The event:
On June 7th Uncle’s Games in Bellevue, WA held the only Regional for Western Washington (possibly even all of Washington, I can’t recall), with 9 players total showing up. This was a little disappointing, both in that it seemed like a low turnout for such a large geographical area from which to draw players, and because we didn’t have an even number to avoid the bye. I attended with one player from my friend group, my friend Shep (goes by Alazzar around these parts).
Background:
I managed to play live and in person 5 times total before the Regional, 4 times with Alazzar and a few other friends who couldn’t make the regional and once in Colorado Springs on a recent work trip where Master Jedi Adam kindly invited me to a game night at his FLGS. This didn’t feel like a whole lot of practice time, and most of that has been spent playing a (non-standard) Jedi and Questionable Contacts deck. So even though I really liked a lot of the objectives for Smugglers and Rebels that had come out in the Force packs, I decided to go with a Jedi-based deck that went more for the control playstyle that I’m more comfortable with. My deck’s a little different, it uses the Big 3 Jedi, plus 2x each of Secret of Yavin 4 and Last Minute Rescue.
On the Dark Side I never got comfortable with any Navy deck I tried. I hadn’t played with any of the sets from the two most recent Force Packs for the DS, so this left me feeling like Sith was the best choice, since I was sticking to mostly core set cards. I did find I always enjoyed drawing just about every card in The Endor Gambit, so I threw that and 1 Imperial Command into 2x each of Fall of the Jedi, Counsel of the Sith, and The Emperor’s Web. I just needed to choose one more set. For my trip to Colorado I had Shadows on the Ice, thinking I’d see enough Hoth objectives from the LS board that Wampas would still be a good defensive choice and liking the fate card in that set. I knew this was not the optimal choice, but I thought I’d play with it in Colorado and make a change later. Flying home on the 6th I didn’t have any play time and so I stuck with it. In the end I don’t think having this set made a difference in any games.
The tournament director couldn’t make it because of a family emergency, so a store employee, with help of Alazzar and at least one other player, ran the tournament and kept everything going nicely. We had 70 minute rounds, by universal acclaim of the play group, and it was announced beforehand that we’d do 3 rounds, with no need for a top cut to decide the winner.
Round 1:
I was paired with Hugo and fortunately sat one spot in from the end of a table, as about 5 minutes into the match a shelf collapsed, dropping around 40 games onto the floor, table and two neighboring players, plus the player with the bye who was watching his brother in that game. After a few minutes break to clean up, we started the clock again and got down to business. I had my Jedi deck against a Navy affiliation deck that had Motti, all the main Sith control, and The Killing Cold.
Hugo announced right from the beginning that he had not played much, so we were both fairly inexperienced with this game. However, I’d played a few tournaments of Decipher’s LotR back in the day, and I felt like I was playing pretty quickly overall. Hugo was often taking a minute or more to make decisions, such as on choosing defenders so this one game took all 70 of our minutes. I’m not sure if he got faster later, or if he continued having games go to time. In the end I was pretty frustrated and glad to move on to a new opponent.
Over the first two turns he got down 3 Icetrompers and was really slowing my attacks with them. I got Yoda and Obi-Wan down fairly early, along with some protectors, so as Palpatine and Vader made their appearances I was able to keep them focused out from doing anything. The game ended up going 9 turns because I took the Force back on all but one of my turns, had my Guardians sticking around forever thanks to Last Minute Rescue being out, and took forever to find Luke to start clearing out his big guns that kept finding it hard to dig out from their focus token pile. I also saw zero attachments until my seventh turn, when two Shi Cho trainings went down on Yoda. I didn’t manage to win the edge battle either of the next two turns with Yoda, so wasn’t getting much damage through with him. Luckily, by this point in the game I had taken two objectives and was feeling confident that I just needed to find my lightsabers to finish off a third. I never did see them, despite getting down to about 6-8 cards left in the deck.
In the end the game came down to three misplays. I knew time was almost over on my eighth turn and that I couldn’t get my third objective that turn, so I just wanted to get his next turn started to give me one final chance at pulling my lightsabers. I stupidly attacked with a Twi’lek loyalist despite Palpatine finally being ready, getting Obi-Wan and Yoda buried with focus tokens when Palpatine also attacked the next turn. Fortunately I had a Force Rejuvenation, and cleared off Yoda to make one final go. I just needed to win the edge to finish off my third objective, and went all in on the edge battle. Hugo still had one or two cards in hand, but he didn’t play them because he didn’t fully realize Yoda’s text. This explained to me why it was taking him so long to make decisions all game, but I wasn’t allowing a take back at that point. He seemed like a good guy, and I felt bad about being frustrated with him, but overall it was just a disappointing way to get started. End result was 3 points for the second game being declared a draw due to time.
Round 2:
This was the polar opposite in terms of time. I played Ryan, a guy Alazzar and I hope to be getting together with, along with Ryan’s brother Evan, for future Star Wars actions. In the first game he chose to go Dark Side after winning the flip. I didn’t see much of his deck, but I know he had two of Starck’s set. Ryan played Starck on turns 1 and 3, seeing him die to an attacking Luke on my first turn and then focused out with a Jedi Mind trick when he went to attack on his turn 3. At the end of his turn 3 he had some damage on two of his own objectives, I had Luke and Redemption out, and one Trust Your Feelings in hand. He had two units out, but focused and unable to defend. It was already looking bad for him, as Luke could take out one objective on his own, and one more attacking with Redemption, losing both his units to targeted strike. My draw brought me Yoda and another Trust, so that gave me all three objectives in one turn. The dial got to 4 because he held the force one turn.
