Here we are with another Heroclix trip! This one is for the Heroclix for Huntingtons and ROC Cup 2023. It’s held at Lucky Dice Cafe in Huntsville, Alabama. This was my first time travelling to Alabama, so it’s another state that I’ve now been to. As always, the whole time there was spent between the hotel and the venue. My travelling buddy was Jay and I was happy to have him with me. We also shared the hotel room with Matty and PJ. It was great getting to know the both of them better and spending time with them. The travel there was easy, but long. The flights themselves were short, but the waiting was long. I woke at 4am to get to the airport at 6 for a 9am flight. Unfortunately there is no direct flight to Huntsville from Toronto, so we had a layover in Chicago. As always, I built a long layover in, in case of delays. We got to the hotel around 3, checked in and headed over to store. I was super excited to see friends that were already there and had a chance to just hang out and chat. When talking with Aaron, he let me know that his wife would be there over the weekend too with their baby and I’d get to meet them too! He’s such a cutie!
Thursday night was the Tracy Brock Memorial team sealed event. My teammates were Jay and Adam. This event uses random old boosters that were a mix of carded and uncarded, individual foil packs of old gravity feeds and tab app figures. I wasn’t playing when most of this stuff came out and had no idea about most of what we were opening. I had the guys build the teams and they gave me the easiest one to pilot – which was using Black Hand as a tentpole with some support in the way of enhancement from a Hydra Agent, SHIELD from a Shield Field Agent and pseudo support and mobility from an Indigo Tribe Recruit. I really don’t remember many specifics from my games – other than managing to get alpha strikes off with Black Hand doing 6 penetrating damage (bump from SHIELD plus enhancement) in my first game to one shot KO his big piece in the 1st match, keeping the figure that got posessed when Black Hand was taken out in the 2nd game, and also one shotting the big figure in game 3 against Lucas and getting the 7 damage I needed there by rolling a crit hit. They cut to top 4 for this event and we didn’t have enough wins between us to make it in, but it was a really fun experience. This was a really long day and I think it was around 1am that we made our way back to the hotel. 
Friday had an 11am registration time for the Scott Porter vs the World tournament, which ended up getting called Scott Porter vs the Warehouse instead – with product not having arrived in time. Everyone seemed to stay in great spirits through all the hiccups. As an apology and a way to kill time, Wizkids got everyone a battle royal on the house as we waited for the Avengers 60th boosters to arrive. Just as they were about to go with an alternate idea to get the event under way, the FedEx truck arrived and we got started – only about 4 hours late. Because of the awesome turnout, they had to go with 1 booster of Avengers 60th and 1 booster of Spider Man Beyond Amazing instead of 2 boosters of AV60. Everyone had the chance to mulligan if they wanted – I chose not to, because of my initial pulls. In my SMBA booster I had SR Vulture and R Dr. Strange. In the AV60 booster I had SR prime Super Adaptoid and Misty Knight. She has the choice of choosing either empower with close combat expert or enhancement with range combat expert – allowing me to choose what I needed each turn to get the most damage off by supporting either the range on Adaptoid or in close with Vulture. Having prob on Strange was fantastic for sealed and him having 18 defend and giving them all ESD while adjacent made the team really difficult to hit from range. It was a really good team!
My first round opponent was Matty G who had exactly what my team doesn’t want to face – stealth. I did manage to get a few of his figures down to the last click or two and was going to try and get 1 more energy explosion off to get them all but time was called before I could take them out and he won 0-50, only taking out Vulture.
My next opponent was Mike who also had a team that made it difficult on me – with Madame Web. I know as soon as she gets a 6 on her card that taking anything with senses out is going to be impossible. I went right for her and couldn’t roll high enough to hit her and of course gave her 6’s for her Rally. I was only able to take out Hammer (the only one without senses) and he got all of my team except Adaptoid. He won 80-155.
Round 3 I faced Dennis, who travelled from Mexico. He had the kind of team I had built to face and was able to start with a hit on his Clea to put her down half her dial so she wasn’t as scary then picked off his other pieces before finishing her off and winning 295-80.
Round 4 was against Cory. This was another team that I could deal with easy enough and his dice didn’t help him much to go along with it so I won 300-50.
