Swedish Wind 2024 Day 1

For the Swedish wind I was preparing a new version of my WTC list but I went 2-10 with it while practicing during the week before the tournament so I lost all confidence and went with comfort. For me that's Black Order and you might as well throw a Webs splash into that since why not? It's not like Black Order needs all the character slots because Black Order only has 3 playable characters. 

Roster

Characters (10)

* Amazing Spider-Man (5)

Black Cat (3)

Ghost Spider (3)

* Spider-Man (Miles Morales) (3)

Wong (2)

* Black Panther (4)

Baron Zemo (3)

Corvus Glaive (Reality) (5)

Proxima Midnight (3)

* Thanos, The Mad Titan (Mind, Space) (8)

Team Tactics (10)

Brace for Impact (R)

Patch Up (R)

All Webbed Up

Spider-Tracker

Fall Back

One-Two Punch

No Matter the Cost

Mission Objective

I Am A Baron, After All

Mothership

Secure Crisis

Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 (D, 17)

Cosmic Invasion! Black Order Descends on Earth (D, 16)

Infinity Formula Goes Missing! (B, 17)

Extract Crisis

Fear Grips World As “Worthy“ Terrorize Cities (D, 18)

Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? (C, 19)

Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership (J, 20)

This is clearly not a WTC roster since it has both Zemo and Thanos in it which are going to be contested models but it is definitely comfort for me. As a general guide line, I play black order when there's less than 8 points on the table, and webs when there's more than 8. This is of course a guideline but you need to make choices yourself if you try to play this. 

The weakness with this roster is that neither squad particularly likes pay to flips, but that's something you just have deal with. Nothing in the game can deal with every set up.

Another weakness is that it doesn't particularly like 15 and 17 threat. Which is threat values on the scenarios that it enjoys most. 

The food

Swedish wind was held at Malmö Brewing Company which is a brewery famed for their beer, but the food is also really nice. An example here is their pork butt with stewed beans, 300 g of pork, mac and cheese, cremed corn, bread, kimchi, a pickle, pickled onions, and some slaw. All for about 20 usd. 

This was the evening meals each day and not included in the tournament. Included in the tournament was pulled pork burgers with chips, as in the super thin things, not french fries. Still great food for the money. 

Games

I was nervous for the first game and I hoped a bit for an easy matchup but well no such luck, instead I pulled one of the top players in Sweden  Antstonez. He was playing Xavier as practice for the WTC since his team seems to be combining some affiliations that I don't think should be combined.

I've played my fair bit of Xavier, so I felt pretty comfortable in that regard. My opponent won priority and looked at my slow extracts and decided his were better for his game plan. So I got infinity formula, and he got senators. I don't really want to play black order on senators, so Webs it is.

My preferred 17 with webs is Miles, ASM, Black Cat, Gwen, and Zemo. So that's what I play. During deployment I want Zemo up against Miles, while my opponent makes sure he gets Magik up against my Miles.

Turn 1, My opponent  plays first class and starts his power train with Magik, who picks up and bounces to his right home point. Giving a power to Shadowcat.

 I start with ASM running up and picking up the spider in front of Miles, this since I misremember and think I can pick up the spider and stand on the back B but that's not possible, that's something you can do on F's not on B's. 

Then Shadow Cat come and pick up my extract and bounce to my home right point, giving a power to his Miles, 

Black Cat walks up and picks up my left, and is ready to hide away there rest of the game.

Nightcrawler double walks to pick up my middle extract and then bounces backwards. Giving a power to evil Miles.

This forces Gwen into the middle of the table to pick up his extract. 

The professor double runs to my right secure. 

Miles then walks up and tries to kick him back into this chair, because he can't reroll on himself so that way he can't use his leadership, but I get no damage and no wild.  

Evil Miles then activates and he doesn't like ASM holding an extract so he walks up and spenders him. ASM takes no damage and rolls his crit. Miles doesn't have enough power to pick up the extract, and he places it by his feet, which Zemo can reach to. This is a huge mistake costing my opponent 1 VP and a lot of tempo on the map. 

So yeah Zemo runs up and contests his point, and picks up the extract.

This ends turn 1 with my opponent leading 6-4. Which is a bit of a disastrous first turn. I messed up the activation order a bit and Gwen is also standing more exposed than I would like. Both Miles are in scary situations.

