Second Wind 2023 Battle Report

Welcome back to yet another Battle Report! This time, I'll be going over my latest attendance at Second Wind in Chicago. Even though I had only settled on my roster two days before the event, I felt pretty confident with the list I had for the event.

So, here's what I brought

Affiliated Characters

Storm: In my opinion, Storm still holds the title of premium leader of the X-Men. The additional mobility provided by the jump is still an incredible scenario tool, even if the loss of Cover in favor of a defensive reroll makes the team more fragile.

Cyclops: Serving as mostly my plan B for certain scenarios or match-ups, Cyclops, thanks to X-Men Blue, provides a good alternative at a very low opportunity cost, while keeping most of the X-Men scenario openings intact.

Beast: With a 50mm base, solid mobility and inexpensive displacement, Beast remains one of the most flexible 3 threats available to X-Men. He also lets you threaten to deny an opposing B secure fairly easily, making him a good specialist there.

Domino: X-Men's prime damage dealer, her output and resiliency for her threat cost. She's a pretty solid defensive piece under X-Men Gold and one of the best characters to fuel your team under X-Men Blue.

Colossus: The newest addition to my competitive roster, Colossus has impressed me as a key player under both available leaderships. Under Gold, he's a character that you can use to overextend and aggressively contest secures to break parity or grab extracts from the opposing side of the board without being punished except by big attrition models.

Logan: With his inherent mobility and great pay to flip stats, Logan is a solid and reliable brawler for X-Men. He's also one of the few affiliated characters that can reliably displace size 3 models, carving him a comfortable spot in my list.

Rogue: My favorite affiliated 4 threat and what I think is one of the best affiliated models overall, Rogue serves as both a resilient brawler and effective generalist. She brings Mutant Absorption, which is a prime tempo tool for X-Men Gold. Taking power away from opposing models makes it a lot harder for the opposing team to chase your extract carriers effectively. Under X-Men Blue, she's one of the characters that scales the best with the power provided by the leadership, being able to throw size 4 models or terrain and use her charge more often.

Cable: Another reworked affiliated X-Men character making his way into my list, Cable brings very good and reliable offensive output with a great terrain throw and the ability to help protect your other models. He's a flexible piece that works well under both leaderships and provides another safe extract option under X-Men Blue in a pinch.

Out of affiliation characters

Pyro: Another flexible piece that works very well under both X-Men Gold and Blue, Pyro provides control with Firewall and good attacks that can be boosted with Stoke the Flames to fuel X-Men Blue. He also brings Pyrotechnics, which, combined with Domino and Cable as other sources of Incinerate, can be used fairly reliably to deny extracts and control models.

Dr. Voodoo: Even though he received a significant nerf, Voodoo still fits a very comfortable niche for X-Men. His power generation and the range of his extract drop are still excellent, and now he plays more as a brawler than before, even bringing displacement on his builder. At 4 threat he has more competition for his threat level in X-Men thanks to the rework of Colossus, Cyclops and Wolverine, but still think he has his spot in my list.

Games

Game #1: X-Men Gold vs Hellfire Club, Mutant Madmen/Cubes (18)

Teams: Storm, Beast, Colossus, Rogue, Voodoo vs Emma, Beta Ray Bill, Sabertooth Apex Predator, Logan, Bullseye

Going into this game, I knew I wanted good models with displacement and high physical defenses to play on Madmen. I deploy my models to steal an F extract from my opponent's side of the board and take the VP lead on round 1 which I successfully managed to do. I made the mistake of collapsing my models on my opponent's strong flank, which gave him a better chance of coming after my extract holders. We trade attacks and extracts, but I end up losing the game when Emma (in normal form) managed to flip contested traps from under my characters, securing Hellfire's win 17-19 by a very narrow margin.

Game #2: X-Men Blue vs Brotherhood of Mutants, Mayor Fisk/Spider-Infected (17)

Teams: Cyclops, Beast, Domino, Logan, Pyro vs Magneto, Juggernaut, Hulk

Since we were playing on Mayor Fisk, I assumed my opponent would probably play Magneto since it's one of his strong scenarios and at least one of Juggernaut or Hulk. I went with Beast and Logan since both characters can displace Magneto pretty easily, and every move action he has to take is one less attack going into my models. Mayor Fisk is one of the few secures where I think X-Men Blue helps play the scenario better than Gold since it tends to be very brawly, so I brought characters that I knew would help me fight for the secures with Domino and Pyro, the later being able to cripple big models like Hulk or Juggernaut with Firewall. 

On Mayor Fisk, I usually try to not fight for them too much in round 1, especially against narrow teams, and try to force them to split up to fight for both while I take the advantage on extracts. Knowing that I could control Magneto, I had to try to daze and KO one of my opponent's models to take away as many activations as I could, so Domino, Pyro and Cyclops attacked Juggernaut very early, dazing him on round 2 and getting the KO on round 3, leaving my opponent with only 2 models to play the scenario. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough for them to score out, giving me the win 19-12 in round 4.

