Last Canadian tournament weekend of the season and we’re not sure when or what the next one is going to be. Winter CCOs? ROC? I hope we get something up here in the coming months to play for!
The weekend started with Mike picking me up for the drive to Ottawa on Friday. Other than a little traffic for a bit, it was a smooth trip. There were enough people travelling from the area that we split up into 2 cars. Friday Night had some 200 point constructed battle royals running at Studio Staja (the rest of the events were being held elsewhere with more room at the Arts Court). We’d signed up for the 2nd of the Friday evening events and figured if we got there early enough and if there were still spaces available, we’d jump into the 1st one as well. Turns out we made good time and arrived 30 minutes before the 1st one was going to fire so we got to play both. The build was 200 pulp plus 1 super rare allowed. After a chat in the car on the way home from the Ontario CCO with Devin and Dan, we came up with a pog team that I played of Morlun, Ramonda, Nick Fury and Goose, and Falcon and Redwing. It wasn’t until we started playing that I realized that Falcon couldn’t do the whole saving pogs thing because it wasn’t a theme team, but it still got me another pog on the map. During the 2nd turn of the 1st game, we clued in that we were only supposed to have 2 actions (3 with leadership) but had been playing it with 3 out of muscle memory of usually playing 300 point games and corrected that for the next round once everyone had their 2nd turn. Prizing was 2 LE’s dropped plus the contents of 2 boosters to draft and I got to walk away with chase Tony Stark in this one. Game 2 I figured out more about my team that Nick Fury actually shared a keyword with Morlun (animal) to be able to mastermind to him. Always learning the more I play. I drafted a Deceased Darkseid in this one.
After the games we found a late dinner of some great Greek food. Mike, Andrew and I then went back to our room for the night and got our bags ready for the next morning before going to sleep. This is the most up in the air I have ever been about what I’m going to play. Usually I have tons of practice with a team I’ve been playing forever and just tweaking until it’s the best it can be. This year I packed both teams that I’d played the last 2 weekends at the CCOs, was also considering some kind of 200 Kong, and between talks in the car and talks over dinner, when I went to pack my bag, I finally decided on the Alberta Kong team. It was easier to pilot, less decisions to make and I felt it was the stronger of the 2 teams. I did tweak it to take off Seth and add in the Mind Gem one shot instead. I felt like I needed the Mind Gem against 200 Kong and didn’t want the mystics to help a Red Hulk Spirit of Vengeance activate. Everything else was the same as the Alberta CCO team, that you can find on that post.
Saturday morning and here we go! It’s time to defend the current Canadian National title and see if I can’t do it for a 3rd time! If it’s not me, I hope it’s another Canadian again. I had to snag a pic with Dan wearing his custom Queen of the North t-shirt he got made. Love the support and encouragement my friend! Here’s the hcunits link for the event to find all the teams and matchups.