With not taking any points in round 1 and very little in round 2, it wasn’t enough to make the cut with a 2-2 record. Again it turned into a late night. They paused the tournament after round 3 so they could do a live portion of the auction and then go on live for the last hour of the Auxxit auction. I wanted to make sure I was coming home with a Scott Cramton pog so I was bidding on one of those and did win it. Auxxit is not set up for international paying, so it was a bit of a workaround to get invoiced and pay for it before leaving. Thankfully Howard took the cash from me – now I just need it cleared out of my account because it’s still sitting there showing not paid. After the auction they continued with round 4 and I can’t remember if they did top 32 or not – but they decided they’d continue the rest of the top cut Saturday, after the teams event.
Saturday was Silver Highlander Teams event. Again my teammates are Jay and Adam. Jay and I already had teams we’ve been playing around with, with very little overlap of figures so we just tweaked slightly and Adam worked around what we were already using to build his team. I was grateful for this so I could play something that I’ve been playtesting already. Adam ended up building Robots with danger room constructs, Jay played Doom Patrol and I played prize Apoc at 145, prize Genesis at 35, Carnage Silver Surfer, Faust and Star Sapphire. I have to share a story about the Carnage Silver Surfer. I wrote this up and shared it on Facebook, but I want to remember it all and add it here too. 
I got a random message from someone on discord a few weeks ago asking when Canadian Nats usually is. I invited him into the Toronto and Ottawa groups on Facebook so he could see easily when it gets announced. We continued talking clix for a while and he out of the blue asked me if I needed a Carnage Silver Surfer. You see, I’d posted in the Toronto group looking to borrow one for the Huntington’s event and he’d scrolled through the group after my adding him to it and saw it. I was still looking to borrow one and he said he’d be willing to mail it to me to use for the event. He did ask for a favour though. He said that he also wanted me to take his Lucky Ditto Pokemon card as it’s been lucky for him, and he wanted it to go on a journey and hopefully bring me luck too. I was awestruck. This is someone I’ve never met before who was willing to trust me enough to just mail me a very expensive piece to borrow, along with his good luck charm. As you can see, I had the Lucky Ditto take a spot on my sideline and the judge even ticked it off as present with my team. All my opponents got to hear the story and the Lucky Ditto was on the table every match with the Carnage Silver Surfer card. And whoever keyed the teams into hcunits and named my team Lucky Ditto, you have no idea how much it made me smile, so thank you for that! This community is amazing and I’m so happy to be a part of it! Now that I’m home, I’ve mailed it back to him and surprised him with a boxed con John Cena. There weren’t many of these released in Canada so I was hoping it was something he didn’t already have and I was right! He was surprised, super appreciative and said it wasn’t necessary, but I was happy to do it.
My first round opponent was Jaylen who was playing full ultra chase Thanos with all the gems, Q prime and Saturnyne. Between Q and Saturnyne, he was able to have his gem effects of rolling a 10+ trigger 4 times on me so I wasn’t in a very good place and lost. Jay was able to win his match and Adam went to a tie on his game. We had more points though so we came out with the win as a team.
Round 2 I played against Nicholas who was playing Monsters. Super nice guy but newer. I was surprised he didn’t send his Sky Tyrant across the map with Venom Mags to take out some of my smaller guys at the back of the map. I did try and make it difficult with some barrier, but he would have had a chance against my guys with shape change. I’d placed Apoc such that he’d be able to reach anyone the next turn and got in to hurt his Sentry to get him off the printed 4 damage. From there I got a whole bunch of my roll-outs and was able to pick off his pieces one by one and ended up with the win. Our game ended before time was called and he took the opportunity to ask me things he could have done differently or improve on so we had a real nice conversation where I pointed some positioning he could have done differently (things like having a 2nd target in case I roll shape change) and things that he could try and remember for his next games. Jay and Adam also won their games so we’re now 2-0 as a team.
