NA Champs Top16 7-1 Jabba-Dooku Mill 1.0

• Wersje
• 1.0

Prized possession could be very handy in this deck

I'm curious how Salvage Stand went for you as looking over the list it seems Dark Presence might be a better fit. Also why the decision to not include Blackmail?

@Plymouthdean86 Could be, I haven't tried it in a while. It would probably come via upgrading the Vibroknucklers off from Count Dooku - Devious Strategist because so much of the removal is 1-cost and you're looking at trying to squeeze 2 removal cards into play every round, getting up to an extra 4 is sort of hard. The only dice I'd really want to steal that bad are Poe and Palatine dice, and both of them play a bit too fast to draw it early. I was already iffy on if I could afford to play a second Mind Trick since I'm more limited by resources than by card quantity as shielding up Dooku helps you draw deeper without losing value.

@pstalker Salvage Stand was stuffed in to replace Dark Presence actually about a month ago. I played it a lot, especially before I cut out the whole force-powers package. The catch is that as the game goes on, its impact becomes lower and lower since the opposing dice pool grows and thus when it does trigger, it just takes away a blank/non-valuable side. And that's when it does trigger. With so many focus sides on Jabba and the worth of saving a dollar to resolve his discards over Dooku's, I found that I very rarely wanted to reroll. It does pair very well with Vibroknucklers as the knuckles can help remove a character to shrink their dice pool as well as can trigger the Dark Presence, but personally I'd rather claim the battlefield instead of worrying about rerolls. I am looking into swapping the Ascension Gun for an Interrogation Droid or two since I've not played those in a while, they should be a more guaranteed trigger that gives me extra stall actions, information, and not having to consider how to get the gun down before Dooku has to roll out for the turn.

Salvage Stand fits into the Fast Hands & plan to try to keep upgrades from coming down in the first round or two as well as to suppress greedy decks like FN and Vaider tend to be. In particular, in one testing match I kept a FNunkar deck so poor the only upgrade he slammed all game was a single Vibroknife between my low curve and eating up his dollars before eating his hand. It's a cheap way of trying to keep Planetary Uprising off from the table if I can manage to out claim them as well, those can be a serious problem when they start adding damage up if they just start rolling guns.

Blackmail is something of a delightful card, but at costing 3 it's a little high for my aggressive curve. Jabba tends to be the one targeted first, so spending 3, even if discounted once or twice afterward, is still not quite as good as playing Diversion or No Disintegrations on the aspect of netting a better return per dollar spent when Dooku can't wear the Fast Hands to try keeping the card in play longer. It's quite good, especially when you get to stack Jabba+Fasthands triggers and just resolve it, but playing a mill strategy is already a high-risk path since many of the cards you might hit are would-be blanks vs you, holding up resources and extra removal to interact with the dangerous cards left in their hands is safer in my opinion when swiss rounds are best of one. The Grifters decklist with Jabba-Nightsister-Guavian Enforcer makes much better use of Blackmail because you can drop it + Fast Hands on the Enforcer and make a threat that might be worth killing before finishing Jabba off since he also gets to activate Loose Ends himself. Jabba-Unkar gets to play it better since whoever has more health left can carry it and the Fast Hands while having extra character dice dedicated to keeping them out of resources to ensure some safe discards get resolved. I haven't gotten to play more than three or so games with each of these two though, they don't fully fit my transformative playstyle as well and can suffer against Thermal Detonator more easily in my opinion, for whatever that's worth.

So overall, I expected to see a lot more Poe and FN than my pairings presented to me, so the list was held to lower cost cards that would have more of an immediate impact on stalling the boardstate so I'd have time to pluck cards from hands.

I should note that I believe the hardest part of piloting this deck is deciding when to leave Dooku back in order to claim faster, which leaves putting too many upgrades on him dangerous when he already likes to carry all of the non-Fast Hands upgrades to try to keep the character threat levels even. If its your field, it's cheaper discard without needing luck. If it's their field, getting to have threatening dice showing in the pool and possibly resolve sides before they get to play out their second card is worth a lot even if they got to keep something in pocket.

