U.S. Nationals took place last week at Origins in Columbus, Ohio with players traveling from all over the country to compete for the title of U.S. Champion. Let’s talk about the top four teams and some other aspects of this meta-defining event.

Nationals is always an exciting event for the meta game because it happens just two weeks after rotation meaning a lot of players are scrambling to figure out what’s going to be a competitive team and which pieces just don’t make the cut. We also just had the biggest release in history with Avengers: Infinity, so there was a lot of room for people to carve a new state for the game.

To put everything into perspective, Nationals shapes the beginning of the current year’s Meta and drives prices on pieces. It’s the first event to give players an idea of what they’ll encounter.

Today is all about the top 4 players and their teams, along with some other musings that I found interesting about the top 16 players.

1st Place – Isaac Arnold-Berkovits (in Featured Image)

Shredder Clone + Ocean Resurrection Trait | 85 Points

Starfox Chase | 80 Points

Captain America Chase (Samantha) | 70 Points

Fast Forces Giant Girl | 10 Points

Main Set Giant Girl | 10 Points

Carnage | 10 Points

Mjonlir | 10 Points

Boxing Ring | 5 Points

18 Points in ID Cards | Chamber, Jean Grey, Professor X, Wolverine)

Issac has reclaimed his title since the 2015 ROC World Cup and took 1st place.

The majority of offensive on Issac’s team came from Shredder Clone with Shark Shredder on his sideline to deny points on KO, and the new Starfox chase with Mjolnir, giving him an 8-square Flurry swing and a ton of consistent healing. Point denial has always been a healthy strategy, but it’s tough to build a team that can output a lot of damage while sticking around. Both these characters require at least 2 hits to take down, and will usually take a lot more thanks to the replacement on the Clone and the STOP click with Steal Energy on Starfox (along with Steal Energy to go with his traited Flurry).

Issac also ran a healthy array of retaliation to back up his characters that are hard to KO. As usual, Carnage made a showing as the king of retaliation, while both versions of the new Giant-Girl carved places in his lineup as well. Because the main set Giant-Girl doesn’t have Colossal Indifference, she’s another capable attacker, and if she manages to KO some characters, it’s a ton of work to put her down compared to her 10 point cost. The Fast Forces Giant Girl serves as a double-up retaliation on any turn making it very risky to make an attack on his team without getting destroyed in the aftermath.

The big tech on Isaac’s team though is Captain America, which I’ll also cover in the musings section. While Samantha first made news in overdrive teams where she could Charge an opponent in their starting area from across the map, that isn’t what her purpose is these days. Since Samantha can take any action after being carried, she’s potentially the best ID summoner the game has seen, possibly even better than Ultron Drones. Her Perplex is the cherry on top and ensures that she’s going to cause a lot of trouble.

The Boxing Ring makes a lot of sense on the build as it protects from Uni-Mind sniper attacks, and forces Isaac’s opponent’s to fight on his terms since both his primary attackers are melee-oriented. It also eliminates walls so that Starfox has more openings for his 8-square ‘melee’ attacks. While some other terrain did make showings, it’s clear that the Boxing Ring is still the best.

Finally, Isaac’s ID characters were the typical cast that we’re used to in this new environment with a small twist. Chamber is a great sniper, Chase Jean Grey provides tons of value with free TK and Outwit, Wolverine is perhaps the most brutal damage dealer in ID history for only 50 points, and Professor X brings opponents closer into Starfoxes range. The twist that was new to me was the inclusion of the Prime Professor X on his 50 point line. This guy packs a 3-target Pen/Psy blast, perfect for eliminating every retaliator from the board, making him a better silver bullet than Unseen since it only costs you 5 points to include rather than 65 (Unseen was still actually… seen? Okay, that was terrible, sorry).

2nd Place – Abdul Manickram – Cosmic Theme Team +5

Starfox Chase | 80 Points

Infinity | 75 Points

Unseen | 65 Points

Avengers: Infinity Groot X2 | 40 Points

Ape Batman | 15 Points

Mjolnir | 10 Points

15 Points in ID Cards | Wolverine, Iceman, Professor X

I have to give Abdul some major props; almost his entire team is made up from the Avengers: Infinity set, and the portions that weren’t are from Xavier’s School, sans Mjolnir!

