I have to come clean: I came very close to swerving for the Connecticut Regional. In retrospect, swerving to mill might’ve been the right call. My teammates Shane Martin and Brendan Devitt both won regionals with mill over the past two weeks with our three-wide Millionares deck. But, I couldn’t do my readers like that. For one, I wrote about how good I thought Aayla was right now last week in this very column. I also practiced a ton with the deck posting a half a dozen or so game play videos for our Tournament Prep patrons. Finally, it was last year at the Connecticut regional where I brought Rey/Aayla/Profitable after writing about my thinking Rey was in a great spot to take over the meta; so running blue hero and putting my money where my mouth is was something that interested me a great deal.

In the end, I ended up running Qui-Gon Jinn, Defiant, Aayla Secura, and Bitter Rivalry as my plot to make the team fit. I had been testing Solidarity, but really hated losing Hidden Motive and especially Guard as a two-of. Guard on an upgrade showing +4 (buffed from Qui-Gon’s ability) has been absolutely gross in testing so I wanted to include it. Forces Speed and Illusion are also nice two-ofs, and by adding Steadfast to the deck it meant that I could have some very explosive first rounds that also mitigated the effect of the plot, especially if playing on my Theed. Playing on Theed made my opponents’ choice to give me Theed or give Qui-Gon two shields made things painstaking for them, and I never really mind having either.

I think going over each of my games will help demonstrate some of the things I really love about the deck, and Qui-Gon especially.

Round 1 vs. General Leia / Wookiee Warrior / Rey1

Always petriby the round 1 matchup where I have no clue as to what my opponent is about to do to me… pic.twitter.com/sOLRnpw1Sq — BobbySapphire (@BobbySapphire) January 12, 2019

I know better than to underestimate a three-dice mill deck with 30 health and the shields, and this is exactly the kind of round one matchup I hate seeing. Kurt, who I’d been warned on the drive up by my neighbor, Nick, that he always plays crazy decks, definitely had me scratching my head. Kurt played a lot of events that milled, including two Bewilder who took advantage of Qui-Gon’s having a buffed character die to mill me for five in one round. He also used Secret Mission and Strike Briefing to keep the pressure on. I also ate four to two Krayt Dragon Howls on big damage sides.

One interesting chain of events in the late game was pretty interesting; Kurt dropped two Nexus of Power, which a lot of people have shrugged off but actually has a lot of interesting plays because of its ability to turn its own dice. After activating each he turned them to melee, so I knew he was scheming either a CQA or a Force Misdirection, either of which would’ve blown me out and possibly cost me the game. I decided to burn my Beguile and later an Aayla special to keep those plays off the table. I ended up pulling out the game with just four cards left in my hand, though with all of the focus in the deck I didn’t have to reroll in each of the last two rounds. We figured out in testing that Jedi Robes is the best possible opening upgrade vs. Mill and it totally lived up to that theory. The double focus was huge all game, and I was also able to take four resources off of it’s +1 resource early in the game that carried me to ramping hugely and pulling it out even though both of my Ancient Lightsabers were discarded.

1-0

Round 2 vs. Savage Oppress / Boba Fett

This game was against my neighbor, Nick who drove down with me. Funny aside: Nick and I were working out a trade via Facebook and realized we lived four houses away from each other. Pretty insane. Anyway, Nick really liked Boba and wanted to load him up with upgrades that redeploy to set up for a late game Savage that would always threaten with the first action of the game while loaded up. He also ran Friends in High Places with Vader’s Fist and big upgrades like Vibrosword.

This wasn’t too eventful a game, I was able to blitz Boba Fett down really fast, rolling straight fire. His Savage rolled pretty hot, but I was able to steadily get my mitigation. You Were My Friend was a clutch add for a deck like this that could just remove a character die immediately because I will always have more blue cards on table than my opponents considering how little blue hero is in the meta, and my Bitter Rivalry stays on table and counts towards that total. Once Boba went down it was just cleanup time, I can essentially take infinite shields on my characters when I’m up two characters to one and never fall into danger of dying, then continue to build into more and more upgrades to overwhelm my opponent.

2-0

Round 3 vs. Dooku Talzin

This game was against one of our patreon subscribers, and a guy I really like, Eric from upstate NY. He’s been a great supporter of ours for quite some time and we got to talk a bit at the New Hampshire regional where I gave him a pep talk after he got his second loss, and he was able to step up and top 16 by getting his head straight.

