Back from another adventure to Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee again for 2023 Worlds!
I’ve decided to not break this up into multiple posts this time, so it’s going to be a long one. I’ll be covering the travel, social time, Pulp, Teams, Singles and Battle Royals. So hang tight! 
This year I travelled with Devin and Jay and the 3 of us shared our room with Jackson. With how much I enjoyed going early last year, I wanted to do that again – and I wanted that extra day to be as early as possible for the most amount of social time, so that made for a really long day. Our flight on Wednesday was at 7am. This means being at the airport for 4am (darned international flights requiring you to be at the airport 3 hours before your flight). So I woke just before 2am to leave my house at 2:20 to catch the blue night bus to the airport at 2:30. Devin and I timed it so he got on the same bus and we could travel together. Jay met as at the airport and we easily got through security and immigration. It’s always really easy when you say you’re travelling for a tabletop game tournament and they waved us through quickly. We were thinking to grab an early breakfast but nothing was really open that early so we waited until our layover in LaGuardia. If you’ve read any of my travel blogs before, you know I always build in a long layover in case of delays, so this was no different. It was a 3.5hr layover this time so we had lots of time to grab breakfast. Thankfully all our flights were smooth and easy with no issues and we landed at 2pm in Memphis. Found our baggage and called for the shuttle. While waiting for it to arrive, we met some other clixers that none of us knew who were also waiting for the shuttle and had a bit of conversation. Arrived at the hotel and immediately found Az and his partner sitting in the lobby. This turned into them taking us to the Aldi to grab breakfast foods and snacks and then going out to dinner with them. The evening was filled with going to the Dial H welcome event to hang out and play some clix trivia, which then turned into drinks and chatting in the hotel lobby area. All in all, a great start to the vacation, even if it was a super long day.
The events on Thursday don’t start until 2pm, so we took the time to sleep in and have a slow start to the day. This was a perfect time to head down to the pool for a swim (even if the water was a little chilly) before heading over to the convention center. I went over early at 12:30 to get in line. Jackson joined me for company and Devin joined us later. Jay was already there early with the other volunteers. I’m glad I got there when I did – there were only about 25 people in front of me and the line quickly got longer from there. I will say that this year’s check-in process went smoother than last year. Scott came out with some clipboards that had slips of paper on them to check off which events you wanted to sign up for and your name. They also decided to lift the cap of 64 players for the Pulp tournament and just made the participation prizing into top 64 prizing – which I thought was a fantastic idea to let everyone who wanted to sign up to play. They also let us sign up for teams, without having the 3 of us together. So much easier! I was able to pay for teams without making my teammates come over super early with me. This year they expanded the amount of space in the convention center too, to 3 halls. The 1st hall was the play space for the main events. The 2nd hall was for battle royals, XOS events and Onslaught. The 3rd hall was registration, purchases and Troll and Toad booth. Once inside the convention center, you started in Hall 3 and went through a series of tables in a specific order, which kept everything organized. 1st table was picking up the TCB packages. 2nd table was purchasing Con Exclusives. They limited these to 1 per person on the 1st day so everyone could get them. 3rd table was registering for events with the paper you’d already filled out in line. 1st you paid and your sheet was initialed off that it was paid and then you went over with your paper to another person who entered your name in the computer for the events you chose. I took a picture of my paid sheet as confirmation of purchase in case I needed it for any discrepancies over the weekend (it wasn’t needed, all went smooth). From there, you could enter the gaming hall to go to whichever area you needed for what you signed up for. I suppose I should let you all know what I preregistered for! Thursday I signed up for pulp, Friday I signed up for teams and Saturday I signed up for modern singles.
For Pulp, they were doing 6 rounds of swiss with no cut to single elimination. Just whoever the top player was from the swiss rounds would be the winner. I wasn’t feeling very confidant with my team at all. I had packed 2 teams with me. 1 that I’d tried only once and lost terribly and 1 that I hadn’t tried at all but sounded fun. I decided on the completely unpracticed team and said that if I lost my first 2 rounds that I’d just drop and go play some battle royals instead. Knowing that battle royals and teams were going to be using the new Notorious set, I figured it’s better to try out some of the new pieces if I wasn’t doing so hot in pulp. So here’s the team I went with – a fun mind control team for a theme team of Scientists. Mr. Sinister, Moira MacTaggart, Blue Marvel, Dr Psycho, Valeria Richards, Leader, The Brain and Teen Lantern.
