DC 75th post-release

This Sunday brought the Brighton post-release DC 75th tournament, held in an upstairs room in a café kitted out to resemble the bedroom to a teenage boy circa 1980 (I kid you not; among the many wonderful features are a mono record player, old-school Action Man, Back to the Future poster and assorted boardgames including Buckaroo. It's wonderful, and I keep meaning to pop up there when we aren't playing 'clix so I can have a proper look around).

Having scared off the last few non-Clixing café patrons in the room (to be fair, we did have it booked for our use), the ten players in attendance cracked open two boosters each. The format for today would be or usual pre-release method - first round at 300pts, then 400, 500 and finally 600.

My first booster was good, and included Hal Jordan SR, Deadshot and Cheetah Beast Boy. The contents of the second were beautifully colour-coordinated in pink and purple: Carol Ferris, Queen Aga'po, Ruling-cast Dominator and whatever other purple figures the set includes. It was as if Trinny and Suzanna had assembled a booster.

Round One
Hal and Carol fitted together so nicely at 295pts how could I not play them as a team? Round One was against Matt: comic-geek-without-peer, Heroclix judge and excellent player. His team included the Golden Age Batman (great sculpt, even if it does look a little like Batman's waving a walking stick above his head), Deadshot, Bart Allen and a Dominator. My already slim chance of a victory weren't helped by the fact that I based Deadshot, forgetting that Sharpshooters can use ranged attacks against adjacent figures (in my defence, I get to play rarely these days): four clicks of penetrating damage later, that was pretty much game to Matt.

Round Two
Refusing to be deterred by their previous poor performance, I stuck with the Hal and his girl, and teamed them up with Deadshot for Round Two. I was facing Greg; a true gent and a darn fine player; I didn't rate my chances too highly. My apologies to Greg, but I can't remember what he was playing or even too much about the game. Except that I lost.

Round Three
I still hadn't given up on my star-crossed lovers, and was pleased with how Deadshot performed in Round Two, so added the Dominator and his Ruling Class boss to the pack. The Outwit they brought the the team proved very useful in Round Three, which was against Michael - a lad who shares my passion for giant transforming robots. Against a background of talk about Samurai tanks and G2 Primes, I managed to clock up my first victory.

Round Four
My final match of the day was against tournament organiser Lamp who, fortunately for me, was on a rare losing streak. Not that it wasn't a close game - my victory literally came down to the final action of the match, when Hal KO'd Lamp's Captain Comet. I had added Black Alice to my team for this outing and, while she didn't to too much, more Outwit and her PC came in useful. Overall, I finished fifth out of the ten players.