A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the exciting new Bring Your Own Team format, and I spent a little time taking a look at some of the options for the format and how a few people were preparing for the event. Well, although the tournaments are still going on, there have been quite a few that have finished up and the reports are rolling in. Our own event was a great success, and I’ll start with that particular event. Last time, I was torn over which deck to run, and true to form, I was still undecided right up to the day before the event. I’d had a relatively poor run of results in the last few events, stemming primarily from unforced play-errors. I decided that the best way to nip that in the bud was to get back to the basics and play the deck I was most comfortable and familiar with—MKKO. I covered the tournament on my own blog. Here are some excerpts:
MKKO (BYOT):
Characters
4 Black Cat, Thrillseeker
3 Black Panther, Silent Stalker
1 Black Widow, Femme Fatale
4 Punisher, Suicide Run
4 Daredevil, Fearless Survivor
4 Blade, Independent Contractor
3 Ghost Rider, The Devil’s Rider
4 Luke Cage, Street Enforcer
1 Wolverine, Covert Predator
3 Punisher, Captain America
1 Captain America, Loyal Patriot
1 Hulk, Savage Hulk
1 Ghost Rider, Spirit of Vengeance
1 Punisher, Angel of Death
Plot Twists
4 Mobilize
2 Wild Ride
4 Quick Kill
4 Judge, Jury, and Executioner
4 Savage Beatdown
4 Crime and Punishment
3 Flying Kick
Then, I proceeded to break down the deck choices, as well as listed some notable absentees from the deck. For the full deck deconstruction, you’ll have to visit the article, but let’s carry on as our intrepid hero—well, as I—cover the actual events of the day.
“The rest of the field was quite interesting with a mix of pet-decks and top-level threats:
* Bennett: Masters of Evil (Wrecking Crew)
* Conboy: Sinister Syndicate
* Joe: Spider-Friends (Wild Pack Vomit)
* McPhee: X-Statix
* Jason: Green Lantern stall
* James W: Revenge Squad ongoing
* Amy: Kree
* Amit: Underworld
* James C: Avengers Reservist (Secret Avengers)
* Ashun: Warbound
* Swampy: Arkham Inmates Insanity
* Me: MKKO
We were told the BYOT would be three rounds, and we received our pairings for round 1. I’ll try to recap the matches as best as my ageing memory allows:
Round 1: James C—Avengers Reservist (Secret Avengers)
I won the roll and decided to take evens. James led with Dagger, Secret Avenger, whilst I had Black Cat, Thrillseeker. James hit me and Black Cat purred in the corner doing nothing. Turn 2, I think, was my Punisher, Suicide Run and James’ Echo ◊ Ronin, Secret Avenger. Things went pretty standard from then on. I hit Blade, Independent Contractor, Luke Cage, Street Enforcer, and Punisher, Captain America. James also curved out with Jessica Drew ◊ Spider-Woman, Secret Avenger, Human Torch, Secret Avenger, and Spider-Man, Secret Avenger. James got some Hercules-sized burn thanks to Human Torch, and I was way behind on endurance with the totals standing something like 10 / 22. I did manage to completely clear his board on turn five though and still retained Luke Cage and Punisher, so I felt that I was not completely out of it. On turn six, I didn’t have Hulk, Savage Hulk or Ghost Rider, Spirit of Vengeance. I did have Wild Ride, but I was reluctant to spend the endurance. I elected to under-drop with Blade, Independent Contractor and Ghost Rider, The Devil’s Rider. Thankfully, James also missed his 6-drop (Ares). He recruited Human Torch, Secret Avenger and Iron Fist ◊ Daredevil, Imposter * Secret Avenger and passed. I sent my guys in, and after James burned me some more, I had won thanks to a few pumps. It was close, but I’d done just enough.
1-0
Round 2: Ashun - Warbound
I was worried about this match, because with the majority of my board concealed, I could suffer too much damage to claw my way back. I also knew that Ashun had a full set of Pathetic Attempts ready to stop my KO tricks.
I won the die roll again and elected to go second. Ashun started with nothing, and I had Black Cat, Thrillseeker. I drew a card, and we moved to turn two. I had Daredevil, Fearless Survivor, and Ashun had Miek. I took down Miek and drew another card with Black Cat. Turn three was Hiroim to Blade, Independent Contractor. I took a direct attack from both and hit back. I took down Hiroim, and when Ashun tried to remove him from the game, I responded with Quick Kill. Ashun tried to negate it with Pathetic Attempt, but I pointed out he was a turn too early. On turn four, I had Luke Cage, Street Enforcer to Hulk, Gamma Rage. I took down his board, and Miek was removed from the game. I had a Judge, Jury, and Executioner, but with Pathetic Attempt there, I wanted to wait until I had a couple of characters ready.
Turn five saw a new Hulk, Gladiator who boosted to stun Luke Cage. I recruited Punisher, Captain America and used his ability to get the stun-back when Hulk took him down. Once again, I was behind on endurance leading in to turn six, but after a few calculations, I realised I could win this game. I used Mobilize to find Hulk, Savage Hulk whilst Ash recruited his own Hulk, The Green King, who boosted in to gain 5 counters. His 18/18 Hulk found himself in an unfamiliar position—dwarfed by an even larger character—my 23/23 Savage Hulk. I sent Black Cat, Thrillseeker into Ash’s Hulk, using Punisher’s ability to take down the behemoth, which left the road clear for my Hulk to smash puny Warbound.
