Leading up to the first local regional for me at Above Board Games in Fort Mill SC, I had been messing around with a few various decks. I didn't really like any of the Navy builds as they really just seemed very meh. You could pull out randomly odd wins by blowing up objectives, but it just didn't seem strong enough, efficient enough or consistent enough. Those hands were you get all those mediocre do nothing but offense chuds does very little against most Jedi decks. I'd considering playing Rebels, but there's just no internal consistently and often if they aren't able to apply a ton of pressure early, then they just flail and lose. So I reverted back to the standard Smugglers Den (1, 2, 5, 15, 37 x2) for LS but for DS I still wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to play. Obviously 19, 20 and 23 were all going to be x2, but it was a matter of what and how to mix with them. I thought about running 'big sith' with 26 x2, 29 and 42; it just has very little defense against Ben's Spirit and despite loving having an actual counter interrupt, the rest of that pod always left me wanting more while receiving little. I also hated how Han and Luke kept on nuking my resources as the Duty Officers and Motti just die cold terrible deaths. Tiny had got me messing around with the Hoth pods more and I got to really enjoy the tricks they enabled, my only problem is that the deck always felt choked on resources such that you had to keep any hand with a resource in it regardless of anything else almost. I was also having trouble playing Palpatine at times. Motti's pod fixed that somewhat but it still didn't solve the problem of Han/Luke wrecking face on resource chuds T1 if I didn't also get a Royal Guard. I messed around with 33 and Boba Fett as an answer to Old Ben's Spirit, but the rest of the pod just felt very lackluster. I also missed the ability to move towards endgame that you could do with the old sith deck when you'd drop Orbital Bombardment and just blow 2-3 objectives off for the finish. I loved Boba, but his pod didn't provide any resources and the 1 chud it has in it (while good) is not very good on defense. Driving up, I had a genius idea to play Tarkin's pod to finish off because Tarkin can protect himself in combat, his other resource generator is immune to Han/Luke and helps me grind out an Emperor turn 2 if need be, gives me reach in the Superlaser and gives me a very sturdy 'faux wampa' in the Stormtrooper Elite. So I decided to roll with (19 x2, 20 x2, 23 x2, 28, 40 x2, 42).

When I got to the shop I was greeted by the owner and (I'm assuming) his wife both of whom seemed very nice and helpful. I submitted my decklists and got registered. An old friend I went to college with (and played magic and poker with occasionally) met me; we caught up while talking about what we thought was good and why… yadayadayada. A guy randomly showed up who had demoed the game before; we ran through two games with my Navy Fighter and Rebel Rush decks so he could get the feel of things. He ended up deciding to play borrowing decks from the store owner IIRC. It was announced that there was going be 3 rounds, but there wasn't an announcement on Top 4/Top2 so I just decided to aim for going undefeated.

Round 1 I got paired against Nathan. He randomly chose to play LS. I flip Shadows and Council x2. He flipped some odd rainbow special with Leia's pod, the resource match pod and Luke's pod i think. Turn 1 Vader and library just starts eating his lunch and he gets really flustered because between force choke, Vader, turn 3 Emperor, never winning an edge battle etc. He decides he should've played something different and concedes which actually doesn't really matter as I would've finished off the 3rd objective the following turn and gotten the dial to 12 then.

Game 2 He flips some 3 color special again with Droids, 19 and something imperial iirc. He goes Turn 1 Vader; to which I respond with T1 Yoda with message and a lightsaber. He's able to grab the force for one short turn, but then Yoda swings in fully loaded up and a couple of protectors to back him up. Questionable Contacts allows me to pick off a few random guys before it but Yoda with ShiiCho and Weapon Mastery (despite losing edge) just clears his board and it's gg.

Round 2 is against Nate who is playing Tinygrimes decks AFAIK. He played DS first and got out a resource guy and a wampa I think. Luke eats up the wampa. He plays a guy or two on his turn and I put out a guardian and a focus guy. He answered with finding a Vader, but Luke made short work of him as the guardians protected luke from real damage coming his way. Once Vader died, it was all down hill for him. He didn't draw a signle unit after that as he was stuck to drawing 1-2 cards per turn at that point as he couldn't play anything and I had a growing board.

Game 2 was really strange. I flip Shadows on the Ice, Council and Ultimate Power. He shows Message, Questionable, Yavin 4. I start off with 2 Dark Precognitions and then I play a sith library, Tarkin and an Icetromper (having double focused the Shadows). He consideres a few options and decides to run Han out there and attack; he deals 1 damage to Tarkin. This is a very subtle misplay and here's why: If he has a heat of battle, then he can put the damage on the icetromper and perhaps bait me waiting until after edge to tromp. Instead, he's going for the long-term deflection target. Not bad, but it specifically shows that he doesn't have a Heat of Battle in hand making it 100% safe to doubleblock. He wins edge but interestingly enough I double Heat of Battle and he doesn't have a deflection to keep Han alive. I drop Vader turn 2 and sit back. He plays double Protector and puts a lightsaber on one and swings with both. When it's all said and done, He's down 1 protector; I'm down 1 Icetromper and there's nothing terribly important out of it. I drop Emperor and swing it to puts some damage on objectives with Vader since he's served his purpose. The Lightsabered Protector gets Succumbed which he Counterstrokes and he adds a C3PO and another Protector but that's just 0 pressure. I keep the force the whole time and am able to Superlaser one objective and then damage another one out while at 9 to jump straight to the finish line.