Round 1 is against Ed playing a Phoenix Sentinel team with Colossus with Destroyer Armor, legacy Black Panther with Atum, Green Man with Khonshu, Space Ghost, Copycat, Weasel and 2 Timebreakers. I won initiative and chose to go 1st. He put us on Major Brocks Bunker. I chose the side of the map that has the different elevations and positioned with a Kong on every section. This did make it so I couldn’t do the body placement to prevent Mimic rolls though, which he did when I went to pick up the phone booth with Khonshu Kong and he rolled a 20, meaning I couldn’t go back to the starting area and back into immunity. I sidestepped Juice, carrying Fenix, so Juice would be able to sidestep the next turn to be next to the wall between elevation 1 and elevation 2 so he could punch it open if needed to help the Kongs get to where they needed to go. I really shouldn’t have carried Fenix though, breaking his immunity. He uses Colossus to walk through and break a wall so he can get a shot with Phoenix Sentinel on Khonshu Kong and crit hits, making the damage 4. This allows me to use my Fortify to keep him alive, but the after resolutions ping takes out Fenix. He then positions his pieces in such a way to block areas where I’d want to move with Kongs on my turn. I use the hurt Khonshu Kong to charge and take out both Mimic and the Timebreaker he’s got blocking an area. Then charge again with Khonshu Kong now that I have space to move into and hit his Phoenix Sentinel to last click. Then I move up Gaea Kong into charge striking range and when I went to charge, he reminded me that I no longer had leadership with Fenix being KO’d. I’m used to Fenix usually being alive much longer, I wasn’t even thinking about it! He double targeted Gaea and Khonshu, missed Gaea but hit Khonshu to take him out. I went in with Gaea and took out Phoenix Sentinel, Weasel and Green Man. Then took a second action with Gaea and took out Space Ghost, Copycat and put Panther to last click. He charged with Colossus to put Gaea to Stop. Then he had Black Panther attack to hurt himself with the Atum damage to KO himself to bring out Atum to try and take out Gaea for the points but he missed with his attack. When Atum goes away, the only thing for me to choose to take out is his Colossus and win 295-75, 1-0.
Round 2 is with Wade who’s running Betelgeuse with Motorcycle, Supergirl with Atum, Spider-Ham with Bucky’s Arm, The Wall with Longsword and Per Degaton. I won initiative and chose to go 1st. He put us on Guardian Ship. He shot with Supergirl on Gaea and hit to stop click, me completely forgetting Fortify here. Beginning of turn I heal off stop with Gaea heal then triple target Spider-Ham, Juice and the Wall with Gaea. He uses Web-Swinging with Ham to evade, so I split the damage to do 1 to the Wall and Juice for 4, completely forgetting the mystics. The mystics along with my Chthon damage, takes Gaea out. I triple target the same targets with Khonshu and Ham doesn’t get his senses so I put all the damage on him to put him to 2nd last click and he heals 1 from Supergirl. He takes out Khonshu Kong with his next attacks. I go in with my last Kong and target the same 3 and take out the Wall and then TK Juice with Fenix to mind control his Juice and crit miss which I prob myself into another crit miss. The next turn he didn’t do much between being double tokened or me getting shape changes. I go in with Kong and only successfully hit Per Degaton to KO him then I mind control his Juice and Ham with my Juice. His Juice gets his senses from the motorcycle but I successfully get his Ham, which I use to finish off his Juice and then move him next to my Juice to poison him back onto a regen click as last action gets called and I lose 155-170, 1-1. Such a close game!
Round 3 opponent is Luke who is playing Hadari Yao with Universal Weapon, Colossus with Destroyer Armor, KEVIN with Tawaret, Madisynn, Daredevil with Bucky’s Arm and Timebreaker. I won initiative and chose to go 1st. He put us on Rivals Respawn. He asks if I know how the lava works and I say yes. I grab my phone booth and herb and he comes up with Hadari and double targets the 2 Kongs he can see and hits them to stop. He charges in with Colossus on Gaea and I don’t get my imperv roll, so he’s KO’d. I hit Hadari down 2 clicks. He supports back up with KEVIN then hits the 2 remaining Kongs with Hadari, putting both to stop then uses giant reach with Colossus to mind control a Kong to hit my other Kong, but I do get imperv this time and only the mind controlled Kong gets KO’d from the after resolution damage. I hit Hadari down a few clicks again with the remaining Kong and then TK Juice with Fenix to mind control Hadari but he rolls out. He has Colossus mind control Juice and finishes Juice off with a Hadari pulsewave, also taking 10 points off his Daredevil. I lose 10-290, 1-2. It wasn’t until we were talking after the match that I realized I never once vooped a Kong for taking 3 into a respawn room. When I said this he said he never did 4 damage to me and I said no, the respawn room is from taking 3. I don’t know how much that would have changed the game, but I wouldn’t have been near enough for his Colossus to ever mind control me, for sure and could have given me chances to heal off the stop clicks. This is where some lack of preparation on my part comes in. I’d only played on that map once before and the muscle memory of remembering the special rules wasn’t there for me.
