Hi all,

I am preparing myself for participating in the regional championship of my country, and have been looking at the different decks used to win regional event in the US.

I have been very surprised to note that most of these competing decks were mixing objectives from 2 affiliations of the same side.

I am wondering why such a trend?

On one side I can see that obviously you can get the best cards of both affiliations.

But on the other hand, you get risks of ressources match problems which can make you (stupidly) loose a game.

What is more, aren't a single affiliation competitive enough? For instance, a pure 100% imperial navy deck seems to me aggressive enough with its "blast units" to obtain good results, then why mix it with sith event/control cards?

What are the opininon of the competition experienced players around here?

Thank you for your attention

Each affiliation has its own strengths and weaknesses. The reason that people tend to mix affiliations is to combine strengths while trying to cover weaknesses. Done carefully, resource match issues become a very rare event. That said, it is certainly still possible to play with a single affiliation deck. For instance, I won a regional using a pure Sith deck (well, with a single neutral objective included).

I think some of it has to do with the tounament rules. For example in a match you have between 60 and 80 min per match, thats two games and most TOs want to give less time then more.

This is bad news for control decks and control players. Control plays slow, so in order to speed up the game you need to take out some optoinal parts of your deck to put in some blast damage. For sith this means things like pulling Shadows of Dathomir for Death and Despayre. For Jedi it means probably putting in a Han Solo pod or some Rebel Assaults or something.

There are also some fantastic combos with the new sets. For instance a Jedi contorl deck with Echo Caverns is a dangerous combinaiton. Also Renegade Squad Escort is the protection piece that was missing from a Rebel Vehicles deck. To exploit these combos you need a multi-affiliation deck.

Time is not a factor in my opinion. Objective tie-breakers may matter to DS, and is why you frequently see navy splashes in Sith, but then again if you win your games you dont need to worry about tie-breakers. Just depends on how confident you are in your LS deck.

Short answer to OP: It can be advantageous to mix two factions for the reason dbmeboy noted. However it is far from required. I won a regional using straight Jedi and Sith with a slight Navy splash.

Note that if you do go with a mix, you dont generally want to go with fewer than 6 objectives of your main faction though because it is easy to screw yourself out of the resource that way, 7+ of main faction being the safest.

I really don't think that the tournament rules should make as much of a difference in deck choices as people seem to think that they do.

Yes, control-style decks will often destroy fewer objectives than an aggro-style deck. But they will also tend to allow fewer objectives to be destroyed. Preventing an objective from being destroyed and destroying an objective are equivalent for the tie breaker.

dbmeboy said:

I agree to a point. The problem is really the differential, not the actual amount you kill/save by using a particular deck type.

If I play Navy Rush and win by killing 3-4 objectives, and give up 2 (the maximum I can give up and still win), my tie-breakers will be much better than a Sith deck which gives up and kills ~1.

The Navy Deck had a +1-2 differential and the sith deck was a wash in my example. Its a minor difference, but can matter since typically the match wins are frequently determined by 1 objective when both DS decks win.

Obviously this example is not really a fair comparison, because the Navy deck is currently more susceptible to losing than the Sith, which is the risk you take, and again emphasizes why you see so many mixes which hope to increase the number of objectives they kill. If they can get their killed to 2 and still give up only one objective in most games, then they are at least as good as a less aggressive deck, and frequently better overall.

That all being said, I do myself prefer a more defensive Sith deck because it is typically more consistent and fits my play style better.

Maybe it's just me, but I usually find that I'm +1-2 still with Sith when it wins. I destroy on average 2 objectives (though Prep for Evac messes with that some) even playing a pure control version (I don't run Devastator). Sometimes I loose 2 objectives, but most of the time it's 1 or 0.

dbmeboy said:

My point of the Tourney rules is not about the tie breaker alone. It also has to do with not wanting to run into the time limit. Aggro decks just play faster. Control decks need to either control for 7-12 turns or control the board enough to free up attackers that blow up 3 objectives. In our regional we had a guy who played control go to time on the first game the first round and the second game the second round (both his LS deck).

Crazy. I've never had a match run to time through 3 regionals and a handful of local tournaments, playing Sith control and some form of Jedi control in every tournament. *shrug*

flightmaster101 said:

I've played in three regionals. We run 4 Star Wars LCG tournaments a month, our latest getting 12 and 13 players in attendance. Overall I've easily played over 50 tournament rounds of this game. I've used a large variety of decks including complete control decks paired with a slow pure Jedi decks. Each regional have 70 minute time limits, our weekly events using 60 minute rounds. I have never scored a draw, I have never even had time called while playing. I keep all the stats from the events, and I am not the only player. Infact nearly everyone one of our draws has the same 4 players as a common denominator in some way.