Congratulations on your top 16 finish. I can say with the utmost sincerity that there were a lot of us rooting for you to finish well. The Discord communities would greatly welcome your presence, too -- I think a lot of people have a lot of questions about your card choices and how you ran the deck. Take a look at the Knights of Ren and their Discord and hopefully we'll see you around the community!

Congrats @Rithzarian! As one who has been playing mostly mill decks from the beginning, was definitely rooting for you. Man, I so want to pick your brain on the Poe/FN matchups, those seem tough!

The ability to destroy a hand with Dooku/Jabba is strong against those decks for sure if you can get going first. That's definitely an advantage it has over my Grifters style which is more about hitting the deck as fast as possible, clearing out the hand at the end with FH/BM.

I'd want to get in NoDis somehow into the deck. A bit extra speed to get to the end, but also helps against Graveyard/Castle at the end. Nice job!

Thanks @Lasci! A friend of mine is in there and passed on that people were curious, but I had to go ensure the moon didn't fall into the sun before a way too long drive home; some jargon's up here but I'm sure I'll cough up more later.

Indeed @smerle, I tend to prefer a transformative style list, suppressing board state while surviving. The discard from hand takes much longer to work through a deck, but it pairs up better with having extra removal being more valuable when they can't afford to re-roll. The more I can tempt them to work against themselves with rerolling into removal, the fewer actual discard effects I need to resolve and the sooner I can safely claim.

I really would like to get No Disintegrations back in, but it would probably come at the cost of cutting On The Hunt and Sabotage as they were the two least impactful cards during the event, even if Sabotage did kill 2/3 Planetary Uprising and 1/1 Salvage Stand. With playing more rounds, I really want an answer to Uprising or else I'm just damaged too fast it seems.

I really do need to try your Grifters more, I had everything with me to use your list but just didn't feel comfortable leaving Dooku in the box when I'm not used to managing Jabba's workforce.

TinyGrimes posted up his review of the event and included a few minutes about our match with more accurate representation of the pacing and his thoughts during.

www.youtube.com

Been playing this deck and its a lot of fun!

I dont know how to beat Vibroknife though, really counters Dooku.

Maybe something could be used to hedge against it?

@kittenhead The best trick to beating Vibroknife is just to make them discard it ;p Failing that, surviving through it by aggressively discarding for shields early on. Most decks nowadays, especially 9s decks, are packing mixed damage so even though you're not making use of that shield when the Vibro sticks into Dooku, buying a shield anyways might be the difference between surviving the final round of damage and a game loss.

My local meta loves Vibros, so I've learned to pitch early and often. Even though it's often the smaller of the damage-dice in the pool, using a removal event on it allows you to sometimes put your opponent into a bad position where you can make use of those previously gathered shields.

Even though discarding removal effects to buy a shield you can't use really doesn't feel that great, there's enough in the deck you can afford to lose some of whatever is more awkward at the moment if you don't have any outright dead cards from Jabba dying yet.

Sometimes Dooku still just dies with full shields up, and that sucks but all well. At the moment the only good option is Disarm removing one of Dooku's 2s, which conveniently isn't too bad against things that pick up little guns. Confiscation is a bit too expensive for how rarely I resolve resource dice and doesn't guarantee it's absence, but doubles as removal at the right time too.

I figured Poe/Maz would be more prevalent with Planetary Uprising pushing out damage faster than I can shield it up, or failing that I expected to get into resource fights with FNunkar's Salvage Stand so I slotted a Sabotage over something to target Vibros as a lot of my removal can suppress them on a turn that a lot of damage would swing in because of it. Removing a Vibro's while there's an Armor Plating in play is almost as effective as removing a 3 at the right time.

I think I resolved all of two On The Hunt dice during the event since I'd cut it down to 1 copy and saw it early enough on much more rarely, so I'd look at replacing that in your own adventure.

Hey man can you answer me a quick question, what are dice?

Did you ever find yourself starved for resources? I see lots of low cost events but not much resource generation. Maybe it doesn't matter, i'm not an experienced mill player, and would appreciate some insight.

