NOVA Top 32 - "Curtain Call" (Aphra/Executioners) 1.0

• Wersje
• 1.0

I was part of the commentary at NoVA and I really enjoyed seeing this deck. Congrats on the finish for Luke!

Thanks man, and glad you liked the deck! We appreciate all the work you guys put into streaming and commentating for these events - you do a great job!

Congrats on a great run. This deck was super cool to play against and cant wait to give it a try on TTS.

Did Modified HWK pull its weight?

Firststrike also seems great for those times when you can't roll in ahead of time.

How was the curve in general as well ?

@ArrowBrookGaming Thanks! Had some great games against you guys in the tournament. Congrats on taking Aphra all the way!

@stranglebat Modified HWK was there primarily for the mill matchup and potentially some 2-character matchups (as a higher upside version of Climate Disruption Array). I won both the games against mill that it hit the table and didn't play it in any other matchups. As long as mill is as prevalent as it is I feel good about having 1 in the deck.

First Strike was included because of all the big dice in the meta, with the additional benefit of being another card that can proc Execs unexpectedly. I only used it once, but it's not bad as a flex/meta call slot and has a very high upside against decks running AT-ST and Planetary Bombardment.

The curve works well, but differently from most decks. There are a lot of pay sides in the deck, and the reality is that you need to be able to resolve them for the deck to function well. Aphra's engine helps tremendously with this, by allowing you to play a droid and still have a resource left over to resolve a pay side. This is also why I loved the inclusion of Reprograms - an early Reprogram improves all of your dice by increasing the likelihood you will have money for the pay sides.

If your concern is paying for dice sides, would you consider running Imperial HQ over Reprogram? Reprogram gives you a resource advantage on the turn you play it, but with all of your pay sides, Imperial HQ will give you a resource bonus on every turn, and it will enable you to resolve those dice even if your opponent you.

Reprogram is a super good card to draw into with aphras engine though. You have bt1 in hand and hit yourself a couple of times then draw it. oh look he's free now

Imp hq is also good but finding the room!

@PeoplesChampion Imperial HQ certainly works well in the deck and is a good include (and we did test with it), but ultimately I think Reprogram is better. Reprogram gives you a round 1 boost where the HQ does not, while a round 1 HQ will not outpace the Reprogram until turn 3. Similarly, a turn 2 Reprogram is better than a round 2 HQ until round 4. The first round or two are the most important of the game, so we tend to favor resource generation cards that are better on round 1, as opposed to those that give more value over the course of a long game (for the same reason, we have always valued Reaping The Crystal more highly than It Binds All Things).

Congrats on taking no blue characters to the top 32! THat seems to be an amazing feat in this meta. Well done.

Congrats on another great finish. Did you happen to try Twin Shadows? It seems like one of best removal cards if active. Is 2 cost removal just too expensive for this deck?

Great write up. One question, why not a Training or two?

@Shaydebecause you can only roll one executioner die when a character is defeated.

@The Destiny Council That makes a lot of sense, I’ve never thought of it in those terms. I guess my second concern with Reprogram is that you will be play, at max, four cards where it will be useful (1 each of BT-1 and 0-0-0 and the 2 Hailfire Droid Tank). When you played this deck, did you find you would often have droids to play when you had Reprogram or was getting both a droid and reprogram at the same time difficult?

@edwinchen50 Thanks Edwin! We definitely considered it, but yah, the deck plays too poor to afford 2 cost removal, especially early in the game when Twin Shadows would be active.

@Shayde I'm always a little hesitant with non-redeploy upgrades in 3-wide decks - it's just too easy to knock that character out once you play the upgrade. And @the BEAST is right, it doesn't give you an additional roll in. I think I'd try an Executioner's Axe before training for that reason.

@PeoplesChampion Aphra's draw engine helps a lot with that. There were multiple instances where I drew into the second piece of that equation off of an Aphra proc, allowing me to Reprogram one of my droids. I do wish there were a few more good droids to include though ;).

@The Destiny Council Okay, nice! I really appreciate you explaining that to me, because most of my games are casual, and so I don’t get that depth of strategy going in my decks. This will definitely help me reconsider some of my strategies and help me play better in the future. And I agree, more solid droids would be great. Cause BB-9E and Droid Commandos aren’t really stellar.

@PeoplesChampion Happy to help! :)

@The Destiny Council what are your thoughts on including aftermath? With the goal being to get the first kill as quickly as possible the extra resource could be very beneficial to resolving a pay side on a Droid/Aphra that round.