The Headliners are lining up to show off!

With 2 new team boxes and 2 Superstars out this week for RUMBLESLAM, with a total of 12 brand new types of wrestler, I bet you’re all on the edge of your pre-paid seats to see how they fare in a match.

Well the bell is about to ring, so let’s see the contenders!

The Headliners

Joining Kaiser’s Palace this week are a team of absolute specialists. These wrestlers have chosen their preferred field, and almost perfected it! Today we’re going to have a look how these fine wrestlers play.

The Lucky Winner

Okay, except for this kid. He literally just won a competition and is lucky enough to get to “wrestle” in the ring with his heroes.

First of all: check out the fancy new card! I know we’re most of a casino in at this point, but I don’t ever get tired of seeing how cool these jumbo sized cards look!

Rei has stepped it up on the art for all these new wrestlers too. This kid is so excited to be int he ring that he’s wearing his underoos as a luchador mask, and has a towel cape too. You can even see his “contest winner” ID badge!

So, you can see from his stats that the Lucky Winner isn’t going to be very lucky in game. With 1C-1 on 3 of his stats, he is without doubt the worst wrestler you’ve ever heard of (but at least you’ve now heard of him eh?).

He’s kind of fast, but only has 3AP. He’s not what you’d call a “heavy pounder” quite yet!

So why would you include him in your team? For one simple fact: You Can’t Punch a Kid!

That’s right, if anyone tries punching the Lucky Winner (or in fact anyone in base contact with him) the ref will step in and make all your attacks count as Dirty! He’s the ultimate shield as the rest of the Headliners fall over themselves to protect him. I can’t imagine their contracts will be getting picked up next season if they let some little kid get his lights punched out by a troll!

There’s one other little rule tease for you too. Surprising Star stops the Lucky Winner from choosing to perform a Crowd Pleaser. Only if he ejects an enemy wrestler does he get the chance to do it. Otherwise the crowd isn’t really going to pay attention to him. What’s his Crowd Pleaser? Oh I’m not giving everything away today!

Halfling High Flyer

We’ve seen punchy ones and grapply ones, and even a dryad one without a leg! But this one is flyyyying!

Here’s the basics for the Halfling High Flyer. Told you I’m not giving everything away!

He’s got a fairly middling statline, not really excelling anywhere. He is a bit faster than a regular Halfling though, which is good for getting across the ring! However, he suffers from 1 less Stamina, so be careful.

I can tell you that this guy has two Turnbuckle Abilities. Each are useful in quite different situations, so you should get a lot of use out of them! They’re also only 2AP each, so that’s nice!

And here’s what you’re going to be doing with the rest of his AP. The Halfling High Flyer can buff up his own Turnbuckle attacks, spending extra AP to increase the range and damage. If he’s caught on the floor it’s lights out pretty quickly, but with loads of Turnbuckle options, he should be gliding around the ring causing havok!

Charging Blocker

You can just just from looking at him that the Charging Blocker means business!

And he’s in the business of smashing people around! Similar in stats to the Human Brawler of the Heavy Pounders, he drops a little in attack power, but is so beefy that he has a massive 9 Stamina! He’s a hard nut to crack, but suffers a bit if he gets grappled.

The Charger special rule is his big deal. And I mean a big deal.

All of the Charging Blocker’s Rope attacks (including his Rope Ability “Battering Ram”) gain the Shove special rule. The Shove distance is double his unused movement.

So if he moves 4 squares, it’s Shove 2. If he moves 1 square, it’s Shove 8! WHAT!

The Charging Blocker is pretty much a shoe-in for all my teams now, and for good reason! Not only is he bound to get a lot of rebound Rope attacks, he’s just fantastic at moving your opponents round the ring. Repositioning the other team is super helpful, and only gets more helpful as the game goes on.

Martial Artist

For all of the Charging Blocker’s shock and power, the Martial Artist has a more balanced approach.

And by “balanced” I really mean “holy moly that’s a lot of +1s on his stat card!”

If you’re after an all-rounder, look no further. He’s obviously tailored for grappling (he’s a Martial Artist after all), but with +1 on ATT and DEX, he’s able to bring the fight in several ways.

Speaking of balance, how about his Crowd Pleaser? Intense Focus adds 1S to the stat of your choice until the end of the round. If you manage an early Crowd Pleaser, bumping up ATT or GRP would be good. A late one? Go for DEF or DEX to make sure you’re safe from counter attacks.

We’re not going to spoil all his skills, but know that the Martial Artist is excellent at grappling his opponents to the floor!

Ogre Flattener

Finally, the big guy! And he’s really big.

At 12 Stamina, it’s going to take a lot to beat up the Ogre Flattener! You might be better lifting him, but with a solid GRP, that’s no mean feat either.

His statline is solid all round, trading in Throw value for a little better DEF. A good trade off, even if he’s not going to be your go-to for throwing people out the ring.

But he’s not about throwing people, he’s about flattening them, and the Ogre Flattener has 2 excellent rules to aid with that task.

Squash allows you to re-roll any dice when making Pin actions. Already incredibly useful! I can’t tell you how many times my WEIGHT 3s have thrown all blanks and failed to pin a lousy Shadowling.

But if you get off the Flattener’s Crowd Pleaser, he bulks up to WEIGHT 4! Currently the heaviest wrestler in the game! Wow! That makes Pinning EVEN EASIER.

It’s not all fantastic news for the Flattener though. That extra bulk makes him slower than other characters, slowing down his bouncing from the ropes. Still though, a decent price to pay for being potentially WEIGHT 4!

Scrapheap & Puggy

That’s the team done, but what about this pair of Superstars? You didn’t think we’d leave them behind did you?

I’m feeling nice, so here’s the whole card!

Scrapheap is a real beast of a fighter. Don’t expect him to be out-grappling a lot of people, as although he has 3 dice, they’re all Copper, and we all know how those can turn on you.

But you shouldn’t be grappling anyway! With 3S+1 ATT, he can do some RIDICULOUS damage. Do a Rope or Turnbuckle attack and watch the Beatdowns come in!

Speaking of which, Whirling Dervish is a killer move, doing a massive Shove 6 (combine him with the Charging Blocker and watch your opponents bounce around like a pinball table). That means that you’re likely going to be able to line up for an additional Rope Attack, in if you do, it’s 3S 1C+1! Yeaaaaah!

If you want though, you can use Scrapheap & Puggy to try to eject your opponents. Fore! gives you a killer move that can potentially send your opponents flying out of the ring. The distance Thrown depends on how much you beat their DEF roll by, so pick on light wrestlers and hope that those Coppers work out for you. The ref does not like this blatant misuse of a ball and chain though, so careful of Dirty!

There we have it, a whole bunch of new wrestlers! They all have their very specific uses, so make sure you’re playing to your strengths.

All of these wrestlers (plus more!) will be available this Friday, so make sure to pop back then for all the details. In the meantime, check out the TTCombat webstore for our already pretty heavy range of RUMBLESLAM goodies!