by Aaron Cantu
Last weekend I took a trip down to Southern California to participate in the Realms Open Championship U.S. Cup (the ROC equivalent of the U.S. National Championship). This is the second year this event has been held and is slowly growing to a really big event. This year's format was a very unique format designed to create a more diverse field and I think it was successful in that attempt.
FORMAT: 300 Point ROC Age with Ban List
BAN LIST:
*Jakeem Thunder
*Resurrection Man
*Morphing Jar
*Power Battery: Orange Lantern Corps
*Copycat
*Con LE Felix Faust
*Zombie Super Skrull
*All Team Bases
*Juston Seyfert
Before I get into what I played, I want to take a minute to talk about this ban list and format. First off, this format was great. It opens a lot of diversity for building teams, since just more stuff was allowed. It stimulates sales for older figures (which is a plus for players and shops), something I think this game sorely needs. The format breaks the stale team building seen in most events (who isn't tired of seeing Jakeem win 80% of all events?). As for the ban list, I know it was discussed among many top minds for the game like Paris Gordon, Easton Brock, Adam Friedman, and many more and wasn't just hodge-podge thrown together on a whim. Everything on the list is there for a reason, and everything excluded was done so to help keep in check certain game effects that would otherwise run away with the format. I look forward to seeing where this format goes and grows from here, and I think it is an exciting thing for the game as a whole.
