Witness Me, Shiny and Chrome (Top 8 PDX Prime) 1.0

• Wersje
• 1.0

I ran this to a top 8 spot at the Portland area Prime by Smugglers Run so in my obviously biased opinion, I'd say it went pretty well. Especially considering I'd built it from (almost) scratch at like 10:30 the previous night, after doing quite badly at the Artificery tournament with IG/Snoke.

I like writing, so if you don't want to read this giant wall of text and only want to know how it works, just skip down to the divider.

I'm a pretty big fan of IG-88, and with how comically bad the SoR version was I wanted to figure out some way to make him not 100% junk. Honestly, the first time I saw the new Spark of Hope version I was pretty underwhelmed, but knew I had to try and make something work.

Thinking it over, I decided to go all-in on his interaction with bounties, which was something I hadn't ever really seen before, aside from a couple random decks on SWDdb. I ran IG with Snoke for a while, but with IG being the obvious first target it left Snoke having to clean up, which was obviously not good. Resources were never an issue, so it wasn't hard to get Vader's Fist down, but it was basically a requirement after IG was toast. In a lot of cases, that ended up with me hurting for resources to afford the paid sides on Fist that inevitably rolled out.

With Phasma finally getting back down to her original 13 elite cost, it seemed like a good way to not auto-lose the game after IG was down, while not hampering my mitigation options too badly (thanks to Dass at Artificery for pushing me that way). It kind of hurt not having Hidden Motive, Forsaken, and to a lesser extent Mind Extraction, but made up for it with Tactical Mastery, Automated Defense, and A Sinister Peace. I was having a hard time figuring out if I should've had Separatist Embargo, but after coming up against a couple Order 66 decks it very quickly became worth it. I also embargoed Jeff's Bacta Therapy, which felt nice and definitely ended up with the closest of our three games.

My match memory is pretty poor, and i'm downright bad with names, so I'm not really going to bother going to far into my wins at the event, just talk about where things didn't go as planned.

My first loss was in (I think) the second round and went to an Ewok deck with Chirpa and Hoth Trooper. I knew that one was a bad matchup for me before we even started, but it became especially apparent when he almost immediately dropped Target Acquired down on Iggy and took him down quick. Since I hadn't really gotten much time to plan the deck out, my strategy was to basically salt the field with bounties and push IG-88 and IG-2000's dice across the board. Him having six characters out made it tough to actually get all my targets set up, and I also don't think I got either of my Dead Or Alives or Bounty Boards down before round 2, which just exacerbated the issue.

My next loss was during the sixth round where I was pitted against the aforementioned Jeff and his ePalp/Jabba deck. I wouldn't say I did too bad there, but I certainly made some critical misplays, resulting in what I would describe as a fairly easy game for him. Even after losing those two matches, I still just barely squeezed into the top-8. Unfortunately for me, I was immediately paired up against Jeff again in the quarterfinals since he was #1 and I was #8.

If you want to read more about those games, Jeff has it written out on his deck analysis ("Go for Papa Palpatine"). Ultimately, his deck was simply better honed and tested, and honestly he was the superior player at the time. I will definitely say that while I lost all three matches against him, I actually had a whole lot of fun, which really helped me get energized about Destiny again. It also didn't hurt that I was a little relieved by not having to stay for another three hours through the finals :-)

In any case, I'm hoping for a rematch with Jeff again soon (at Worlds perhaps?)

Gameplay

This deck's not exactly hard to play, but it does feel pretty different from the stuff I've been playing for a while now. Ultimately I was feeling kind of down on the game cause it felt like there were really only two or three decent decks, and like the Portland hipster I am, I can only like things before they're cool (OG Maz/Rey/Ackbar Launch Bay represent). This deck ended up feeling kind of like a breath of fresh air cause it's not terrible, has a silly theme, and I ♡ IG-88.

As far as playing goes, there are really only two cards you should be looking for in your opening hand: Dead Or Alives and Bounty Board. Depending on your opponent, Separatist Embargo is another one to add to that list (especially against Order 66), but I tend to toss it back if I don't have DOA AND BB in hand. The most important thing to keep pace and control of a normal game is to get at least one DOA down right off the bat, since it forces your opponent to really consider their activation timing. Bounty board helps with getting you there, since it's kind of like having four copies of DOA, albeit a little slower.

You're pretty likely to win the roll-off, cause Iggy's dice are solid and Phasma's no slouch either. I found that starting with my battlefield made ramping up so much easier that it is totally worth +2 health for the opponent (since we're gonna rip them away with Iggy pretty quick). I'd say the hardest choice is when playing against Reylo since they love those sweet blue shields. Don't get distracted though, it's still worth taking your Lair for the free DOA.

As for the other bounties, Wanted is really useful to dig for once you've got your DOAs since it's 0 cost (sometimes -1 with Nightsister Lair) and you can easily throw it out onto the opponent's squishiest character, activating Iggy's ability on them, and netting an easy 2 resources when they go down. The free upgrade from Enticing Reward is rather enticing to have (hahahahaha), but resources for playing your upgrades aren't really in short supply and I found that I was frequently digging for it with BB only so I could discard it for another reroll. I've pulled a Pulse Cannon a couple times with it, but more frequently it's better used to pull out Riot Shield or to just leave out there for Hunt Them Down or Prey Upon.

Getting out IG-2000 early is nice too, but not entirely necessary since it's really only great when Iggy's still on the board. I was playing the Snoke version for a while before this, and I can't tell you how many times I surprised my opponent by using Iggy's power action on the 3 for 1 against all their characters for free, when they didn't bother removing it cause I had 0 resources (it's a bounty hunter die while another BH is out, and resolves for free with IG). With the Phasma version though, I found that I didn't really need it all that often.

There's not really a whole lot more to say about it I guess. Remember the DX-2 die is unblockable, as is anything it modifies. I've seen a bunch of times where someone resolves like 3 on a character with one or two health left, and I'm like "Um, OK... I hit Kylo for 2 unblockable damage", meaning they just wasted both the dice and the shields. Pulse Cannon is rad when you're making resources, but it always hurts a bit when you roll the 1 for 1 with its power action, since you have to resolve whatever it rolls if able. Really though, Pulse Cannon has directly won a lot of games for me, since there's not really anything your opponent can do about the up to 9 damage it can dish out.

The only thing in the deck that I am still on the fence about is Admiral. I really only included it cause the rest of my dice are short on faces, and I'm notorious for rolling mind-bogglingly bad in tournaments. That said, with the fat stacks this deck makes, it was pretty cool playing Admiral on Phasma for 4, refreshing IG-88 with a DX-2 and a Pulse Cannon for 2, while still leaving me with a couple resources to pay for the costed sides.