The Op’s Road to Gen Con 2023 Meeples Family Tournament Recap — Anaheim, CA

The tournament drew eight competitors from around the southwest, including two players — Tyler Hansen and Gray Baker — who drove six hours from Arizona to play. After a few minutes of ensuring all players had everything they needed to get started, our three-round event began.

Round 1’s match-ups included Gray, running a team of Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey, Dr. Facilier, and Jack Skellington, versus So-Cal Twitch streamer Amanda Panda, who summoned Ariel, Demona, and Moana. While Amanda used Moana’s Ocean tiles to gain additional movement for the two Oceanic characters on her team, their mobility wasn’t enough to offset the sheer stacks of Magic Brooms that Gray’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey piled up. When the dust settled, Gray strolled to a 24-7 win, citing Mickey as his de facto MVP of the round.

Other first-round pairings included Tyler (W) versus Peter Little (L), Sree (W) versus Alex Varela (L), and Joseph Braverman (W) against another Californian Twitch personality, Banzainator (L).

While some of the players at this event had been following the results of the Seattle tournament, looking for a leg up in the meta-strategy, the overall read among the Anaheim players didn’t feel overly rooted in previous RtGC event results. Seattle had shown a strong slant towards “value” teams that used Davy Jones or Aladdin as mid-range hitters with high enough HP to offset their VP risks and several trios that featured Sulley and Ariel together for board control. The Anaheim field was a little more diverse in its team builds, though, in all twelve matches together, no team ever had more than a single Expansion character. These games showcased the consistency of the Core Set characters.

In the second round, two separate games paired a player against another who they regularly played Disney Sorcerer’s Arena: Epic Alliances with prior to the tournament: Gray and Tyler, and Sree and Joseph. Pairings like these often feel inevitable in bracketed events, and this tournament fit that pattern to a T.

Gray set up across from Tyler, running the same team he’d used against Amanda. With his experience playing against Tyler many times before, he knew that Tyler leaned heavily on the control elements that Sulley brought to the Arena. Gray’s strategy was to siphon counters off of Sulley using Jack Skellington’s Skill while setting up Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey as his primary source of heavy damage. It almost worked; in the end, Tyler took the match by a single point and advanced to the finals with a 2-0 record.

Meanwhile, Joseph and Sree brought nearly identical teams to the table; both played Sulley and Gaston, but Joseph set up Ariel as his third, while Sree chose the more aggressive Demona. Sree cited the game's pace as the main factor in his choice of Demona.

“I usually love playing as Ariel, but in a timed tournament, I think bringing out the heavy hitters is key,” he said after the match. In this case, it was the right choice, as he edged out Joseph by one point, claiming the remaining finals seat.