Like Issac, Abdul ran Starfox with Mjolnir. It’s a simple and brutal strategy that’s extraordinary difficult to deal with now that Nick Fury and the Green Arrow ID card are no longer modern. However, their teams were vastly different aside from the main player.

Abdul went for a Cosmic theme team and included Unseen as his deterrent to retaliation, power control, and Probability Control. I’m pretty happy to see Unseen show up in the top 16, let alone second place. While he lacks attack and damage values and plays a purely support game, he’s very hard to hit without coming right next to him thanks to his free Smoke Cloud after Phasing. While he’s not as good as Samantha at calling in characters, he’s still a very good candidate. He doesn’t need to take actions to attack if he’s using them to call in characters to attack for him!

Infinity is another exciting piece to see in second place. She gives Abdul a slight advantage over Issac as his Starfox has a 9 range thanks to her trait, and drops Isaac’s to 7, and reduces movement on his opponent’s team while boosting his own. The best part is that Infinity serves as a team reposition with her stellar trait that allows characters to be placed in different squares if they’re adjacent. You basically get a 3 square Sidestep on single-base characters, or a 4 square Sidestep on colossi. With her Outwit and Barrier, and a +5 to map selection, it makes Abdul’s team very difficult to actually take shots against.

While Unseen was a surprise to see this high, Groot absolutely was not. Easton Brock recently talked about how good this guy is on an Apex Insiders article, and I have to agree. The overwhelming value you get here for just 20 points is too much; Leadership with the Cosmic Keyword, two of the best Bystanders in the game at the start of the game for free (the Leslie Evans bystander for your opponent is worth two 10 attack 3 damage Flurry pieces), which also generates more if he hits with retaliation. I see big things coming for Groot, and unless he’s errata’d, he and his Flora Colossus brothers will be a big part of this new Meta.

Ape Batman gives Abdul a third source of Outwit, basically giving him an overwhelming amount of shutdown if his opponent didn’t have Power Cosmic, and it’s a great strategy when analyzing where the Meta was leading into this event. The two big threats were Uni-Mind and Shredders, and while Outwit isn’t going to do much against Uni-Mind, three sources of Outwit pretty much cripples the Shredders. Once their Sidestep is out, they become a lot more taxing to plug free damage.

For Abdul’s ID cards, I’m not sure what characters he used, but I’m going to guess that he used the Chase Iceman at 60 points and both Professor X’s (regular and Prime) at 50 points. Wolverine was of course the Super Rare.

3rd/4th Place – Matty G.

Mini Shredder | 90 Points

Captain America Chase (Samantha) | 80 Points

Pip the Troll | 40 Points

Mangog | 30 Points

Surtur | 25 Points

Giant-Girl (not sure if Fast Forces or Main Set) | 10 Points

Pym Pocket Tank | 8 Points

25 Points in ID Cards | Cyclops, Iceman, Jean Grey, Professor X, Wolverine

Matty’s team is similar to teams we’ve seen in the last few months with slightly older characters and retaliators.

Up top, we see Mini Shredder, possibly the most brutal 90 points in the game right now. We’ve seen this little guy decimate games for almost two years now, and it looks like there’s no stopping him from competing. With a built-in resurrection, free damage on movement, Plasticity for tie-up, and an unusually long dial for what he is, Mini Shredder is just a fantastic piece. Oh, and he’s not a half-bad ID summoner either since he’s tough to KO and has a big 90 point cost making it easier to summon bigger pieces.

Speaking of summoning ID’s, we see another Captain America, but there’s a different piece for carrying her around instead of colossi or Starfox. Instead, we see Pip the Troll! Here’s a piece that I legit never thought I would see at Nationals, especially on a non-theme team! Pip has a huge movement value of 13, and he doesn’t require objects like Overdrive does, and he has Phasing making it much easier to get around terrain. With Stealth and Super Senses, he’s also a bit harder to KO than Overdrive. Even better, if he does go down, he donates his ability to carry people and phase through walls. Pretty good for 5 points more than Overdrive, which means you get another ID card!

