Before I go into the event details I want to start off by thanking everyone that helped me play test or offered input on my deck list or the predicted Meta along the way. In no particulate order – Cody, Paul, Kyle, Edwin, Dave, Frenchie, Jack, Tommy, Joe B, and Harrison (Red_3). It took a village and I thank you for everything that went into this.

A Good Failure:

Worlds 2018 was a bittersweet event for me. It was my first major tournament outside of galactic qualifiers and coming off a regional win and regional top 4 prior to Worlds I felt great about my chances going into the event. I had prepared extensively but ended up finishing the event 3 and 3 and was eliminated on day 1. Fortunately, I was able to support my team-mate Paul on Day 2. I was also able to watch my testing partner, friend, and future team-mate Edwin Chen win the entire event. While it was great to be on hand for this it was very disappointing to have worked so hard and to have fallen so flat on my face. Walt Disney has a great quote about how failing at something early is often a good thing as it gives you a baseline for how you do not want to feel a 2nd time. 2018 Worlds was going to be this failure for me and I would use it as motivation to succeed in the future.

Preparation:

After worlds I looked back at what went wrong and targeted several areas for improvement. The first and most obvious was my deck choice. While Yoda/Hondo was a great deck prior to worlds, and one of my favorite of all time, it was a deck that had little room for improvement remaining and while other players were out trying to innovate I was sitting still with a deck that was to become victim to this innovation. I also determined not to burn myself out on Star Wars Destiny, at World’s I may have over-practiced in the weeks prior. I made it a point to practice as much as possible in the month prior to NOVA, notably spamming games on TTS with BobbySapphire and Red_3 to try and get an idea for what was going to be good in this meta. I also made it a point to back off my practice schedule the week of the event only playing three games live, and one day on TTS so that I would be excited to play the game when I got to Nova. Other areas for improvement between worlds and NOVA were physical and mental health, along with proper diet the days of and prior to the event.

Deck Choice:

After seeing Nick Cuenca’s Aphra/Snoke/Battle Droid list from Gencon I decided to try it out and was surprised by how efficient and smooth the deck played. It was being billed in the community as a deck that had caught everyone by surprise for Gencon and that the surprise factor had heavily influenced its success but after winning the Highlander store championship with his exact list on a fairly low number of reps, I saw a few things that could potentially improve the deck. At this point in time I was planning to play R2P2 at NOVA because I had been having a very high level of success with it. I was surprised to find out at my local near Philadelphia that Jack Broomell, Tommy Phillipe, and Joe Baiocchi from the Golden Dice Podcast were also on this list. Seeing other top players with the same opinions gave me added confidence that I was on the right track. I also looked back on my lack of innovation prior to worlds and started to think about how my R2P2 list might potentially be a repeat of Yoda/Hondo. It was not running either Yoda or Snoke, the two characters people were calling to have nerfed, which concerned me. Another important piece to the puzzle at the time was the input of local friend and also future team-mate Cody Williams (Manten), who I think is secretly one of the best Star Wars Destiny Players in the world although the secretly part will probably change by the time I am done here. I ran a few ideas that I had for changes to the original list by him and after seeing his high opinions on what I had proposed decided that I was all in on this list. Refining the list became a collective effort between all of us and I don’t think 8 hours went by without someone offering a proposed change or feedback on an idea. Having such a strong group of players all working the same list also helped to cut down on play testing time. It was nice to be able to offer an idea and have someone else playtest it, or have had another person in the group reason out why it would or would not work without having to test it myself. The basic idea of the deck is to build a strong board of supports using tech team and Doctor Aphra while using Snoke’s ability, 0-0-0 and BT-1 to overwhelm the opposing deck with indirect damage. Bubble shield, Force Illusion, and dangerous maneuvers coupled with a load of zero-cost mitigation are used to keep Snoke and Aphra alive for as long as possible.

