We just finished regionals for Star Wars: The Card Game in Tempe (near Phoenix) at Game Depot today. I won! It was my first official game tournament ever. In the end, I felt like there was a lot of luck involved. I just tried to have fun, mostly. But enough of that, let's talk about the decks.

Jedi Affiliation
4 A Journey to Dagobah 2x
6 Last Minute Rescue 2x
11 The Rebel Fleet 2x
8 The Defense of Yavin 4 2x
38 Hoth Operations 2x

Sith Affiliation
19 Fall of the Jedi 2x
20 Counsel of the Sith 2x
23 The Emperor's Web 2x
24 Cruel Interrogations 2x
40 The Killing Cold 2x

My dark side deck was pretty standard. We've seen a lot of these types of control decks. It worked like a charm. When I faced the opponent who took second, I won all but one of the edge battles and really kept his forces at bay.

The light side deck was a little different. It started with me wanting to play Jedi affiliation because I was going to wear my Jedi costume to the tournament. But I wanted a deck that was different from the Han/Jedi decks that seemed to be most popular. I knew I wanted Red 5 , but I wanted to augment him with enhancements like Astromeck Droid (The Defense of Yavin 4). But I really wanted some control so I wanted to run The Secret of Yavin 4 for the Guardian of the Peace, C-3PO, and Lightsaber Deflect. I hatched this crazy plan that if I then included Last Minute Rescue and The Rebel Fleet, I could get two big-hitting vehicles out, protect them with shields, and save the Guardians that die defending the vehicles.

But when I played some practice games the night before, it turned out that the deck I had built lacked The Secret of Yavin 4 and had Hoth Operations instead. It seemd to do okay, so I took it to regionals. It's focus turned away from being Guardian-centered (since they were no longer in my deck) and became all about the non-edge enabled blast damage ( Red 5, Rogue 3, Home One ). The Corellian Engineers did do their job shielding things, and Repair Droids worked in tandem with Last Minute Rescue to keep my heavy-hitting vehicles functioning. I couldn't play Redemption as much as I wanted, because it seemed I rarely drew it when I had 5 resources out or The Defense of Yavin 4 in play. What I didn't anticipate, was that Redmption, Return of the Jedi, and Force Rejuvenation became key cards to winning edge battles. It was really nice to use a vehicle deck where I didn't always feel hopeless at the start of an edge battle.

In all honesty, though, I didn't really expect to win. I knew I was going out on a limb by including an objective set that had so little synergy with the rest of my deck. I was hoping to catch people off guard with it, but it didn't seem to phase people at all. It worked for this tournament, but I don't think I'd ever run it again.

Unlike other tournaments, we had a large variety of decks (and 17 people playing in the tournament). There was the Han/Jedi, straight Jedi, Rebel vehicle, Imperial vehicle, Imperial trooper, Fett & Sith, and other random combinations (like my LS deck). It was fun to face so many different decks. It was just unfortunate that of 5 rounds, I had to take a by on my first one. That may have actually had a lot to do with my winning the tournament. Like I said, there is just a lot of luck involved in these sorts of tournaments, which thing I never had supposed.

Congrats on the win!

I like the LS deck - played a few games with it against a few brews, and actually it seems pretty good.

Congrats and thanks for posting the decks here. I had looked into something similar for the LS (the idea of having better fortune with the Force Struggle AND protection from the onslaught of Vader) seemed like a great idea.

I would be interested in hearing more about the tempo of the deck.

Budgernaut said:

So no top cut? Just 5 rounds of Swiss?

Gratz on the win, I am really enjoying these reports coming out and seeing the different decks being used

Congrats on the win! I won my regional with that EXACT Sith deck. I found it very strong.

ScottieATF said:

I confess I'm new to competitive games, so I'm not exactly sure what a top cut is, but yes, it was just 5 rounds of Swiss. I got a by on the first round, then a modified win, then a modified loss, and won my last two games 4-0. At the last round, the scores were 14, 13 (me), 12 for the top players. If 14 and I both won, I would lose the match. 13 was undefeated except against 14. 14 only had one modified loss against me, but won all his other games. At the last round, I should have faced 14, but we'd already played, so I played 13 and 14 played someone else. Unfortunately for him, he got a modified loss and I got a full win.

That last match was crazy intense! I started as lightside first. My opponent was playing an Imperial trooper deck. He got Tarkin out first round and started bringing the punishment to my objectives. I started with Last Minute Rescue, The Rebel Fleet, and another objective (maybe The Defense of Yavin 4?). I took out an objective with Red 5 piloted by Wedge. Then things slowed down for me. He took Last Minute Rescue and the other objective I can't remember. I flipped over Hoth Operations and another The Rebel Fleet. This was towards the end of the game. I made a bold strike against the last objective (needing to deal one more damage) and got fried. On his turn, he took Hoth Operations. He had enough troops to take two objectives (including Vader's boost and Orbital Bombardment), but all he could take was Hoth Operations since he had no vehicles to take against my two The Rebel Fleet objectives. If I could draw Home One or Rebel Assault, I could win. I drew Home One, sent it in with a Corellian Engineer to give it a shield, lost the edge battle, but the shield kept Home One alive for the killing blow.