Round 3 was with Nathan who was playing a Mr Sinister x-swap team. We had some pretty big moments in this game. I moved up a little, just out of his reach and he took a set-up turn. I got in with Apoc and double targeted both Moira and Sinister and regretted having double targeted. I couldn’t roll blades because of the double targeting (with blades would have been doing minimum 5 because of Genesis) and ended up putting Sinister on last click with my 4 damage instead of KOing him. Then I came up with Carnage Surfer and triple targeted his Wonder Woman, Carnage Surfer and something else. He got rollouts on everyone but Wonder Woman so I got her to stop click. My Star tarot card flipped and he attacked my Apoc with Genesis and rolled a 1 on blades, making it a 6 from the tarot card, putting me to my first stop. He brought his Carnage Surfer, Wonder Woman and Emma over to try and deal with some of my smaller pieces that were held back. I brought Sapphire over to make a Boot to knock back his Wonder Woman into a wall to KO her and he used her revive on herself. I then made an attack with the Boot and managed to hit her with doubles! He didn’t get his super senses so the damage put her back to stop and the knockback took her out. In the end he took out a bunch more than I was able to and took the win. Our team went 1-2 this round, putting us overall 2-1.
Round 4 I faced Kalder. He had a really fun knockback team with Frog-Man, ring bearers to make boots and Iron Spider prime. He came up and was able to get a whole bunch of damage off and get rid of my little guys really fast. I think he got every single leadership roll with Iron Spider and really messed with my guys not being able to use their equipment. He had me scared with how effective his alpha was but I slowly was able to pick off his guys from there and came out with the win. Our team went 2-1 that round, putting us at 3-1 and into the top cut.
Top 16 I played against AJ. This is a new opponent for me who I was meeting for the first time. I won’t lie, he was pretty cranky and in a rough mood. Instead of mirroring his mood and bringing myself down, I kept my happy and fun self and tried to make it an enjoyable game. He had a team that was a big counter to my team. He had both Switch and Agatha with Hope, Sakky and Molecule Man. I did my usual thing of putting my blocking terrain in his face to mess with his TK lines. Instead of blowing them up, like most opponents do, he left them there to protect him even more with all the barrier Molly was doing. He picked the Daily Bugle map and it was perfect for his team. With all the walls and the barrier terrain that he placed, he was able to effectively not let me get to him without blowing up a bunch of walls. There were also perfect places for him to place his 2 ruin markers where he could be behind them and keep me from being able to be anywhere but in them. This made me have to slowly blow up walls to be able to eventually see him and placing debris down in more places that he wouldn’t be able to place his barriers down on, while putting up barrier myself to keep my guys protected (unless he brought Molly out to take some away) until I had enough of a clear line to him. I was surprised that he didn’t eventually TK up Switch to shoot me then TK her back – there ended up being 0 dice rolled on both sides, with the exception of Faust rolls for all his perplexing. We had a TON of turns though with all the positioning and wall breaking and barrier placing – I actually shuffled my 6 card tarot deck even! Our game ended in a 0-0 tie that went to roll-off because of it being top cut. I rolled an 8, he rolled an 8. I rolled a 9 and doesn’t he roll an 11. Even though no dice were rolled for attacks, it was a really good game. The best thing though was at the end of the game. He was now smiling and laughing and said that it was the most enjoyable game he’d had and he was really glad we played and gave me so many hugs and thanked me for making his day. Adam and Jay did win their games, so we continue on.
Top 8 I finally get to play Issac AB. We keep seeing each other at big events and not facing and keep joking that the current Canadian Nats champ and current US Nats champ need to face. He’s got a random good stuff team. The details of this game are escaping me, but I know that he beat me. As a team we went 1-2 and this is where our run ends. 
Prizing for top 8 was the Speed Racer variant map (that I got Scott Porter to sign to the Queen of the North), Scott Cramton pog, dice, sleeves, full set of Mandarin rings, 3 plastic man objects, Death Metal Wonder Woman, John Cena, Spider Hulk, Ashley Barton and Punchline.
