ok this deck is insane, it has yet to lose, in fact after a few games the concensus was thats it's too powerful.

ePalpatine

Cool!

I might almost consider trading the Sith Holocrons for It Binds All Things? Palpatine fills up those three upgrade slots really fast, and Holocrons are pretty slow out of the gate.

Glad to hear you're having luck with Palpatine! I drew one at a prerelease, and since then I've pulled two Force Speeds but still not the second Palpatine... I've got another box preordered with the reprint! Fingers crossed for another Palpatine!

so lost my 1st game versus my own triple death trooper deck, i couldn't mitigate 6-8 damage per turn

I'm surprised there's no Force Illusion in here. With Rise Again to fish back crucial lost upgrades it seems like a good fit.

Okay, ePalpatine and a turn one The Price of Failure. It gets them every time.

And if Palpatine isn't the boss, then who is?

6 hours ago, Darth evil said:

so lost my 1st game versus my own triple death trooper deck, i couldn't mitigate 6-8 damage per turn

Interested in hearing about this trooper deck!

13 upgrades in a deck with 3 upgrade slots? Your list needs some fine tooning. Also, if you can"t deal with triple death troopers 6 damage a turn, then there will be many other decks you will struggle against with more damage potential per turn. Also, decks running cards like Defensive Position and The Best Defense will shut you down for a turn, and lists running Salvage Stand will make it hard for you to generate enough resources to ramp up quick enough to have the needed defense. ePalp will blow out any non tooned deck that is not prepared for the meta and will usually die to any list that took 15 seconds to think how it will deal with ePalp.

I totally destroyed Palpatine on local torunament yesterday. Went 4-0 with Poe/Maz. I finsihed with 4 damage on my characters against him. Frozen Wastes + Friendly Fire were MVP.

Palpatine is higly vulnerable by dice removal. Still it is good aggro deck and if opponent do not know how to play against him, he is doomed.

If Poe Maz 's player uses his/her turn to play dice removal this will leave his/her dice exposed as well (unless it is his/her 3rd/4th action of a round).

They are actually on par 1vs1, a good ePalp deck will pack plenty of manipulation.

Frozen Wastes is indeed diffficult to deal with but can't manipulate Lightnings and Probe that can dish out a ton of damage per turn.

ePalp can shot Maz on the very 1st turn.

The chosen battlefield will play a key role.

Nevertheless a Frozen Wastes Poe/Maz is not scary (for all the other decks) as an Emperor's Throne Room Poe/Maz.

I guess your BF choice was based on your meta actually.

Frozen Waste is superior to Emperor's Throne Room in PoeMaz.

17 minutes ago, Bigulf said:

Frozen Waste is superior to Emperor's Throne Room in PoeMaz.

As I stated, it is a meta choice.

If you are going to face a lot of Vader (Awk), Palpatine, Luke decks I agree it is a strong choice.

All the other aggro decks rely more on upgrade dice than on character dice AND losing your Poe die to Frozen Wastes really hurts against fast/faster decks

17 minutes ago, blackholexan said:

As I stated, it is a meta choice.

If you are going to face a lot of Vader (Awk), Palpatine, Luke decks I agree it is a strong choice.

All the other aggro decks rely more on upgrade dice than on character dice AND losing your Poe die to Frozen Wastes really hurts against fast/faster decks

Against pretty much any agro deck, if Frozen Wastes isn't removing a 3 damage side, it can probably still find a 2 damage side to pluck out. A free Isolation that saves 2 damage every turn is nothing to turn your nose up at. Big fan of this for eMaz/ePoe as well.

9 hours ago, Ajones47 said:

I'm surprised there's no Force Illusion in here. With Rise Again to fish back crucial lost upgrades it seems like a good fit.

i'm going to have to try it, may save his butt.

There is no faster deck than Poe Maz and I can imagine that you can claim with Palpatine faster only if I do not have Fast Hands and you have Force Speed and you roll decently. I can usually claim on third action: 1) rolling Poe, resolving one of his dice through Fast hands, 2) Rolling Maz, resolving focus plus second Poe or just any two dice 3) claim and remove one character die or play some mitigation / upgrades or supports now. You can outrace this only if you start the turn or if you resolve your force speed. This does not mean I always claim as third action of course, but I am able to do it and still deal 5+ damage per turn reliably if opponent wants to outrace me. There is really nothing faster in claiming than Poe/Maz currently, trust me.

Emperors Throne Room is totally unnecessary in this deck. Usually you really do not have an issue to get 1 special on Poe and that is enough, you usually do not get 2 cards to throw to special which would be worthy and also you already deal billion damage. You just have to survive long enough. Half of my deck is survival kit including the battleground and this makes Poe/Maz scary, as I usually can mess away with several opponents dice plus heal/shield 5hp or more each game.

50 minutes ago, Hennessy said:

There is no faster deck than Poe Maz and I can imagine that you can claim with Palpatine faster only if I do not have Fast Hands and you have Force Speed and you roll decently. I can usually claim on third action: 1) rolling Poe, resolving one of his dice through Fast hands, 2) Rolling Maz, resolving focus plus second Poe or just any two dice 3) claim and remove one character die or play some mitigation / upgrades or supports now. You can outrace this only if you start the turn or if you resolve your force speed. This does not mean I always claim as third action of course, but I am able to do it and still deal 5+ damage per turn reliably if opponent wants to outrace me. There is really nothing faster in claiming than Poe/Maz currently, trust me.

I agree that is a really fast deck, no doubt about that (I play it myself for fun).

