Last year, I talked about the top teams of the ROC World Cup, so I figured I would continue the tradition and talk about the top two teams of this years’ cup. If you didn’t have time to check out the stream, this should help!

Some of you that remember my article from last year are probably thinking “hey, didn’t you cover the top four rather than just the top two?”. Why yes, you’re correct dear reader, and I thank you for sticking around this long. The reasoning behind this change is two-fold. One, from what I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be a listing of the top 4 players team builds out there as of yet since the ROC Cup happened just a day ago as of this writing so I can’t provide information I don’t personally have. Two, since I’m running on a weekly schedule, I want this to be relevant while the taste of ROC is still fresh in everyone’s minds.

I’m going to take this a little differently because both of these teams were almost identical, so instead I’ll be covering them at the same time and then talking about their differences.

Without further adieu, let’s look at those teams!

2nd Place – Easton Brock (Uni-Mind)

1st Place – Daniel Powell (Uni-Mind)

We can see that both of these teams are running the incredibly potent Uni-Mind, and I’d like to take a moment to pat myself on the back for calling which three Eternals would be used with Uni-Mind, and the fact that three were used in general. I saw a lot of play in the last month where people were using only two Eternals, or different set-ups, and I’m happy to see that my prediction came true! That’s not to say that my article had anything to do with these selections, rather I’m just stoked that I was able to call it with 100% accuracy!

Anyway, Uni-Mind was huge this last weekend with over 20 of the top 32 teams running the transparent green jerk. There’s a good reason, too; Uni-Mind is an incredible piece and with the new rules changes (mainly to Outwit), he’s a pretty good choice over Jakeem Thunder. All we need to do is look at the results of the ROC and it’s evidence enough that Jakeem has pretty much been dethroned. Does that make Jakeem a bad piece? God no! It just means that his reign looks to finally be coming to a close. For a little more points, you get so many more options and more importantly, you get Power Cosmic.

But enough about Jakeem compared to Uni-Mind! Both teams also ran something that I saw a lot of teams rock as a counter to Uni-Mind, and that was Nighthawk Prime. One of the biggest tools Uni-Mind has is his Perplex ability, which he can raise/lower values by a grand total of 4 if there’s no Outwit to be afraid of. Nighthawk single-handedly takes this aspect away and unlike Deadpool, Merc-With-A-Mouth, this effect is always on. Nighthawk also has Outwit and an incredible Shape Change, so it’s easy to see why he saw a ton of play this past weekend. Sidenote: isn’t it interesting that no Title Characters made much of a showing?

Both teams ran Carnage at 10 points, while they both had other ideas for a second retaliator (I’m getting there). Carnage is disgusting, and he’s made it clear that he’s the new standard to which Colossal Retaliation pieces are going to be held to. It’s not just the Sidestep for mobility on such a low cost, or the 11 attack value, or the traited Plasticity; it’s the fact that whenever Carnage retaliates, even if he doesn’t hit, he spawns a Symbiote next to his target. These symbiotes are nothing to brush off either. Anything that gives you a potential free 6 damage and locks down targets is a huge boon, so it’s easy to see why Carnage was the Colossal King this year.

The last portion that both players had was the Boxing Ring. This thing has been everywhere in events and frankly, I don’t see how it isn’t on every single team. The benefits that this provides for just 5 points is staggering, and it’s perhaps the first game element since ID cards that’s actually worth swapping a card for. It slows people down, it protects your team, it breaks down walls, it decides where fights occur, and there’s no way to destroy it. This is probably another big reason why Nighthawk Prime was played so heavily as he cancels out the benefits pieces get for fighting in the ring. If you don’t have one of these, I highly recommend you get one if you want to make the jump to competitive.

Now then, let’s talk about the differences.

Retaliator #2: Easton ran another Carnage while Daniel ran The Atom. When you compare these two there are a small amount of differences, but the question is whether those 5 extra points are worth said differences. Sure, The Atom is a much more reliable source of damage and his Indom makes him a great taxi, but you’re giving up an ID card to gain those benefits. Meanwhile, you get the Plasticity out of Carnage and the ability to spawn those previously talked about Symbiote pogs. I only got to watch the final match, and The Atom went down pretty quickly, so I can’t really judge how much this helped Daniel throughout the day.

