The 2015 WizKids U.S. National Championships have come to a close. Thank you to everyone who joined us for an exciting weekend of tabletop gaming. We would like to give a special shout out to our hosts from Games & Stuff. The success of these events would have never been possible without your help.

If you didn’t make it to Glen Burnie, Maryland, we’ll give you a bit of a recap.

The competition was steep as many players battled it out for the right to call themselves a WizKids U.S. National Champion and win an invitation to the World Championship, taking place in June at Origins Game Fair. One man came in on top.

Congratulations to our new 2015 U.S. Dice Masters National Champion David Walsh

To learn from the best, we interviewed the new Champ- check out what he had to say:

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Name: David Walsh

WES ID: Kite

Location: Austin, TX

Favorite Local Venues: Dragons Lair

What was it like to win the 2015 Dice Masters U.S. National Championship?

Equal parts exhilarating and relieving honestly. I play tested and brewed so many different builds until I was consistently winning as the second player and it’s great to know all that hard work payed off.

Did you enjoy the competition?

I was skeptical of mixing all sets prior to the event but the format was very well balanced and diverse. Sure we saw a lot of Tsarina and Gobby but very rarely were they centric to the main win condition of a team.

How did you come up with your winning team and what was your main strategy?

My main rule is that consistency trumps speed so I decided to stick to a midrange strategy. When I brew a new team I look at other popular teams in the current meta to get a water mark of the average game tempo. My main strategy for the Polymorph team was to push tempo with high burst damage from Wolverine while Hulk provided a defensive wall.

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What were the teams you went up against like?

I faced a fairly even mix of aggressive teams that benefit the most from going first and combo teams that wanted to force lethal damage in one turn. I struggled more against the latter in that I had to pay very close attention to the overall board state instead of being free to push tempo at will.

What first brought you to the world of Dice Masters?

Marvel characters and fantastic team building mechanics with a ton of game play depth.

How often do you play, and where do you play Dice Masters?

I play online with Google Hangouts almost every night with my teammates from DiceAnon.

What is your favorite things about Dice Masters?

Hands down the community.

Anything else you would like to add?

I can’t wait to see everyone at Worlds!

Watch David’s Final Match