BUT a good Palpatine player:

1) won't activate Palp as his second action (to force you to pass at least once). Activating Palpatine has to be always your very first action (barring the first round, of course)

2) will spend the very first round to just lay down speed force and (above all) a holochron and bounce it back to equip something big (Probe or Lightning) and equip Holochron again (if needed or not having your force speed). First round damages are important only if you have enough to kill Maz (and taking out Electroshoks from the equation), otherwise you focus on Poe and try to have him dead by the end of the second round.

3) will claim aggressively on the second round if you have not enough damage. Activating first on the 3rd round may be crucial to finish one of your characters with a No Mercy (and avoiding a possible Defensive Position / Dug In in the meanwhile)

Furthermore on a average you will win initiative roll BUT it is not sure (Palp has an amazing average of 3+ with just only 2 dice). Even then he will find useful an advantage of 4 damages thanks to the initial shields.

The best thing however about FW is that you will get 2 free shields anytime you lose initiative because nobody want to see it played vs them.

32 minutes ago, blackholexan said:

The best thing however about FW is that you will get 2 free shields anytime you lose initiative because nobody want to see it played vs them.

This is the reason why to run two New Orders in the deck, so you start as second to et shields and than play this to switch battleground to yours and remove a character die. This card basically means 4 HP switch and Isolation for 2 resource and 1 card which is massive opening move.

Ok I accept your points, however I still have to wait to find someone who is actually really able to do me trouble with Palpatine. I will get mine second copy next week, so I can than try by myself, but as an opponent, I am not scared by him at all.

On 5/17/2017 at 1:49 PM, Darth evil said:

i'm going to have to try it, may save his butt.

Try it. I was decimated playing my poe/maz vs epalp using double illusion: falcon to the face>oh ill just discard 4....

Palp is just nasty, all by himself. I went to a really fun tournament yesterday, 13 people there (so 4 rounds) and I won the first 3 with my Luminara/Rey, and I couldn't believe how well it was going! However, the final round was against Palp, and he didn't need to do anything but mitigate a few of my dice. He only had six upgrades in the whole deck! So I guess if you're gonna build Palpatine, just go for the dice mitigation - he can crank out that natural damage all by himself!

I like the theory crafting going on here. Not enough talk about deck tech on these forums.

I prefer the idea of TIE Pilot and single Palpatine.

Training and Cargo Hold battlefield to boost Palpatine back up to elite.

That TIE Pilot ability really helps Palpatine a lot. Plus you have a target to use The Price of Failure.

I've seen Palpatine lose to the dice removal of The Best Defense quite a lot.

9 hours ago, Shadow345 said:

I prefer the idea of TIE Pilot and single Palpatine.

Training and Cargo Hold battlefield to boost Palpatine back up to elite.

That TIE Pilot ability really helps Palpatine a lot. Plus you have a target to use The Price of Failure.

I've seen Palpatine lose to the dice removal of The Best Defense quite a lot.

1) You are not sure to have your BF

2) You are not sure to have Training soon

3) You are not sure to claim first unless you claim as your 2nd or 3rd action (just after playing Training), BUT your opponent has to be blind to let you do that

4) One die Palpatine is not amazing as an already elite Palpatine

5) By the time you have switched Training on Palpatine, he may have died already

The only real positive aspect of Pilot is that he adds 7 HP to your Palp in the best scenario .

Royal Guard is more realiable as a Guardian in that aspect

7 hours ago, blackholexan said:

1) You are not sure to have your BF

2) You are not sure to have Training soon

3) You are not sure to claim first unless you claim as your 2nd or 3rd action (just after playing Training), BUT your opponent has to be blind to let you do that

4) One die Palpatine is not amazing as an already elite Palpatine

5) By the time you have switched Training on Palpatine, he may have died already

The only real positive aspect of Pilot is that he adds 7 HP to your Palp in the best scenario .

Royal Guard is more realiable as a Guardian in that aspect

I completely agree with all of this.

Palpatine is naturally extremely aggro. He wants to hit really hard really fast. His whole benefit is that he puts out 4-10 damage naturally and thus can usually win by round 3 without any upgrades. Of course, he can still get destroyed by dice control, but the Pilot/Palp combo is just too slow to get started. ePalp is still the only deck I've ever lost to with eLuminara/eRey, and that's not even the best aggro Rey deck - eQuiGon/eRey is better (if someone was running it, I'd probably also lose to that one). I'm just guessing Jango/Veers can also crush the Pilot/Palp combo. The whole problem is that even if you're lucky, Palp won't become ePalp until at least round 2 (probably round 3 or 4 in a normal game). There's a lot of cards that mitigate a single dice, so any round that Palp spends with one dice is most likely going to be wasted.

I think a very speedy and high damage deck that can compete with both ePalp and Poe/Maz is an updated eLeia/Ackbar (or alternately eMothma). With an early Wingman and just a couple of upgrades (e.g. a DH-17 Pistol and an Overkill) it can dish out significant damage, through good rolls or with Hit and Run + All In/It's a Trap. If the upgrades come a little slower, there is plenty of room for dice mitigation cards to survive a couple of rounds. Of course this deck, as any, can be blown out in two rounds by god rolls and perfect draws, but absent that this deck is as fast and high damage as any. Thoughts?

eLeia + eAckbar

I think you go Mons if you have cards that are reliant on rolling focus. Otherwise that 1 range damage on Ackbar is needed for things like over kill.

1 hour ago, Mep said:

I think you go Mons if you have cards that are reliant on rolling focus. Otherwise that 1 range damage on Ackbar is needed for things like over kill.

I agree. Motha makes for better/more consistent All In Plays, while Ackbar provides for slightly better general damage and It's a Trap Plays. Mothma's ability is probably a bit more useful as well. Big picture they are probably interchangeable, with at most a slight edge to Mothma over a large sample size of games. Either way, I believe it could be a Tier 1 deck.