Reg’s One Big Online Weekend

Reg (from Dice Masters in the Great White North) graciously shared his report on his experiences during the recent One Big Weekend Online Event.  I will be handing the reigns of the article over to him for the remainder.  Take it away Reg!

– jourdo

After Finishing Second at my Local OBW Event, I was very happy to accept an invitation to the Online OBW tournament this past weekend.

Before I even go into this event, I would like to say a thank you to everyone that was involved in this event.  They need to have a huge applause. From the organizer Arge donating his time and prizing, Troy and the Dice Coalition group, Matt at DM North, and Kim for running our own local event.  From the generosity of this event months ago, made me give back to the community as I just hit my 60th envelope of tokens being mailed all over the world!

With an estimated event time of six hours!!, It started at noon in my time zone and it was announced that it was going to be a six round Swiss event.  The Format was Modern LCG only.  I had a few weeks to test my team, and in the end, my submission I came up with a simple plan based around a pair of combat and non-combat damage characters.

What Did You Play?

The Team:  8 Boobs.

The team is based around these two cards:  Ant-Man and The Atom. 

From the Justice set released this month, (The Atom – Professor) was an obvious inclusion, as if I roll a mask, I can spin my character up and down and deal 2 damage. Do that 10 times in a game and you win!

My other win con was one of my favorite cards from the Justice Like Lightning Team Pack in (Ant-Man – Petty Theft).  When he is spun up with the Awaken ability, he becomes unblockable.

To make my Ant-man larger, I included (Parasite – Maxwell Jensen).  Just attach him to an unblockable Ant-man and we are talking some serious damage, plus Parasite does not go to the Used pile…

My Two Basic Actions for this event were Static Field and Energy Field.  Energy Field was to Awaken Atom to deal damage, and the Static field was to keep my opponents’ similar threats from attacking for damage.

With having all this power potential, I then needed a way to stop my opponent from using Static Field to bring my own pumped up Ant-man back, hence my inclusion of (Wonder Woman – Child of Clay).  

I wanted another way to spin up my characters, so I brought (Zatanna – Being Of Magic) to the party.  When I field a character, Zatanna’s ability will allow me to spin them up one level for free. She not only instantly makes my Ant-man unblockable when I field them, but it allows my Parasite if he rolls on a lower fielding side to get him bigger.

I wanted my last 3 cards to be defensive cards, and I know I had to have a spot on the team for Promo (Black Widow – Agent).  If my opponent deals me one damage, its negated and Atom would only do 1 damage if I came across a mirror match.

I included (Venerable Dreadnaught – Custodian of Knowledge), as I thought he would force my opponent to early buy their own Black Widow, and if they did not I would bring VD to the game early and cause pain on my opponents’ field.

(Shriek – Sonic Beam) was on the team, because I felt everyone was running a shriek and probably would have a couple Shriekings of the Shrieks.…

Let’s see how this team matched up against the other players:

So how did the Team name become 8 Boobs?  Well with the spoilers from the X-men forever sets and associated Team Packs, I noticed Wizkids brought some more guns to the cards… So, I proxied in these customs for the event.

Note, for several of my matches, my opponent kept asking me to re-read these cards over an over like they weren’t paying attention to the text in front of them….

So that’s the team.  How did it work out?

Game 1:  Versus ZBiggety

Zack brought the team I was not looking forward to playing at this event.  It had the Black Adam that sends knocked out cards by LOD (Legion of Doom) characters to the Used Pile.  And Yes, He had that Poison Ivy as well to make my cards get KO’d. My characters had such low D, and I was in trouble this game.

Early match, Zack setup his defences exactly as predicted.  I went for Wonder Woman, Zatanna and a few Ant-men hoping to get an edge on life early when they are fielded.

Poison Ivy went off a couple times, and set me back taking the non-combat damage, but it gave me some ramp, and that was when he purchased Black Adam.  It was going to be over soon, however the gods turned off the dice rolling on Zack’s side. He missed 2 times on both Poison Ivy and Black Adam. I had a chance, but my dice were also not co-operating.

Sometimes the rolls don’t go your way, and in this match we both were not rolling good.

In his final roll, he missed lethal by not rolling Poison Ivy yet again, and I was lucky to get final damage to end this poor rolling match…  Obviously both of our dice did not do any stretching before this event…

1-0

Game 2:  Versus Patrick K

I looked at Patrick’s team and realized that we had similar builds but his Poxwalker was cheaper and he had 4 parasite dice…  Not good for me especially since he brought Clayface. His attack was simple, get 2-3 parasites in the field, and attack with a single poxwalker to do 7-10 damage.  All that was needed is 2 Poxwalkers, 2 parasites and a Wonder woman and you are set.

Patrick’s team screamed rush and quick damage, and first two turns he had purchased 2 Poxwalkers, and 2 Parasites…   My dice were still asleep for this event, as I didn’t roll a single fist energy first 2 turns… I purchased a Zatanna, and a Shriek.. (Man I was in trouble here..)  I think I bought an Atom (My only time buying atom in the whole event…)

Patrick was very efficient setting up his field and was able to use the Clayface global at will on me.  I was behind in numbers and once Wonder Woman hit the field I was on a clock for impending doom (Not doom lance that he also had…)

I tried to stabilize from not rolling fists early, but I was too far behind and Patrick was able to easily take me down this match.

