(I’m writing this up like 5 days later, so any mistakes are unintentional, and I might have some rounds swapped. Apologies to my opponents if I misremember anything that happened). In particular, I can’t remember if rounds 5 and 6 are in the correct order.

Game 1: Vader Greedo. My opponent was really there for X-wing, but put up a good fight. 1-0

Game 2: Palp/Jabba/LM. I have experience with Palp/LM and I knew to control both palp dice every round after he got a few upgrades out, to stop the Fatal Blow. Without his finisher, I was able to take the game. 2-0

Game 3: Palp/Motti. He Sepratist Embargo’d No Answer on the first action. I milled his first Admiral round 1, and held onto Flames of the Past for the entire game, in case he played the second. He got out 2 Force Storms, but I was able to Resistance Ring his Best Defenses to remove them. Late in the game I milled the second Admiral and he, couldn’t push the damage through. 3-0

Game 4: Vader/Greedo. This one is on the FFG stream. You can watch me screw up my resistance ring/bartering/no answer combo in the first round (foreshadowing future events). I worked hard to claw my way back into the game, and then I screwed up my sequencing at the end of the game. There was no reason for me to threaten the discard before using Flames of the Past on his saber and playing field medic. Given what he rolled, both of those weren’t enough, but i could have also lived with forcing a double pass before turning to the discard, going another round would have given me time to dump the 2 useless admirals in my hand and draw into removal that would seal the game. 3-1

Game 5: Han Droids. This was one of the matchups I didn’t want to see. I was on the ropes at the end of the game, but he claimed slightly early, I was able to get an admiral reset on Bail, and sneak a no answer that won the game. 4-1

Game 6: 4-Lom. This was the first of my games that threatened to go to time. He also embargo’d no answer early. The game was really back and forth. One round he put 10 damage into bail, but bail had 3 shields at the time. I was able to re-shield and hold on until I was able to complete the mill just before the clock ended the game. 5-1

Game 7: Palp/Jabba. This game is on the Hyperloops stream (here at about 25:00), and shows what the deck can do when everything goes as planned. I was able to remove both palp dice every round after he had enough upgrades, turning off fatal blow. Combined with milling his big damage cards, and vandalizing his force wave round 1, he was never able to push enough damage through. 6-1

Game 8: Poe/Aayla. This was another game that went perfectly as planned. We were both in the cut and without a lot on the line the game was a bit goofy. I milled/ used Flames of the Past/ or Vandalized all of his ships, drawing the exact card for the situation each time. 7-1

Top Cut:

I felt favored going into the game, but it wasn’t favored enough for me to make the mistakes that I made while Vika made few or none.

Game 1: I started out by missing 2 occupied city triggers round 1. I was still doing fine. I got all his cards round 1, but round 2 he opened with a Delve-Fist combo on his first action. I was still okay, until late in the game when I screwed up my resistance ring/bartering combo, exactly the same way I did on the FFG stream. He had 5 cards in deck at that point, which combined with the 2 occupied city triggers would have won me the game right there. (I know card orderings would have been different, but it likely would have been in my favor- it may have disrupted the delve-fist that he drew round 2). With over 30 minutes already elapsed, I conceded right there, instead of dragging out the game another 10 minutes into a likely loss. There is a case to be made that I should have played this one till the end, since there was no way we were going to get a full game 3, but I think I made the right call on the concession.

Game 2: I won game 2, but without drawing any admirals or rebellion leaders, so it was a slog. At one point in this game he didn’t notice a shield that was behind one of my dice and miscounted a lethal – which, as near as I can tell, was the only misplay on his part of the series, if you can even call it that. At the end of game 2 we only had 17 minutes to reset and play game 3.

Game 3: For the first time in the series, I got my combos together early, with a round 1 Admiral. I felt in command of the game the entire time, I was milling him quite quickly, and a side effect of getting admirals out, is that it allows me to re-shield to 3 at the end of each round. I felt better about my chances in that game that either of the first two, right up until the clock ended things, and we went to tie-breakers.

I hope none of this comes off as me saying “I would have won if,” and I’m not trying to take anything away from Vika. Because I made the mistakes I made, by definition he outplayed me. Congratulations to Vika for continuing to play well all the way to the final table.