@Ion87 Starved for resources is a hard thing to place. Yes, this deck is very resource greedy, getting hit with hurts a lot because it means you're without removal for the turn. I've been told that I personally play very conservatively with my resources, but in turn that's from a lot of years of playing MTG to get an understanding of just how to use my health total as a resource and trying to save up to ensure I can stick at least one upgrade during the game. Once Jabba goes down, resources get a lot more tight because you're forced to resolve Dooku's dice at cost, and that's before you take into account you'll be skipping two dice for Bait and Switch use.

For the moment at least there's no solid way to speed that up. I'd consider Enrage since it can be played like a Smuggling when you trigger Dooku.. but at the same time, that last point of health can really matter a lot on whether or not Dooku lives through the end of the round you're milling them out in.

At the end of the day, you're wishing on luck either way. Roll a lot of dice or grantee a specific result. I'm still learning the finesse of things on how much flex I have... not to worry, less than a week before Empire at War shakes lists up a lot.

@Ion87 Starved for resources is a hard thing to place. Yes, this deck is very resource greedy, getting hit with hurts a lot because it means you're without removal for the turn. I've been told that I personally play very conservatively with my resources, but in turn that's from a lot of years of playing MTG to get an understanding of just how to use my health total as a resource and trying to save up to ensure I can stick at least one upgrade during the game. Once Jabba goes down, resources get a lot more tight because you're forced to resolve Dooku's dice at cost, and that's before you take into account you'll be skipping two dice for Bait and Switch use.

For the moment at least there's no solid way to speed that up. I'd consider Enrage since it can be played like a Smuggling when you trigger Dooku.. but at the same time, that last point of health can really matter a lot on whether or not Dooku lives through the end of the round you're milling them out in.

At the end of the day, you're wishing on luck either way. Roll a lot of dice or grantee a specific result. I'm still learning the finesse of things on how much flex I have... not to worry, less than a week before Empire at War shakes lists up a lot.

@Rithzarian I would love to hear your thoughts on updating the deck now that Empire at War is out!

Why no force illusion?

@EchoJuliet The verdict is still out. The addition of Quinlan Vos - Dark Disciple is something that I still need to try, as well as it's not quite good due to its expense but Pickpocket is a way to force discards and pairs well with his and the idea that Jabba the Hutt - The Great and Mighty is going to die easily and you still have to finish the game out. Plus saving that dollar on the discard face can be very big as I'd rather Bait and Switch than I would resolve a randomly rolled resource face most of the time. With Vibroknucklers he might be threatening enough that I can force people to target him before targeting Jabba since he doesn't have that sometimes daunting-feeling pile of free shields that Dooku gets. The real problem with updating the decklist without a major overhaul is its really just the most efficient discard-upgrade and a pile of the most efficient damage prevention.

Some cards like Buy Out scream that they want to be used, especially given that with the current character options playing Loose Ends to cut a turn off the clock requires dedicating to non-discarding upgrades.. but then Buy Out just eats up so many resources in an already resource starved deck.

Although I'm using Salvage Stand and Jabba's , trying to slot in a copy or two of Truce could lead into free between the ambush activation just taking away their option or enticing them to play an extra card themselves or simply a less painful than Enrage cost to getting to surprise with a removal card.

Deciding how many cards to cut in order to squeeze in new flex cards like Rend or Truce and still being able to play 1-2 removal cards per turn is going to take more testing than I currently have time for.

@Wosho Force Illusion is very powerful yes.. but Command Center - Lothal is more powerful. I started with two copies, then down to one as just extra versions of Armor Plating but the milling can hurt you too much. There's so many removal cards in the list that losing a few of them might cost you not just a turn's worth of cards if your opponent is claiming faster than you, but also a turn of holding your opponent's gameplan back while your powerful character dice push for the win. Saving 2-3 points of damage for a is what most of the deck already does, but milling 2-3 cards to pre-pay the action isn't quite worth it. Or at least, wasn't at the time. Now it seems that the general gameplan is to put more dice into the pool all at once, so spot removal in the moment is weaker than being able to bank actions by playing them out on turns your opponent already claimed. I should also note that I usually play in a very Vibroknife heavy so having too many platings sometimes just didn't matter.