Equipment: Amazingly neither of these players opted for any of the amazing new weapons from The Mighty Thor. Instead, they reached for older pieces with Easton playing the Hulkbuster Torso to give his Nighthawk Invulnerability and Daniel played the Symbiote to give his Uni-Mind the extra edge in combat. Based on how the came played out, I liked the Symbiote play a little more as it made Daniel’s UM a much bigger threat. Not only does he get that free Shape Change on top of everything else, he also breaks away automatically meaning you can never stop him from running rampant around the map. Neither of these options were bad, but very surprising that weapons weren’t played. I was really suspecting a Mjolnir to show up.

Resource: I was almost happy to report that this was the first ROC without resources on the winning team because you almost forget that Supreme Intelligence exists. While we might see that next year, we had to stomach them again. Easton ran a full Teleporter and Daniel had Supreme Intelligence assigned to his Uni-Mind. This is the biggest difference in the two teams as Easton was built more for calling in monumental amounts of pain while Daniel was more about making his Uni-Mind even more ungodly (which he did).

In all honestly, I liked Easton’s play here a bit more as Uni-Mind is just after Ultron Drones as the best ID summoner in the game since he can boost their values for free, and the Teleporter gives him access to 6 ID cards while granting him free powers. The issue is that the powers the resource grants are somewhat unreliable, but it’s fantastic that a different character can be used with it, which Easton did a few times. Meanwhile, the Supreme Intelligence granted Daniel free movement with Sidestep, which combined with his automatic breakaway from his Symbiote gave him the edge on mobility and reduced the amount of answers a team had for him. Supreme Intelligence also offers more versatile powers if you need which is really great.

Regarding ID Cards, we see the usual suspects here: Level 7, Spider-Man, Green Arrow, Superman, Firestorm and Nightwing, all with their main partners in crime that you see above. I feel like ID cards have been around for a while now and everyone pretty much knows which figures are used, except for one new one which I want to cover on Daniels team. Daniel had the new Super Rare Hulk from The Mighty Thor as one of his Level 7 choices, and it was a really great play. With so many Carnages (and other Colossi) taking up space, this new Hulk is a total silver bullet. He’s also got a very deep dial with good reducers, is impossible to one-shot (unless you get really creative), and becomes stupid-hard to take down once you do hit him thanks to his Powered by Rage trait. 12 Attack Super Strength and 5 Damage Battle Fury are really good as well as he can dish a lot of damage, and he gets through Nighthawk’s Shape Change. It’s all about that versatility.

As with most final matches, this one was a nail bitter, and was extremely close. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend you do so as it’s a very entertaining game. Both players did a great job and it’s easy to see they played very well considering the sheer number of hours they were playing straight.

If you recall from last year, both Daniel and Easton made the top 4 with Easton going all the way to the final match. It’s fantastic to see a player improve from an already incredible achievement of 4th place at this level going on to win the following year, and Easton is absolutely one of the best players in the world seeing two back-to-back final table games. If either of you are reading this, my sincerest congrats to you both and I thank you for such an entertaining game.

What are your thoughts on these teams? Do you think Uni-Mind is on his way to the Watch List, or do you think something in the next two sets will release something that will help to put him in his place? ID cards in the new X-Men set is a big deal and could spell disaster for Uni-Mind. Either way, it’s seems like WizKids is all about printing one really huge piece a year. One thing is for sure; if no characters come out before next June, there are going to be a lot less ways to deal with this gigantic juggernaut as Nick, The Level 7 ID, Green Arrow ID, and Nighthawk Prime will all be rotated out (most likely).

I hope you all enjoyed this report on the two big teams of this year’s ROC World Cup! Let me know what your favorite team was in the comments below and I’ll breakdown one of them and use that for an article in the coming weeks!

See ya next week!