WKO Tournament Report (Stockton, England) – Christopher Dunn

by Christopher Dunn

Hello from the UK, my name is Christopher Dunn and I attended the WKO at Beanie Games in Stockton in North East England on the 4^th December together with my team mates from the “Night’s Watch” – named because we originate from nearby Hadrian’s Wall which George RR Martin obviously got his inspiration for the Wall in Game of Thrones.

The Night’s Watch consists (from the left) of Myself, Sean McDine, Matthew McDine, Claire Fittes and Anthony Jackson. A few weeks ago we traveled to the Wildling settlement of Hamilton in Scotland and Matthew and Myself claimed the top 2 positions in their WKO so we were reasonably confident that we could repeat our success today.

There were 16 participants in the event,  Heroclix isn’t as popular a game in the UK as it is in the USA so this wasn’t too bad a turnout. This was a mixture of new and experienced players so I was expected it to be fairly easy to get into top 8 but it would get harder from then on.

My Team

Quinjet + resource 75
Age of Ultron Drone 30
Ultron-6 Drone 30
Jean Grey FF 50
Jarvis 40
Mephisto 45
ID cards 30:
-Batman ID – TW Batman 85pts
-SHIELD Level 7 x2 Nick Fury and Peggy Carter
-Hawkeye – 75pt Movie
-The Atom – 15pt Colossal
-Black Canary – 77pt
-Red Tornado – 95pt
-Iron Man – 50pt
-Nightwing – 25pt Outsider

The team I ran at the previous WKO was a Mxy + Quinjet team and although I was familiar with the characters in this team I hadn’t actually done any testing, so was winging it a bit.

 Round 1

 In the First Round I was paired immediately with my team mate Sean McDine whose team consisted of

Felix Faust 80
Juston Seyfert 40
Batman/Superman Robot 25
Pandoras Box 20
–Sloth Relic
–Lust Relic
Batman ID Card 5
Green Arrow ID Card
Sideline: JLTW051 Batman – 150pts, JLTW208 – Green Arrow

This was the same team that Adam Friedman won a WKO with in the USA. Sean won map, which turned out to be important, and chose the Avengers Tower from the Movie set and I chose the inside area to start with. The game was pretty much decided by two things,  that even with breaking a few walls I couldn’t get a line of fire to TK a drone out for a shot with an ID character and Faust rolling Energy Dampeners twice during the game. This is especially brutal for my team as I just couldn’t call in anyone to turn the resource dial. What I ended up doing was trying to edge up my team throwing out the Atom and 25pt Outsiders Nightwing just to occupy him whilst removing all this energy dampener tokens and then having to clear and then Faust rolled energy dampeners again. All the while Bat/Supes Robot was picking people off and running back to his starting area. Eventually I managed to get to him and a Drone took out his Faust but Sean won fairly easily on points. A pretty frustrating game to start with but I am definitely not the first player that Faust has done that to.

Round 2

My opponent was Grace Stebbing who was playing

(Future Theme)
KC Flash 195
Future Drone 30
KC Spectre 35
KC Green Lantern 30

Unfortunately I can’t remember what the other 10pt were used for, probably a couple of ID cards but they weren’t used in the game. She won map roll and put us on the Temple map from SMWW set. Spectre and Green Lantern were placed behind the blocking terrain so hard to get to. First turn she moved up KC Flash and just sidestepped the drone out of the starting area. Unfortunately she moved the Flash up too far and I was able to TK a drone out, sidestep and call in Nick Fury. I rolled high enough on the resource dial to get out Iron Man so with 3 Perplexes on Nick Fury I hit the Flash for 6-penetrating damage and the Quinjet carried everyone up to make it difficult for him to run and hide. Turn 2 the Flash used HSS to try to hit Jean Grey but missed and was slightly annoyed to find that her Time Locked trait meant she couldn’t use probability control to reroll it. Flash then retreated next to Spectre and Green Lantern who threw up some barrier to hopefully protect themselves. Her drone was still too far away to get into the action so it just Sidestepped up again.