Turn 2 starts with the professor putting good Miles into the dirty with his spender and then walking back to his point. Then I remember to take a photograph.

Zemo is a master swordsman and puts evil Miles in the dirt.

Nightcrawler then puts Gwen in the dirt and jumps to my right extract, giving a power to Shadow Cat.

I pull back Black Cat to the point and stand there.

My opponent here makes the second mistake of the game. When you're ahead, protect the lead. Instead he runs shadow cat half across the table and jumps closer to get one 4 dice attack onto Black Cat in cover. One of the hardest things in MCP is to realize when you're better off doing nothing. 

This gives ASM a target. So he jumps towards her, does a normal attack into her, then with the damage does a spender. Which forces my opponent to spend both Xaviers Dream and Brace to keep standing and not give me her extract. While ASM then uses the medium move of the spender to pick up the extract that Gwen lost. 

Then Magik comes bouncing forward and does 3 damage to ASM, thanks to some rerolls from Xavier.

This ends turn 2, with 5-5 and 9-11 total score. Losing Miles that easily hurt, but the spike back from Zemo made me feel great. My opponent using both Xaviers dream and Brace to save one point is a lot of resources. In general I don't think you should use Xaviers Dream unless it saves you an activation. It's of course a general rule and there are exceptions but yeah you need to use your survival tools at the right time if you want to play x-men because they are fragile.

Turn 3 I start with ASM, jumping into the middle of my opponents team and giving everyone but evil Miles slow with All webbed up. Then he puts down Shadow Cat, and puts her extract at the feet of Gwen, and makes a try at Nightcrawler that does nothing. 

Nightcrawler then goes after Miles but Witty Banter keeps him from getting the trigger on the first spender and he fails on the second and good blocks from Miles keeps him standing. 

So it's Miles time for revenge. He jumps up, kicks the wheelchair dude paying for the defence. I was planning to do two kicks into him but the first one spikes and puts him down, so I also get to rub salt in the wounds with a spender into nightcrawler to get his extract. Then I patch up ASM to full.

Evil Miles then dazes Zemo with a spender. 

Gwen takes offence to this, so she picks up her thing then walks up, murder stabs him to get a second walk but happens to get 5 hits on 4 dice and Miles blocks nothing. So I don't need to pull him off the point, I just kill him. I drop the extract on Zemos feet. 

Magik kills Miles, and then walks to her back point. Where I trigger spider tracker to Move ASM onto the point. 

Black Cat walks backwards to end the turn. This ends the turn 5-2 which puts the total att 14-13

Xavier and Evil Miles toppling over has definitely swung the game in my favor and there's nothing really to do about it.

Magik starts the turn by trying to kill ASM but only gets 3 damage through.

ASM tries to Jump away and kick Nightcrawler to daze him but does no damage and gets the trigger, so he has to impact Magik and jump straight back into the fire once again  So he kicks Nightcrawler once more but still doesn't put in the last point of damage.

My opponent calculates that the only way he can win is if Shadow Cat bounces forward and puts Black Cat in the dirt, getting the trigger once so she's on the point. She does get the trigger but she only does 3 damage at Black Cat.

Then Zemo picks up his extract, and charges Shadowcat, does a spender, which lets him travel into range of Nightcrawler, then does a spender to try and do that last damage, but Nightcrawler is immortal but he gets the bleed. Which is more or less a stagger for the 1 health Nightcrawler. 

So my opponent can't get anything over to my side of the table, and the game is over. 6-4 for a final score of 19-16.

I feel like this is how most of my matchups against x-men tend to go. They get an early lead, then All Webbed Up slams the door in their face and you end the game with a big turn. Playing B's usually comes down to getting all the extracts to the side you're winning. Which webs are the masters off. ASM and Miles really pulled their weight this game. They fought 8 threat vs 11 and won the fight. 

Game 2

My second game I got Jakob Oskarsson, one of the people I've known back since the warmachine and hordes days. He was bringing spider foes to the event but he hadn't gotten any of the new cool toys. 

He got priority picked his own blues, and got Mutant Madman, and I'm forced to play a pay to flip. I draw hammers so it's time for me to bring out my Black Order. 