This night went long with the sealed top cut happening after teams finished and I always like to stick around until the end of stuff. While top cut was happening, Adam volunteered to have his hair cut for charity and Jay won that auction so him and Kalder cut Adam’s hair and filmed it. While they were doing that, I jumped in on a battle royal. It was the only one I played the whole weekend. Someone was looking for a 4th so I was happy to join them to do one. My booster had Spider Supreme in it, so I took that for my first pull. The guy to my left pulled SR prime Goblin and the guy to my right pulled SR Vulture. He chose to take Bullseye instead of Vulture, so it got passed to me. I also got passed 2 Silver Sables and a Black Cat. It was an insane battle royal team. I ended up winning the battle royal and walking away with the SR prime – which was on my didn’t have yet list. Always great to fill in holes in the collection. Unfortunately, this battle royal was my only sour point of the whole weekend. One of the guys at the table was newer and we all said we’d be happy to help him out and teach him. A few turns in, one of the guys at the table casually asked if he’d had a chance to read the PAC and asked if he had one. The newer player said he didn’t have one so we offered to loan him one to use for the game. Well the newer player didn’t respond to this very well and got very defensive and talked about not bugging us anymore and he’ll just read what he needs from the borrowed PAC. We again said that he wasn’t bugging us and we didn’t mind helping him, but he just got an attitude about it. At almost the end of the game, he had a whole bunch of Rally dice on his Bullseye and one of my opponents took his Bullseye out. This made him really upset and he said he was quitting the battle royal, forfeiting the game and didn’t want any of the prizing. He got up and left – even though we reminded him that there are 3 SR’s on the table, plus they were adding prizing into the pool and everyone was going to walk away with something good. He refused. Just as we were calling over a judge to ask what to do with his figures on the board, the judge was coming to call last action. I noticed he had some action tokens under one of his figures on the board and handed them to Matty, who was standing by me and offered to find him to give them back, but he was right there in the area and we again offered for him to come back and draft but he again refused. It was such an uncomfortable situation and left me feeling on edge. We were only trying to be friendly and help.
Anyways, Jay and I didn’t get out of there until after 2am. Mike drove us to the hotel and I went right up to shower and get a few minutes of quiet alone time to recharge. Jay stayed to chat with Mike for a bit. PJ and Matty didn’t get back to the hotel until close to 4am after staying back to get their battle royal in with Scott Porter. Very little sleep for everyone as we had to be back at Lucky Dice for 8am registration for singles.
Sunday was the singles Silver ROC World Championship. I played the exact same team that I played for teams. I was debating between 2 versions of the team and was undecided which I was going to use, right up until the night before. I was asking friends which version they thought was better and I got answers on both sides but decided to go with the Carnage Surfer over Wonder Woman – and I’m glad I did because it was definitely a better choice, especially when it came to my matchups.
Round 1 was against Robby playing Guy Gardner with red ring, Sinestro with indigo ring, Sakky with cloak, Faust with spin and influence rings, Flash with muramasa blade, Ch’p with emod and Green Lantern with green ring. He moved up a bit and protected with some stop signs. I moved Apoc and Genesis up a bit myself. He copied GL TA with Flash and moved the crew up to go after my back line group and I think got out Star Sapphire. I came in with Apoc and took out Ch’p. I think I rolled out of everything on his next turn and then was able to take out a few more things myself with Apoc flurry, Genesis coming in with a Flurry and Surfer also doing damage. He was only able to get out Faust and I had most of his team out. When time was called I won 205-60.
Round 2 was with Jay. It was bound to happen at some time this weekend that we’d get paired – it always happens that we travel all this way, only to face locals. He was playing his Doom Patrol team. I moved out a bit and he came in with a pulsewave from Deathstroke to take out Faust and hurt someone else. I was able to take out Deathstroke on my next turn. From there I came in with Surfer and dealt damage to multiple people with his 2 attacks and heal up. Just before time was called I had managed to take out his whole team and he’d gotten almost half of mine. I won 300-120, putting me at 2-0.
Round 3 opponent was against Mike Eskew and we played on stream. He was playing an X-Men team of 5 Wendigos, Surtur, Groot, Apoc, Genesis, Professor X, Moloid and Sakarian. He swapped out Professor X for Peeper. I won map roll and put us on a little map. He moved out on his 1st turn with 3 Wendigos and Peeper. I moved Faust out for the prob and came in with Surfer to take out 2 Wendigos and damage Peeper. The follow-up attack went after the other Wendigo and Peeper again to take them both out. He came in with Surtur to retal on Surfer and I luckily rolled a successful shape change. I think this would have been a different game if he could have made that attack. He took out Faust and I got Destroyer in with that. I was using Destroyer to attack his Genesis, so she’d hit stop and I wouldn’t lose equipment and then finished her off with Apoc. Surfer took out Surtur and then later Groot. He took out Sapphire near last action and I think he only had Sakky left on the map when time was called? I won 245-60 and I’m now 3-0.