Game #3: X-Men Gold vs Avengers, Scoundrels/Spider-Infected (20)

Teams: Storm, Beast, Domino, Colossus, Pyro, Dr. Voodoo vs Steve Rogers (First Avenger), Hulk, Luke Cage, Sam Wilson, Hela

Not having priority, like in my round 1 game, I knew I had to steal one of the extracts on my opponent's side to gain the advantage, and hopefully use Colossus to force parity on Secures with my last activation. Seeing Sam on the other side of the board, I also chose to deploy Voodoo across him because, if I was to take the extract on their side, they would have to leave Sam there, so my Voodoo could use the X-Men jump to attack Sam twice and possess him to keep my 3-2 lead on extracts. 

Luckily for me, this is exactly what happened but I managed to daze Sam in the process, letting Voodoo keep his Brother Daniel Token. On my last activation, I used Colossus to go across the board and tie a Secure in front of Captain America, knowing he wouldn't be able to threaten Colossus very effectively, especially since he was holding a Spider-Infected. This let me take the VP lead 5-4. 

After that, I pivoted most of my models holding extracts away from his Sam, Hela and Hulk, which let me keep my lead on the extracts, and used Colossus to deny the point Sam was scoring, to lock my win 17-12 round 3.

Game #4: X-Men Gold vs Avengers, Spider-Portals/Hammers (18)

Teams: Storm, Domino, Logan, Rogue, Voodoo vs Steve Rogers (First Avenger), The Black Widow, Invincible Iron Man, Hulk

I chose my squad so I could leverage both crisis as best I could. Domino with hammers becomes a blender that can chew through most 4 threats in a single activation, Logan is a pretty solid piece to flip a contested Portal while constantly attacking, and Voodoo to break parity on extracts in case my opponent fielded Hulk. 

I ended up making the right call but was surprised by my opponent going 4 wide, which would let me have the last activation most of the game to either flip Portals or steal extracts with Voodoo. This ended up being true for most of the game since my opponent didn't have any ways to steal extracts from my characters apart from dazing them, and I had more characters to flip Secures, I ended up winning by a comfortable margin of 19-12 on round 4.

Game #5: X-Men Gold vs Web Warriors, Scoundrels/Hammers (18)

Teams: Storm, Beast, Colossus, Rogue, Voodoo vs Miles, Ghost-Spider, Agent Venom, Black Cat, Amazing Spider-Man

Just like the other game I had played on Scoundrels, my plan was to leverage my last activaton to get parity or the advantage on secures to get ahead of my opponent. Knowing I wanted to use Voodoo to steal away extracts (especially true with Hammers), I made the mistake of putting him in a dangerous position in round 1, which let my opponent get free attacks into him. I also made the mistake of picking up an extract with Rogue in a game where I didn't bring First Class, which also meant that she wouldn't be able to do much until round 3. 

Those two mistakes ended up giving my opponent enough breathing room to catch up to me on VPs and they managed to very narrowly win by dazing Colossus with Ghost-Spider, for that key VP swing, which lost me the game 15-16 on round 4.

Game #6: X-Men Blue vs Avengers, Mutant Madmen/Research Station (18)

Teams: Cyclops, Domino, Colossus, Rogue, Pyro vs Steve Rogers (First Avenger), Iron Man, Black Widow, Sam Wilson, Hulk

Going into Research Station, similarly to Mayor Fisk, I knew I wanted to bring X-Men Blue and a good brawling team to be able to fight for the Researcher. Since I was also expecting to see Hulk, Pyro, alongside Pyrotechnics, would be giving me additional ways to displace my opponent's characters. In the first round, my opponent sent a lot of characters directly on the Researcher, keeping Hulk for last to stop me from being able to take it. I used this to try and get ahead on Secures and force his Hulk either on the Researcher or to have to deal with my models on the Secures on his side. 

Having scored the Researcher on round 1 meant I would have to go after it in round 2, so I went and tried to daze some of his characters before they activated with Domino and Pyro, letting me take control of the Researcher while keeping my advantage on the extracts. On rounds 3 and 4 we brawled for control of the Researcher, but since I had managed to get the lead on attrition by playing fairly resilient characters like Domino, Colossus and Rogue, I managed to take a very comfortable lead by round 4 of 15-9. After that, since I knew I only needed to score 1 more VP to win and had more characters on the board, I made a run for it and scored a Mutant Madmen trap to lock the win 16-14.

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the team I brought to the event, I played almost every model in my list save for Cable, but still felt he deserved his spot on the roster.

In all honesty, I was a little disappointed by my performance, even with a score of 4-2, because I felt I could've done better if I had played just a little better than I did. The event was nonetheless amazing, I had the great opportunity of being able to finally meet in person a bunch of my fellow Canadian players who made the trip to the event and had an absolute blast. I would like to thank all the players I met and talked to throughtout the weekend. I want to thank the tournament organizers who put together the event and for how smoothly it was run. 

Thanks again for taking the time to read this piece and as always, don't forget to have fun!