Defense value; if the result is greater than or equal to the listed defense, the target takes "clicks" of damage – represented by turning the base a given number of clicks which reveals new (usually lower) stats. Some figures have an additional Range statistic – this does not change along with the others. Some of a character's stats may be surrounded by a colored box. These represent special powers and abilities.
All of this was simple enough, and I rapidly played through a few basic games. Unfortunately as you try and move into the more advanced games you can run into problems. The documentation for the game is poor. It's riddled with mistakes, (Hawkgirl is mentioned as having a power not noted on her base) and lacking corrections and explanations. The colors on the bases and reference can sometimes be a bit tricky to read, making it hard to determine exactly what power a figure has in a certain category. The reference card also features some poor explanations. The Energy Explosion power is a particularly noteworthy version of this. The ways that these abilities can be used and combined is often quite complex – given that this is a starter set, a reference that explained ways the characters can use and combo their abilities would go a long way to improving new player friendliness.
There's a lot of information to take in, and therein lies what I consider the largest problem with the game. Like many games before it, Heroclix falls into the trap of making things overly complicated and adding in more and more rules; which tends to subtract from the fast and freewheeling four-color feel of comic books.
Despite its problems DC Heroclix: Icons is a (relatively) fast playing game, and it's certainly entertaining. Even if you took away everything else about it, my fanboyish little heart gets a thrill and maneuvering a tiny Batman around the map. If you're looking to get into Heroclix this isn't a bad place to start. Just be prepared to ask a lot of questions and dig through websites looking for information.
