A few weeks back I started to get serious with my prep for the Perth Regional Championship, after a failed attempt to make eDr. Aphra/Ciena/Dark Advisor droid swarm a thing (it was close!). This was right in the middle of the Poe2/Hondo craze after it won Portland. I noticed two things about that tourney, firstly Agent of Zion’s Yoda/Hondo deck had gone largely unnoticed in both our local meta and online and secondly that I had massive room to make improvements with the starters release and the flexibility to be able to attack an expected but varied meta.

The Deck

Here is the list I ended up playing after a few weeks of testing and one near miss moment where I nearly decided to switch to OTK, which luckily my testing partner Blake (The Aussie National Champ) talked me out of.

A quick rundown of the updates from Zion’s list.

-2 Force Throw /+2 Force Wave

The main driver here was how hopeless I felt against vehicle lists, do everything right then they destroy you round 3 or 4 regardless. Force Wave turns that around in a big way.

-1 Defend/ -1 Double Cross/ +2 Entangle

So many decks require you to remove 2 dice in 1 action, the rate on Entangle isn’t as efficient as Easy Pickings but it’s a lot less restrictive.

– 1 mislead / +1 Vandalize

I never removed an upgrade that cost more than 2 but Vandalize was live in every match. Well worth the price of admission and against Mill/Vehicles it’s critical to remove their supports. It’s also necessary when you decide to go for the mill win (yes you can!) to be able to hack off Ancient Sabers.

-2 Hasty Exit/ -2 Dangerous Maneuver / +2 Force Speed/ +2 Impulsive

Speed is the name of the game here. Without the speed you have no way to prevent an opponent just removing your big special die like Light Bow or Cunning. Without speed as well if you focus to 2 Hondo specials chances are they are going to make some money to pay him off which significantly impacts your ability to kill a character. These cards gave me the choice between dealing damage and resource generation that this deck had been missing. These are the cards to use to make the people that say they can “play around Hondo” eat their words. Speed also helps you get your character die off the table making Frozen Wastes very hard to use against you, more on that later.

-2 Unbreakable / +2 Rebel

This card seemed like a no brainer to me but a lot of people have been super surprised by its inclusion. It was easy to set up as 4 Character dice and 6 upgrade dice have discard faces so there is nearly always something available. It also lets Hondo have 4 Second Chances instead of 2 but more often than not was entangle or Easy Pickings 3 and 4. The way I saw it Unbreakable is situational removal and Rebel is that and much more.

-1 Throne Room / +1 Frozen Wastes

I was expecting a fair amount of Throne Rooms at my regional and I had just cut a truck load of situational die removal. Given that I love shields in this deck and that with special chains I super speedily resolve my character dice Frozen Wastes was the obvious choice. I won my bf roll 1 time in the entire day so I received shields a lot which is a great upside.

The rest was all solid with a place, Lone Operative makes the mill plan real, while Riposte makes your shields deadly against mill itself, and it doesn’t hurt being able to play it 3 times with Rebel.

The Tournament

I took the deck against a field of 23, our local competition is in my opinion deceptively strong for its size and the meta is always varied. There were only 4 decks that were using the same characters and only 1 of those that had more than 2 representing them (Boba/Phasma2 had 3). So it never felt like a sure thing despite my confidence that I had brought the right deck for the meta and more importantly the right deck for me.

Round 1 Vs 5Die Mother

I feel that we have the leg up in this match up if we don’t let Bala reset. Mother is still the primary in my eye for most of the games I play as she is what will consistently switch to damage and enable Bala to reset.

He won the BF and gave me the shields (which I always distribute 2 to Yoda and 1 to Hondo)

He put down a Holdout quickly got Bala in and resolved a Logistics, he then proceeded to follow the normal game plan of getting to 7 die R1 and put an X-8 on Mother. I had countered by removing some damage and getting a Cunning down. By the end of round 2 Yoda was on 8 damage but I had killed mother and set up a nice bank roll. Yoda did not take another single point of damage for the rest of the game between shields, Illusion, removal and a Jump. Meanwhile Force Wave and Cunning did its thing and hammered the rest of his team away.

Win 1-0

Round 2 Vs Poe2 Aayla

This matchup has been 50/50 for me with maybe a slight edge to Hondo in testing.