For retaliation, Matty ran a suite of Mangog, Surtur, and Giant-Girl, although I don’t know which Giant-Girl he played since the photo online doesn’t show. Mangog presents a threat that needs to be dealt with while dishing out a huge chunk of damage if he does retaliate, Surtur is the Uni-Mind Silver Bullet, and Giant-Girl… does what I talked about in Isaac’s team, regardless of which version he ran.

What’s really interesting is the inclusion of the long-thought-dead Pym Pocket Tank. WizKids didn’t just take the nerf bat to the tank; they put that think in the nerf cannon, and then fired it into the nerf ocean, but Matty still did really well with it. While the tank certainly doesn’t abuse the game like it did, it’s still a very strong disruption tool, and with the sudden spike in teams of nothing but colossi (see later), it can cause a lot of trouble. While I don’t know if I would personally use it today, it’s a very interesting strategy, and it had to perform well to earn a 3rd/4th place victory so I should probably eat those words.

Matty had the largest array of ID cards with a whopping 5 Headmasters. The only new addition from the top two teams was the Cyclops ID and there’s a very good chance he was running the Super Rare Cyclops at 50 points since it has so much offense for a fairly low cost, with a runner-up of the Chase Cyclops at 60 points.

3rd/4th Place – Daniel Powell – Cosmic Theme Team +3

Uni-Mind with three Forged in Blue Flame | 165 Points Starfox Chase, Thanos Colossal, Makkari

Lockjaw LE | 75 Points

Avengers: Infinity Groot | 20 Points

Pym Pocket Tank | 8 Points

Symbiote | 6 Points

20 Points in ID Cards | Jean Grey, Professor X, Storm, Wolverine

Invisible Plane Terrain

The 2017 ROC Champion was able to pull off a 3rd/4th place spot with a newer version of Uni-Mind, the character that led him to victory last October with some very new and different Eternals.

We all know Uni-Mind by now, and Daniel surely is no stranger to how the figure works and how brutal he can be. At 150 points, you get the shortest amount of health, but lots of room for support. The big difference with Daniel’s team this outing were two new Eternals from Avengers: Infinity. Starfox grants Uni-Mind Flurry, a huge help to chunk lots of damage, and Thanos grants Sidestep, a lower-tier power when you have other big choices, but still very good. However, these two are fantastic when Uni-mind eventually pops and are put out on the board. Thanos becomes a multi-based giant that blocks off parts of the map with Pulse Wave and Probability Control, while Starfox has STOP with Mastermind and Probability Control as well. The big play is that Thanos gives out +1 to all combat values when he’s KO’d, so Daniel can use him as a giant Pulse Wave threat and if he goes down, he can buff one of his other two attackers, mainly Starfox since he has better stats and Prob.

There is simply no better support piece in a Cosmic theme team than the LE Lockjaw. The pup has been making the rounds, winning events all over the place, and to be honest, it’s somewhat odd that he only made one showing in the top 4. Lockjaw provides Uni-Mind with whatever powers he needs. TK to get to the Symbiote, Probability Control to help attacks and defend, Outwit to counter powers like retaliation, or even Energy Explosion to drop swarms. The Inhuman best friend might not have the strength that Jakeem Thunder has in terms of firepower, but the fact that he can pick any power, has 6 very good and very different clicks, and most importantly, is nearly impossible to KO makes him the ideal candidate.

The last two characters on the build were covered in previous builds with Groot doing Groot things, and the Pym Pocket Tank making a surprising two appearances in the top 4. Maybe there’s something about this tank that will make it come back around and show up on build sheets again.

