Road to Masters
Between now and the 2027 US Masters next summer, I’m going to chronologue my efforts to qualify for Masters. If you’ve ever wanted to make Masters, or if you’ve even just wanted to be great at something, you’ll get the full inside look at what it takes. Alternatively, if you love watching a trainwreck you might get to see me descend into madness as I fail to qualify again.
Link to current Midwest Masters standings here (this has not been updated since before Masters as of the time of writing this, but I believe it will be updated very soon).
The story so far…
Despite falling just short of qualifying for US Masters 2026 (thanks Sam Kula for beating the brakes off me top table final round at Hoosier Storm, keep your friends close or something…) I was picked by the Northeast team to play with them as a merc. Rundown of 2026 US Masters here.
This year I’ve resolved to qualify on my own merit. The midwest won best region this year, so it’s an uphill battle. But who doesn’t love a good underdog story? Sean Troy auto-qualifies off his win at Masters, Sam Kula should be a lock with the points he’s already earned, then Trentin Priebe and Jeff Schiltgen should be locks with their performances so far. That leaves just 4 spots for some combination of the usual suspects (Jeff Franz, Matt Temple, Paul Cravo, Erich Trowbridge, Jason Birr, Kyle Pietsch, Cyle Pool, and certainly some others that I’m forgetting rather than implying that they’re bad (but some of them are probably bad, who knows)) and the new blood (me, some other people that matter less, and Alex Danylko).
So far my qualifying campaign (which begins in April for… reasons) has gone swimmingly, if you want my road to qualifying for Masters to be full of drama, and terribly, if you’re me and want to qualify for Masters. I failed to earn points at either of my last 2 2027 qualifying events, Bugeater and the aforementioned US Masters 2026. I got 7th at the Radnor Manor Minor Major, which got me some qualifying points, but less than the 6 people ahead of me because that’s how scoring works.
This leads to now. I’m writing this before attending Dragon Dash 2: Kind of a Big Deal (one day in Columbus), the St. Louis Open (another one day in, shockingly, St. Louis), and then the Ohio GT (a two day in Columbus).
What I’m running
For the foreseeable future, I’ll be bringing Xirkaali to events. This is for 3 reasons:
- I’ve played a ton of NA in the last few months, it’s time to try something different.
- My Xirkaali are better painted. I dropped multiple places on hobby score at several events this year since my NA is my first army (this is why I think hobby scoring is bad at a lot of events and punishes new painters, but that’s a different conversation).
- Dude. DUDE. Xirkaali are so fun.
My current list starts with a warrior pack horde with some kind of items, 1 lionsnarl with jboots, a couple warrior pack troops, and a yan lieutenant. From there, I have quite a few options. I’ll be testing multiple hordes, wildfang regiments, matriarchs, mortars, and chakrams. Xirkaali got options. This event was 2150points and each player also got to field a Big Deal from the ogre army. My list (not including the Big Deal) was:
My immediate takeaway for future events is:
- 1 lion with jboots is perfect
- Wildfangs with items are stonks
- Mortars are good but ultimately a bit unreliable, I need to test them more
- 1 warrior pack horde might be enough
Game by game breakdown
Game 1, invade win against Grace Patterson’s Salamanders
This game finished with over an hour left in the round timer. Xirkaali really might be a “push your stuff forward and see what happens” army.
At Hoosier Storm, Grace beat me with a single unit (a phoenix) alive and holding all her tokens. To make it up to me, Grace gave my warrior pack troop a flank onto a kaisenor lancer regiment turn 1. Fun fact, 30 dice on 4s with crush 1, thunder 1 (shoutout to the command), and vicious (matriarch go brrr) kills stuff. From there, I was able to just point my lionsnarl regiment at stuff and cast kill.
More importantly, my witch cage got to turn off a brew of sharpness for consecutive turns. Witch cage haters are awfully quiet now.
All that said, sometimes in Kings (and in life, I suppose) one mistake can ruin your whole plan. Grace made one mistake, but is an excellent player and scrapped back what she could from that mistake. It was just too much to recover from.
As a note, prior to this game I’d never won a Xirkaali game where I went 2nd AND I got 2nd on invade. There’s been a lot of dialogue online about invade being unwinnable if you go 2nd. Do with that information what you will.
Game 2, push win against Nate Glowacki’s Forces of the Abyss
This game in a nutshell:
- Top of turn 6, Nate held every single token. Push is a funny mission.
- Nate learned the hard way turn 2 that wildfangs are nimble.
- Getting an abyssal guard horde stuck in terrain and turning off their brew of strength can ruin a FoA player’s day.
- This game was my only non-max point win (thanks for NOTHING, Nate). That will matter later.
Game 3, salt the earth win against Alex “hitmang” Danylko’s Basileans
This is a game where I think Alex and I both played well. I played a gambit where I let elohi get behind my line turn 2. The thought was that they’d have to pivot on turn 3 to see anything, then if they were threatening something serious back there I could individual pivot my matriarch and go tie them up since she’s non-yielding. Alex set up a staggered battleline (something he does really well with most his armies) and had enough speed that I couldn’t approach. I sent my strong wildfangs up the far right flank where he deployed his cannons. My best case hope was to break his middle before the elohi came around while my wildfang survived a couple rounds of shooting to turn off Alex’s shooting battery. Even then I knew it would be close, but with his speed advantage I needed to take a risk.
Alex took charges onto 2 warrior pack troops aaaand his dice crapped the bed. (Here’s my obligatory mention that Alex didn’t pop jboots on his cav this turn, if he does that they kill a warrior pack troop and there’s a good chance I lose this game, but don’t tell Alex I said that). After he failed to kill anything on turn 2, I was more or less able to just pick apart his army with what I had left.
Did I play perfect? Absolutely not. Did I deserve to win? Uhhh… probably not. Do you take those wins? HECK YEAH WE DO. That’s showbiz.
The result
My combination of great play, dice luck, and sp7 strider units led me to taking 1st in battle. I even went 2nd in ALL 3 games, overcoming my “go 2nd and lose” curse with Xirkaali. Buuuuuuut I tied on overall points with Erich Trowbridge. To max hobby at this event you needed at least two “favorite mammoth” votes and I only got 1, while Erich got 2. If I’d gotten that one extra bonus point in round 2 against Nate I won the event and would’ve won my first Kings tournament. So I got 2nd overall on a tiebreaker.
This is easily my best performance at a Kings tournament. I got my good one day result needed for Masters qualification, now I just need at least one REALLY good two day event result…