Round 1 was against Tim. He was playing Stardust, Silver Swan, Eddie Brock, Reptil, Jimmy Woo, The Brain and The Wizard. I won initiative and chose to take us to Avengers Tower. This was very much a game of my dice missing by 1 constantly. My opponent said if any of my attacks would have actually hit that I’d have taken it. I remember a run of rolling a 6 5x in a row when needing a 7. I was able to hit a little and took 70 points (Silver Swan and Wizard) but he took a little more at 135 and I lost the game. 0-1.
Round 2 was against Phillip. He also had a Scientist team of Blue Marvel, Sunspot, Mr Sinister, Spider-Man, Leader, Teen Lantern, Dr Celia Reyes and Moira MacTaggart. He brought up most the team just a little, but behind barrier. I made my way over with Blue Marvel to try and start working on his Mr Sinister and Moira. Rolled a 3. I don’t think I managed to ever hit them at all in any attack I was making. I did manage to take out his Sunspot through my various mind controls, but like last game, he got more with 150 and won. 0-2.
As I said, I wasn’t too invested in Pulp and did exactly what I said I was going to do – drop to play battle royals. If it wasn’t a chance to play with the new set, I would have just stayed in and played. I don’t usually ever drop. But this was a different circumstance with having something else to do and knowing I wasn’t in the running for any prizing at all with prizing only going to top 8. I didn’t do much better in the battle royals – coming 3rd in the 1st one and 4th in the 2nd one, but it gave me a chance to see a few of the pieces in action. Once everything was done, Jay and I went to dinner together and out to the back of the hotel for some more social hanging out time.
Friday was the teams event. This year I got to play with Jocelyn and Ajà again for team Calm Your Clix. We were lucky with our brick that we pulled a chase Hawkman and 2 primes, Omac and Ras. Ajà was hoping to play a Poison Ivy and she was able to do that. Jocelyn played the Hawkman. I chose Omac Prime and Metallo for a Robot theme team. I was debating with that or playing the Black Adam. I do kinda regret not choosing Black Adam because Omac and Metallo were really susceptible to outwit and it hurt me a lot.
Round 1 I faced Will Gordon. His team was Prime Kamo, Lex Luthor, Superman and Zod. This was a case of RTFC better. I did look at his cards but I glossed over a key thing that Kamo could do. I looked at his movement and threat range and moved what I thought was 1 square out of it. What I had missed was that Kamo could place himself to a friendly within 4. So he was able to reach me when I thought he couldn’t. I threw whatever I could into him, getting him to his stop click. He got some more hits in and I went after Zod so he wasn’t so scary. He took out Metallo. I finished off Zod. He came in with some hits on Omac and I finished off Superman. He was able to get through Omac (shark pog MVP for sure!) and won 140-300.
Round 2 was with Dan Powell. He played Martin Manhunter, Black Hand, Lex Luthor and Saturn Queen. I moved up a little. He moved up to get a hit off, doing only 1 damage but moving me back to basically my starting area. I came in to try and take out Saturn Queen, the only one I could see, but he got a roll out. He got some damage off on Metallo. I hit Lex and he masterminded to Black Hand, putting him on last click. Next turn I was able to take out Saturn Queen. I think this is where he took out Omac. I finished off Lex. He got some damage off on Metallo. I based Black Hand (he’d outwitted my move and attack) and then got him out the next turn. Now it’s down to my hurt Metallo and his full Manhunter. I’m not able to get any successful attacks off on him. He hits me to my stop click. I get my shape change and actually hit him. I miss my next shape change and the game is over. 140-300.
Round 3 was against Eirik. He’s playing Saturn Queen, Wonder Woman and Two Face. If there was ever a game of can’t hit anything, this is it. He had all the probs in the world and rollouts. I just couldn’t hit a thing. I did get some damage off on Saturn Queen, but not enough to finish her off. The only reason the game lasted as long as it did was he decided to have fun with his Two Face and made an attack, which turned into a crit miss, which took him off of outwit and on to prob. Otherwise he could have taken me out much sooner. 0-300.
Round 4 was with George. He’s also playing Omac Prime with Batman, Black Manta Goon, Polka Dot Man and Manhunter. This was my favorite round of teams, we had such a fun game. We kinda met in the middle and just went at it. I got a good hit off on his Omac and Polka Dot Man. He attacked back. I took out Polka Dot Man and tried to take out Black Manta Goon to get rid of the enhancement that he was using to get shots off with Batman and Manhunter from the elevated. He got through my Metallo. I took out Manhunter. He got a good hit on Omac and I took out his Omac. I hit his Batman to just 2 clicks left. He hit me to my last click. He hides in stealth so I move away from him, knowing if I stay alive I win. He’s only got sidestep on his dial and decides to just walk over to me to base me. Not wanting to breakaway, I decide to attack and say I’m using his range combat expert and shoot him out of adjacency, needing a 5 to KO him. Don’t I crit miss and KO myself instead?! George wins 260-300.