1-1

Game 3:  Versus Ross

Always a pleasure to play a game of dice masters against my fellow honorary Canadian and King of the WDA.

Ross brought a similar team with Antman and The Atom, however instead of Black Widow he brought Avengers ID Card to get more masks for the spinny stuff…

I bought Black Widow early to stop Dreadnaught, and it was a race to get characters into the field.  Ross did not have Wonder Woman so I was able to always hold a mask back to blink potential damage back.   Ross then stopped the Ant-man race and bought a Team-up..

On my next turn I noticed I have 6 Affiliations in the field as well with a Dreadnaught that can range stuff out…  4 energy spent on a Team up myself into the bag…

A couple turns later we both had a decent board, but I was able to roll the team up, and clear his field.  I had Wonder Woman to protect me against the globals, and I was able to get lethal damage in for the narrow win.

2-1

Game 4:  Versus PeterVDV

A fun matchup against Peter V from the Netherlands.  Peter and I have talked many times online, but never was matched up.  Peter brought an Ork Nob KO team. Basically with an Ork Nob in the field, Dreadnaught does his range damage, and I lose characters and Ork Nob grows larger and larger.

My plan was to go defence first.  Wonder Woman, Shriek, Black Widow all were needed.  Once I had Board control, I would have gone for the Ant-man unblockable route….

However, my dice were tired again… It was horrible as I don’t think I rolled any characters this match.  My opponent was very sympathetic, I think he even offered to allow me to roll a third time on a couple occasions…  (Probably would not have helped this game)

Peter was able to field his Ork Nob and all I could do was blink stuff back after they did their damage.  Sometimes the dice don’t like you during a match, and you just have to look at your cards…. Eventually I didn’t roll the masks and the Wong show with Ork Nob swung in for lethal.

2-2

Game 5:  Versus Patrick G

There were a few players that dropped this round and the system they were using to generate the matchups doesn’t take dropped players into effect during the current round.  After a slight delay and a couple bites to each of my sandwich, I was paired up with Patrick G.

Patrick G had a similar team to the Patrick K I played earlier, but he did not have Clayface to make the rush Poxwalker/Parasite team work.    Lucky for me this match, but dice were alive. I started with a Zatanna, and a couple of Parasites turn 2.

Both made it to the field on their first chance and the Parasites were spun up to level 3’s due to Zatanna’s ability.  My Opponent was not lucky to roll a character and took a sidekick 7/7 on turn 4. It was one of the quicker matches on the night, as once Ant-man hit the field, my opponent never rolled a mask and it was over as I swung for the final lethal damage.

3-2

Game 6:  Versus mPire

A Mirror match… Kinda..

Rick brought the same team and we only difference was with the Zatanna. (More on his Zatanna later)

Would be a fun way to end the tournament with a mirror match.
I bought Ant-man early and a Wonder Woman to start damages.  My Opponent did the same. It was going to come down to rolls.  I believe I had an extra Parasite in the field and it allowed me to get an edge on damage getting through.  I was down to my final turn and needed to do 11 damage. VD was going to clear his field with Range damage and I had 10 on the board, and if I spun something down, I could not gain an extra damage to get to the 11.  I was stuck, My opponent I believe would have had lethal on me the next turn with rolling an ant-man and was ready to wait until the next turn when I asked to we have any globals I can use. I then saw his Zatanna and her global.  Pay Fist Spin target character up one level. I gladly took the 1 damage to spin Zatanna up one level and got the 11 exactly I needed to get lethal.

It was a great back and forth match that either of us could have won.  This was my favorite match of the night and I think Rick would have said the same.

4-2

Post-Mortem:

I ended up finishing 6th.  I was quite happy with that result; however I very easily could have been 1-5 with my opponent having better luck on their side.   

I was expecting more of the Poison Ivy/Black Adam, or Team up, but only faced 1 of each of those.  

The card that sparkled tonight was Wonder Woman.  Definitely was the MVP for most teams that won. She allowed your unblocked characters to do their worse and nothing you could do about it.  

Top offensive cards were Poxwalker and Parasite.  Sounds stupid that you can push an unblockable 1A poxwalker and attach 2 parasites to make it a 7/7 character, but you can these days.

I still think Zatanna that spins up characters to make them unblockable is a great card with Ant-man.

The card I would not bring if I redid my roster:  The Atom.  He was bought once, and never able to get the masks to make that work.  I think Promo Black widow just shuts that down, but if you didn’t have Black Widow (all my opponents did) I would have gone that route.  I am glad I brought Dreadnaught instead of Poison Ivy as I bet her card would have frustrated me when she didn’t roll.

I believe most of the teams had the same 6 cards and really that is what its like in a Nationals event.  Winning today came down to will your dice roll for you when you need it to roll.

Congrats to James for winning the event, every team today had win cons that could have won if they rolled.  It was a fantastic afternoon of rolling dice, great friends to chat with online, and even the cats got fed a sandwich or two.   I cunt have asked for anything to be different and look forward to doing this again soon!

Thanks for reading,

Reg