He puts the trap on my left pay to flip and starts with Zemo going over to my pay to flip and flipping it.

I now realize that my deployment leaned way too far towards the left but not left enough. I run up Proxima to trigger the trap, because I think I can still reach the hammer after the push but yeah I was placed too centrally. I should just have flip my trap and be happy with that.

Doc Occ goes and picks up the hammer on the other side. 

Thanos then picks up my back hammer and pulls Zemo towards him but fails to do damage on the punch so he jumps over and flips back the point to me.

Rhino then walks up to flip his home point and fails so he sadly walks up a bit more.

Then Corvus walks up and does one damage into Zemo.

Lizard picks up his hammer. 

Wong goes and stands on the trap and meditates to give a power to Corvus.

Then Spider woman picks up his home hammer and jump to his point.

So I'm down 3 hammers to 1 but my opponent hasn't been able to flip anything so it's a 3-3 turn.

Corvus starts the turn with doing a spender into Zemo because I need to get him into the game, Thanos acts as a cheer squad and I get 3 damage in with my trigger for an extra attack. Zemo falls back and I have to chase after him, and I luckily get him down with the free attack and then do some damage into doc occ with my second action.

Doc Occ senses the danger so he does an attack into Thanos and then walks back to his home point to flip it.

Wong gives a power to Thanos.

Rhino thinks this is the opportunity to rob Thanos so he goes after Wong to try and build power but two attacks fail miserably.

So then time for Thanos to go after Doc Occ. He places forward, then runs doc occ into position where I can punch him straight into Spiderwoman. The second attack gets him down and I get the throw on both attacks. So Spiderwoman gets 4 damage.

Spiderwoman then walks forward and does a spender into Thanos and picks up both hammers.

Proxima then ports into Corvuses arms and tries to do the last two damage to Spider Woman but fails and only does one damage, which costs me 3 vp.

Lizard flip my point on the other side.

This ends the turn 1-6 and it's a 4-9 game. The game really has slipped out of my hands I abandoned the left flank to have the chance at the hammers in spiderwomans arms. At least she gets dazed from my trap but it's too little too late.

Corvus activates and kills zemo, then tries to put Spiderwoman in the dirt but fails. Proxima picks up all the hammers and also tries to kill Spiderwoman but leaves her on 1

So she does a spender into Proxima, and spikes hard and puts down Proxima. Then she picks up 3 hammers and makes a run for it.

Thanos doesn't have enough power so Wong has to activate and give him one.

Lizard runs to his home trap and flips it.

So then Thanos goes after Spiderwoman and pulls her in to do 2 yellow attacks on her from range 3. The first one fails to do the damage I need but the second one gets it but I only have 2 power to pick up hammers with so I put one down on the ground.

Rhino keeps rolling like trash and does no damage but he picks up the hammer on the floor.

Lastly Doc Occ throws Wong off my point and flips it.

This is another disaster turn for me. 6-2 with 2 extra points for killed characters, means it's a 15-8 game.

So Corvus starts by doing a spender into Rhino one shotting him, then he does his extra attacks into Doc Occ but failing to kill him. So Proxima can't run over to the other side and flip, instead she has to put down Doc Occ and flip on his point on the right.

This leaves Thanos with not enough power to move Wong towards the right either. So yeah the game is over. Lizard runs away.

Thanos goes and flips one point out of spite ending the game 15-17

Being forced onto a pay to flip sucks, but yeah I really should've picked up the hammer with Proxima, but I feel like that's such a small difference, and that would've made the mothership to kill Spiderwoman play impossible. Which had great odds of working and would've been game winning if it did. I struggle with games like these because I feel like the dice just decided that I wasn't allowed to win the game, and the decisions I made didn't really matter because nothing I did worked.

Game 3

In my mind I have to get up to 3-1 to get into the winners bracket which is the goal for me. So now it's do or die. I get matched up against Jakob Ladstedt, who went on to win the second bracket, with his guardians.

I saw Thanos in his list and I'm very comfortable in the Thanos mirror. He wins priority and he doesn't like my secures so he picks his own and get intrusions and i get Skrulls. So I get to pick 19 threat which is probably the best threat for Black Order since you the the power triplets and Zemo.

