Last weekend my local shop (Comic Culture & The Games Store) hosted a regional.  There were forty players in attendance, so it would be seven rounds of swiss followed by a top eight cut.

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Having had some decent results with it recently, I decided to go with a five-die villain team.  I’d been using Bala/Ciena/Nightsister for a while, but decided to swap Ciena for Mother Talzin and Nightsister for First Order Stormtrooper.  I didn’t plan on using Talzin’s ability to alter my own dice very often (as I have very few odd-cost cards), but instead planned on using it as a Hail Mary against my opponent’s dice.

Round One vs eYoda/eChewbacca

I started by perhaps making a mistake and targeted Yoda first.  I was vindicated on the second round, as my opponent played a Force Wave on him (this is so good against three character teams!).  On the third round, I killed Yoda and actually remembered to ready Bala-Tik, who was then immediately struck down by Chewbacca.

This left Talzin and the Stormtrooper against the tooled-up wookiee.  Second Chance proved to be the deciding factor here.

In hindsight, I should have probably gone for Chewbacca first (even with the threat of Force Wave), as it would have cut my opponent off from ‘spot a yellow character’ cards, such as Easy Pickings (brutal card) and Entangle.  LOSS

Round Two vs ePalpatine1

My opponent was one of my regular opponents, so I had the luxury of knowing his deck pretty well.  All strategy and nuance went out of the window as my dice were pretty hot, and even with a decent amount of mitigation used against them, Palpatine was defeated on the third round.  Bait and Switch helped put the final nail in the emperor’s coffin.  WIN

Round Three vs eSnap/Jedha/Jedha

Another local player!  Again, I was quite familiar with my opponent’s deck, and began by ruthlessly targeting the Jedha Partisans (even though Snap is an annoying shit!).

One of the Partisans had Second Chance on them, which slowed things down a bit.  However, on the round after I had popped it, Bala-Tik engaged in what can only be described as bullshit.

Tooled-up with three pistols, he blew away the Partisan who had recently had a reprieve.  This allowed Bala to ready and unload on the other Partisan.  Talzin and the Stormtrooper finished them off, allowing Bala to ready again.  This time he unloaded on Snap (who had already taken some indirect damage from an E-11 Blaster), and with the help of Backup Muscle (how thematic!) was able to defeat him.  Yeah that’s right, wiped out his whole team in one round (albeit on the third round of the game).  WIN

Round Four vs eObi2/eMaz

This was a team I was familiar with.  It hits hard, and if Obi-Wan is rolling well there’s not much you can do about it.  Knowing how vital Maz is to the consistent damage output from Obi-Wan, I went after her first.

Unfortunately, it took me well into the third round to kill the little old lady, by which time Obi-Wan had neatly sliced up Talzin and the Stormtrooper.  That left poor Bala facing off alone against an unharmed Obi-Wan.  LOSS

Round Five vs eQui-Gon/eRey1

Another local player!  I’d played with and against this character pairing many times, and went straight for Qui-Gon (if you let him get tooled-up with multiple Shoto Lightsabers and/or Fearless, he is a right pain in the arse).

I managed to defeat Qui-Gon through pigheaded brute force on the third round.  Bala got to ready and take some pot-shots at Rey.  The First Order Stormtrooper did his job and died first, then Talzin and Bala took out Rey.  WIN

Round Six vs eObi2/eMaz

Damn, another Obi/Maz!  This time however, I managed to kill Maz on the second round.  This meant that my opponent hadn’t built up to much of a damage lead.

Talzin was my first character to die, but she had caused some mischief with my opponent’s dice using her ability before she went.  First Order Stormtrooper pulled off a couple of juicy The Best Defense plays (eating two of Obi’s three damage sides was nice) which kept me in the game long enough to whittle away at Obi-Wan.

The game came to a close with my two copies of Backup Muscle completely bypassing Obi-Wan’s scary shield generation capabilities.  Thanks, old-and-underused card!  WIN

Round Seven vs eSabine/Yoda

Sabine was a pain in the arse to kill.  It’s hard to remember the exact details on every turn and round, but with the mitigation and bullshittery that yellow/blue heroes have, you have to work hard for every point of damage.

