1/4/2020 Louisville Prime Runner Up Snoke Mando Mudtrooper 1.0

• Wersje
• 1.0

Played at Louisville Prime on 1/4/2020

This will serve as both my tournament write up plus explain some of my card choices as well as overall thoughts on how the deck did, and things that I would change. A quick warning, I tend to be wordy, so this will be pretty long.

I was basically undecided on what to play until about 4 days before the tournament. I was trying to get my collection organized so I took apart all of my decks and had everything put away in binders so I was starting fresh. My favorite decks to play are big/little two wides so that is what I was leaning towards playing. The main things I was considering were eThrawn/eBib, ePhasma3/Mudtrooper/Retribution, eQui-Gon/eYoda, or some type of Palpatine deck. Ultimately I decided, Qui-Gon/Yoda was too weak against Reylo, it was too easy to tech against Palpatine, and my friend who I mainly play with that was going with me had a deck that destroyed 2-Wides (he was the guy that brought the 4 wide villain aggro deck that also made top 8).

I went with the deck that I picked for four main reasons:

1. I just traded for Snoke two weeks prior and had never played a deck with him.
2. I just bought a 2nd megablaster troopers a couple days prior, so I wanted to use that
3. The Hyperloops brought it to a prime and dominated top cut so I assumed it was good.
4. It beat my friend Ryan's deck who I was traveling down to the tournament with. My play group for the past six months has basically been me, him, and my kids so I typically build decks to beat what he is playing.

Deck choices: I knew very little about the deck that the Hyperloops brought other than it performed well, and didn't use Delve/Fist. I didn't know if it was upgrade focused or support focused so when I built my deck, I basically split it down the middle.

For supports, I had 2 Fickle and 2 conscript squads for the 1 cost value, included megablaster troopers for obvious reasons, and then include a single imperial officer so I could get another leader in play.

I wanted cheap upgrades so that I could always get value from the Mando power action. I also wanted to prioritize 1 cost upgrades so that I could overwrite them with riot shields and armor plating without losing value.

The event package was pretty straight forward. I took the free villain removal that is typically ran. I wanted all of my mitigation to be free so that all of my money could be spent on upgrades and supports.

Tournament Results

Round 1 - Win eJango/Palp3/ lightsaber mastery 1 - Played against Kroozin from Entourage Gaming. Beating Palp was pretty easy because he didn't draw almost any upgrades round 1 or round 2. I finished off Palp at the end of round 2 and he only had Niman Training as his only ability.

Round 2 - Win eFinn/eSatine/Naboo Palace Guard / allies of necessity - Kind of a weird deck, but the person who played it had pretty good results and was a super nice guy. The game was long. He was able to prevent me from Snoke power actioning by using guardian and controlling my dice. He just never was able to get any dice down as upgrades or supports. I slowly chipped away at him, winning the game.

Round 3 - Win eVader/Fost - Got matched up with my son as we were both 2-0. I know my son doesn't really like playing mitigation. He like to re-roll for max damage. This ended up being a pretty quick game.

Round 4 - Loss Reylo - This was to the player who eventually won the tournament. Kylo rolled fire and I got crushed. This game wasn't very close.

Round 5 - Win ePalp/eConan - This was an incredible close game. We both just mitigated everything round 1. Round 3 ended with him having Palp at 1 health but fully loaded with shields and upgrades. I had one dead character and one close to dead. I drew Act of Cruelty and had control of the battlefield so was able to get the opening kill. He never got to play a bacta therapy. If he did, there was no chance I would have won.

Round 6 - Win Grievous/SM/Greedo/Commando Droid - This was against my friend Ryan that I drove down with. We had played this matchup 3 times the night before, with me winning 2 of them. I figured out the strategy is to take shields, and not let him get a ton of value from arena of death. The best thing is to just leave characters at 1 health and then finish them with an opening Mando Power Action. Ryan was worried that the loss would knock him out of top 8, but we ended up finishing 3rd and 4th in the standings.