The opponent played an Heirloom turn 1 with Reaping the Crystal which left money in the bank to pay Hondo. I managed to disrupt and apply 6 to Aayla who had the weapon but he hit me back for 5. Round 2 came with one of my four identified mistakes of the day (the other 3 were all in the finals :P) I had a Cunning special and he managed to reroll to 5 damage with Aayla after I had entangled his Poe die and Vandalized his Poe’s blaster. In my turn all I could see was claiming to remove an Aayla die leaving me at 1 or trading the damage dropping Aayla to 1. I chose to trade and completely missed that I could have used Cunning on Aayla’s special to blank the 3 on Heirloom and still deal that 3. Yoda held on killing Aayla with an Obi Saber and then getting Poe down to 2 life but the Ancient Saber looping prevented me from milling or killing him.

Loss 1-1

So not feeling great after figuring out my mistake which was 100% responsible for my loss but it’s very important not to let that affect future matches. You can only climb from where you are and can’t ever climb from where you could have been.

Round 3 Vs Obi Maz

This match up I feel favored in from testing. Obi is a little bit resource hungry and Vandalize on the right weapon really slows them down, not to mention Obi being a prime Easy Pickings target.

This one was over fast. R1 I managed to remove both Obi dice and Vandalize his ancient. While also placing 6 damage onto Obi. The Following turn he had a Shoto Vandalized two 3 melees sides Picked and 3 more damage on Obi while I also got Cunning and an Obi saber down. The 3rd round saw Yoda roll out with speed and Hondo received another Cunning. Impulsive was played on Force Speed giving me 3 actions, first was to roll in Hondo, second was to use Yoda 2 focus and Hondo 1 focus to turn 2 Cunnings and Yoda to special, third action was to resolve specials doing 6 unblockable to Obi and 3 to Maz with another Hondo special for good measure.

Win 2-1

Round 4 Vs Palpatine

Felt good about this match up with my shields and survivability.

Turns out that feeling was little bit over generous to my deck as Palp still hits hard! Not only that Endurance plus Resilient made it hard to stick removal and he basically refused to roll like symbols for my Easy Pickings. Long story short at the start of r3 I had decided to go to the mill plan. He had a 6 card start, played an early dark council which drew more cards and the Resilient and Endurances lead to more rerolling. He also played a Premonitions after which managed to discard the second copy so he was down a lot of cards. The mill plan meant I was overwriting my Light Bow with Lone Operative and started to heal, I also used his battlefield to move Lone Operative to whoever had damage and healed it back up on the next turn. By the time Cunning came down and I started milling 3 a turn with Yoda specials he realized that mill is very real and the rerolls dried up. Yoda died but Cunning Lone Operative Hondo who also had a Second Chance could close by healing over and over and resolving the last 3 discards needed to take his hand.

Win 3-1

Round 5 Vs BROTK

Match Recorded- https://www.twitch.tv/videos/229819440?t=03h34m32s

Piloted by my testing partner and Australian National Champ, we had not really tested vs each other much in these decks preferring to spend the majority of our time testing against archetypes we expected to be in more numbers. Though we expected it to be in my favor as OTK doesn’t deal well with my disruptive playstyle.

It was over really fast for those who didn’t watch the video. The only upgrade he got down was Vandalized and I went hard for sister. He had to spend all his money on mitigation or paying Hondo. Turns out it’s a really good match up for me.

Win 4-1

Top 8 VS Aayla Vehicles

Earlier in my testing this match up was very rough, I made some tweaks, bringing in the second Vandalize and Force Wave and hoped for the best.

G1

This was decided quick smart, an early Force Wave and Cunning meant the opposing team melted so fast we really couldn’t tell what type of match up it was with my changes. I also pretty much immediately Vandalized his Rally Aid meaning that his vehicles were entirely manageable.

Win 1-0

G2

This one was close. I got another turn 1 Force Wave which he Vandalized giving up Rose and Ezra’s dice for the privilege but both of us ended up slowing. I didn’t hit Vandalize for his Rally Aid for a while so around r3 the vehicles started to spit out. It got to the point where I had 3 life on Yoda and only 1 on Hondo and we lost the crowd of watchers. Between Second Chance, Lone Operative, Cunning and Illusion however I ended up with Yoda on full life and Hondo still on 5 life.

