Having enjoyed competitive Marvel: Crisis Protocol, you can probably imagine how excited I was when my friendly local gaming store, Tritex Games, announced they would be hosting their first tournament at the end of August. What’s more, they announced foil versions of some of the core set initiative cards would be given to all that attended. Upon hearing the news, I immediately began to concoct the list I intended to run.
For the tournament, I would need two squads to comprise 1 strike team as this was a showdown event, one of the two official tournament formats, the other being a premier event in which you take four squads with which you construct a strike team for each matchup. For me, one of my squads was obvious, the Nightsister’s, led by Mother Talzin whom I had purchased earlier in the month. This then left me with a Dathomirian dilemma. The core set comes with four primary characters, two of which (Lord Maul and Asajj Ventress, Sith Assassin) share the Dathomirian tag with Talzin, Savage Opress and the Nightsister Acolytes, therefore providing the most synergies. Whilst both have their benefits, I decided to choose Maul simply for the fact that he was the one I happened to be more familiar with, having played him more than Ventress. Choosing the rest of Maul’s squad was simple as the Mandalorian Super Commandos and Gar Saxon have minor synergies with the rest of the team and were conveniently already grouped with Maul in the core box. With that sorted, I prepared my tokens, rulers and dice and headed to Tritex Games.
Upon arriving at the store, I paid my £10 entry fee for the tournament and was rewarded with the aforementioned foil cards.
The cards are visually stunning, especially the Shatterpoint card which already appears prismatic, so the foil effect simply builds on that. Once all the players, totalling 8, had arrived and registered on the website used by both the MCP and Shatterpoint communities for such events – longshanks.org – Joseph, the extremely friendly employee running the tournament, announced the matchups for the first of three rounds, putting me up against one of two Separatist players.
My opposition was running one squad led by General Grievous, accompanied by Kalani and some B1 Battle Droids, and the other under the command of Count Dooku, Separatist Leader who found himself joined by Kraken and his loyal Magna Guard. Still green to the Dathomirian ways, I found myself finding more and more synergies between the Great Mother and her children, such as allowing Savage to move quite far up the board before he even activates allowing him to attack just about anyone he needs to. This was particularly handy in this game as it allowed Savage to wound the Count before Dooku got a chance to activate. The Separatist put up a good fight, but the Dathomirian’s emerged victorious, winning two of the three possible struggles, ending the game there. The number of struggles each player won and the total amount of wounds each player inflicted upon opposing models were recorded on longshanks and we awaited the next round.
Round 2, I was paired against one of 4 Republic players who were running General Obi-Wan Kenobi with CC-7567 Captain Rex and the 212th Clone Troopers in addition to Jedi Master Mace Windu along with CT-411 Commander Ponds and some ARF Clone Troopers. This was a matchup I was slightly more familiar with, having played against Kenobi a few times prior. Windu, however, was a complete wild card as he was at the time a relatively new release and as such, I had no practice against him. I feel I slightly misunderstood what was needed to defeat Windu, realising too late that he was very reliant on his defensive expertise. This made the counter obvious once I had figured this out: expose! The expose special condition prevents a unit from using the defensive expertise on the next attack targeting them. As it happened, the Dathomirian’s had many ways in which to inflict expose before an attack. This allowed Maul and Savage to live up to their names and wound Windu quite easily. This was unfortunately too little, too late resulting in my defeat by losing both struggles. Once again, the results were recorded on longshanks as we awaited the third and final round.
For the final round, I was paired against an opponent who, rather than basing his strike team off a particular tag like everyone else at the tournament, instead was running a strike team filled with characters that shared little synergy but were generically strong characters. He was running CC-7567 Captain Rex and some Clone Commandos under the command of Luminara Unduli, Jedi Master, who were accompanied by Lord Maul, Gar Saxon and Mandalorian Super Commandos. Whilst interesting in concept, I don’t think such a team will see much competitive play in the future due to the lack of synergy. I managed to emerge victorious, winning both struggles in this game. For a third and final time, the relevant information from the game was put into longshanks and we awaited the final placements.
Now before I get to the results, I’m going to take a minute to explain how the results are calculated by Longshanks. There are a few different things it takes into consideration. For all games, the primary determinant is the number of games a player has won throughout the event. Normally, because of this there is no contention for the winner as in most events after three or four rounds, depending on player count, there will only be one player with zero losses. In the result of a tie for the rest of the placements, longshanks have various tiebreakers, the order of which is determined by the Tournament Organiser (TO). There are three tie breakers for Shatterpoint: struggles claimed, strength of schedule and wounds inflicted. A player’s strength of schedule is determined by how well the players they played against throughout the event performed. So now, for the results:
As you can see, I placed 3rd, being beaten out on strength of schedule to second. 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th all went to the 4 Galactic Republic players with three of them opting to use the recently released and very powerful, Jedi Master Mace Windu. In addition to this, there was not a single Galactic Republic player not playing General Obi-Wan Kenobi, showing his effect on the meta. Partially due to the great presence of the Galactic Republic, many primaries went unrepresented. Only one primary from the core box, Lord Maul, was used with all Anakin’s, Ahsoka’s and Asajj’s being left at home. This is probably due to the Republic and Separatists having many other primaries that are more synergistic with one another.
In addition to this, there were no inquisitors present except for Vader, who does possess an Inquisitorius tag. This is probably due to a lack of releases for them, with them only having one squad worth plus Vader (who synergies better with the Republic). Future releases, such as the fistful of credits pack which comes with bounty hunters who for a force, can gain any tag for a turn, may change this as it would allow for more people to benefit from the Grand Inquisitor’s identity.
Cad Bane and his bounty hunters I imagine will certainly have a big impact on the meta due to them providing a good secondary squad to currently underdeveloped factions. I certainly expect him to be making an appearance at the next tournament. The other release of September, the We Are Bold pack which comes with Padme, Sabe and handmaidens, I expect to have less of an impact on the meta simply due to how powerful the already released Galactic Republic is.
Tritex Games in Stafford hold a monthly tournament every month for Star Wars: Shatterpoint if you’re interested in trying your skills against a variety of opponents, with prizes!