Round 4 was against Easton. He was playing a scary team of Switch, 2 Carnage Surfers (one with symbiote and one with lightning and spectral rings), Ch’p with green ring, Venom Mags and Mad Jim. I’ll be the first to say that I played this game terribly. I didn’t position well to start and didn’t place my terrain in good places. He was able to come in with Switch, via Angler, and rune my whole team. The only points I got were from moving in with Sapphire to drop a chainsaw to take out Jim. He easily took out my whole team really fast. I lost 40-300 and I’m now at 3-1.
Round 5 was with Isaac AB. He’s playing a team of good stuff, including 2 Carnage Surfers, Sakky, Venom Mags, Molecule Man, Commissioner, Pym Tank, Groot, Cosmo and equips. I think I was able to take out Mags, Molly, Commissioner, Groot and a few equips while he got through my whole team. Similar to our top 8 match yesterday, the exact details of this game are escaping me – but I know it was a good game and as always it’s enjoyable to play him. I lost 117-300 and that puts me at 3-2. I’m at table 5, so I know I’m up there in points, I just hope it’s enough to put me into the top cut. I knew it was going to be close. When they put up the top cut pairings, there I was, 16th place, just making it in.
Top 16 was a rematch with Easton. Right away, I knew it was going to be a better game. Anyone that knows me, knows I get better with practice. I knew a few things I was going to do different in our match this time. I was crossing my fingers that I would win map to be able to put us on Fountain of Asgard, but nope, Easton won map again and put us again on Hells Crossroads. This time I completely spread out my team, putting Apoc in one corner and Surfer in the other, with everyone else spread out between them. If he was going to rune me, it wouldn’t get more than 2 people. I also placed my terrain in places that blocked most of his line of fires and he had to set up his team very different and it took him a while to decide where to even put everyone. Because I got to go first, I took this chance to split up my figures even more, bringing Faust way up to both be in closer range for his roll outs, as well as to be able to shoot Colossal Carnage next turn if he lived. I also used Sapphire to TK Genesis into place to be able to blow up the Object terrain token that he’d placed – so I could make his Angler trick more difficult to pull off. It took him a while to decide what to do after that opening move of mine. He was trying everything he could to have his Switch be able to see Faust to outwit his stealth, but be out of his range with perplexes to not have me roll Fausts trait for the outwit and he never did end up doing it. I think he just kind of repositioned. His tarot card up was half move free if you have plasticity and my tarot card that flipped was charge +2. With a TK from Sapphire, the free move and then charge, I was able to get in to take out his Jim (I realized after that because of the +2 charge card I would have been able to get in 1 square more and have a 2nd target for my flurry – but it ended up not mattering because I crit missed on my 1st attack anyway). I was also able to get Surfer in a place to take out his colossal Carnage and heal up because of that free half move as well. He then dropped a rune and took out Genesis. He repositioned everyone away from his rune and as he finished his turn I realized that I should have had a Destroyer roll. He said that it was too late after all the moving that took place after so we just moved on. From there he got a great turn in where he took out my Apoc. After the game, I realized that I again forgot to roll for Destroyer here. I was doing so good at remembering all day too, up until now! Then I got in and took Mags with Surfer. When time got called, I still had Surfer, Faust and Sapphire on the map but with him taking out Apoc, the win was his. I lost 80-200, ending my play for the day.
Prizing once again was great. Another map – I thought it was the same Speedracer variant map, but it wasn’t. It was the double sided Critical Clix and Marsh map – last years winning player designed ones! I got Scott, PJ and Lucas to all sign the Critical Clix one and will bring the map to Worlds to have those guys sign the other side for me. As well, I got a cheque for $75USD, another Scott Cramton pog, dice, sleeves, John Cena, Phoenix BC and Orion cons.
Congrats to Easton who ended up winning it all – so I got knocked out by the person who won. He made my day when I went over to give him a hug and congratulate him – he said that I was his toughest opponent who gave him the most challenges and came the closest to beating him. I’ll take that as a win in my book!
We stuck around the store to see how it all played out and then a group of us all went out for dinner and drinks before parting ways. Mike ended it all by getting us all in for a family group hug, which was the perfect ending to the weekend. I love that I got to meet new friends on this trip and become closer with people who I already knew. These trips really do fill my soul with happiness and love.
Thanks as always for reading along about my experience on another trip and I can’t wait for the next one!!
Until next time, xoxo