Top Cut

Quarterfinals - 2-0 vs eBoKatan/R2/Built to Last - This was against Jimmy from Entourage Gaming. I hard mulliganed for sinister peace each game to control the BoKatan dice. Both games BoKatan went down in round 2 and were pretty comfortable victories.

Semifinals - 2-1 vs Yoda/Leia/Astrogation - This was a match up I really didn't want to play. I'm still a fairly new Destiny player and I have a grand total of 2 games that I had played against mill to this point. The person I was playing against was really playing well all day. I think I got really lucky to win this match up.

Game 1 - Win - This was a weird game. I was able to get down both megablaster troopers pretty early, but he was able to control my dice all game. I had the battlefield most of the game, so I was actually milling him when he would play his upgrades and supports and every turn he had to use his whole hand to control my dice. In the final round, we each had 2 cards in hand and an empty draw pile. I played probe to kill his last two cards, and won by milling him.

Game 2 - I got crushed. This game wasn't very close. This was the point that I think fatigue was starting to set in because I remember I started struggling with the math to kill characters after he would play healing cards.

Game 3 - My opening hand had both megablaster troopers in it, and I was lucky that he attacked my deck rather than hand in the opening round. I think getting megablaster down is critical to winning. After killing Leia, he just couldn't finish off my final hand and I was able to get the win.

Finals - Lost 2-1 to Reylo (same guy from round 4) - The guy I played against did a write up where he called this match Peak Destiny and he is 100% correct. All three of these games were incredibly tight. They were all decided by 1 or 2 health where a single die roll or card draw could have swung the game either way.

Game 1 - I was able to get a megablaster troopers down very early making Snoke the first target. I was actually hoping for this, since I had my imperial officer in hand to replace Snoke as a leader. After finishing off Kylo I was able to keep my last character alive with riot shields until my supports were able to finish off Rey.

Game 2 - This game was incredibly frustrating because I though I had it won. He started out targeting my mudtrooper, but switched to Mando after I played a Pulse Cannon on him. I finished round 2 with Kylo at 1 health and no shields. He had already played both steadfast so I knew he couldn't heal. I kept riot shield in my hand to get the power action kill but he opened the round with Polarity, Polarity, Kylo Power Action to kill my Mando that had 3 health left. This swung the game in his favor and he ended up winning. With investing my resources into upgrades on Mando, I had very few supports in play but it still came down to the final die roll.

Game 3 - This was yet another incredibly close game, but I'm struggling to remember most of the details. At this point we had been playing for close to 9 hours straight. I think I remember him having this game well in control for the majority. I’m pretty sure his Rey dice were half special sides they way he was rolling.

This was an amazing match-up and even though I was super disappointed to lose, my opponent really played great the entire tournament and deserved the win.

Takeaways:

1. DX-2 was such a crucial card and should have been a 2 of. This is an easy pick over Donderbus. The unblockable damage was incredibly important.
2. I always wanted Act of Cruelty. This deck is so good at doing little bits of damage that having that 1 unblockable out of hand is critical. Mandalorian Vambraces never really felt that strong, so that may have only needed to be a one of.
3. I didn't feel like I had enough dice mitigation. One of the last cards that I cut was rout. I'm not sure if that would have been the correct card though. Entangle would have been a blow out card in the Reylo match up.
4. Mind Extraction didn't feel necessary. Even though Palpatine was the most popular deck in the tournament, the card felt dead. One guy I played even played protective suit round 1 to counter it.
5. I think I only used Desperate Measures once the entire tournament and that was on Forbidden Lore. I think people are so afraid of the card, that supports are becoming pretty scarce.
6. I think I should have been more aggressive playing Pulse Cannon. Pulse Cannon is so strong when it goes off. Getting to resolve it once was ending games.
7. Pretty obvious, but getting an early Megablaster troopers down wins games.
8. Getting free re-rolls with Mudtrooper and Energy bow is super fun when you are as good at rolling blanks as I am.