Constructed Event Re-Cap 29th March

We had eight players at the constructed event on Tuesday at Element Games in Stockport. It was a good turnout, made all the more special as we had three new players who hadn’t played in an event with us before.

This gave the event quite a bit of energy and there was a good buzz around the room as participants arrived and we all introduced ourselves & got to know the new faces. (Hopefully not coming on too strong!)

For the event I was playing the team build I put together on Monday night (you can find my write up of the build HERE) we were going to have three rounds of swiss and there was some Spider-Friend OP cards up for grabs, along with a booster prize pool.

ROUND ONE 0-2

My first opponent was playing for the very first time tonight but was handling the learning curve very well. He was playing a ‘War of Light’ build that had one team member representing from each of the Ring colours.

Those early ‘Guy Gardner’ die can be a real pest, can’t they? Turned out my ‘Catwoman – Acrobat’ just wasn’t quite enough to keep the raging Red Lantern at bay. I threw blocker after blocker at the Guys for turn after turn until a couple of well placed ‘Fatality – Yrra Cynril’ dice cleared a couple of my blockers and got the finishing blow in.

We went to time in the second game and it was a win for the Lanterns. Those Guys just chip away at you!

ROUND TWO 2-0

My next opponent was playing a build largely made up of AvX characters. I spotted some nasty characters across the table from me, most notably ‘Hulk – Jade Giant’ and ‘Hawkeye – Longbow’.

I got my BEWD/’Batman’ machine up & running nice and quick in both games and kept up a nice pace of ping & life gain every turn with KO’d ‘Zatanna’ and Aquaman’ die rotating around. That, topped off with a few well timed attacks, gave me the win in both instances.

I also experienced an absolute stroke of luck in the first game of the round as my opponent repeatedly failed to roll or re-roll his ‘Hulk’ die over & over again! I empathised with him – I’d been there all too often myself so could feel that pain, although I’d be lying if I didn’t produce a sigh of relief & a fist pump each time those Fist faces were rolled.

This was also the second round in which I had failed to actually play my win-con and hadn’t seen the ‘Dick Grayson’ Bat-Bomb at all. It was clear to me that I was trying to do too much with the team by combining the Justice League and Bat-Family affiliation – there were just too many moving parts and it was super-slow to get going. In future I most definitely need to simplify and just commit to one firm direction…

ROUND THREE 1-1

The team I was facing down in this round seemed to centre on life gaining blockers like ‘Beast – Genetic Expert’ and ‘Iron Man – Philanthropist’ to keep me at bay while hammering me with some offensive strength in the form of ‘Black Panther – Wakandan Chief’.

I was absolutely determined to get my ‘Bat-Bomb’ going off in this final round, win or lose, and committed to it fully. The fact of the matter was that the ‘Beasts’ had all but made my ‘Catwoman – Acrobats’ useless as my jammy opponent had rolled them all on burst faces – creating a mutually assured destruction scenario, so ‘Dick Grayson’ was going to be a solid go-to in any case. I ramped up, got the man himself out and BEWD Global’d a ‘Catwoman’ to set up an 8 attack. I did this twice in the first game of the round, and soon cleaned him off.

In all fairness – I was getting a bit low on life myself in that first game and would probably have been a bit twitchy if I hadn’t got a late game ‘Batman’ to give me back some life and ‘Dick Grayson’ to land some bit hits.

The second game of the round went to time and my opponent took the win. We were aware of the tight time limit as we started the second game so each played an aggressive strategy to chip down each other’s life. My opponent went straight for the ‘Black Panther – Wakandan Chief’  and put the pressure on reeeeeeeeally quick. I kept throwing characters down the field to get some damage in and to keep my own characters out of the field to keep ‘Black Panther’ at bay, but to no avail as his cheap & cheerful ‘Beasts’ were soaking up pretty much all of what I threw at him.

One all draw.

SUMMARY

I was soooo excited to see some new faces turn in and I think we may be slowly attracting a few more. Despite my mediocre performance I had a great time – I just love playing this game. I’ve learnt something about my team building too: I think right now I need to stop trying so hard to fill my team’s with complicated mechanics & over wrought win conditions and simplify.