Ajà and Jocelyn did better than I did in my games (Jocelyn was our MVP this year – we’ve all had a year where we’ve rocked it independantly, we just haven’t yet connected them enough yet. We’ve now all individually had our rough year, so next year has got to be the year where we all rock it at the same time!) so we ended 43rd out of 69 teams. As always we had a blast playing together and we can’t wait to do it again next year!
As top cut of teams played, I jumped into some more battle royals and waited around for the Fan Appreciation night. They shared some things upcoming and gave out participation stuff on the way out – more mandarin rings, like last year, lol. Back to the room to drop stuff off then down to hang out with friends before going up to the room to make sure I had everything I needed packed for tomorrow.
Saturday is the main event. 300 modern singles World championship, my favorite format! While we waited in line to get in, Ian came to Devin and I to have us on the live stream to talk about our teams and how we’re feeling for the day. I’m playing the same prime spidey team that I played at Canadian Nationals (you can see the team and read about that experience here). The only change I made was taking off Fountain of Asgard map and putting on Morlock Tunnels.
Round 1 was with Spencer. He’s playing a mission points team of Indigo-1, The Riddler, The Watcher, Mad Jim, Ch’p, Molecule Man, Uatu, and Green Lantern. This was my first time playing against a mission point team, but I had thought about the matchup a bunch and knew what I would do against it. I knew I needed to be aggressive and be in their face quickly, so that’s exactly what I did. He won initiative and put us on Negative Zone. I wiggled Spidey, made Rookie and moved him out to the middle of the map and moved out Sakky to the middle of the map while grabbing his objects. I made sure to stay out of range from letting him perplex me though. I could tell he’d done this set up many times before with where he had everyone placed to drop stop signs and sidestep back to put around 17 squares of barrier after doing some healing to get some mission points. I was happy that he rolled a 1 twice on the healing (my tarot card to reroll a die was up) so he couldn’t get as many mission points as he was hoping for on turn 1. I saw a play where I’d be able to get Spidey in. I did a running shot with Rookie to take out 1 of the squares of barrier, then running shot with Sakky to take out a stop sign, then TK’d Spidey who sidestepped, wall crawled and charged in, picking up a square of barrier to be adjacent to Molly, Green Lantern and Ch’p. I double targeted and missed all 3 attacks I was making (flurry and crime fighting). He got more mission points between healing and perplexing Spidey down. My next turn I was able to take out Molly with one of my attacks. I also used running shot with Rookie to take out a wall and then charged with Sakky to punch one of the barrier markers. I then sidestepped Sakky in so he couldn’t barrier there again and I’d have another attacker in. He got more mission points, putting him around 15 or 16 I think. I tried to break sidestep with Spidey for better positioning to try and get to Riddler but failed that sidestep. He used prob on the breakaway roll to get the mission point. I still failed that breakaway. So instead I flurried on who I could reach and was able to take out Watcher and hurt Ch’p – with his having probbed my attack rolls, putting him at 19 mission points. I declare that I’m going to crime fight flurry and as I’m picking my targets, he’s like oh, Peace Maker – I’m going to bring him in for the Watcher KO. This is where my not having played against mission points hurt me. I really should have read Peace Maker’s card and looked closer at the dial to see he had prob. I really should not have attacked with Spidey and should have instead started moving my back line people in closer and doing anything other than giving him a chance to prob me again. But in my mind, I’d declared it and it was what I was doing and I was on autopilot from having declared it – so he of course probbed my 1st attack with Peace Maker, putting him to 20 mission points. We call over the judge to see if I get to finish my flurry to try and score some more points and while that is getting answered, time gets called. If time had been called 30 seconds earlier, before I made that attack, I win the game. FYI, the answer was yes, I got to finish my flurry, so I did get more points in my loss. 145-300, 0-1.