Between Second Chance, Force Illusion, and Running Interference, it was pretty vexing putting her down for good.  Step up, Backup Muscle, bypassing my opponent’s Force Illusion to put her out of my misery.

Bala-Tik then readied and unloaded into Yoda, and my team mopped him up next turn.  Hard-fought!  WIN

Final Standings

Rank	Team	Wins
1st	eBoba/e7thSister	6
2nd	eAayla/eRey2	6
3rd	eKylo2/eAnakin	5
4th	eKylo2/eGreedo	5
5th	eAayla/eRey2	5
6th	eHera/eMaz/Ezra	5
7th	Rieekan/Yoda/Jedha	5
8th	eKylo2/eAnakin	5
9th	eObi2/eMaz	5
10th	eBala/eTalzin/FOST	5
11th	eKylo2/eAnakin	5
12th	eKylo2/eTalzin	4
13th	eSabine/Yoda	4
14th	eYoda/eChewbacca	4
15th	e7thSister/Servant/Nute	4
16th	eKylo2/eTalzin	4
17th	eBoba/e7thSister	4
18th	eYoda/Rey1/Padawan	4
19th	eObi2/eMaz	4
20th	Thrawn/Ciena/Guavian	4
21st	eThrawn/eTalzin	3
22nd	eSabine/Yoda	3
23rd	eKallus/eTalzin	3
24th	eAayla/eRey2	3
25th	Rieekan/Yoda/Jedha	3
26th	eThrawn/eTalzin	3
27th	eKylo2/eTalzin	3
28th	ePalpatine1	3
29th	eKylo2/eTalzin	3
30th	ePoe2/eYoda	3
31st	ePoe2/eHondo	3
32nd	eRieekan/eYoda	3
33rd	eObi2/eMaz	2
34th	ePoe2/eHan2	2
35th	eQGJ/eRey1	2
36th	eKylo2/eTalzin	2
37th	eSnap/Jedha/Jedha	2
38th	ePoe2/eHondo	1
39th	eQGJ/Zeb	1
40th	eGrievous/Maul	1

I finished on a 5-2 record, which I’m quite pleased with, but narrowly missed out on the top cut due to tiebreakers.

As you can see from the table above, there were quite a variety of teams (21-19 in favour of heroes).  Lots of Kylo Tormented One and Mother Talzin across teams (and in the same team), and a decent amount of Yoda (shocking, right?).

Top Cut

Top 8
eBoba/7thSister	defeated	eKylo2/eAnakin
eAayla/eRey2	defeated	Rieekan/Yoda/Jedha
eKylo2/eAnakin	defeated	eHera/eMaz/Ezra
eKylo2/eGreedo	defeated	eAayla/eRey2

Top 4
eBoba/7thSister	defeated	eAayla/eRey2
eKylo2/eAnakin	defeated	eKylo2/eGreedo

Final
eKylo2/eAnakin	defeated	eBoba/e7thSister

Winning Decklist by Chris Green

Summary

Overall, my deck worked pretty well.  I think that the only change I would make would be to remove The Price of Failure for Friends In Low Places, as I didn’t use it at all during the tournament, and Friends In Low Places could help snag some nasty mitigation such as Easy Pickings or Feel Your Anger.

One thing you might have noticed about my deck is that it contained no legendaries.  This was a conscious decision, as recently I’ve been re-evaluating my gaming habits.  One part of that re-evaluation has been that I’m only going to play Destiny ‘on a budget’, i.e. no legendaries.  This is because I don’t get the opportunity to attend enough competitive events to justify the expense.

I’m still going to be playing Destiny (as I really enjoy the game), it’s just that going forwards all of my decks are going to be ‘budget’ ones (although the occasional character or card with a distinct playstyle like Crime Lord might tempt me to keep some legendaries).  When the new set comes out, I’ll be buying some boxes to draft with my friends then flogging off the legendaries.

Since I’m not going to be spending as much on Destiny, it does open the door for other games.  I’ve been getting back into boardgaming recently, and Games Workshop has also been upping their game quite a bit (enough to possibly see me lapsing back into Warhammer 40,000 after a ten-year absence).

Anyway, it was fun and smoothly-run event.  Thanks go to the T.O., Karl Bown, and the judge, Steve Stewart.

Hope you enjoyed the report!

Cheers,

Tim