2-0
Round three: Swampy: Arkham Insanity
I knew that the match against Swampy would be a good one, he’s a great player and we were both on 2-0. He won the roll and decided to take evens.”
I think that’s where I’ll cut you off. For more details, check out the original article at
http://the-kamiza.com/vs/?p=139
The match against Swampy (who, incidentally, was the man who built the Insanity Joker Legend deck that I reported on a couple of weeks ago) was the final round of the BYOT event. Despite not having access to the same prize support that our American cousins do, we still had a decent turnout. After that was wrapped up, we held two more separate events on the same day. Next up, we broke open the packs for a session of Super Crossover Sealed. When that was over, we closed the day by holding a 5 v 5 Team Battle Royal. The day was fantastic, as is usually the case at Fantasy Wargames in Luton. In fact, the day was so good that we actually had a local TV news crew come down and get a few minutes filming in:
http://www.local-news.tv/your_townvillage/luton/v277-fantasy_wargames/
Although the news crew managed to pick up some miniatures players who were holding a simultaneous event at the club, we still managed to get a nice little bit of exposure for our beloved game. They had contacted me earlier in the day after stumbling across details about the game on our website. This truly demonstrates the power of the online community: attracting attention from outside the game. I feel like Neo when he laid the electro-smackdown on those sentinels outside the Matrix!
Luton was not the only venue to host an event though. We’ll start off by popping over to VSRealms.com where long-time regular Kariggi posted a quick recap of his BYOT experience at Comic Cult in Torrance, CA.
Kariggi writes:
Ok, so I cheated, well not cheated, but I didn’t have a deck ready I was happy with, and I just didn’t have a mind to run my poor JLA New Era deck (Jane?) (J-Lane?) after Mickey (BorisVonUsky) beat me down with Golden Super-Clones, and I’d already been having a tough time with T-bolts, which I knew were showing (two as it turns out). So I ran TNNB, The Next New Brotherhood. That’s right, to a hobby league event.
Well, it was Comic Cult in Torrance, CA, so as someone once said about taking Quicksilver to a City Championship there, “You don’t bring a knife to the O.K. Corral,” or something to that effect.
Still, despite my misgivings, I thought it would be fun to dust off the reservist build, shove in The Next Brotherhood in place of my Rick Jones, A Hero’s Best Friend and Call down the Lightning (which were, of course, not legal for this format) and rock. I, then, found that I was 4 cards short. Hmmm . . . what pump to jam in there? And then, Roger of Money.dec said to me, Losing the Argument, reservist, replace, set up. It made sense, so I shoved them in and was ready to go.
First round, I saw my nightmare unfolding before me and the reason no one runs TNB anymore: SpiderClones. I am now well prepared to be Gift Wrapped out of the game. I’ll just sell the highlights here. He hits Black Cat on 2 with an Ego Gem. Spider Girl, 3; Spider-Man, 4. I’m thinking, “Game over,” as he spends 7 to exhaust one of my guys, replaces with bagman, and passes. Yeah, he gains 20 endurance between Level 12 Intelligence and a Messiah Complex. At the end of turn 4, he is at 12 (that’s right he would have been at 0). Spider-Man, 5 and Wolverine, 6. With 3 The New Brotherhoods up and him hitting 0 Gift Wrappeds, I won after seeing half of his deck and knowing that he had a 7-drop Spider-Man in hand.
The rest of his matches are detailed in the following thread, which inspired an interesting debate about the use of powerful decks in a Hobby League event.
http://www.vsrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=61318
Next up, we zip across to the ever-dependable and always-willing Miguel Rodriguez (a.k.a. , Carlosthedwarf) and his own little corner of the web at www.vs-blog.com.
Miguel writes:
“Our BYOT season has just ended in the Bay Area, and I loved it. I came up with a few fun BYOT decks (some of which I shared), but my favorite is the one I actually ran. I took first place in Berkeley and second place in Stockton with it. I’ll write up my tourney reports later this week, but today I’m just going to introduce you to my deck.
4 Captain America, The Patriot * Secret Avenger
4 Falcon, Sam Wilson
2 Hawkeye, Loud Mouth
4 Natasha Romanoff ◊ Black Widow, Mighty Avenger
4 Iron Man, Mighty Avenger
3 Spider-Man, Secret Avenger
1 Wolverine, Secret Avenger
2 Captain America, Living Legend
1 Invisible Woman, Secret Avenger
2 Hercules, Secret Avenger
1 The Sentry, Mighty Avenger
2 Captain America’s Shield
2 Extremis Upgrade
4 Avengers Reassembled
4 Cover Fire
4 Entangle
4 Tech Upgrade
4 Big Leagues
4 Mobilize
4 Savage Beatdown
CTD then breaks down the good, the bad, and the ugly about his deck, with a promise of a tournament report to follow. So make sure you keep an eye on vs-blog.com to see exactly how Miguel managed to place second and first in concurrent tournaments with this deck.
As more of the events get recorded, more and more people are documenting their experiences. Today, I’ve highlighted just a few, but take a look around, and you’ll see players reporting on their events. Check out VSUniverse.com, VSRealms.com, VS.Skillze.com, and The-Kamiza.com for reports on events from all over the world.