Atlantic City Open Tournament Report

 

Welcome back! Even though it's been a few weeks, I wanted to take some time and go over my roster and tournament results for the main event at the Atlantic City Open, especially since it was my first MCP event abroad.

I brought with me:

Characters
Storm, Beast, Domino, Magik, X-23, Rogue, Jean Grey, Ghost-Spider, Doctor Voodoo and Juggernaut.

Tactics Card

Advanced R&D, Brace for Impact (R), Do You Know Who I Am?, Field Dressing (R), First Class, Indomitable, Journey Through Limbo, Mental Domination, Sacrifice and To Me, My X-Men!

Crisis Cards

Secures: Sword Base, Mutant Madman and Spider-Portals 

Extracts: Research Station, Spider-Infected and Cubes.

For my characters, I wanted a diverse core of low cost X-Men, so I started with most of their 3's.

I picked Beast because he's resilient, mobile, and has cheap displacement. Being able to interact with two Mutant Madman traps on turn 1 with First Class is also very noteworthy.

Domino is one of the best damage dealers and tanks for her threat cost. She also eases the match up against Black Order, by being very resilient to Corvus Glaive.

Magik is a character I brought because of the niche she fills in the roster. She can act as another mobile extract carrier in addition to Beast (with her Limbo Step). She can do good damage into the Web Warriors while being relatively resilient to displacement. Journey Through Limbo gives another displacement tool.

X-23 is the prime Cube holder of the list thanks to Healing Factor [2]. She has good mobility thanks to her spender and Frenzy while also being a solid attrition piece.

Rogue is, at the moment, the best affiliated 4 threat of the X-Men. She's resilient, relatively mobile thanks to her Charge, can throw size 4 characters with her spender and Mutant Absorption can starve models of power and alleviate pressure and she even has a size 4 terrain throw to boot.

Jean Grey is the model I play the least with this list, but has a very important role nonetheless. She can put an incredible amount of work against both Black Order and Web Warriors, while fairing very well against teams like Convocation. Shield Mind delays Black Order's tractor beam and denies Web Warriors opportunities of control, while hitting them in their generally weakest defenses.

As for my splashes, I went with characters that I felt brought valuable tools for the team.

Ghost-Spider has been an excellent model in my team for a while. She can unconditionally displace most models on turn one thanks to Impact Webbing or Web Line. Her Life Saver also works well under Storm's leadership, as it can bring a model back into Cover range. Finally, she also benefits greatly from the other part of Storm's Leadership, if you use the X-Men jump, she can potentially do a 4 dice builder, then a 7 dice builder both accompanied by two Long advances because she was placed during her activation.

Doctor Voodoo is a character that has been talked about a lot in various MCP podcasts, Blog articles and Discord servers, but what does he bring specifically to X-Men Gold? First, a 50mm base that can significatively agument his reach. He's also even more resilient from ranged attacks with the Cover provided by the leadership.

Finally, Cain Marko, the Juggernaut himself. He's been one of the most impactful 5 threats in MCP so far with his studiness, his impressive mobility and damage output. His signature Tactics Card, Do You Know Who I am? is also one of the best displacements in the game at the moment. Under X-Men Gold, his 65mm base is a great pivot for the rest of the team and can give him even more mobility if needed. Cover from attacks outside R2 combined with his Nice Punch... superpower makes him even more resilient.

As for the tournament itself, I ended up playing a good variety of teams and players that piloted their lists very differently from my local meta which is something I always like when I travel to events.

In my first round, I was paired against Brotherhood for a very thematic match up on Cubes and Extremis and won in round 3 with a score of 17-8.

In Round 2, unfortunately I was paired against a friend with whom I traveled to the event. He brought Asgard on Mutant Madmen and Spider-Infected and I ended up winning 18-8.

Round 3 I was facing a mirror match, which is something I wasn't very experienced with and our rosters were relatively similar, having only one different crisis and two different models. I ended up taking the win by a very narrow margin, 16-15 on Spider-Infected and Spider-Portals.

For the 4th round, I was facing Criminal Syndicate, which is usually not a great match-up but I managed to play a very tight game and won 20-16 in the last round thanks to a decisive Voodoo play on Mayor Fisk and Cubes.

For the 5th and final round I played against Web Warriors on Spider-Infected and Cosmic Invasion. I ended up winning that game 16-11, winning a LVO qualification and ACO. 

Overall I had a blast playing MCP for a whole weekend with friends, meeting new players and all. I'm going to try to make it to LVO if I can. Credit to all my opponents that day and to the TO, for running a smooth event.

Thanks, good luck and don't forget to have fun!

Addendum; If you want to check out my semi-final and the finals, you can watch a Vod of the streamed games here.