When Way of the Force came out I was exploring different characters, I covered Luke, Snoke and Aphra (Click on the names to see the articles if you missed them.) With many results in, including North American Champs, the format might seem like it’s getting stale. Fear not! I think there is still plenty to explore and for those who like to do investigating I will bring you one of the characters I was intrigued to play with… that is of course… General Grievous, Fearsome Cyborg!

I picked Grievous mostly because I BananaLightsaber from SWDB make the finals of a store champs with Griev daddy. Before that I had taken everyone’s word that he was “unplayable”. If Sith Lord Vader wasn’t playable, why would Grievous be? Turns out that his power action is actually good. Here is the second place list I’m referring too.

This deck looks pretty straight forward, put stuff on Grievous and smash! Tactical Mastery will let you cheat a little and will allow you to resolve his power action but besides that it’s going to be hard to pull off that Hadouken with mitigation running around. I really liked the idea of being able to cheat in the power action to do some uninteractive damage. This list is fine but pretty straight forward. I was looking to do something a little more spicy, a little more weird. I went into the tank and came out the other end with this masterpiece. Well… its at least a piece of something.

This is the list I played this past Saturday and Sunday at two different store champs. On Saturday I ended up winning the store champs on tie breakers and on Sunday I scrubbed hard – that was the product of getting mom killed in round 1, me being sleep deprived and a little hungover. Saturday I played much better and I beat KRAP(Kylo Pryce) and a TaCos(mom and commandos) deck. When I was 3-0 I was paired against Snoke DJ and that went very badly for me. My draw was bad but he was also played two Deflects against me and when I was taking two and losing a die I knew I wasn’t long for the world. Thankfully RNJesus was on my side and I won on breakers since he had already taken a loss. To make sure that the match wasn’t a fluke I asked the guy I lost to if he wanted to play a friendly after the tournament. I lost again. Both times I was able to kill someone but the DJ damage allowed him to win the race.

In the end I think the deck is fine. On Sunday I think I would have won the game vs Mill if I hadn’t randomly claimed with my opponent showing lethal mill on the board while i had 2 Ancient Lightsabers showing – that Anakin Podracer modified resource side can actually be resolved when there is another resource on the table. His Cassian had two health and my grievous would of been fully loaded. My plan of playing Three Steps Ahead into a power action and then resolve dice was working perfectly. After talking with BobbySapphire he gave me some ideas for decks, the direction I wanted to take my testing in and the deck in general. I found that I was winning most games where people would attack grievous first but would lose when Mom died quickly. This made me realize that perhaps I wanted to try the following.

Without Profitable Connection its harder to make money so I’ve chosen Outer Rim Outpost as the battlefield. Mobilize was that perfect card that made money in round 1 and was also odd. It was awkward drawing it in subsequent rounds though so we won’t be missing that aspect of it. Having the better die with Grievous is nice but in actuality starting with Profitable is like starting with an extra die because you usually would be playing either a DH or a Hunting Rifle with that resource. Enrage and Crafted Lightsaber would be slam dunk two ofs but with them being even its harder to justify it. I added Force Speed which goes up in value here when Grievous has two dice. It probably should have been in there in the first place but again its even and those slots are highly coveted. Well-Armed is worse in this deck since you can’t guarantee having resources for a 2 cost and a 1 cost weapon so perhaps that card should go.

Part of the conversation that I had with Bobo involved me telling him that I really liked the consistency that Mother Talzin provided which led him to say “If you like Talzin so much why not try her with Dooku?” That’s why you have teammates folks. I have pretty much ignored Spooky Dooky because of the Kylo issue and while I do think that’s an issue its much less of an issue now. The auto focus of both characters seem excellent in a world where you don’t want to be discarding to reroll. Let those jerk faced mill players earn their wins! I suspect that the match up might still be bad but maybe with Chance Cubes, Force Speeds and Ancient Sabers I might be able to make it slightly favorable? It does stink that all those cards are even though.

I don’t want Rogue fans to be left out so I’ll leave you with a YOLO list that should be fun when it goes off.

I really want to put a Darksaber into play on Grievous with Friends in High Places and you know you do too. Friends in Low will protect friends in high and with your high value die sides you should be getting high in no time! There isn’t much in the way of interactivity with dice (we have four cards…) This is how I like to build decks, go extreme and see what works and what doesn’t and THEN make it a little more balanced… or not, maybe the consistency of degenerate things is good enough? I opted for the 1 cost weapons like DH and Hunting Rifle because they synergies with a bunch of things in this deck like Grievous’ power action, Well Armed, Friends in High Places and Imperial Armory. Being able to play a 2 cost weapon on turn 1 and claim to put a gun on at the end will set you up nicely for the next round.

Thanks for reading. I hope this was helpful. I might circle back to the Royal Guard version at some point since It might be able to beat mill and do all the things I want the deck to do anyway. Having guardian seems real nice vs Snoke and generally protecting Grievous. Take care and as always…

May you always be Three Steps Ahead!

-NJCuenca

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