And that’s it for me for this years main event. I ended in 17th and they cut to top 16. Worst performance in a long time and not making cut. Yes I’m sad and wish I could have at least made cut, but I also know that it’s just a game and it’s going to happen sometimes. I’m glad that I go to these tournaments for more than just trying to win. It’s about playing a game I love, seeing friends and socializing. The goal of keeping the title in Canada was unsuccessful with Isaac taking it this year – huge congrats to him! And congrats to Alex for placing top 4 and being the highest ranked Canadian this year!
The afternoon turned into playing battle royals instead of playing in the top cut. I don’t often have a lot of time to play in battle royals, with them usually going on while the cut happens, so it was a nice change of pace. The 1st one I jumped into I came in 1st and got to draft the chase Captain Marvel that was pulled and one that I didn’t have in my collection yet. The 2nd one I played I can’t remember what I drafted, but Dan drafted a Daredevil Elektra that I needed (and he had extras of already) so he traded me for a Hawkeye Skycycle – which I made him take, he was going to just hand it to me. Going into this weekend, I was only missing 3 LE’s from what has been released so far this year and this knocked one of them off my list.
Dinner tonight was burgers that they had catered in from a local restaurant called Bam’s along with a salad and doughnut and played Heroclix Bingo. They had us each take a random figure from a table and then pick a click on the dial. They spun a wheel to call out powers and once you had all the powers on the dial called, you got Bingo. I won a legacy card from Smash and Destroy and opened Juggernaut!
After dinner, we played in the Fellowship tournament. Fellowship events are a regular thing at Studio Staja. They pick a theme and you build according to the theme and not how well the team actually functions. The theme for this event was Canada and I have to admit I had WAY too much fun building for it, especially because I normally don’t throw myself into casual builds. It was 300 points silver (but no restriction of how many points from each age) and no sideline allowed. I built a team of Snowbird (snow), Rockslide (rocky mountains), Redroot the Forrest (maple trees), Headless Horseman with a Police Officer (RCMP – Royal Canadian Mounted Police), Frenchie (2nd language), Night Nurse (healthcare), Polar Bear (animals) and a Civilian (lots of people). My terrain were the Cement Mixer (always construction), Dumpsters (homelessness) and Standard Water (great lakes) with a map of Canadian Wilderness.
Round 1 I faced Pat’s team of the Canadian Flag. He played a team of Kingpin (white suit) with a 4 tracksuit Goons (red suits) and set them up with Kingpin in the middle and 2 goons on each side to represent the way the Canadian Flag looks.
Round 2 was with Jay’s team of stuff he mostly got at Canadian Nationals last minute build. Basically a bunch of box con LE stuff that there was no way for me to be able to get through his team, but it was really fun lasting forever because the Polar Bear just wouldn’t die and my counter at the end of the match was showing 7 on it for how many times he got to respawn!
Round 3 was against Derek’s cowboy team. He won map and had to put us on High Noon Saloon of course. This was an incredibly fun match where he made his cowboys be bad and do things like specifically target free healthcare and Two Gun Kid going after the Civilian.
Sunday is the best format – teams! I got to play on Calm Your Clix again with Ajà and Jocelyn as my teammates again and we had to rep with the awesome t-shirts that Ajà designed and had made for us. Thanks Pat for getting this great pic of us (including Steven’s great photobomb)! We had a great brick and easily found what we each wanted to play. I was hoping for prime Abomination and we pulled one! Ajà wanted to play a Goat and she got her wish too. Jocelyn was happy to play with chase Captain Marvel. I paired my Abomination with a Quicksand, Thori, Titania and broke Brute theme for Valkyrior for the prob.