Gamorra starts the game by running up and picking up his skrull, getting pushed and then running backwards again so she's out immediate death.

Proxima walks up over to the left side and picks up that skrull and gets pushed off the point backwards.

Then Bill goes and stands on the point feeling robbed from his purpose in life. 

So Zemo goes and picks up my home skrull and walk backwards a bit, to set up his reroll bubble so I can do it on anyone standing on the middle point. While trying to eyeball being out of the long move and 3 range from Nebula. 

Luke cage run up to the middle.

I don't have to do anything so I'll pass.

Evil Zemo then ran up stood on the middle. 

So Thanos walks up, places Corvus forward with the space stone, then pull down Evil Zemo with mind stone and place back Luke with his portal. I get one punch into Zemo but I fail to do damage 

Nebula then walks up and does her attack into Thanos and does a damage. 

So Corvus starts swinging at Zemo and does two damage with the first attack. Then counts blanks and puts down Zemo. with the second swing, where he plays fallback to get out of range for the double tap next turn and gets into Heroes range.

 Starlords ends the turn by getting onto a point and picking up an extract without getting pushed. 

This means it's a 2-4 turn and I'm pretty happy trading 2 vp for a dazed Zemo and fallback gone.

Normally the husband and wife wants to start the turn but they're spread out and I need to kill Zemo which is impossible for them especially with Heroes involved. So it's time for Thanos to put on his killing shoes and do the work himself.

I start by Portaling Luke far away, then Thanos does 2 attacks with rerolls into Zemo. My thinking here is that if I get him I'm super ahead, but if I fail them hopefully I've gotten the wild on the spender and I can make him run away with mind, but the dice goes my way and he dies. Scoring me one more point. So I also get to mind Nebula away from myself.  

Bill then walks down to Proxima and puts a builder into her doing a point of damage and tosses her away. 

So Proxima walks up, does a spear thrust on Bill, dealing no damage but getting onto the point.

Nebula walks up and proves why she's the best 2 threat in the game by putting Zemo in the dumpster with a spender. 

I don't have to do anything so I pass.

Starlord is happy on his point.

So I pass again.

Luke Cage runs up to the middle.

Now it's time for Corvus to do his thing. He spenders Nebula, putting her in the dirt with some cheerleading from Thanos. He also picks up an objective and isn't pushed. 

Gamora double runs to my left point.

This means I'm scoring 2 and my opponent is scoring 5. For a 5-9 game. 

The daze on Zemo really hurt but I'm well ahead of the curve here and I feel like I will have this game in two turns time. 

Proxima doesn't feel like standing next to these two characters anymore, so she spear throws over to Bill and is within 3 of Nebula and throws a spear at Nebula. Which gets her to relative safety. 

Then Corvus goes and puts Nebula in the dirt with a spender and walks up to Gamorra and with the trigger from the spender, and with an attack counting blanks he gets to softening up Gamorra. 

Luke feels threatened so he does a spender into Thanos, failing to get the trigger but does 2 damage. Then he uses the secure to jump over to the right side to keep Starlord safe.

Zemo, walks up does a spender into Bill and then runs away to the middle point. Bill Aggressives after. 

Bill then smacks and tosses Thanos into Zemo which burns my brace. 

Thanos pulls over Gamorra and spenders her to get her down. 

Starlord, walks, hits and runs to the middle point.  

I now hold 2 extracts, a secure and one bonus point for killing. While my opponent holds one extract and 2 secures. Which makes this a 10-12 game. 

So it's time for the murder train to start running. Corvus and Proxima deals with Gamorra, 

Bill does a spender into Thanos needing 4 damage, which he doesn't get. So he walks and picks up the extract and is pushed.

Zemo then goes and puts down Starlord and jumps through the portal to do 2 damage to Luke Cage. 

Thanos picks up and the game ends 16-14. 

I think the big thing here was the passiveness of Luke Cage. He never got to use Heroes, he never got to do any of his tricks. He just tanked a couple of attacks but those were attacks that I couldn't do on anyone else. If you know the game is going to end turn 4, then it's usually best to make sure your characters gets dazed turn 3 so you can activate them turn 4 instead of surviving on 2 and more or less being dead for the rest of the game.