If you are going to time in this game it has nothing to do with the deck you are playing, you are just playing too slowly. Additionally TOs should be vigilant in regards to players simply playing too slowly if not purposefully stalling.

ScottieATF said:

So I guess my experience is invalid then since it has not happened to you?

Not everyone is a super pro like you. Some people either dont play at a fast pace or dont have a fast pace build. I'm glad you have never experienced it, but I am not lying or exagerating when I say it happened at our regional, once. One match only got one game done in a 70 min time table. I think in after the 70th min during the lightside turn the guy ended up winning so the score went 3-1 or something.

ScottieATF said:

People who are not used to playing outside their play group do play slower due to being nervous or whatever. It happens.

I agree TOs should be vigilant, but our TO called in sick and we had a sub who basically let the players run the tournament. It was fun, but how it was official is beyond me.

I feel as you've competely missed the point so I'm going to expand upon my post very clearly.

You've asserted in this thread that deck composition is dictated by the the time contraints imposed by the tournament rules. That is to say that the time limit is to short to allow players to play slower decks, Sith Control and/or Jedi, to a completeion in the allotted time limit. Thus forcing players to play more offensive decks then they would otherwise.

I believe this to be a false assertion.

Your basis for you assertion is the anecdotal observations you made at one regional. Yes I belive that this evidence is invalid. It is very annecdotal, inexact, and very much limited in scope. I did not state nor imply that I felt you were lying or being hyperbolic either.

By contrast I (and dmbeboy said the same thing) have, as I said, well over 50 tournament rounds playing this game. In my own personal experience I have never had a game go to time. I don't think I've ever even gotten to the 5 minute warning, even in our 60 minute events. The longest single game I've played was 35 minutes, primarily due to my opponent. But as you said myabe I'm superhumanly fast at this game. As I stated I've played every combination of general deck in this game from the fastest to slowest, so the comment about my builds being faster has no basis. Still maybe I just play that **** fast. Still that's 50 rounds of play against 50 different opponets who also didn't go to time in those cases either.

In addition to my own expereince I act as the TO for our events and thus have the exact round by round stats for every player that attends our events. As I stated, I am also not the only player to not have game going to draws (regardless of build) despite our shortened time limits. As I stated all of the draws involve 1 or more of a group of 4 players. Every other player when not paired against one of those 4 has had no issue finishing the round, again even with the shortened time limits. This is across something like 12 events now with draws larger then many of the regionals reported to be honest.

Additionally even traveling to 2 larger regionals none of my play group except our friend (one of the 4) nicknamed Molasses Mike, has had any issue with games going to time despite any nervous tournament jitters.

Those 4 players that are involved in most every draw all have one thing in common, they play too slowly. Some of them absurddddddly slow, to the point that I as the TO have had to step in and award addition turns, if not outright wins to thier oppoenets. Everyone else, even those that don't play as regularly as myself, are able to finish thier games.

Because of this I think your assertion is disernably false. The time limits do not limit deck variety, the slow play of indivudaly players does. The time limits are perfectly reasonable in allowing a player to finish a game round, they simply have to play at a faster then snail pace. There is no reason for the first turn of the DS player to take more then 2 minutes, yet I've seen it happen. I too have seen players not even get to start thier second game in a round. This was due to thier communal slow play being interupted by 3 seperate knock down drag out shouting arguments,

It is not the tournament rules, it is players playing unreasonably slowly.

ScottieATF said:

TL;DR dont care bye

flightmaster101 said:

At least it's very clear you don't have interest in actual conversations on this board. I apoligieze for assuming the point of your posts was to encourage discourse and debate. Thank you for such a thought out retort.

ScottieATF said:

I dont have an interest in being talked down to. You want to feel smug and superior go ahead I wont stop you. I shared my experience and the conversations I have had in my play group. I never claimed it was the prevailing reason for a dual affiliation deck, I just said it was my experience.

I'm not sure if there are rules against posting after so many days have gone by but I have a question in regards to mixing affiliations in one deck.

I read how mixing affiliations helps cover the weakness of each affiliation, I get that. But what the heck are resource issues? And how does one minimize the resource issue? I thought that all one had to do was use the focus tokens to obtain a unit, enhancement, etc. I re-read the rules on deck building (pg 28 on rule online rule book) and I don't remember anything about resource issues being mentioned.

