Torchlight GT 2026: Battle Report

 

Hello and welcome back! Today I'll be going over my performance at the recent GT in Torchlight which will cover both my lists and the games I've played.

Affiliated models

Storm: The leader and cornerstone of my list, Storm provides a very unique leadership with the extremely strong effect of being able to give, once per round, a model an impressive amount of movement. This effects opens of a lot of scenario plays, as well a give very aggressive models movement which they normally don't have access to, letting you get more attacks into your opponents earlier in the game. Storm also benefited from the recent updates, gaining two health (one on her healthy side and one on her injured side). Making her more resilient in the field and letting you keep her leadership around longer.

Beast: Although he didn't receive any changes in the recent update, Beast remains a very strong and reliable affiliated model. With an inexpensive throw, high mobility and excellent power generation, Beast is a well rounded model that helps you construct a solid base of affiliated 3 threats.

Domino: Even though an important amount of models received additional health, Domino's role as an offensive model with high capabilities hasn't really changed. She is still able to dish out an impressive amount of damage while being relatively hard to get rid of. With her main drawback being the absence of action compression, Storm's leadership is the perfect tool to help her accomplish her goal of putting damage into opposing models.

Iceman: A recent addition to my list after his health changes, Iceman provides a unique tool thanks to his Cold Snap ability. It lets him play wide scenarios and either deny access to certain zones because your opponent doesn't want their models slowed, or forcing them to be slowed and hurt their ability to rotate and play the scenario effectively. 

X-23: Another model that received no changes, X-23 remains an excellent and very mobile brawling model. Thanks to her inexpensive spender, she gets to start attacking early and often. This lets her play both scenario and attrition effectively, making her a solid choice for either options.

Emma Frost: Probably the most tech piece model in this list, Emma is there to help answer certain match ups like Web Warriors and Criminal Syndicate, and to be a strong role player on certain scenarios like Scoundrels and Power Overload, where her range and displacement helps make your game easier.

Logan: The last of the affiliated models, Logan brings a well rounded kit, with access to displacement, high damage with his rerolls as well as mobility thanks to the place on his builder. All of these qualities, combined with his physical and energy defence stats, makes him an excellent pay to flip model as well.

Splashes

Omega Sentinel: The first of the splashes, Omega Sentinel offers similar advantages to Logan even as a splashed model. Her long move, with the ability to refund on pay to flips, makes her another premium model to play on your secures. She also brings solid output with offensive rerolls, a charge and displacement on her spender, gives her solid utility as well. 

Prowler: The third model occupying a similar role as Logan and Omega Sentinel, Prowler's mobility and ability to play the scenarios gives him a solid role. Refunding power on interaction, be it on pay to flips or source extracts helps consolidate strong openings, by letting him interact then charge the following round. Prowler also serves the purpose of being able to play 5 wide at 18 threat, without having to play Emma Frost, which is a big upgrade on pay to flips. 

Blue Marvel: One of the current meta terrors, Blue Marvel complements the rest of the list extremely well. He brings a very strong offensive, wide defensive tech with his rerolls at range 3 as well as one of the best throws in the game. Because he is mostly held back by his lack of mobility, X-Men Gold allows him to project threat very early and pressure and help him oppress your opponent.

Games

Game #1: X-Men Gold vs Kingpin, Power Overload/Sentinel Schematics (19)

Teams: Storm, X-23, Logan, Prowler, Blue Marvel vs Kingpin, Omega Red, Rhino, Iron Monger, Blob

With the scenario combination, facing Kingpin, I knew I had to be on the offensive from the get go if I wanted to win. I picked a relatively mobile team that had access to displacement early on. In the early turns I get behind on the score, but with the X-Men jump, Blue Marvel managed to get strong early attrition on Blob and Omega Red. After removing Omega Red from the board on round 2, and managing to control the rest of my opponent's model, I turned the game around on round 3, and closed it on round 4, 22-12.

Game #2: X-Men Gold vs Modok2, Shi'ar Empress/Senators (17)

Teams: Storm, Beast, X-23, Logan, Omega Sentinel vs Modok2, Prowler, Hood, Gambit, Deadpool

Going into this game I felt very advantaged by the scenario combination. Thanks to the innate mobility of my models. First Class, and the speed of the scenario combination (10 VPs on the board) I knew if I was to take an early lead on VPs, I would be able to consolidate it and score out. Luckily for me, after using the X-Men jump, my Logan managed to attack my opponent's Deadpool twice and daze on my last activation, making a huge VP swing of 7-3 round 1. After round 1, I used my models mobility to run around the board as much as possible with the Senator's limitations and closed out the game 19-10 on round 3.