Round 1 I was paired against Zeke’s prime Destroyer and Sindr team. I had to make quick work of Sindr as I know how devastating she can be, so when he came in with her, I sunk everything I had into her and took her out in 1 turn. This did hurt Thori in the process but it was worth it. He took out Thori on his turn. I had so many attacks between Abomination and Quicksand that I was able to chew through Destroyer over the next 2 turns for the win. Ajà and Jocelyn both lost their games this round.
Round 2 was against Mike’s Goat team. I knew he had the reach on me, so I moved into the corner to limit how much he’d be able to do and needing to take actions to get things like outwits into place and therefore only getting to do 1 attack on coming in. I had to make sure to hit his Absorbing Man off the special outwit that let him outwit my protected outwit and then also knock his other outwit off of it to take those both away from him. From there it was just a bunch of attacking each other with lots of low rolls that missed but in the end, this was a really close match and I caught later I missed part of Abomination’s trait that says we can’t be knocked back, so my Valkyrior could possibly have been alive still at the end as she was KO’d from knockback. Mike took this win narrowly and could have been the other way if I’d remember the knockback, providing he couldn’t hit the 19 defense on Valkyrior, of course. Jocelyn was the only win this round, so we’re 0-2 as a team now.
Round 3 was with David’s chase Juggernaut team. David was a newly back to the game after many years hiatus so I was happy to help him out in this game, especially as we knew we weren’t going to make cut. He was trying to figure out how to get his Toad’s into place for the empowers for Quicksilver to come in and he couldn’t see how to get the one in there between having to stop because of terrain and how I was placed, so I helped him find a way to achieve what he was trying to do. I then apologized because I knew if he missed his imperv rolls (which he did miss them all), that I would easily take out his Juggernaut between my flurry for 7 and then flurry for 5 between Abomination and Quicksand, both getting empowered by Thori. From there it was just cleaning up the smaller guys for the win. Ajà also won her game, putting us at 1-2.
We ended up 5th overall and just missed the cut, meaning we got to draft prizes 1st and that means we got to choose Kanto, one of the other LE’s I was looking to get and only 1 missing now. With the most wins, I got to draft 1st from our brick and chose the Captain Marvel which is now a duplicate for me and I was able to trade with Daniel for a chase Magneto that I didn’t yet have. After teams ended, I then managed to trade for the Mantis LE I was still searching for with Derek and Zeke. Mission for the weekend completed of filling in the holes of my collection for the new LE’s!
The rest of the afternoon is all chill now. Ajà and I took a walk to grab lunch stuff and after eating I jumped into 2 more battle royals – 1 as top cut for teams was finishing and then 1 more as they were doing their breakdown of the room. Once done, we decided to go back to our hotels to drop stuff off and rest a bit before meeting up for dinner with Jocelyn, Rob, Devin, Mike for Italian and got some great woodfired pizza.
Back at the room, I got my bags packed, waited for Derek and Zeke to come over to get the sweater Zeke had left behind, changed into pj’s to relax and read a book before crashing for the night. The drive home the next morning was similar to the drive there, easy except for the bit of traffic we encountered as we got back to the GTA.
Thank you so much to Studio Staja for hosting this year. The best and smoothest event we’ve had for Canadian Nationals. The venue they chose was great. Lots of room in the play space, washroom and water bottle filling station right outside the door, close to many options for hotels and food that was all walking distance. My only wish was for Swiss rounds of the modern main event to be at least 4 rounds, but I can’t find anything else I’d complain about that would be something in their control to change (of course we wished for anything sealed to be from Lantern Legacy instead of Smash, but that was something they couldn’t help, of course). It was awesome to have people from so many places this year – I think we had people from the Toronto area, Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton, Red Deer, Winnipeg, North Bay, Maryland and New Jersey. Thanks as always to Jay for judging and helping keep everything running smoothly and I’m glad you even got to play a bit! I can’t wait to see how amazing next year is if Studio Staja gets to run it again!
Until next time, xoxo