In the second round of that match, I drew really weak starting characters and had virtually no resources. At 10 on the dial, I got vader out, but he was mind tricked for 2 focus tokens. My opponent had Twi'lek Smuggler, Han Solo,Guardian of the Peace, and C-3PO out. I defended the third objective that needed killing (2 damage on it) and prevented blast damage, but my defender was killed and Vader took 2 more focus tokens. On my turn (DS dial 11), I drew a terrible hand and lost the edge battle on my opponent's next turn. But the only blast damage my opponent had was from Solo and with the undefended bonus, it still only brought the objective to 4 damage on 5 damage capacity. My turn rolled around and the dial clicked to 12.

Saej said:

Yes, I agree it quite strong as well. In particular, I find 4 copies of Twist of Fate to be killer, especially as a Sith playing defensively. I liked edge battles from the beginning, but I've grown to like them more and more. Barring stupid mistakes on the part of either player, often it's the edge battles that determine who wins a game. In addition to the Twist of Fate cards, this deck brings The Desolation of Hoth, Fear, Interrogation Droid, Vader, and Palpatine to really dominate the edge.

Budgernaut said:

Top Cut is essentially a way of saying that there will be an Elimination Tournament after the Swiss postion of an event. It's pretty common in cards games for any headline event, including FFGs. Usually the only time you don't see a Top Cut is in an event that is to small for one, so it is kind of odd yours didn't make use of one. Especially with there being a BYE.

ScottieATF said:

Hmm. That is odd. It might have been nice since we had 5 rounds and the tournament lasted 7 hours (including handing out prizes).

Aside: So it's " bye "and not "by" huh? I'll try to remember that. Never was much of a sports guy.

Budgernaut said:

We did 8 rounds in about 9 hours, How long were you round times?

I think FFG needs to standardize thier regional format because there is alot of varience, and I think if they are going through all the trouble to put together prize kits, FAQs, etc then they should take the few extra minutes to do that. Something like X players means X rounds of swiss and X top cut.

We had 18 players and ran 4 rounds of Swiss, did a Top 8 cut and had three rounds of elimination.

Our rounds were nominally 60 minutes, but the TO wasn't always right on top of the time, it seemed. Plus, the rules say you can play til the end of the LS player's turn after time is called and that last round seemed to last 10 minutes in some games. Finally, the TO did the pairings by hand and we sometimes waited 20 minutes between matches.

Budgernaut said:

Absolutely. I was undefeated in my regional with this deck. Those Twists really mess up an opponent. Not to mention constantly stealing their cards with Cruel Interrogations and its Oset. And the Icetrompers keep all the small ones at bay.

Something to note, the guardians can only protect character units, not vehicles (except with their Shields). I know you didn't end up running them, but I thought I'd mention it, as has come up a few times locally.

I can't edit my post I meant 7 rounds with bracketing and prizing in about 9 hours.

shaggscoob said:

Yes. Absolutely worth pointing out. My idea was to protect my vehicles with Shielding rather than protecting them with Protect . Judging by how awesome Corellian Engineers were for that, it might be worth trying the Guardian of the Peace. You also get Lightsaber Deflect for when your opponent gets fed up with your shields and tries to kill your guardians. You also have C-3PO to block a Force Lightning, Superlaser Blast, etc. Of course, it does present more targets for a Vader-Force Choke combo. So that's something to watch out for.

Budgernaut said:

Yeah, I figured you must have meant with the shielding. Interesting strategy that I just might have to try out!

Tried it out a bit last night with the secret of Yavin instead of the redemption set. It worked well, pulled out one win against sith and very nearly another!

ScottieATF said:

You can, but it's not very intuitive. At all actually.

In order to edit a post, click on the 'Report to Moderator' link. In your browser, look at the URL. You will see 'reportar' in there. Change that to 'editar' and it will give you the edit post screen.

I'm intrigued by the sith deck. How does it perform resource wise? It seems like you can't even play turn one vader, and getting the emperor out would be difficult. But the 4 copies of twist of fate seem really good, plus the icetromper/tons of cheap tactics icons.

