For The Advanced Clicker Looking to Improve his Game. How to get Lucky.
(Or How I won the 2006 Philadelphia World Championship)
The Story goes something
like this; I drove from Michigan with three other clickers
to chase a dream that I just happened to catch. It involved
a little luck, a bit of skill and 5 months of play testing,
but I achieved my dream. Now let’s look at how you can
achieve this too.
The Team is the biggest part of winning. A lot of people
were surprised at my team and viewed them as underdogs, but
in most match-ups that was not the case. That statement is
not from bragging, but from simply testing my team against
other skilled players in Grand Rapids. Making tweaks and
changes until my team won nearly every game it played
against almost any typical strategy. I will discuss the team
in a separate article, but for now here is a basic run down.
Kill Girl Squad
71 Iron Fist + 10 Incontact with Oracle + 8 Protected + = 89
Points
38 Veteran Lockjaw + 10 Incontact with Oracle + 5 Double
Time= 53 Points
67 LE Aurora (Jeanne-Marie) + 10 Incontact + 8 Protected +
Thunderbolts (usually Suicide Squad) = 89 points (same as
the Fist)
27 Oracle = 27 Points
1 Lian Harper x 3 = 3 Points
8 Rookie Paramedic = 8 Points
31 Rookie Jean Gray = 31 Points
Total = 300 Points
Today’s not about explaining the team, but the basic concept
was it was either a LAMP style team…minus the poison (???).
Aka Iron Fist was carried to the front lines and would hit a
big gun for 4 during the following turn. If that was too
risky, the team becomes a slingshot team with Jeanie-Marie.
One of these two methods seemed to work against almost any
team.
Playing the Team was the real challenge, but play the team I
did. I played some version of this team every chance I had
for about 5 months. The team always had LE Aurora, Jean Gray
and Suicide Squad, other then that everything seemed to
change. It had many incarnations including Ultimate
Spider-man and Havok instead of Iron Fist and Lockjaw. At
one point it even had Emerald Empress and LE Jeanne-Marie;
basically it was the exact same team I played in the final
four. Then it became Iron Fist and rookie Lockjaw with
starter set Spider-man. That was played until about a month
before the tournament, when the play testers and I decided
that the junkyard map hindered Spider-man too much. Then
finally I came about the last incarnation of my team. The
most important thing in team building is being willing to
pull off the entire point of the team to make it better.
Nothing can be sacred and no team should have a better then
50/50 shot at you.
Designing Around the Cards is something to definitely
consider when playing in the major tournaments. KC Flash is
so brilliant, because nothing hurts him too much. The major
wrecker cards aka Disbanded and Poor Team Work do not effect
him a lick, but can crumble other teams. The general rule is
this; IF there is a silver bullet (one card that destroys
your team) your opponent will have it first round. But if
you manage to pull off the victory through a stroke of luck,
your next opponent will probably play the same card.
Ordinary Day only saves you once. If there was no such thing
as Battle Field Conditions then I’m sure there would only be
two teams, Fantastic Four Team with the 21 defense Human
Torch and the only team that beats that team, Emerald
Empress. So even though they get a lot of negative attention
Battle Field Conditions help diversify the team building.
So when you build you must take into account every battle
field condition and nothing can rely on one single strategy.
Diversity is truly the key here. This lead to my final
change with my team; removing 8 Lian Harper POGS and adding
a rookie Paramedic. I had to do this, because when I had
people play Disbanded against me, it was too powerful. It
definitely helped, because in the final round I was
Disbanded. When this happened all I lost was a second way to
heal and had three points of pointless POGS. If I had been
War Zoned then I had my Pogs, by diversifying I was never
capable of getting wrecked by a single card.
Shoot the Hostage is one of the most important strategies in
Heroclix or Chess for that matter. Oh and perhaps the best
line from the movie Speed. This means you’re willing to do
something that hurts you to hurt your opponent even worse.
The classic example is throwing a Lian POG at a major
character and making them kill her or roll to break away.
This will lose you a figure and a point, but change the
tempo of the game in your favor. The other way to do this is
with Battle Field Conditions. Sometimes a Battle Field
Condition hurts your team, but wrecks another team and is
thus worth playing. I played War Zone in the final four,
because I had Suicide Squad fodder and two Protected Cards.
Thus I could heal without with a neutered Paramedic, but my
opponent could not. Another good example is one of my play
testers Jamie, played a Black Adam/LE Jeanne- Marie team and
played Poor Teamwork. Poor Teamwork destroyed his ability to
sling-shot, but completely wrecks a LAMP team. Once Poor
Teamwork is played he would still have two HSS figures with
better movement then probably anybody in the game.
Playing the game is a great deal more nerve-wracking then
play-testing, but you must remember it is just a game.
Perhaps more importantly it is a dice game and no matter how
good you are there is still an amount of luck involved.
Nobody on this planet can beat Icons Superman with Fortitude
if he rolls impervious 10 times in a row. Sometimes it is
just simple pairing, I played a the nicest man since Jesus
first round who told me; “he wanted to lose so he could walk
to convention” and two of my friends played former World
Champions that went on to the final four. Winning Worlds is
a lot of fun, I recommend everyone does it at least once
But as my girlfriend said when I told her I won;
“That’s great, did you win any money?”
“No, baby…but Jamie’s going to buy me dinner tonight!”
It’s all just a game, have a lot of fun with it. Fun is the
reason you started.
“Good, bad, I’m the Guy with the Clix”,
Cramcompany.
Questions, comments or ideas or can all be address at
cramcompany@hotmail.com
Please no hate mail
PS: More on how to play this team, a play by play of the
tournament and a MY PERSONAL INTERVIEW with SETH. and other
play tips later. Don’t forget to sign up for the new issue
of Critical Hit Magazine.
