Eighth Place is Still Top 8

Jbouwme here, reporting in after the 2019 Dice Masters Canadian Nationals.

This was my 2nd year participating in the event, and not to belabour points that have already been covered in many forums, we did not have a lot of notice of the event this year. In my local scene, we focus mostly on theme events, and as a result, I didn’t have as much time to prepare as I would have liked.

My Team

I was struggling building for Nats this year. I had a lot of cards I wanted to build with. I spent several hours reading and re-reading all the current modern cards (there are a LOT of them) and I pulled out a ton of stuff to play with, but when it came down to it, nothing was as strong as The Atom: Professor…except maybe Iceman: Right on Schedule…and Rob was playing that, so I wanted to play something different from him.

I want to put a shout out to jourdo here – he was the first player I saw run Atom/Energy Field, in the CR Game Room Spring Two Team Takedown Tournament. He played Rob and I could not believe how quickly that combo worked out. You can find those games here.

Atom Deadly Doom Lance

So, the primary win-con was Atom/Energy Field.  I made sure that I had Clayface to help me get more masks. Kate Bishop: Straight Shooter provided removal for Shriek or Scarlet Witch, as well as providing me a push-back global, and Black Widow: Agent would neuter Attune as well as reduce damage from other Atom and Iceman teams. Atlas was there for bag control and some ramp. With a few spots left on the team, I turned to my secondary win-con: Deadly Doom Lance, something I have been playing with off and on since I first read the Doom Lance card.

Grey Hunter: Son of Russ is a cheap mask character that just happens to be Deadly, that I can use with Clayface’s global, and if globals get locked down (I’m looking at you, Wrecker: Enchanted Crowbar!), I could pivot to it with Doom Lance and guarantee some life loss. The final slot on my team went to Acererak, in case I needed to reroll a Doom Lance due to a pesky Scarlet Witch. This is a similar build to Ben Scott’s team from US Nationals, although he went with a few different pieces, and he took it to 2nd place there.

I figured I was as ready as I was going to be.

Oh, how wrong I was…

Nationals

Jourdo put together a fantastic coverage page for the event, if you haven’t already seen it. You can go look now. I’ll be here when you get back.

Isn’t it awesome? Thanks Jourdo! The only thing that would have been better, would have been if he could have come to Nats. Maybe next year. *hint, hint, nudge, nudge*

I had some tough rolls, and a couple of my games could have gone either way, but in the end, I made top cut. Whew! I got a sweet Boom Boom prize card. I was pretty happy.

Then I realized I would be playing #1 ranked ccm0007 in my first game. He had an Atom team as well, but it was a much different build than mine, and my control couldn’t slow him down. I lost to ccm0007 in two games; I was going to call it the battle of DM North, but it was really just a skirmish.

This Storm is amazing paired with The Atom and Energy Field, and with the Energy Field errata now in place, may be the way The Atom remains meta-relevant.

He built his removal into his Atom Awaken strategy AND SENT IT TO MY USED PILE. (Also, I Shrieked his Mimic – probably my dumbest move all day, since he could just roll it for masks. I realized my mistake immediately, but what can one do? Hindsight is 20/20, as they say).

You can read his thoughts about the event and his games in this fantastic write up. I would also encourage you to check out the games on YouTube, which you can find here.

This is the best version of The Atom team I have seen thus far. It is inspired. No one is more deserving of the Canadian Nationals Championship in 2019 than this gentleman, and I want to congratulate him on his undefeated day and fantastic showing.

I also want to thank jourdo, for tirelessly updating our coverage page and being in chat for most (all?) of the day on the stream, and doing things like trying to read our handwritten team sheets to create team links in the Dice Coalition team builder.

Finally, I want to thank WizKids for holding a Canadian event this year, and providing qualifications to the top half of players to Worlds in Memphis later this year.

Time to start brewing in case I can make it to…

Until next time,

-jbouwme