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We continue our coverage of weekly champ lists. This week the power of Rey is showcased but first lets show the badboys. For previous champ list posts click on here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Bruce Swiney-Weiner’s Jabba Plutt 1st Uncle’s Game’s store championship in Redmond, WA

NJCuenca: The second Jabba/Plutt deck we’ve featured in this series ignores Crime Lord and goes all out on the mill plan. I personally like Crime Lord but this approach is reasonable enough. In the hands of a skilled pilot it can win any event. The big issue with decks like these is that all it takes is one turn of bad rolls for your opponent to bust through and kill Jabba. Once that happens its tough to come back, this deck feels like you’re tightrope walking without a net. The deck is also not forgiving to misplays and going to time. I can play fast and sloppy or slow and tight but I can’t both be fast and tight which makes me avoid this deck.

If you like control/mill decks this is a fine choice to investigate but just be aware of what you are getting yourself into.

HonestlySarcastc: The deck is interesting to say the least. There is a lot of defense and it makes reasonable sense that removal is better with Fast Hands being only yellow which this deck still gets to abuse, but I’m not a fan of the mill strategy in the current state of the environment with there being some pretty big damage decks floating around. I believe that Round 1 is the most important for this deck and that if it falls behind or takes too much damage the game can be over before it started. Everything requires testing and seeing for yourself. Since I don’t play these decks my opinion shouldn’t count for much here. Infamous is a great touch for speeding up the motions and confiscation can help keep FN on the back foot, but I feel like Fast Hands is the main mulligan target and you need it ASAP.

Palpster’s Palpatine 1st SC In De Ruimte, Utrecht, the Netherlands

NJCuenca: This gets showcased because of the surge in popularity of Abandon All Hope. This card is the real deal and should be in most of your Palpatine decks. It helps slow down FN, big resource decks and helps protect Palp’s dice. Aside from that the deck is a very normal Palp although the use of Force Push isn’t something you see all the time.

Palp is still a big test for any deck you plan on bringing. Locally there’s always a Palp deck in the room and it shows up in SC winner’s list which might skew my perspective about how important it is to the meta. At Gen Con if people decide to play Poe Maz then Palp may be a good counter to it. Regardless, you should expect Palp at Gen Con or any large tournament you play in.

HonestlySarcastc: Whilst I’m surprised to see a Palpatine win, I’m not surprised by the deck list at all. Abandon All Hope is great in the current meta. Force Push has a lot of synergy with Throw, Lightning, and Palpatines die sides so that all makes sense, and the rest of the deck is die mitigation and healing. Very high quality list! The only thing I’m starting to wonder about though is if Otoh Gunga is actually good? Like you have to claim 4 times to even out with the shield differential if you took your field, so maybe he knew to start with the opponents and that was just the backup plan for then they chose his to recover from the differential?? Would it then make sense to have a New Orders and start with opponents field and be able to swap to yours and gain massive advantage??

Rand Anderson’s Younglings 1st Kansas City Metro area.

NJCuenca: I love this deck and with Poe Maz getting nerfed it might be time to pick up the thugz. This list is pretty solid although the addition of more three drop weapons like Luke’s Saber and Handcrafter Light Bow would make the deck stronger against Imperial Inspection. That’s definitely a strength the deck can have and one I’d try to build to. Not playing the 3s is a consideration when having so much 1 cost die removal but I think you can balance it out a little. I’m not completely against cutting One With the Force especially because the rule changes make it worse but It’s still a very powerful card going late.

I’m not crazy about some cards like Force Misdirection or Use the Force but I have played them before in this deck. Misdirection has insane upside so I can see playing it because of the blowout potential. Use the Force can be used to get base 2 power from Padawans which can help resolve Rey’s modifiers, that alone keeps it in consideration. Between Secluded Beach/Deflect and Force Misdirection/Makashi Training the deck has a lot of built in hate for any of the combat match ups. I don’t love Makashi but if you want to be on the action cheat life then having something to overwrite into after you play your Holdout Blaster is nice. The deck is also probably the best Guard deck you could build since all 4 of it’s starting dice have the potential for 2s. Funkar looks like it could be tough, but bouncing your “1 cost” weapons on Padawans doesn’t set you too far behind so that might not be an issue and there aren’t many expensive things to be plutted since you can cycle them through Rey and get them out of your hand when the need arises.

The deck does struggle vs Bala-Tik. Because Padawan’s are so squishy that it’s easy for you opponent to knock one out and get two free dice in the process. Letting them have a free untap from Bala-Tik is a hurdle to climb over and one that I have failed many times. The deck doesn’t do too much broken stuff except for the occasional action cheat kill but most of tier one decks can do that as well.

HonestlySarcastc: I like the deck. I’ve always been big on running Holdout Blaster in this to be a 1 cost upgrade on Padawans with good enough sides as well as doubling up for the action cheat of Rey and redeploy before a character dies, it also allows Holdout into makashi on a Padawan to essentially get makashi out there for 1 resource. The removal has blowout potential and there is a lot of synergy. The deck operates rather slowly, but with all of the FN-2199 running around, that isn’t a huge issue and actually helps the deck get off explosive Guard plays. CQA might just be a matchup dependent card due to the overall lack of speed available, but even netting 2 cards for 0 can be a huge detriment to the opponent. Rainbow Nine’s could be a tough match, but you have enough health and redeploy to cope with it a bit.

NJCuenca’s Poe/Rey 1st SC Toys and Things, Danvers MA

NJCuenca: I finally won an SC this past Sunday! More impressively I beat HonestlySarcatc twice in the same tournament which is probably a feat only I and maybe BobbySapphire can lay claim to -even his fiance, who also made top 4, high-fived me. This deck is in the DemiGOD tier, not quite a deity but stronger than most mortals. It has high power ceiling but can be slightly clunky and suffers from late game “air” draws. Last week I did a video and wrote a 3100 word deck primer article for our 10 dollar Patreon subscribers about this deck. After we get back from GenCon I’ll post those on the site for everyone’s reading pleasure.

HonestlySarcastc: This deck looks awful, worst deck ever… no one should play this. *looks around and realizes no one believes him*… I got beat up twice, so it shows that the deck has some great things going for it. 6 action cheats not including Force Speed is a big way to force your dice resolutions and be able to claim. Unlike in Poe Maz, Rey Poe has a TON of dice cards with specials, so it is almost impossible to lose out on the claim ability as well as being able to abuse C-3PO. The defensive cards are very light and it is a matter of knowing that vs not knowing that, since you could reasonably expect to see high ground or dug in and an opponent might claim and leave dice on the table (like i did). Overall there are a lot of things to throw with Poe or cast on Rey and the sky is the limit as far as the options you are given at any moment when you can claim to resolve a Poe die and have it be damage, discard, removal, or even disrupt.

That’s all for today. GenCon prep continues for us here at TheHyperloops, and we release a lot of our testing for our Patreon subscribers. We’re posting bonus decklists, articles, and videos every single week for our $10 Tournament Prep subscribers, and we release a little bit of that to our $3 tier subscribers as well. The $10 tier also gets you our playmat after 2 months of support. You can click on the mat below to get taken straight to our Patreon page.

Thanks for reading and as always…

May the rolls be with you.

TheHyperloops Staff

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