We see the same three ID cards with Jean, Xavier, and Wolverine, but see yet another new card with Storm. Unlike the other builds, we actually know the ID characters Daniel was running with the Chase Jean Grey, both regular and Prime Professor Xavier’s, Super Rare Wolverine, and the LE What If? Storm. That last character is important because she is the only Modern ID character with Running Shot and Pulse Wave, but at 150 points, not much aside from Uni-Mind can safely be a competitive asset and be high enough points to call her in. (EDIT: Chase Iceman has Running Shot and Pulse Wave at full points, but that makes him cost more than Storm)

These are honestly pretty diverse teams in terms of what each player was using to score points. While both Isaac and Abdul were running Starfox with Mjolnir, they had two completely different builds aside from that one aspect. That means they had 210 points open to utilize, so they aren’t the same team with some subtle changes. Matty and Daniel also had completely different teams, so it’s rather exciting to see new things popping up and making plays.

Since I can’t cover all 16 players that made the cut (that would take over 10,000 words, no kidding), I want to summarize some points here that I find very interesting about the teams we saw at this level.

Musings From Nationals

ID cards continue to be a VERY big part of the Meta game, and will continue to be. All but ONE of the top 16 players ran the Wolverine ID card with the Super Rare sidelined, with Professor X just eking out Jean Grey as the second most popular. Iceman was another very popular choice.

Student ID cards weren’t as big of a deal as Headmasters, but we did see a lot of Chamber, some Broo, Sprite, Rusty, Leech, and a single Goldballs. This will probably change once the Black Bird and ID’s are legal in a large event.

Captain America (Samantha) was seen only 3 times, but I have a feeling she’ll see an uptick in play. She can summon just about every big candidate with ID cards.

Wolverine was played a whopping 17 times on main forces with 3 teams playing 4 at 50 points, and yet another with 3 at 50 points. All 4 of these teams also ran a Wolverine ID card, meaning a grand total of 32 Super Rare Wolverines were present! That’s a lot of Snikt-Bubbing!

Uni-Mind was only seen two times, and both teams were exactly the same down to the special objects, ID cards, and Sidelined characters.

One force had 7 Fast Forces Giant-Girls, all at 10 points for an Avengers team of +11!

The Symbiote proved it’s still the king of Special Objects with 5 showings in the Top 16, but Mjolnir is close on its heels with 4 showings.

Special Terrain was a big deal; 10 of the Top 16 had terrain on their teams, with the Boxing Ring showing up on 7.

We saw just one Title character with Dr. Strange, Earth’s Guardian paired up with Lockjaw, Captain America Chase, Overdrive, Moira MacTaggart, and the AI Groot (with ID’s). My apologies, I was informed this was Shifting Focus Dr. Strange.

My apologies, I was informed this was Shifting Focus Dr. Strange. Retaliation was once again a MAJOR factor with 26 of them collectively. The breakdown shows that Giant-Girl is the big kid on campus now (note that I don’t know which versions were played on which teams, sans for a few photos, so it’s based on characters named Giant-Girl). Giant-Girl (10), AI Groot (7), Mangog (3), Flora Colossus (2), Carnage (2), Ms. Marvel (1), Surtur (1)

A stunning 5 Pym Pocket Tanks were played meaning it might be time to dust off your tank that you packed away after the errata last year.

I didn’t get the chance to watch this year’s Nationals as things have been incredibly hectic for me, and I probably won’t get around to catching them, but from a glance, it looks like the Meta is actually fairly healthy. If you discount the plague of ID cards, the teams themselves were very different from each other and it’s exciting to see that Avengers: Infinity made such a huge splash this close after release. WizKids has done perhaps too good of a job making these colossal figures good pieces and worth collecting/playing.

What are your thoughts on Nationals this year? Did you catch any of these games? Any surprises that you think are worth mentioning? Were you shocked like I was at the lack of typical professional Clix player names in the Top 16? Let me know in the comments section!

I’ll catch you all next week on our sister site over at Clix Fix where I’m going to be diving back into Team Builds with Avengers: Infinity since I’ve only cracked one team for the set. Until then, remember, the real fun begins when you’re Two Clicks From KO!