Whenever you play a non-neutral card (which you can identify by the color of the text box backgrounds and the affiliation symbol halfway down the left edge of the card), at least one of the resources used to pay for it must come from an objective (or other resource-generating card) of the same affiliation. Now, with that in mind, consider a deck with a 50-50 split of objective sets - 5 each from, say, Sith and Navy. You choose Sith for you affiliation card, and draw four objectives, keeping three and discarding the fourth to the bottom of the stack. There is a fair chance you will have drawn no Navy objectives, thus making you unable to play any of your Navy-affiliated cards. (Stormtroopers are typically neutral, so you'll be able to get them out even without Navy resources, but the things you really want to get out - your Devestators, your Mottis, etc - require a resource match.)

Whenever you play a non-neutral card (which you can identify by the color of the text box backgrounds and the affiliation symbol halfway down the left edge of the card), at least one of the resources used to pay for it must come from an objective (or other resource-generating card) of the same affiliation. Now, with that in mind, consider a deck with a 50-50 split of objective sets - 5 each from, say, Sith and Navy. You choose Sith for you affiliation card, and draw four objectives, keeping three and discarding the fourth to the bottom of the stack. There is a fair chance you will have drawn no Navy objectives, thus making you unable to play any of your Navy-affiliated cards. (Stormtroopers are typically neutral, so you'll be able to get them out even without Navy resources, but the things you really want to get out - your Devestators, your Mottis, etc - require a resource match.)

Thank you for the explanation let me see if I understand. If you want to use a non affiliation card at least one of the resources necessary to generate has to come from an objective of the second affiliation (this means that your opponent can cripple you if he takes out the odd ball objective).

Is that correct?

If I am then how does one carefully make it so that this doesn't become an issue? That wasn't really made clear earlier in the thread to my understanding.

Whenever you play a non-neutral card (which you can identify by the color of the text box backgrounds and the affiliation symbol halfway down the left edge of the card), at least one of the resources used to pay for it must come from an objective (or other resource-generating card) of the same affiliation. Now, with that in mind, consider a deck with a 50-50 split of objective sets - 5 each from, say, Sith and Navy. You choose Sith for you affiliation card, and draw four objectives, keeping three and discarding the fourth to the bottom of the stack. There is a fair chance you will have drawn no Navy objectives, thus making you unable to play any of your Navy-affiliated cards. (Stormtroopers are typically neutral, so you'll be able to get them out even without Navy resources, but the things you really want to get out - your Devestators, your Mottis, etc - require a resource match.)

Thank you for the explanation let me see if I understand. If you want to use a non affiliation card at least one of the resources necessary to generate has to come from an objective of the second affiliation (this means that your opponent can cripple you if he takes out the odd ball objective).

Is that correct?

If I am then how does one carefully make it so that this doesn't become an issue? That wasn't really made clear earlier in the thread to my understanding.

Usually people do a 8/2, 7/3, or 6/4 split. So you put the affiliation card associated with the SMALLER group as your affiliation. This way you can always play cards from your minor side. 8/2 is the safest, 6/4 is risky, and 5/5 is just asking to get stuck. Does that make sense?

Whenever you play a non-neutral card (which you can identify by the color of the text box backgrounds and the affiliation symbol halfway down the left edge of the card), at least one of the resources used to pay for it must come from an objective (or other resource-generating card) of the same affiliation. Now, with that in mind, consider a deck with a 50-50 split of objective sets - 5 each from, say, Sith and Navy. You choose Sith for you affiliation card, and draw four objectives, keeping three and discarding the fourth to the bottom of the stack. There is a fair chance you will have drawn no Navy objectives, thus making you unable to play any of your Navy-affiliated cards. (Stormtroopers are typically neutral, so you'll be able to get them out even without Navy resources, but the things you really want to get out - your Devestators, your Mottis, etc - require a resource match.)

Thank you for the explanation let me see if I understand. If you want to use a non affiliation card at least one of the resources necessary to generate has to come from an objective of the second affiliation (this means that your opponent can cripple you if he takes out the odd ball objective).

Is that correct?

If I am then how does one carefully make it so that this doesn't become an issue? That wasn't really made clear earlier in the thread to my understanding.

Usually people do a 8/2, 7/3, or 6/4 split. So you put the affiliation card associated with the SMALLER group as your affiliation. This way you can always play cards from your minor side. 8/2 is the safest, 6/4 is risky, and 5/5 is just asking to get stuck. Does that make sense?