This game started off rough, as I made a pretty boneheaded mistake: I had Aayla on special and Qui-Gon on Resource. I was passing in case he rerolled, but we were on Rift Valley, which can remove Qui-Gon’s die when it’s a 2 or less. If I had just used my Aayla special to make it a 3 melee he wouldn’t have been able to mitigate it, and I lost out on three damage. We went back and forth quite a bit with soft mitigation; my Aayla was rolling her specials, and I got Your Eyes Can Deceive You very early, which seriously neutered both Talzin and Dooku’s ability. He rolled pretty bad, so much so that his Talzin ability almost always only put him on one damage side, and while his Dooku rolled fire, I was able to win the “Dance Off” that occurs in a Dooku vs. Sticks match, doing just enough to force him to activate his Dooku before I activated my Qui-Gon. One thing that he was kicking himself for was not dropping a Stifle to start a turn, and instead tried to threaten lethal. I had a bunch of mitigation and was basically able to make him skip his whole round.

Things looked dicey for a while, and a few people watching early were shocked I pulled out the game, but once I got Talzin down and could focus on building up my upgrades I was able to overwhelm Dooku with dice and shields. I was most excited about using my Dagger of Mortis to steal a Dooku shield to put Qui-Gon at three shields, boosting my +3 to a +4 and hitting Dooku for 8.

3-0

Round 4 vs. Vader/Greedo

This one was also against a patreon sub from the upstate New York area. BMinny traded me a Vader, which I flipped for two Qui-Gon’s, a Qui-Gon’s Saber, and a Shoto, so he was a big reason I was even able to play the deck I ran. This one was firmly won on the back of Your Eyes Can Deceive You, as that thing was live almost every turn from the first or second round of the game. I focused a lot on the Vader’s Lightsaber die, but my opponent was lamenting how he continually rolled the 1X on the upgrade, where I think the 1X is the best possible side when facing down a bunch of soft mitigation. Resolving the 1X on its own lets you trigger the ability more often.

One round he rolled a bunch of damage and tried to get the kill on Aayla though he’d ben working on Qui-Gon. I think QGJ had an Illusion and some shields, and he rolled high enough to get Aayla close, but I saw the math and pulled off a timely steadfast to keep her alive into the next round, and while I didn’t get a ton of value out of her, I was able to use her a bity and pull ahead and close out the game. I don’t remember a lot of details about the end of the game, but more people came up to me and told me they were surprised I pulled it out, lol.

4-0

Round 5 vs. Jyn/Cassian

This one was against Joe Kwiatek who is a mainstay on the Northeast scene. Before the game he referenced that I once told him that when you play two Hit and Run you win the game (this is an adage I believed held true for Poe/Maz), and he got his first early following his dropping of an L-S1 Handheld Canon. Round 2 he dropped his other canon on Cassian and I was starting to get a little worried. Unfortunately for Joe he was on the receiving end of his own medicine: I rolled out Qui-Gon into 7 damage off of a Force Speed. I used the opportunity to CQA his hand because even if I killed Cassian he still had Jyn’s two dice plus her Handheld to reroll. I was lucky enough to catch his Second Chance off of that CQA which showed me further that Cassian was the right call. He could’ve dropped the Second Chance earlier in the turn, and I would’ve popped Jyn as a result, but Cassian is much scarier to me in the late game.

After popping Cassian and putting Jyn to 7 damage he was still able to aggro mill me, and I thought I might lose the game that way. Jyn and her blaster hit me big, and milled a lot of my upgrades which prevented me from closing out the game very easily, but I got there eventually.

5-0

Round 6 vs. Thrawn/Snoke/Bitter Rivalry

This game was the first of two that were on stream, and this one was against Nationals runner up Cody “Manten” Williams. Cody and I had never played live, and I wasn’t super excited to be playing against Thrawn/Snoke, though it was fun that two of the final three undefeated players were on Bitter Rivalry. It was nice to be able to put that damage into Thrawn and get the extra card.

I didn’t love how I played round one. Before I drew my card I had already resolved to play my Treasured Lightsaber first in case he named “2” with Thrawn. My sixth card gave me an Ancient ad I didn’t re-adjust. I should’ve dropped my Force Speed first and let him decide between facing the healing power of Ancient or a blind card in Treasured Lightsaber; but he didn’t name “2” he named “zero” and took my Speed. Manten got an early Fist down, but my Deflects did work (I ran two). Cody made what I thought was a big mistake at the end of round two or three when I deflected a Fist 3 into his Thrawn and he chose to take the damage and go to 11 rather than block it with Force Illusion. I hadn’t drawn a Steadfast yet, and knew I was due for one, which I hit and started off the round killing Qui-Gon by moving damage, which is unblockable.