ZombieTonyBlair said:

You have 4 Sith Libraries and 2 Advisors to the Emperor. That's 6 extra resources. I can usually find one of those in my opening hand for a turn-2 Vader. It's true, though, that some games don't give you those resources early enough. I had one game where I pitched all my Vaders and Emperors in edge battles before I drew any resource cards. But you know what happened? I completely shut down my opponent's ability to win edge and activate edge-enabled blast damage. At the end, when I finally drew resource cards, I threw them in with Twist of Fate to coax my oppenent into overcommiting to the edge battle. Then I stole the edge with a couple 2-Force cards.

If your play style revolves around heavy-hitters being in play, this deck can be difficult to handle, but for me, I play this deck to dominate the edge battles. Destroying and locking down enemy units is just a bonus.

It seems like with already running the 2 hoth objectives, it would be worth it to run the nuetral pack with the wampas in it. Or reconnaisance mission for the extra fate cards and draw power. Or both. Do you think working these packs in dilutes the deck to much.

Do you find Ice Trompers + tactics + edge superiority can take down jedi decks consistantly?

ZombieTonyBlair said:

It depends on your goal. Why do you feel that an extra Hoth objective is necessary? In my strategy, it's not important at all. There aren't enough LS Hoth objectives to make you really worry about controlling more than your opponent. Likewise, the only benefits the DS gets from Hoth is Succumb to the Cold, The Desolation of Hoth, and The Killing Cold. I don't have Succumb to the Cold in my deck, so it's only the other two cards I have to worry about. The Killing Cold usually never comes up as an active objective for me; if it's one of the four I draw, it goes to the bottom. So I never worry about using its effect. The Desolation of Hoth has a whopping 3 Force icons! For me, that's too precious for edge battles. The resources it takes to play and the adjustments I'd have to make to my play style to get that card to work as an event is just not worth it.

A deeper look at The Desolation of Hoth.
So what is this card useful for? Ideally, you have a Hoth objective with 2 or more damage on it (especially 4!) and you're going to spend 3 resources to move this damage. This simultaneously heals your objective and deals damage to LS units. If you can move at least 3 damage, you're paying 1 resource per damage token moved. If you've got The Emperor's Web out, it's even more cost-effective. But what else could I use my resources for? Instead of paying for the event, I could pay for a unit. This unit can deal damage to enemy units perhaps over multiple rounds. It can also defend and try to prevent unopposed damage. Finally, by having this 1-2 Force-icon unit in play, I retain the 3-Force icon event for the edge battle. As long as I win the edge, I prevent most of the blast damage the LS can bring to bear against me. If the unit I play is an Interrogation Droid, winning the edge means locking down even non-edge-enabled blast damage or maybe even tactics and unit damage as well. For me, I find The Desolation of Hoth to be more devastating as an edge card than as an event. In a different DS build with more Hoth objectives, that could easily change.

That's an interesting idea you have about adding Reconnaisance Mission. Since I'm winning the edge so much, those Replica Droids could be nice. And the extra fate cards will also go toward helping me win edge. But I already have 6 fate cards in my hand. I've made decks before where I had more fate cards than that, and I'll get stuck with a hand of fate cards and no units. Is that likely? No. But that one time it happened really spooked me away from too many fate cards. The Replica Droids could really be useful since I don't have a lot of blast damage in this deck so it's hard to win ties against Imperial Navy decks.

Back to your question about consistency, I feel very confident in this deck's ability to take down Jedi decks. Rebels are another story. A Rebel Assault Deck can harass my objectives early on and then sit back and collect Rebel Assaults to take out the rest of my objectives. I think the only deck I lost against at regionals was a Rebel deck that stole a win with a Rebel Assault.

Hey, congrats on the win. I'd say you were trying to have fun, you were the only one dressed up! We never played each other but I just grabbed the decks I'd play with my friend and rushed out the door. I later discovered the LS deck my friend built was illegal in 2 ways… I was ended up at the bottom 4 anyway so I didn't feel too guilty. But still managed to piss some of those more serious players off with a few wins. I also find that luck plays as big a role here like in poker. And I also see the value in winning edge battles. Hopefully we'll play sometime, I've actually put some thought into my decks this time. There is a small tournament at Desert Sky Games on the night of the 18th.

The TO unfortunately didn't know anything about the game and as you said didn't notify us when 5 minutes were left. And then I was against a player who over analyzed for close to 10 minutes his last LS turn and ended up making a huge mistake only to whine and moan about it for the rest of the tournament. The TO did his best, but this one lasted longer than I would have liked/expected.

First off, I want to congratulate you on your win.

Secondly, I was curious when you mentioned that there were Fett Sith at the regional. How did those decks do? The reason I'm asking is because I'm currently using one right now as a counter to the current LS meta. So far it's doing well (especially against Han/Jedi), but I haven't used it often enough to get a decent vibe when dealing with a variety of decks such as Rebel Vehicle. Since there were so many deck types at your regional, I wanted to see how it faired in a regional setting.