Event:

Leading up to the event I had practiced every match-up I could think of and was feeling great about how I was playing. Before I get into the specifics I have to say that the tournament staff at Nova were amazing. They had a few small hiccups with the FFG software and printer issues on the final day and did a great job overcoming them and running the tournament in an efficient manner. Day 1 of the event was actually broken into two days, Day 1A and Day 1B, with the top 16 players from each day moving on. ABG had Edwin Chen and Dave Caruana playing on Day 1A along with the Golden Dice Guys and Cody/Frenchie so we went to watch and support them. I made it a point to myself that I did not want to do a lot of play testing that day because I felt prepared and did not want to exhaust myself on games that had no meaning or go on a losing streak that would break my confidence. I ended up playing a few friendlies with Joe from theHyperloops and had a good last minute discussion on a couple of cards in both our decks which led to a small last minute deck tweak which I think helped throughout the tournament. Jack, Cody, and Dave managed to make it through Day 1 into the round of 32 but unfortunately Edwin fell short at 4-4. Long live the world champ! With my play day approaching we went out for a couple of drinks and Korean BBQ with the team and a few new friends and had a nice relaxing night.

We arrived for Day 1B and I was surprised to see a much larger field and also that the entire Artificery team had arrived as well. The room was much more chaotic and full than on day 1A and it honestly threw me for a bit of a loop and my nerves started to kick in. I decided to go for a walk and get my mind off the possibility of failure in another big tournament when one of the most fortunate events of my tournament happened. A gentlemen named Thomas (I hope I am getting this name right) walked up to me in the hallway and introduced himself and his son as a fan of my Youtube videos. I had actually played his son in a top cut at a regional earlier in the year and it was amazing to hear positive feedback from a member of the community on my content. I ended up feeling great after this conversation and don’t remember being nervous again for the rest of the weekend. It really helped get my mind away from a nervous negative mindset and jump start my tournament. I spent my first round bye sitting in the lobby with Edwin and Cody relaxing until it was go time.

Round 1 – Bye – Win

Round 2 – Snoke/Executioner/Executioner – Anthony – After sitting out the first round I was paired against a deck that I had not play tested and found out I was going to be on stream. I had heard from someone around the room in the minutes leading up to round 2 that this exact deck had been running endless ranks so I quickly made the decision that I was going to take a direct damage approach to this match-up and try to knock Snoke off the table as quickly as possible. A great opening draw allowed me to kill Snoke quick and a sneaky Relentless Pursuit play to kill a loaded up Executioner sealed round 1 for me. Win 2-0

Round 3 – Snoke/Aphra/Battle Droid (Delve Version) – Eric – This is another streamed game and by seeing my opponents box before the game I was able to quickly deduce that this had to be a delve deck. The mirror match is typically a damage race and I fell behind early even without Delve coming out but fortunately I was again able to use Relentless Pursuit late in the game to snipe Snoke at an opportune moment which prevented an Aphra 2 indirect side from becoming 4 indirect. This enabled me to close the game and take the win. Win 3-0

Round 4 – Aphra/2x Executioner – Luke Magneson from The Destiny Council – Prior to this match I had never met Luke in person but had watched much of his content previously. I knew this was going to be a tough matchup but I thought that without Snoke my deck would be able to pull ahead in the long run. Unfortunately for me I had done very little playtesting on docking bay and made a mistake on turn 1 by allowing a claim that brought a bubble shield back into play and also potentially brought the wrong support back into play prior to the last turn. Long story short I needed to roll damage off two droid tank dice to get lucky and steal a win but didn’t and ended up conceding the defeat 2 damage short of victory. Luke ended the day in first place at 7-1 and was very deserving of this position. Loss 3-1

Round 5 – Snoke/Bazine/First Order Stormtrooper – Joe Colon from The Hyperloops – After losing my first match of the day I had a 45 minute lunch break to think about what the worst possible scenario from here could be. Little did I know that what I had imaged was actually better than reality as I was paired up to face a player that clearly ranks as one of the best in the world and has beaten me probably more times than I can count. Fortunately I had played a couple of games with Joe the day before and I felt fairly confident from my playtesting against this deck that I could take the win. The game really came down to a single turn where Joe had a pile of resources to empty his hand of vehicles and load his board but I was able to discard most of it with a Snoked discard side on Aphra’s dice limiting early damage from 6 resources that Joe had complied from Bazine and a chance cube. After this I pulled ahead in the ramp and won a close win after stacking up enough indirect to overwhelm his health pool. Win 4-1