Win 2-0

Top 4 Vs Zeb Rey1

Match Recorded – https://www.twitch.tv/videos/229819440?t=05h58m10s

Going into this match I felt some trepidation, I know that Zeb can roll big but at the same time his removal is nearly all useless on me. From testing I know the key is being proactive with shields and Second Chance

G1

I blistered out the gate with a double Force Speed Cunning opening hand. I got Fair Traded The big thing here was chopping Zeb down through Second Chance, by Rebelling for an impulsive on a Force Speed for the 3 actions then the activate, focus, resolve specials trick did just that.

Win 1-0

G2

This very swiftly followed the pattern established in game 1 except this time he opened with double Running Interference I managed to Vandalize one straight away and then made sure to have Second Chance and Illusions down early. Again the Impulsive on Force Speed let me seal the deal past Second Chance coming down with a surprise 6 damage.

Win 2-0

Finals Vs Quigon Aayla

Match Recorded – apologies for the choppiness – https://www.twitch.tv/videos/229908873

Quigon doesn’t normally make me fuss too much but Daniel is our local Quigon Master. He plays Quigon in every pairing (looking for a Lobot build Daniel!) and is super comfortable with him. The key to beating Quigon is always keeping his shields off, followed by trying to limit his upgrades.

G1

This Game was actually terrible for me, I didn’t get an upgrade out until Round 3 but still managed to kill Quigon and challenge Aayla, here was my second mistake of the day as well, I could have removed 2 of 4 melee but I wanted him to commit to Hondo and then for me to play rebel into Second Chance. Go to play it and I’m short a resource, Oh well! Like I said before you have to keep your head in the game and don’t beat yourself up, always play from where you are.

Loss 0-1

G2

Game 2 was a lot more like normal, I built a commanding board state off a R1 Light Bow and through judicious removal managed to keep either of my characters from dying by putting down a super early Second Chance and Force Illusion.

Win 1-1

G3

This was the where the final 2 of my 4 mistakes occurred. Let me take a moment to point out we were approaching 9 hours played so thinking started to go out the window and I was just relying solely on the prep and the plans Blake and I had drilled. The game had started out somewhere between game 1 and game 2. Which is good for me because it still meant I was getting upgrades and set myself up. Mistake three came when autopilot was telling me I needed another special to kill a Quigon who was at 1 life with a shield. I totally ignored the 2 damage on the Light Bow which then got guarded. Quigon went down anyway next turn but the game would have been a lot safer if I bothered to count! Mistake four came a little bit later when I went to rebel Vandalize his Shoto, look through my discard and it’s not there (damn it must have been last game) so I choose impulsive and then play it on a special to turn another die to a special then resolve specials??? Yeah I don’t know either, but at least this one didn’t slow me down! The game closed out with a few special chains into Jumps or removal that Aayla couldn’t deal with.

Win 2-1

The Final Summary

It was a long day and mistakes were made but a strong deck, strong prep, and a strong positive attitude (mostly) can help get through that. The deck performed really well in an open meta field with the standout cards for me being Cunning, Impulsive, and Rebel. There were some situationally great cards too like Lone Operative and Force Wave that helped tremendously against big damage decks and 3 characters. Riposte as a 1 of earned its slot, more than once I was able to finish a character on low life before we went to the next round in which they certainly would have drawn Illusions and such.

For what I would change going into rivals I would be cutting Mislead and 1 Overconfidence for 2 Hidden Motive. Overconfidence was my least played removal card and doesn’t have the raw power of Pickings and Entangle but still is a nice 1 of for those times where Hondo is dead and you happen to have a rebel in hand and need to affect 2 dice! The rest of the changes are very meta dependent. I would keep the Vibro Ax and Force Throw in mind at all times for possible substitutions depending on what decks you expect to see and Scruffy Looking Nerf Herder is a always on my list for pinching tech cards against OTK, Mill, and Sabine.

I hope you fine people enjoyed my report, I found it very therapeutic to relive the glory in word form. Please feel free to critique my work, don’t worry I can handle it, nobody can say anything that I haven’t heard 3 times from my wife after she has played against Hondo. I am also happy to answer any questions you may have.

Until the next time (hopefully there is a next time).