Next turn I called in Hawkeye who killed the drone before it had the chance to do anything but because of the Barrier I couldn’t easily get to her other figures so contented myself that KC Flash had to clear on her turn so the Quinjet just moved closer to hopefully finish them off in my following turn. On her turn Flash cleared and Green Lantern threw up Barrier again however this time I was close enough to be able to clear that out without much difficulty. On my next turn my plan was to multi-target Pulse Wave them with Black Canary but I rolled high on the resource dial and had enough points to real boy in Red Tornado and because all her figures were standing next to blocking terrain I knew that this was game over. On her first turn as a real boy Red Tornado did 4 damage from two Force Blasts to KC Flash and the next turn finished the game off my Force-Blasting Green Lantern and Spectre.

Round 3

Feeling a little more confident having managed to win that last game fairly comfortably I was paired against Adam Jones running

Superior Spider-man 125
-Eclipso 25
Spider-Man 100
J Jonah Jameson 30
Night Nurse 20

Adam won map and put us on the Prison map from Civil War organised play. Both his main characters had Impervious, Shapechange, and Super Senses up front and with JJ Perplexing up Superior Spider-Man’s defense they were tough nuts to crack. However what they didn’t have was a lot of mobility and with them needing to close up and me having a huge swing it was going to hard for him to get to me although the map favored him in this regard.

During the first turn Adam used the walls to aggressively move both Spider-Men up, however he left JJ slightly exposed so I took the opportunity to take him out with a drone TK’d and Sidestepped Calling-In Hawkeye. Unfortunately the Drone was out of reach of another TK from Jean Grey so was probably going to die at the hands of Superior Spider-man but he would have to double token himself to do that so I didn’t mind that much. On his turn he did just that as the drone was the only character in Charge range. He moved up Night Nurse to give him somewhere to run back to and cleared Cyborg Spidey.

The next couple of turns I was able to take out Superior Spider-Man with a combination of Atom Retaliation and Black Canary out as a Real boy (girl) – bypassing all of his defensive powers and without any move and attack powers I was able to dance around Cyborg Spider-Man before taking out him and Night Nurse fairly easily.

Round 4

After a couple of easier games I was feeling a little bit better about my chances but in this round I faced someone a little more experienced with a better team.

Jack Pashley:

Nick Fury 120
-Rock of Eternity with 3 relics
Jean Grey 50
Ultron 18.2 30
Nighthawk Prime 65
3 ID cards – Nick Fury, Captain Cold, 50pt Captain America

Jack won map and placed us on the Chemical Plant from Civil War. In this match the deciding factor would be Nighthawk Prime. Jack was happy sitting in his starting area waiting for 3 Sins to appear on his Rock and for Nick to get Ranged Combat Expert. My team on the other hand relied quite a bit on Perplex and range modifiers so on a map where I had no real way of protecting myself from Nick I was likely going to take some damage before I could engage him.

The initial engagement was an exchange of Drones by Jack calling in Nick and me calling in Hawkeye. Unfortunately whilst his Jean Grey could TK back his drone I needed to Sidestep forward with mine so lost the second drone on the next turn. Without drones I was fighting a losing battle and without my perplexes I just couldn’t do enough to get rid of his Nick. Jack managed to take out my Quinjet and I managed to take out his Nighthawk and in the end he won fairly easily.

So after the Swiss rounds I was 2-2 fairly disappointing but I had earned enough points to progress to the top 8. Sean, Matthew and Anthony from the Night’s Watch had also done enough to make it through so things weren’t looking too bad for us.

Top 8

Tom Rodden

Red Son Wonder Woman 165
Morlock 10
-Proteus 35
BatSupes Robot 25
Atom 15
Full Pandora’s Box 40
2 ID cards – Jane Foster Thor, 150pt Iron man from Classic Avengers Fast Forces

Tom won map roll, I managed to lose all my map rolls today, and put us on the Temple again from the SMWW set. First couple of turns was him pushing Morlock to death and getting Sins out whilst he hid behind the blocking terrain and I stayed put in my starting area trying to slowly work out Atom as a real boy. He was slowly Sidestepping around the blocking when I saw a chance to take out his Proteus with Nick Fury. Jean TK’d up Age of Ultron Drone and I Sidestepped the Drone thinking I was being clever in blocking Proteus’s line of fire but forgetting that I really wanted to TK the drone back to avoid retaliators. With 3 Perplexes, I had managed to get out 50pt Iron Man as a pilot at this point, I was able to KO Proteus after Nick had turned off his defense power but the Drone was KO’d in retaliation, I nearly lost Nick as well but Wonder Woman missed with her ultra heavy HSS attack against him and went back in hiding behind the blocking.