Round 6 – Kylo/Snoke – Nick Obee (Tacster) from Knights of Ren – Just to give you an idea of how brutal the day 1B field was my reward for beating Joe was to play Tacster who is another player constantly in the conversation for best in the world. I had not play tested against this pairing much at all but I was confident that my deck was favored against almost any two character pairing due to its limited health pool. Several of the Artificery players showed up with this deck and it did great overall. It runs a holocron package and tries to use Force Wave, Force Throw, and Emperor’s Throne Room to try and beat down 3 wide decks while also slowly chipping away with Kylo’s ability and Snoked damage sides. The deck really wants holocron in its opening hand, but has the ability to get resources via Snoke pings as well. Tacster opened without a holocron and I managed to remove his only dice showing a resource with a hidden motive to keep him off an early force wave which is the only card that really scares me. Turn 2 he compiled a pile of resources but I was able to kill his hand with an Aphra discard side and never really let him have a ramp. A well timed Rise Again (more on that in the round of 16, Part 2) brought the game back but it was too little too late and I was able to win after finishing off Snoke and leaving an exhausted Kylo dead in the water. Win 5-1

Round 7 – Obi/Maz – Dan Rutkowski – Dan is a local that I have played with several times who also made the top 32 cut. I have great respect for Dan as a player and he was running the one two-wide deck I really did not want to see at this tournament. I had play tested this match-up against Red_3, and after probably 10 games came to the conclusion that this matchup was a total coin flip. I drew a great opening hand in this game including 0-0-0, BT-1, and Tech Team but unfortunately no mitigation. Dan punished this by opening with a VibroKnife into a 3,3,+2 hard roll meaning I was going to be taking max damage from turn 1 and be behind. My strategy after this was to try and build a massive board on turn 1 and 2 that would let me take 1 massive game winning turn. On turn 4 this was realized as I had in play 0-0-0, BT-1, 2x Hailfire Tanks, Ark Angel, and a Climate Disruption Array. Unfortunately Dan was ready for this plan and had Hyperspace Jump waiting. With 4 cards in his hand I took a 50/50 shot with a probe to potentially win the game but missed and the game moved to turn 5. Dan’s dice finally cooled off at this point and I was able to finally get the massive turn I had been looking for, killing Maz and leaving Obi-Wan with only 2 health remaining. That enabled me to play a podracer for 2 Hailfire indirect into a dangerous maneuvers for 1 that finished off Obi-Wan the following round. I believe this was the only game I played all tournament that went longer than 5 rounds and was incredibly close. After the game Dan and I agreed that we both had made several misplays but it was a great match and one of the closest games of the tournament. Win 6-1

Round 8 – Yoda/Cassian/Anakin – Jonathan Buss – My final game of the day which was the first game I was sure had no meaning other than bragging rights and it was against Jonathan Buss who I had first played in the West Virginia Regional back in January. I was feeling confident against this deck because a local from the Philadelphia area Peter Staulker has been running this on repeat at our local and I was confident that I would be able to make a strong showing against it after the sample size I had from local games. Jonathan started off correctly by flooding his board with shields from Anakin’s Podracer and Yoda specials but I was able to build a massive board of 0-0-0, BT-1, and Climate Disruption Array with the 2nd climate array coming down by turn 3. A well timed snipe of Yoda with relentless pursuit put me way ahead and after killing Anakin with 7 cards in my hand (2 extra from climate array) the final game of the day was a wrap. Win 7-1 – #2 Overall for Day 1B.

Overall Day 1B ended up being a good day for Team ABG. Paul managed to get through the day at 5-3 as the 12th overall seed but unfortunately Kyle barely missed the cut with a 5-3 record finishing in 18th place. We celebrated by hitting the roof top bar at the hotel with the entire team and the guys from The Golden Dice Podcast and were joined by Nick Cuenca from the Hyperloops. It was a fun time and we spent a few hours breaking down our deck and explaining to Nick the changes we had made to his version of the deck from Gencon, which I think he mostly approved of. More to come on that in Part 2!

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