About two weeks ago I started building decks with Doctor Aphra and Way of the Force cards, if you didn’t see that article you can check it out here. I felt 0-0-0 and BT-1 provided some of the best things I could be doing in the format and I really wanted to explore that as fully as possible. Most of the team was on mill and I assumed many would be on it and the 2 wide variety which is favored in the mirror. I felt I was in a pretty good place because I was beating all manner of mill with this list:

It may be that this is the more consistent Aphra deck. Nightsister is excellent vs Mill as it disrupts their plans and fixes your dice – pinging Anakin’s Podracer after the focus and fixing your damage without having to use cards is impactful in that match. Combine that with Climate Disruption Array and 000 gets you a lot of non dice damage and I was feeling favored.

Two days before I had to leave this was beating mill but was losing to Cad Snoke. I didn’t want to go into the tournament with a deck that was very bad to that since I felt I would have to beat it in order to win (I was right although many dodged it.) I think this list could of badly used Force Illusion since they will certainly be going after Doctor Aphra first. That will certainly make the match up slightly better but by how much I don’t know.The match up might be a question of do they “Discard 4 cards from your hand” in a crippling way? The counter play is to get BT-1 down and empty your hand as fast as possible but that’s easier said then done when you want to get value from your characters before they get killed by Cad.

I had to face the fact that the deck wasn’t quite there yet. I had mentally moved on from Aphra either playing Rose/Jedah LTP or Drive by Shooting. The day before I flew out I realized that I hadn’t tested the Aphra, Snoke, Battle Droid deck we had talked about briefly on our pre GenCon podcast and that I would try it a few games vs Cad Snoke. BobbySapphire was my punching bag for a couple of games I was able to win both. His draws were admittedly below average and he never drew the wombo combo of cad ambush cheat into making me discard 4 but it felt better, I felt I was ahead when that didn’t happen.

I was also worried about the Drive by Shooting match up and I played Bobby two times and won both times. This made me feel like the match up was at least 50/50 and I was fine going into the event with that because I felt I would have the edge since most of my opponents wouldn’t know what was going on with my deck.

I arrived at the house and tested vs Kylo/Snoke, in one game killing both of his characters on turn 2. In the words of DrBear “I have no idea how to beat your deck.” That was the sort of feeling I had about the Kylo match up, I felt it was very favorable. To be fair the team felt that their Kylo Match-ups were favorable as well and I wasn’t positioning myself diffrently in that respect. I do think that Kylo/Arindha is tougher in the hands of good pilot for mill but I could be wrong about this. I suppose the biggest positional advantage in comparison was my match up vs 2 wide mill – there’s being bad while mine being good.

The moment of truth came when I played versus Outrun playing 3 wide mill and I lost two in a row. In between games I decided to sneak in a couple of Probes over Partnership since I felt that card was better in that match up and I always want to keep the testing somewhat honest. What I mean is that in the wild your opponents won’t know your list but in testing things get a little inbred and people start playing knowing what is in your deck. Suffice it to say that the Probes were good and if it wasn’t for a sub-par start I felt like I could have won the match. At that point I told Mike that I would play with no one cost mitigation or Partneships and that I would play Probe. He was on board with Probe as he thought it was one of the best cards against mill and generally a solid choice. Shane wanted to play games but after losing two games vs mill I didn’t want to feel super discouraged going to bed. I went to bed feeling pretty good, I felt the surprise factor plus my testing would give me a pretty good edge. I registered this beauty.

Mike had tried talking me into playing Torment and I set to do that until I did some test draws and had a change of heart. I added a 2nd Kylo’s Starfighter because that was the only reasonable card Joe had on him. That 2 solid damage side is really good at finishing off a character but there are options for things in that slot like a 2nd Ark Angel, an Astromech or a Back-up Muscle. I knew I would be mulliganing aggressively and I wanted to have solid aggressive cards that weren’t droids since I knew I wouldn’t always draw them. The list has no 1 cost mitigation, as someone put it in our group “One cost mitigation is so 2017.” I wouldn’t mind getting something hard like a Best Defense or Flank in there.

Round 1

I opponent didn’t show up until after the judges took the slip. He said he woke up feeling sick, I felt as bad as you can feel after winning a match but there wasn’t anything to be done. 1-0

Round 2 VS Yoda/Hondo

I had actually tested very little vs this but it became apparent that the small health pool would be his downfall. He was only able to get one upgrade down before he started chaining Hyperspace Jumps. I was slightly worried about going to time but I was able to close it out before that was an issue. 2-0

Round 3 VS Yoda/Hondo

Yeah… this one was closer since he was able to get Cunning and Force Wave down. He went for a hail Mary play after rolling badly but I had a second Hailfire Tank Droid to finish him off with the triggers. 3-0

Round 4 VS Kylo/Snoke

This one was quick and dirty. My draw was great, he missed with Kylo a bunch and the indirect got him. 4-0

Round 5 VS Kylo/Snoke

As you can see my pairings were very strange. This one was closer because he got a good draw and hit a couple of times with Kylo. The key play was when he took his 5th resource to play Rise Again but I had a Probe and made him discard it. 5-0

Round 6 VS HonestlySarcastc with Drive by Shooting

I felt good about this match up but not good playing against Joe. He played 2 Cautions which let his guys live for a while. I also drew a couple of Crash Landings that stranded some modifiers. In the end I took a line to win and it didn’t payoff. 5-1

Round 7 VS Cad/Snoke

Well… here it was. I hadn’t seen many around but I suspected that someone would bake their Cad dice and get deep with him. All I needed to do was not get my hand discarded in a savage way and I would be able to pull it off. My hand was insane having both 0-0-0 and BT-1. He won the roll and chose to play on his battlefield. First action he activated Cad attaching an ambush gun, rolled… 2 discard and a 2 range, played Truce and used the Snoke Power Action to make me discard 4 cards… the discard hit both 0-0-0 and BT-1. Not like this, not like this….

