A Look at Lulnenko's Feb SBBMonthly Heroes

Hey, I'm noted copycat enthusiast lulnenko and I thought I'd do a quick review of what I played in the recent tournament. With a new patch out now, it won't be as useful as otherwise, but maybe some of my thought processes will be interesting.

Day One

Day 1 I played all games on my stream at twitch.tv/lulnenko. I needed 40 points to make day 2 and ended up with 45.

Game 1

Loki - Mishmash - 3rd

I should have probably picked Sharebear here over Loki, but my Shareby stats hadn't been looking amazing and I had heard rumblings of Loki being playable. In hindsight, I think playing Loki in a tournament setting loses me more agency than I am comfortable with. An early Polywoggle into peep + a shop with three more peeps very early forced me into eyes of ares, a lane I kind of stayed in for the majority of the game. Nothing too strong ever solidified, but most of my midgame was won via mummies and my final comp had 2 doombreaths and a pumpkin.

Game 2

Muerte - Dwarves - 4th

I decided to go Muerte over Mihri here as I think royals were terrible in this patch and Muerte is good with the meta scourge Tweedle Dee. I ended up with one golden Tweedle and a Dwarven Forge, but another player got Excalibur and bought up all the best Dwarves. C'est la vie.

Game 3

Pied Piper - Copyboy - 2nd

Rune Stones into Monkey's Paw (off Blind Mice) on turn 4.0 made building into Copyboy a no brainer. Friendly Spirits, Wombats, and Shoulder Fairies off Polywoggle got me to 6 fairly comfortably but I ended up taking second after my last opponent got great Cupid hits against me.

Game 4

Wonder Waddle - Copyboy - 1st

Wonder Waddle is the best hero in the game in both tournaments and ladder, and it is not close. In this game I got early Fork + Merlin's Hat and ramped for 4 exp with only 4 gold. From there I could probably win with anything. I chose to make a large knighted Good Boy and build toward a Good Boy + Court Wizard end game. I picked up Copycats along the way to use in case of emergency (as they tend to give the board way more stats, but at the cost of being a bit more fragile) and did end up needing to use the cat in the end as my last opponent had a had hatballwand board.

Game 5

Peter Pants - Mishmash - 5th

I picked Pants over Sir Galahad, a hero I have performed extremely well with lately, as I was more confident that Pants should give good results on average while almost never totally missing. I dug for Hatball, as Pants tends to do, but never found Merlin's Hat and took 5th as a result. Still, a board of random Pants stuff is good enough to not bottom 3.

Game 6

Headless Horseman - Dwarves - 1st

Oh boy. What do you pick between Mrs. Claus, Pan's Shadow, Horseman, and Snow Angel? I went with Horseman, because I had at least heard rumors of the hero being good even if I didn't really believe them. I trusted fate and cast kidnap on turn 1, stealing Fanny. Turn 2, I fought Skip and stole Princess Wight. Phew. That level of luck alone is essentially good enough for a guaranteed victory already.

Day 2

Day 2 I did not stream, although my perspective of game 5 was featured on the main broadcast.

Game 1

Pied Piper - Animal Summons - 2nd

This game I ended up in the somewhat unusual position of having an early Grumbleglore off Polywoggle and I chose to leverage that into a summons comp by using both support treasures. My final board was a Bearstain build, which I would usually recommend against playing, but here it came together fairly smoothly and it was good for 2nd.

Game 2

Geppetto - Good Boy Royals/Summon - 3rd

Geppetto is a solid pick overall as the amount of bonus stats he grants in the midgame will generally save tons of health while damaging others. Oddly enough, my final board was good boy, 3 peeps, 2 court lizards, and a bearstain. It's a bit of an unusual way to build into Good Boy, but it makes some sense as the Peeps have multiple synergies (good boy, hero power, lizard, bearstain).

Game 3

Celestial Tiger - Mishmash - 6th

Celestial Tiger is a bit of a "pick this if you feel you need to highroll" hero. On average, Tiger is probably solid enough, but can be a bit boom or bust. Unfortunately I did not find any treasures I could really build around this game and ended up reliant on Dark Contract. This means I needed to buy new evil units every turn, which works against any long term progress. I couldn't get much going but held on for 6th.

Game 4

Trophy Hunter - Pew pew pew - 1st

Trophy Hunter is THE hero to play if you feel you absolutely need a 1st place finish, along with maybe Hoard Dragon. For some reason I picked up some early Happy Little Trees and got Bounty Board early. This treasure is a money printer for Trophy Hunter, so once I got going a little bit I built fully into Mummies and won easily. On tier 6, I took Jorms, which can weaken the board significantly as Grim Soul can hit Jorm instead of Mummy. However, in this case, the pick was justified as it gave my board some protection against medusa or pigomorph.

Game 5

Gwen - Printer into Slay Dragons - 2nd

Gwen is another solid pick for 1sts, as she can sometimes get an overpowered unit early with mixawizzle + knighthood, polywoggle knighthood etc. On turn 3.0 I found Ogre Princess and decided to knight her and play Printer comp (golden ogre princess + grim souls to farm units). Feel free to watch the official stream if you don't believe me ;) From there I was able to pivot into slay dragons + jorm, one of the strongest comps of the meta. It was especially strong in my lobby, as there was a high health Trophy Hunter and taking out a TH's Baba early can be devastating. Everything was going great for me! ... until I died to a ghost with 9th book. 2nd place.

This put me at 10th place of 773, missing top 8 by tiebreakers. Ouch. However, due to some unforeseen circumstances with bye rounds leading to Top 8, the tied players were payed out as if we were all 8th, so I was essentially tied 8th rather than being 10th. Additionally, 2 players above me had already qualified for the next seasonal championship, so the invitation was passed down to me and I will be eligible to compete in the next, more exclusive tournament.