Round 2 was against Caden. His team is a Defenders team of Clea, Beast, Arachknight, Venom Dr Strange and Hulk. He moved into the corner of the map, protecting both Clea and Beast from my alpha coming in. I sent in Sakky to pulsewave the group and then Spidey, who took out both Hulk and Venom Dr Strange. He brought out Beast to outwit Spideys defense and Arachknight got some good damage off on him, putting him to near the end of his dial. I took out Beast. He took out Spidey with Arachknight. I used pulsewave and knockback with Sakky to take out Clea. Arachknight took out Commissioner. I was able to get in with Sakky with a running shot precision strike to take out Arachknight. 300-120, 1-1.
Round 3 opponent was Jon who was playing and almost mirror match with The Commissioner, Venom Magneto, prime Spidey, Carnage Silver Surfer, King Killmonger and Mephisto. Jon puts us on Limbo. I do a similar thing that I did at Canadian Nats when put on this map, I brought out Sakky to the middle of the map, on the edge, and put him between those 2 1×2 pieces of blocking at the top of that elevated. Don’t I flip my pulsewave tarot card on turn 2? While he has the free half move plasticity card up? This allows me to get right into his team to get a pulsewave off on his whole crew. The game is basically decided on this attack. I roll nice and high to hit everyone, but doesn’t he successfully roll his Killmonger. Dangit! By him hitting that, he’s still got everyone at full health and alive. I still decide to bring Spidey over to try and get at his Spidey. He missed this Killmonger roll, but he rolled his imperv. I do take out CSS though. He takes out my Spidey with his Spidey. I’m not as lucky with my imperv rolls. I use Rookie to take out Venom Mags. He takes out Sakky with Spidey next. I move the back line crew up so they can get in to try and take out some more stuff. He comes over with an energy explosion with Ghost Goblin and is able to take out Venom Mags as time gets called. 85-175, 1-2. If I can sweep my next 2 games, maybe I can squeak into top 32?
Round 4 was with Eric. He played a near mirror match too of prime Spidey, Carnage Silver Surfer, Sakky, Kid Thanos, Mephisto and Tyler Hayward. He won initiative and chose to go first. I put us on Morlock Tunnels, hoping to throw him off, knowing I could reach him before he could reach me, with all the TK I have and having practiced the lines to get there. He stayed back and broke some walls to get some tokens on his mystery card and swapped into Iron Inquisitor. I went in with Spidey, hoping to get his Spidey. I double targeted Iron Inquisitor and Spidey and hit. He did something that I didn’t realize was a thing. He masterminded to Mephisto. I don’t know why I didn’t realize he could do that. I thought Iron Inquisitor’s mastermind thing was only to him. But it’s not. It’s to MOE. So he got me. I deserved to lose this game by not seeing that he could do that. So I get the points for Mephisto. When I swap my Iron Inquisitor into Killmonger, he puts his Mephisto right there, tying up my whole back line. I did have Sakky up a bit already tho, so I hyper’d in with him. He took out my Spidey. I attacked with Sakky but there was no impact from it. I tried to take out Mephisto but he shape changed every attack I tried. He took out Sakky and brought the rest of his team closer into my back line. I managed to take out Mephisto again and he was able to finish off the rest of my team. 60-300, 1-3. I’m there to play, so I continue on and don’t drop.
Round 5 was against Jay. His team was Agatha Harkness, Clea with Galactus, Iron Inquisitor and Mad Jim. Unfortunately, when he came over to me he said that he wasn’t into playing. He wanted to meet new people still, but was done with the day. He said that once the round started, he’d call the judge over to concede the game. So he just chatted a bit while everyone was setting up and he was putting away his figures. While I enjoyed meeting him, I really was wanting to play a game – the whole reason I didn’t drop myself, even though I knew I had zero chance of making the cut. Part of the experience at Worlds for me is getting to play high level competitive games against different people from different places. Every region has their own style, ideas and tricks, so I feel like it makes me a better player by facing a bigger variety of people.
So that ends my 300 modern run at 2-3. Even though this is it for the main tournament for me, I’m proud of how I played and the choices I made in the games I had. Only 1 learning experience with the MOE that caught me off guard, but will help me in future games I play for sure.
Seeing as I was now out, I decided to go over and sign up for some battle royals. I had to wait an hour for the next one to start so I sat with some friends and chatted while having some of my snacks. No luck in the battle royals again, but I got a few pieces that I didn’t yet have from the new set. From there I went back to the room and was just going to hang out there to recharge. My mood was in a bit of a funk with all the losses I’ve been having the whole weekend and I just wasn’t feeling the most social in that moment. Don’t get me wrong, the games were enjoyable and I had great opponents, but it still kinda sucks to have poor performance. You all know me, I try and stay positive and keep in a good mood – but I’m human too and inside it was getting to me.