Game 4

I got matched up against Eusebio, who is a convocation player that I've played against several times on TTS. I get priority and I pick my blues. Pulling out extremists, while my opponent pulls senators. 

Turn 1. I start with ASM walking up and picking up an extract on their side because that's what he's there fore. 

Toad walks up and picks up their back middle.

Miles picks up my back left. 

Dr Voodoo walks up and tries to reach Miles but it's out, so he picks up his thing and is done. 

Black cat picks up the extract on the right.

Then Wong walks up onto the back point and gives Strange a power.

So Gwen walks up and picks up the last extract.

Then Strange places up 3 is within 3 of Gwen so he rolls five dice into her, gets five hits and a pierce and one shots her. She drops her extract and he walks and picks it up and sends ASM to the shadow realm.

Zemo walks and stands on a point.

Then Rhino walks and stands on a point.

So my opponent gets to go up 4-5 with all my characters out of position and nothing fun happening. This is a disaster of a turn. 

So I need to roll dice to get out of this situation. Gwen pulls in Strange and does a spender into him, which does 3 damage, my opponent then fallbacks and uses bump to get the hell out of dodge. 

She sadly walks to the back of my point and prepares to pull characters out of trouble.

Wong activates and with extremist and his own healing he makes Strange fit for the fight again.

Black cat walks back into my bunker to keep safe. Partly with Gwen, Partly with Mission objective.

Then Rhino comes in and I forget to play mission objective. I know really pro play there, so he gets to rob Black cat, toss her off the point and steal the objective.

Miles walks to the point in a way such that he's in cover and Dr. Voodo can't walk up to the point. Then kicks him to try and get the wild and get him away from me but doesn't get the throw.

Voodo then activates, does 2 attacks into Miles getting the throw on the second attack and getting 3 damage. While also possesing Miles in the middle, so I'm thrown off the point and I'm not allowed to keep my extract.

Zemo then walks and does a spender into Voodoo for 3 damage and uses the movement to get into the position where Miles was.

Toad walks to the back point.

ASM jumps to the back point and tries to start dealing damage into Rhino. 

Strange then walks, ports himself, and ports Zemo away. 

So end of turn it's 6-1 and the score is 11-6. Not exactly ideal.

I need to try to roll dice to get out of this situation. So Miles jumps and kicks voodoo in his stupid face, but he does no damage. 

Rhino runs away to the right point.

So Gwen walks up, pulls him off the point, then hits him, so I get a second walk onto the point, but he just gets to aggressive anyway so that was a wasted hit. If I just double walked I would own that point and Black Cat would be in range to steal the objective. The hardest skill in MCP is knowing when you should do nothing. I failed at that.

Dr. Voodoo runs back to his back point and gets healed.

Black Cat walks and jumps to Rhino, so I need 4 damage on a 4 dice attack to even possible make it to a next round, which I don't get.

Then Strange puts Miles in the dirt and walks away.

ASM walks and jumps to his back point and tries to kill Voodoo but doesn't gett it

Wong heals Dr Vooodoo,

Zemo walks and stands on a point

My opponent tries to move toad over to take my home extract forgetting that he can't move twice. 

Which ends the game 11-17.

Luckily for me, both Anders and Hugo went 4-0 and weren't going to play in the top bracket for the next day, so one 2-2 would make it into the top cut and my Strength of Schedule was monstrous. So at 10:th spot after day 1 I made it into top cut in 8:th spot. Just barely in.

This meant it was time to go hide my shame in a mountain of beef and get a fresh head for tomorrow.

I was really not happy with my last game. Missing the trigger on Mission objectiving robbery is a huge mistake which cost me 2 VP's that turn and 2 VP's the turn after. Still if that game goes one turn more it's not like I'm in an advantageous position. I'm down in the grind and on points as well. All from that 5% turn 1 spike. Sometimes the opponent is bound to roll a nat 20 and I don't know how to deal with it.

I feel a bit helpless. I can't find huge glaring mistakes in my gameplan but I keep losing over and over again. The games where I roll decent dice I win. The games where I don't I can't figure out what to do about. I don't feel as confident as I was this time last year, when I was crushing people and getting into top 4 of the TTS league. 

If we are going to defend our title at the WTC then I need to get my Mojo back.