Round 3 is against my friend Art. I know that he's playing some odd build (to me) of like 19, 22, 23, 24, 29 for DS and 1,2,3,15, 37 for LS. Game 1 was both the most swingy and oddest game I've played in a long while. He plays turn 1 Vader. I turn 1 Luke, training grounds, spirit and swing in just to get in a bit of damage so I can clear Vader later. He's able to drop and advisor, but the advisor and a protector get traded the following turn. On his turn he puts on Vader's lightsaber and finally kills luke. Out comes a new luke with a lightsaber and a Crossfire to counterstrike Vader out. He replays vader and keeps him on defense. Yoda and protector and message come out. He blocks I lose edge, Weapon Mastery clears Vader. The following turn Yoda grabbed 2 objectives himself. Very back and forth interesting game.

Game 2 was pretty different. I don't remember it much; I think Art made a few key misplays early which limited his play turn 1 and bought me a bunch of time.

Because I was undefeated everyone just called it then and we hung around talking about decks, pods, and everything else.

Big props to all the guys who were there whose name I forgot. I think the event went really, really smoothly and was a ton of fun.

Congrats man, and thanks for the quick report!

Gratz on the win,

Navy are good, especialy with Imperial Vader and/or orbital Bombardment

Rebels, well, I tried in a tournament and while I won overal it was due to the strenght of my Navy Deck and my Rebel one is going back to the drawing board

Kordos said:

My only problem with the Bombardment + Vader decks is that you really need a weird combination of lots of dudes and lots of resources. It just never works out for me.

agnos said:

My deck has 35 units in it, most of them cost 2 or less and 12 cards that generate resources - worked great

I find playstyle affects how a deck works/fails as well, I don't seem to have much luck with Jedi (or Han/Jedi) and I put that down to my playstyle

I wish I could get draws like you, Turn 1 or 2 Vader every game

While it's true that I got a main out early in most games by turn 2 (maybe 1 game without a main by turn 2), much of that is a factor of finding ways to cycle my hand. When I get to see 11-12 cards generally by the second turn, that drastically increases your odds of getting a 'main.' Honestly, that's the major difference between a good player, an average player and a mediocre player. Good players are exceptionally willing to toss their hand into edge just to draw a new one regardless of chances of Twist etc. Yes, "running well" had an effect on me winning for sure, but not all of "running well" is luck.

You gotta be good to be lucky, and you gotta be lucky to be good.

It was great to meet all of you guys in Fort Mill, Caleb and I hope you can come to our regional in Matthews on May 4 at Your Local Game Store (www.yourlocalgamestore.com) so we can have a chance to play each other. We all learned a lot from the new opponents we met at Above Board Games.

Congrats on the win and you're right about having to be willing to toss cards so you can draw new ones making you a better player. This game does not reward sitting on the combo cards very much. I feel the game engine and the tournament scoring system in general reward more aggressive play than control-related play.

Can you post your decklists? That's an interesting strategy playing with both The Ultimate Power and The Emperor's Web.

Darik said:

Why is it interesting?

Because they are forced to attack The Emperor's Web…………………………………………………………………….?

The decks I played:

LS -- 1, 2, 5, 15, 37 x2 aka The Smuggler's Den

DS -- 19 x2, 20 x2, 23 x2, 28, 40 x2, 42 aka "The" Deck (as all the objectives have 'the' in the name)

Thanks for the deck lists. I found the combo of The Ultimate Power and The Emperor's Web to be interesting because I'm still trying to wrap my head around the logistics of playing different affiliations in the same decks. I think it is weird to see "XXXX Affiliation Only" objectives in decks that are multi-affiliation at this point in the game's development.

I've just been in too many games where my resources were all wrong and I had nothing to play, so it makes me raise an eyebrow when someone does that. But, then, Caleb won all his games at the regional so maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

The thing you need to remember is that "X affiliation only" objectives only require that you use a specific affiliation; it doesn't require that you play most of that affiliation. In many cases for a long time, it's going to be very reasonable to play 7:3 or 8:2 deck core-to-affiliation choice as you are guaranteed to have resource match for the fewer pod alignment while not comprimising or risking not being able to play your core or primary pod alignment.

I've found I can get aways with a 6/4 split without much trouble. Unless a deck is mono faction, my faction card usually matches what faction I have the least of in my deck.