I felt bad again, but this time because I was certain Ryan couldn’t have had any fun with that game. I know he was frustrated from a couple misplays, including forgetting Starck’s objective’s text on two of his three turns, but at least I enjoyed the conversation with him and feel like I’ll be having some more quality time with him in the future.
For our second game Ryan was running a deck that looked to be three Jedi objectives and Questionable Contacts and Renegade Squadron Mobilization. If I had to guess it was Yoda, Secret of Yavin 4, A Hero’s Journey, and the Smuggler sets. I got an early AT-ST out, early resource ramping up, and Palpatine around turn 2 or 3. However I broke the cardinal rule of my deck and attacked back on my second turn, and never really recovered the ability to defend. When Palpatine came out all he really did was give away half his black tactics icons out of charity to the Rebel Scum, and Luke went to town. My copy of Shadows on the Ice came into play here, as Han succumbed to the cold on Ryan’s final turn, but as I said Luke still made use of his text, which I believe says “Declare Luke as an attacker. Wreck stuff.” And took the game. I had the dial to 6, so got 3 points for the modified win.
If you’re reading this Ryan, thanks for the enjoyable time during our too-brief matchup, sorry that Yoda had so much Trust in his Feelings and here’s hoping we can get a few more games in in the future.
Round 3:
By points I was set to play Ryan again, but those running things had Aaron (holder of 4 points at the time, I believe, because of his 4-0 first round win and 0-4 second round loss to Alazzar) pair up to play me. He gave me his deck lists after the round, showing me his DS deck as 2x Emperor’s Web, Fall of the Jedi, Counsel of the Sith, and Death and Despayre, then one each of Cruel Interrogations and Deploy the Fleet. His LS deck was 2x each Questionable Contacts, Secret of Yavin 4, A Hero’s Journey, and In You Must Go, as well as one each of Message from Beyond and Renegade Squadron Mobilization.
For the first game I once again started as LS. This was the best game I played as the LS player as it moved quickly but I didn’t get a god draw that allowed to win too easily. (I actually hate those. I want to have SOME fun when winning, and would rather have a game that I lose after a close match than win too easily) Aaron got the dial to 8, but he had a huge problem getting resources down early, so it took him too long to ramp up. I forget how I won this one specifically, but I do recall seeing all three of my Jedi mains on the table, with Redemption out to pick them up if they fell. I DO recall that Aaron was fantastic with his Twists of Fate, and won just about every edge battle we did, limiting my white blast icons quite a bit. In fact, it was probably his clutch plays in that regard that kept him around to get the dial to 8.
For the second game it was almost a complete repeat. My first hand had two fate cards, Dark Precognition, two weenie units, and a Force Choke. I had Fall of the Jedi and Counsel of the Sith out to start so figured I would keep the hand, and cycle through most of it to start. Idea was if my hand was mostly crap to start, I had to be getting to the good stuff sooner, right? Wrong. I ended up seeing all 4 Force chokes, but had to use 3 before seeing Vader, I once got an Advisor out to allow for an Emperor play the next turn, but that plan was Swindled by Aaron, and saw no other resources besides the Advisor. He had an early Luke, and the two AT-STs that I played didn’t last me more than a full turn. They kept holding the force (my third objective was the Endor Gambit so in theory they could have both held the force and defended. Well, they did defend, they just failed to survive said defending actions) allowing me to get the dial to 6, but this game was over pretty much from the end of my second turn.
I had a fantastic time playing with Aaron. By this point we both knew we weren’t taking first, so we helped each other remember things and allowed a fair number of takebacks or “I just remembered I could draw two phases ago, do you mind?” The height of this was when Aaron tried to play a Twi’Lek Smuggler with me immediately playing one of the 64 Force Chokes I drew, (as in, didn’t wait to see if Threepio would drop, because I knew I couldn’t have the tactics icon down) and he then played Threepio, claiming he could use him to stop the Force Choke. I showed him the deployment phase action rules, and then only after Aaron understood did I…allow him to step back and all of a sudden Twi’leks were coming out of the discard pile and droids were going in it. I had a good time, and I think Aaron did to. I hope to make it up to his local store sometime, too.
End result:
Alazzar took 4-0 wins each time, and I hope he posts some sort of follow up here to showcase his decks and some of his experiences. He took home the shiny trophy, which made me quite happy for him. I finished tied with Hugo for second at 8 points, getting him on both strength of schedule and head to head. I’m pretty pleased with the swag FFG offered, and will enjoy using the new Force token the most, I think.
Conclusion:
I’d never seen anyone mention running those 5 Jedi sets together, even though I’m sure it’s been done. Last Minute Rescue kept my Guardians out in all 3 games, it was just a clutch performer. I liked the way it got around the Jedi’s resource ramp issue (in my opinion) by allowing me to use Obi Wan or Luke in the Edge and go fetch them, and made good use of Force Rejuvenation as well. Redemption seemed pretty good in there, either hitting the table when I had nothing better in hand or being a good edge card. It went 3-0 at the tournament, and 2-0 in Colorado, meaning I will try playing it longer than is good for me. I did notice the other two LS decks I faced both made use of Echo Caverns with the Jedi, and that I lost to both of those decks, so I’m probably handicapping myself here. Still, I was pleased with the results.
For my DS, I feel like it wasn’t the best build in the first place, but I piloted it poorly in attacking too soon in one game and not taking a mulligan in the other. I’m not sure what I’m going to try next, but it won’t be this particular build.
As for the overall meta, I didn’t see what anyone outside of my 3 games was playing. Alazzar ended up being the primary scorekeeper, so he could comment intelligently (or at least correctly) on things like DS wins vs LS wins, what some other people were playing, and the like.
I’m glad I closed with my match against Aaron, and can’t wait for my next tournament!