One thing I couldn’t do was stop his resource generation and he was able to drop a Fist and two TIE Fighters. He had a rough sequence where he couldn’t roll more than one focus side against my Aayla’s special, and ended a round forgetting to resolve some of his dice, especially a two indirect damage die. I haven’t rewatched the video yet, but will check it out and probably do my own commentary over it. I know I let him Pinned Down when he didn’t have a vehicle out. I don’t think it was intentionally malicious or anything, but this is one of the first game state errors that was pointed out to me b/c of the stream, and it made me realize that I have a long way to go before I’m in Worlds Shape – something I wrote about last year. I’m too much playing on level zero, focused on my game, and while I still do a decent job of figuring out what my opponents are up to, I’m definitely not catching things about the game state while playing that I should be. It’s a lot easier to catch mistakes on stream, but if you want to be the best you have to pick up on those things.

The game ended up going to time, and I was able to put in a decent amount of damage into Snoke in the final round while also taking a bunch of shields with Qui-Gon. At the end of the game, against a deck doing Indirect damage, it is nice to be able to resolve 5 shields with two dice. Manten had an opportunity to kill Aayla but settled for more indirect damage instead and I think it allowed me to get too much value out of my Aayla in the end, which put me over the edge in the damage race.

6-0

Round 6 vs. Vader / Greedo

This game was also on stream and it was kind of crazy. I don’t remember a ton about it until the end. I basically got milled, and I held Deflect through about 200 Greedo rolls with his Vader at 14, but he never rolled ranged. At the end of the game I had to reroll my last card to kill his Vader with my Ancient. I tried a bunch of times but the final roll got it. I extended my hand and he conceded, but I wasn’t thinking he still had Greedo left. I had an Ancient on Qui-Gon, and could loop it to heal twice a turn with Qui-Gon’s Saber and Shoto (I can remove a shield with shoto, get it back with QGJ Saber, and draw my Ancient back. And, with only Greedo alive, even with no rerolls I should be able to deal 7 damage before he could deal 7. I don’t know if I was tired, or just forgot that he never Price of Failured because I was expecting him to a bunch of times, but I don’t think it much mattered.

7-0

Quarterfinals vs. Vader Greedo

Not much to say about this one. Game 1 he got a round 1 Vader’s Fist out and buried me in damage. Game two he exhibited that he had way more mitigation than I put him on, and did a great job simply getting Vader to the late game, slowly doing 6-8 damage a round until he could Rise Again and put me wicked far back. He cast Rise Again both games and they were really, really good. Chrono questioned my pitching my Guards to reroll, and maybe I was being too aggressive in trying to race Vader, but removing both of Vader’s dice at the same time is obviously awful. I should’ve maybe had more patience in trying to get cards out of his hand, or mitigating one die followed by two dice, but his Force Speeds made that a tricky proposition. Nothing felt good about the way these games went, and I fittingly felt like Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace where you can see on his face that something is wrong and he knows he’s about to lose to Maul. Everything I know about the living force was telling me that this game was out of reach, and verily it came to pass.

My favorite thing about this game is that my opponent Disabled my Your Eyes Can Deceive You, lol.

7-Dead

After having run the deck I’m not sure I’d run it back next weekend. I thought I had good matchups vs. Vader but the top cut games has me thinking otherwise. Chrono went on to win the whole thing, so his build and his play was obviously strong (though he did Overconfidence one of his Vader Dice vs. my Shielded up Qui-Gon’s die and I loved my chances there, but of course I got rekt), so he certainly earned his regional victory. And, while there’s something to be proud of for going 7-0, being the only undefeated, and being the one seed, it really doesn’t matter much when you can’t take home the whole thing. I’ve been in the same situation in several Magic PTQs and it always felt more awful getting close but never making it to the Pro Tour. This loss isn’t quite that bad, but I am proud of building my own deck that nobody else was on, and doing really well with it. I think it goes to show that you don’t need to net-deck, or play whatever you think everyone else thinks you should play, when you go to a regional. You can absolutely build a solid deck and run the table with it if you build a strong enough deck and practice well.

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire