The Road to Bricks Cascade 2015 - How Many A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gates?

Another Tuesday, another Road to Bricks Cascade post. 

At Long, Long Last…Spider-Man vs. Mr. Freeze!

Okay, I’ve finally finished building my first Crisis on Infinite Baseplates MOC.  (And according to my schedule, it’s only five months late.)  One A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gate, two baseplates, five minifigures, and who knows how many other elements.  And as the title implies, the MOC depicts Marvel’s Spider-Man battling DC’s Mr. Freeze, as Freeze’s henchmen are heading back through the A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gate with the loot from the jewelry store. 

So long as you’re aware of the COIB collaborative build, and recognize the A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gate for what it is, the MOC becomes fairly self-explanatory.  Of course, this single action scene doesn’t tell you the whole story, but it doesn’t really need to. 

I know more about the story than is evidenced from simply looking at the MOC, because I’m the one who thought it up and built it.  But I suspect that’s true of most MOCs.  So just what is going on here? 

MOC Backstory

In an effort to improve the cryogenic suit that keeps him at the subzero temperature he needs to survive, Mr. Freeze broke into a cutting edge laboratory facility to steal some experimental components.  On his way out, he discovered an otherworldly artifact that scientists had been trying to activate.  Freeze entered that lab just as they managed to get their mystery technology (known to you and I as an A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gate) operational. 

The gate now allowed travel between the DC and Marvel universes.  And Freeze was aware of a theory that gemstones from an alternate universe had a different vibrational frequency.  Since diamonds were a key factor in fueling his cryosuit, alternate reality diamonds could provide a more efficient source of power. 

So Freeze and a pair of henchmen went through the gate to locate and rob a few jewelry stores.  During their first robbery, they encountered Spider-Man.  They managed to escape, but not before the wallcrawler learned what their tech was capable of. 

Stopping off for the insulated version of his costume (complete with snazzy fur-lined hood), Spidey set off on patrol, hoping to catch them at another jewelry store.  And that’s exactly what he did.  Freeze and his minions robbed Sal’s Jewels, froze Sal in a block of ice, and were headed back to an A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gate to return home.  Spider-Man dodged two ice blasts from Mr. Freeze, then perched himself near the top of a lamppost and fired a web at the dimensional invader.  Freeze fired his weapon at the oncoming web, trapping it in another block of ice.  As this went on, the henchmen escaped into the gate with the goods. 

How Many A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gates?

(I really wanted to title this post “How many A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gates could a A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gatechuck chuck if a A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gatechuck could chuck A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gates?”  But that seemed like an awful lot of characters to try and cram into Blogger’s “Post Title” box.) 

Mr. Freeze and his henchmen stepped into an A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gate in the DC Universe, and stepped out into the Marvel Universe.  When they were ready to leave, they used the portable controller that the DCU scientists had built to operate ‘the artifact’ to summon a gate in the jewelry store parking lot to get them back home. 

One gate.  With only two realities in play, only one gate is needed.  So I built that one gate, slapped it onto my MOC, and called it good. 

But what do you if you want to build a more elaborate scenario? 

Using More Than One Gate

I’ve got a list of MOCs I want to build for this collaborative display.  (Hopefully, I’m now in ‘Building Mode’, and can stay in it until mid-March, so that I can actually get all the stuff on my list(s) built in time for Bricks Cascade.)  Most of these MOCs are simple one-gate/two-universe builds.  Most, but not all.  I’ve got a couple of MOCs that are going to require multiple gates and represent more than just two universes. 

One of the Crisis on Infinite Baseplate MOCs on my to-build list teams up a pair of heroes from independent comics (each from his own reality) to fight a threat from the Marvel universe.  Three disparate entities.  But how many gates?  Well, that really depends on exactly where this fight is taking place. 

If this MOC is set in either the Marvel Universe or one of the two universes of the superheroes in question, than it is most likely a simply two-gate/three-universe MOC.  But what if none of the participants are ‘home’?  Say that these two superheroes are aware of a threat to a third universe by invaders from yet a fourth?  There’s nothing that says a COIB battle has to take place in the home reality of any of its participants. 

So let’s say that these representatives of three different universes are all meeting up in the DC Universe.  You could have three different A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gates on your MOC, one from each faction’s home reality. 

The other big MOC on my COIB list sees two superhero groups from different universes teaming up to take on the threat of a pair of BIG-BAD / BOSS-LEVEL style villains from two other universes.  And it is definitely going to take place in yet a fifth reality.  So:  four gates/five realities?  Not necessarily…

My current plans for this MOC are to have three A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gates included.  Because in the secret backstory for this whole thing, the two villains each travelled through an ARTIFICE Gate into the same alternate universe.  It was there that they met and decided to team up to conquer the multiverse.  So that villainous pairing will be entering the MOC’s battlefield together through a single gate. 

If I wanted, I could eliminate one of the three proposed gates, and assume that the two superhero teams had joined forces within a single reality (either group’s home reality, or a convenient ‘third’), and were coming to the battlefield via a single gate of their own.  I COULD do that, but I choose not to. 

Heck, if I was really going for economy of gates, I could get away with a single gate on the baseplate(s) for this one.  Good guys in one reality, villains in another, both using their respective A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gate to travel to the same destination gate on the battlefield. 

That having been said, I still like the notion of three separate gates for this particular MOC.  But as you can see, the number of A.R.T.I.F.I.C.E. Gates you have in play in any given MOC is largely up to you.  So long as you can justify however many gates you end up using, you can pretty much use as many (or as few) as your MOC demands.