Game #3: X-Men Gold vs Hellfire Club, X-Men Infiltration/Unexpected Guests (17)

Teams: Storm, Beast, X-23, Logan, Omega Sentinel vs Emma Frost, Omega Red, Mr. Sinister, Shadow King

This was one of my first games going into Hellfire Club since the recent character update so I was looking forward to see how the new iterations of the models would play out. Luckily for me, since we were on a pay to flip and my opponent picked a 4 character squad, it often let me try to steal secures from under his models with either Omega Sentinel or Logan. I was able to run around and score point faster than he could pressure my models, and ended up closing out the game 17-15.

Game #4: X-Men Gold vs Guardians of the Galaxy, Shi'ar Empress/Surprise Assault (17)

Teams: Storm, Iceman, X-23, Logan, Omega Sentinel vs Star-Lord, Moondragon (Mind Gem), Beta Ray Bill, Emma Frost, Wong

I was pretty confident going into this game as well, as I felt my opponent didn't have a 17 threat squad that scared me on the scenario since most of his models were either not very mobile like Bill or Emma, or didn't put a ton of offensive pressure on my models (like Wong or Moondragon). Thanks to having last activation on round 1, I used the X-Men jump to forward Logan into my opponent's back point to counter flip the secures away from them, putting me in the lead. We both trade attacks but I manage to keep the VP advantage thanks to the innate mobility of my models and close the game 19-12.

Game #5: X-Men Gold vs Defenders, Deadly Meteors/Sentinel Schematics (17)

Teams: Storm, Domino, X-23, Logan, Omega Sentinel vs Dr Strange (Soul Gem), Blue Marvel, Elektra, Wong

The Defenders match up here is definitely one where I was hoping to get priority, as the scenario selection heavily changes who becomes favored. Looking at the amount of VPs on the board, I picked a somewhat fightier squad that could still play to the scenario combination. Early on I managed to get a strong VP advantage thanks to lucky contested flips at the end of round 1 by Omega Sentinel. We exchange his back and forth but the early lead lets me close out the game in extremis thanks to a winning pay to flip that brings the game to an end 16-11 for me. 

Game #6: X-Men Gold vs Midnight Sons: Shi'ar Empress/Sentinel Schematics (17)

Teams: Storm, Iceman, X-23, Prowler, Omega Sentinel vs Blade, N'kantu, Black Panther Chosen of Bast, Man-Thing, Wrecking Crew

Going into the last round, I felt pretty confident especially after winning priority for a few reasons, the first being that I knew my opponent didn't have a lot of options to play at 17 threat, and that they also didn't have a lot of models that could play the pay to flips as well as my list could. So I ended up being able to break parity on round 1 with a last activation from Omega Sentinel putting me in the lead at the end of round 1. On the following rounds, thanks to the mobility provided by my squad, I was able to take away some of the source extracts before my opponent could grab them and maintain my VP advantage by forcing him to come after my somewhat brawlier models. After which I closed out the game 16-8.

Overall, I was extremely satisfied with both my list and performance at the event and was very glad to have takeaways from my games. The first one being how surprisingly easy it was to end up playing on a pay to flip without even having priority. I had priority 2 out of my 6 games but managed to play to them 5 out of the 6, and after doing some maths, I was surprised to find out that if 2 of my opponent's secures are pay to flips, my odds of hitting at least one of them were 70% (going up to 90% if they had 3). The second one was that, with the advent and popularity of current 4 threats in the meta, a lot of people didn't have very exciting squads at 17 threat, which is by far the most common threat level in the current rotation, and one of the threats where I think X-Men is the strongest on. I think the combination of these elements helped me perform better than I thought I would at this event.

As for lessons learned and list changes, there are some minor changes I made after the event, I ended up removing Senators from my list as I wasn't very satisfied with my 19 threat options if I was to play on it and replaced it with Surprise Assault, as I think I can play a stronger 5 wide at 16 or even 4 wide if the secure that goes along side it is fightier. 

Finally, I would like to thank the event organisers as well as all the players who participated in the event, making it super fun and extremely well run. We'll definitely try to attend it again next year if possible.

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