It does make sense thank you for the clarification. I never thought to use the affiliation card of the minority objective sets, that takes care of the problem quite nicely.

As for the split I noticed that you didn't mention the 7/3 split. Is that a risky gambit or is it like the 8/2 split and is okay?

You must not grasp the reasoning behind the splits. since you take the affiliation of your smallest represented faction, if you have 4+ of that faction you can become resource locked. for example, if you take 4 navy sets, 6 Sith sets, and the navy affiliation, you can and will (eventually) draw all 4 of the navy objectives for your starting objectives, effectively locking you out of any Sith cards at all, at least until an objective is destroyed. another example would be if you drew 3 navy and 1 Sith objective for starters. if your opponent blows up your only Sith objective, there is still that 4 th navy objective you could potentially draw, and again, lock you out of your Sith cards.

having a 8/2 or 7/3 split makes it impossible to resource lock yourself with your starting objectives. in a 7/3 split, if you drew all 3 navy objectives and a single Sith objective, you still could not be resource locked because the 3 rd navy objective you put on the bottom of your deck.

You must not grasp the reasoning behind the splits. since you take the affiliation of your smallest represented faction, if you have 4+ of that faction you can become resource locked. for example, if you take 4 navy sets, 6 Sith sets, and the navy affiliation, you can and will (eventually) draw all 4 of the navy objectives for your starting objectives, effectively locking you out of any Sith cards at all, at least until an objective is destroyed. another example would be if you drew 3 navy and 1 Sith objective for starters. if your opponent blows up your only Sith objective, there is still that 4 th navy objective you could potentially draw, and again, lock you out of your Sith cards.

having a 8/2 or 7/3 split makes it impossible to resource lock yourself with your starting objectives. in a 7/3 split, if you drew all 3 navy objectives and a single Sith objective, you still could not be resource locked because the 3 rd navy objective you put on the bottom of your deck.

I apologize for sounding unsure of myself I understand why having a 6/4 split and lower is a bad thing. I was just curious as to why the 7/3 split was not mentioned earlier.

So to summarize, if you have 6/4 split or lower you have an very high chance of screwing yourself over by way of resources because at least one of the resource tokens has to go on the affiliation of the card you want to use. 7/3 higher is safer because there is a less chance of locking yourself out so to speak.

You must not grasp the reasoning behind the splits. since you take the affiliation of your smallest represented faction, if you have 4+ of that faction you can become resource locked. for example, if you take 4 navy sets, 6 Sith sets, and the navy affiliation, you can and will (eventually) draw all 4 of the navy objectives for your starting objectives, effectively locking you out of any Sith cards at all, at least until an objective is destroyed. another example would be if you drew 3 navy and 1 Sith objective for starters. if your opponent blows up your only Sith objective, there is still that 4 th navy objective you could potentially draw, and again, lock you out of your Sith cards.

having a 8/2 or 7/3 split makes it impossible to resource lock yourself with your starting objectives. in a 7/3 split, if you drew all 3 navy objectives and a single Sith objective, you still could not be resource locked because the 3 rd navy objective you put on the bottom of your deck.

I apologize for sounding unsure of myself I understand why having a 6/4 split and lower is a bad thing. I was just curious as to why the 7/3 split was not mentioned earlier.

So to summarize, if you have 6/4 split or lower you have an very high chance of screwing yourself over by way of resources because at least one of the resource tokens has to go on the affiliation of the card you want to use. 7/3 higher is safer because there is a less chance of locking yourself out so to speak.

you do have to pay attention when using the neutral sets however. if you run 6 sith, 1 neutral and 3 navy you once again will resource lock yourself as if you were running a 6/4 split since you will draw your 3 navy, and 1 neutral objective in that 20th game or so.

now if your playing for fun, then who cares, but if your playing in tournaments, and competitively, then you certainly don't want to lose a tournament because of this.

also, decks don't have to be multi-factional to be good or even to win. there is plenty of pure decks that are competative. i have a pure navy deck that i love and have won tournaments with and i have been messing around with pure scum, and smugglers decks since EoD released, although time will tell how good they become.

Thank you for all the help and advice now I know to avoid the pitfalls when creating my Rebel/Smuggler split deck.

I run 6/4 splits pretty regularly. There's a 1/200 chance of getting resource locked out the gate. I'll probably get screwed at some point, but it hasn't happened yet.