Next turn Hawkeye took out Atom but instead of trying to force Wonder Woman out of hiding I tried to lock her down by using a real boy Peggy Carter to turn off her HSS and grouped my force around her. Forgetting of course that by this time she had cleared and was able to call in Jane Foster Thor for some energy explosion goodness on my Jet and adjacent figures. My Ultron-8 had fortunately survived this and attempted to call in Black Canary to Pulse wave Wonder Woman, unfortunately however I miscalculated her movement as the square I needed to get to was 6 squares away from the drone. Wonder Woman didn’t let me have a second chance and polished off the Jet with a HSS attack and that was game right there.

So that was me out of event and unfortunately Matthew and Anthony were also knocked out at this stage which left only Sean through to the top 4. So rather than leave the report there I will let Sean take over from here.

Semi Finals

This would be my 6^th match of the day, having played in a 4 round Swiss and having already won my first match up in the Top 8 cut.  I knew going in to this match that there were two spots available for Nationals and, unfortunately, two of my team mates who had already qualified a few weeks earlier had been knocked out of the Top 8.  This meant that in order for me to qualify I had to win this match.  The pressure was on.

My Semi-Final match saw me pitted against Tino using a double Namor team and full Round Table. The full team was

(Ruler Theme)
Namor 110
Namor 110
Mephisto 45
Avengers Round Table 35
-John Constantine
-Batman
-Namor 
-Aquaman 
-Triathlon 
-Black Canary 

I had seen my opponent in an earlier game against a team mate.  During that game my team mate was playing a double D20 team of Felix Faust and Doctor Strange.  My team mate (also my son) had rolled the yellow power on Felix and had decided he was going to wipe out all of the Atlantean Bystander tokens as they were proving “annoying”.  In doing so though he had enabled Tino to spin his round table quite a lot which resulted in Tino eventually being able to pick up the win .  I had made the decision then that if I faced Tino I was going to ignore his bystander tokens as best I could.

Tino, playing a Ruler themed team, won map roll and put us on the TMNT map as the Atlantis map for Trinity War was not legal for this event.  First couple of turns saw Tino bringing out Atlantean Warrior whilst I assigned Sins and failed to get anything useful with Faust. 

By Turn 3 the map appeared flooded (no pun intended) with Atlanteans and there was only one location I could get to without being adjacent to one of the pogs.  I rolled ‘Wheel of Nyorlath’ (close combat actions only) on Faust rolled prob on Pandoras box and perplexed up attack on the robot.  With Juston’s attack and a Hypersonic from BatSupes I managed to do enough to take out one of his Namors and stay away from his other figures. We both then cleared and moved around our forces until Tino called in Black Canary with his remaining Namor and decided to running shot pulse wave, missing the attack even after selling her soul to Mephisto to re-roll the attack.

I then managed to take out his second Namor with another double attack from BatSupes and a handily placed Ultra-heavy. I then managed to roll the red power on Faust sending everyone back to their starting area and just for good measure rolled a 5-6 on Faust D6 and did it again the following turn. At this stage there was only 20 seconds left of the match so we both agreed to call that game.  I had made it to the final , guaranteeing my position at Nationals.  Which was just as well as the final match was brutal

Final Match

I faced Jack Pashley in the final who had beaten Chris in an earlier match. Jack won map roll and put us on the Chemical Plant Civil War map. First Turn we both sat back and assigned Sins then came Turn 2 – or as I like to refer to it the turn where it all went wrong.

Jack free action TK’d Ultron Drone and called in Nick using SHIELD Level 7.  He then power action TK’d his other Nick. He declared an attack with call in Nick , targeting Bat/Supes.  He had forgot to ‘Watchers Eye’ my Shapechange.  If ever I needed to hit a Shapechange roll it was now.  I rolled the D6 and rolled a 3.  He made the attack and hit putting Bat/Supes on his stop click.  He declared a second attack with his “real Nick” and hit killing Bat Supes. Then used his “Watchers Eye” power to get rid of Pen/Psy from Faust.

I rolled Fausts d20 and got Orange. Energy Dampeners on everyone. Couldn’t get to him to attack so had to phase away. Jack made swift work on Faust and that was game. Congratulations to Jack on winning the event.