After a little bit, Jackson says that Dial H posted a scavenger hunt on their Facebook and to find them and take a selfie with one of them for a legacy card. We all know how much I love taking selfies with friends, so off I went to find one of them. After looking for a few minutes, I found Simeon and snagged a pic with him. He gives me a legacy card and tells me the next clue will be going up at 10:45. Now that I’m out of the room and into playing this scavenger hunt, I go and grab a hard cider and hang out in the lobby with a bunch of friends. At 10:45 I saw the mission is to give one of them a Goon, so up to my room I went and found Kalder, who gave me another legacy card. He tells me the next clue is Blue Suede Shoes. Then another mission goes up to show them your favorite sculpt of their favorite character (Cap for Kalder, Wolvie for Simeon or Batman for Ian). I saw Kalder so googled a pic of gauntlet Cap and he gave me another legacy card and says the next clue is The Pool. I never did see anything else but they posted that someone put all the clues together and won the grand prize. In the meantime I joined more friends outside by the fire pits and chatted some more until I decided to go up to bed. I know to everyone playing it was just a fun little game, but to me it meant more. It got me out of my room, social and out of my funk. I’m grateful that they put this scavenger hunt up and that Jackson saw they were doing it. Thanks guys! It really did lift my spirts.
Sunday is a wind down day. I head over with the guys going to play in top 32 and sign up for a battle royal while they play. This was my first not so great game of the weekend. It started great – I get to the table and see that Malcom is sitting there, someone who I’ve played some battle royals with before. Then another guy sits down. Then Miles comes as our 4th. I’m excited that I get to play at a table in person with Miles for the 1st time, after only knowing him from online. The random guy asks if we all know each other and we reply that yes, we know each other. Then we open our packs. The notable pulls are that I have SR Wonder Woman and the random guy I don’t know has chase Superman. He seems very excited to have it and thinks he’s going to beat us all. Don’t his dice fail him, missing almost all attacks. He’s getting more and more irritated as the game goes on. Between his attack rolls and my shape change rolls, he starts cursing and becoming agitated. Miles ends up winning the game and getting Supes, Malcom takes the box con and I take WW. Random guy decides he wants nothing and leaves the table and drafting completely. After he left, Malcom said that he’s played in battle royals with him before and he’s had that attitude then as well. I sign up for 1 more battle royal. They’re now out of Notorious and are offering XOS battle royals, giving us a mix of boosters from all 3 months and giving everyone tickets for a drawing to see who’s going to get the main prizes. We had nothing exciting at our table. In fact, we had 3 Pogg-Ur-Pogg and 3 Isca’s on the board. I come in last place, but I’m okay with that because I end up drafting the 2 Cuckoos that we pulled. I still ended up getting the Warp World Phoenix on my next go around as well as a random sword.
I decided not to play in the last battle royal of another XOS event and lined up to sell some stuff at the Troll and Toad booth. I had packed with me some random Chases and SR’s from all the modern sets I had that were duplicates, as well as duplicate swords and constructs that I didn’t need. It turned into $200 in credit that I spent there and brought home SR prime Wonder Woman from BTU, chase Scooby and a few smaller collection hole fillers. From there, it was perfect timing to head over and watch the final game between Zane and Patrick. Fantastic match and huge congrats to Patrick for winning it all! That using phasing with Sakky to bring Spidey in was epic! If you haven’t watched the Dial H filming of it, you definitely should. They did a great job on it and it’s well worth the watch.
We spent the afternoon getting our bags organized and then headed over to Marlow’s for dinner with the west coast guys – Miles, Curtis and Nick joined Jay, Devin and me. Great meal as always and even better company. Love getting to know more people of the clix community, forming more new friendships and strengthening existing ones. After heading back, we hung out in the lobby area outside with the Dice Station Zebra crew, Dial H guys, west coast guys and John for a while before we all headed up to attempt some rest before having to get up before 4am to head to the airport. Thank you again Nick for being willing to drive us to the airport with the shuttle not yet running. Appreciate you!
The trip home was easy peasy for us. No issues at security or customs and it was the perfect amount of time on the layover for us to grab lunch. Definitely a long day, but thankfully easy. I of course crashed soon after getting home to rest up to be ready for work the next day.
As always, my favorite part of the trip was getting to see everyone, having great conversations and taking lots of pictures. If I didn’t get a pic with you, help me remember next time! If we played a match and I’ve misremembered any details, let me know and I’ll update our game. Hope to see you all again in Florida in January!
Until next time, xoxo