The last card left in my hand was Dangerous Maneuver which I used to move damage around and draw a card, it needed to be the best card for me to have a chance and it… was… BT-1! Little buddy wanted to join the squad so bad that he tutored himself to the top of my deck! The BT-1 activation yielded another card which was a Force Illusion. I could have used the Illusion for a reroll but I opted to play it on Snoke instead. That was a wise decision because at the end of the game the Force Illusion blocked 7 points of damage from a heavy modifying range assault from Cad. This was the game that I wished had been on stream because it was epic, we both got lucky and it sort of equalized in the end. I somehow escaped with a win, it was starting to feel like my day/weekend. 6-1

Round 8 VS Mother Talzin and 2x Mandalorian Super Commandos

Aurelio was a great guy and was the other person playing Mom and Mandalorians in top 32. I felt this was going to be a tough one and I was right. My opponent chose his battlefield which was Rift Valley. That card was phenomenal for him and should definitely be considered going forward if you are playing Mom and Mandos. I felt I also got slightly lucky in this match up because on the last round of the game I rolled 6 damage off of an Ark activation activating BT-1 and Hailfire Droid. If I had rolled below that I would have been dead a couple of actions later. 7-1

I was really pumped to have gone 7-1 and was extra pumped that I didn’t have to play before top 32 like some with a 6-2 record. The squad showed up and made the right call playing mill. It was stated that decklists would not be shared before matches and that all top 32 matches would be best of 3. Out of all my teammates I was the only one happy that they weren’t sharing decklists, the surprise factor of my deck and cards like Probe definitely gave me some value. My team informed me that I was on the side of the bracket by myself while all of the other loopers would have to beat each other up to get to the finals. While unfortunate for them that was some additional great news for me. At some point I was going to stop running hot…right?

Top 32 Round 9 VS Cassian/Yoda

I had tested this match up before and I knew this was better for me than 3 wide to the point I felt favored…especially with opponents not knowing my list. Things went according to plan and this was the match that Climate Disruption Array shone brightest. I did a lot of out of combat indirect and his small health pool couldn’t outlast all of that indirect. I won the first two games. In the words of my opponent “that indirect sure does add up fast.” It sure does! 8-1

Top 16, Round 10 Kylo Ren and Arihnda Pryce (KRAP)

This one was somewhat by the numbers. I outlasted him and eventually overwhelmed him with indirect. I won the first two games. 9-1

Top 8, Round 11 KRAP

There they go playing that KRAP again! I got really paid off with my deck choice and played Kylo four times that weekend. This was certainly my hardest KRAP match and lost game 1 to Kylo hitting on his ability more times than usual. He did such a great job naming the cards in my hand that at one point I turned around to make sure no one was feeding him info. He kept switching up the color naming and was right a larger percentage of the time. Game 2 and 3 went according to plan and his Kylo didn’t hit as much and his rolls weren’t the hottest. At the end of the game he said he was naming colors assuming that I would be mulling for yellow cards and that after I played a bunch of yellow cards he switched to red since he figured I was evenly split between those two colors. At one point he named blue and I had a Force Illusion in my hand, what a stone master! That was some sound reasoning and in hindsight he wasn’t cheating, just following his plan. That’s very solid play on my opponents part who was also a super nice guy. 10-1

Top 4 VS Mom and Mandalorians

Game 1 was pretty close even though he killed Aphra on turn 1. In the penultimate round I played Climate Disruption Array and activated because I was going to be able to do enough damage to race him to death with the help of an average Ark Angel roll on the following round. He unfortunately rerolled his force Push die to 2 damage and that messed up my racing math. he was able to kill my Snoke before I could kill Mando and Mom.

Game 2 we both mulliganed 5 cards and I got served up what was the worst draw of the tournament hitting no droids and only hitting Slave 1. I probably should have taken his battlefield but if I don’t hit a resource I won’t be able to do anything offensive. I got crushed that game and suffice it to say it was a pretty anticlimatic way to end the tournament. Well played on my opponents part! He was a super solid player and deserved to be in the finals. 10-2

I was upset after the loss but perked right back when Reflex took down the event and milled the Mandos to death in three really intense games.

Not sure about Aphra going forward. I really disliked the feeling of having to mulligan 5 cards which I had to do often but I went in with the mentality of “this is a synergy deck and we have to play to that.” Kylo’s Starfighter are very good vs Mono color decks and I was keeping those if I had a hand that could compete in those match ups. Against the three wide decks you have to go for your best draw and if you get it you’ll get paid off but I’m not sure its worth it to take that risk. It’s possible that Climate Disruption Arrays should be Back-up Muscles since they are better vs everything that isn’t mill. If I had that in the semi-final round over Climate I would have had a much better chance of winning that game but you do lose percentage points vs mill if you make that switch although it is fine vs them.

Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think about this deck in comments or on social media. And as always…

Evil C-3PO > Good C-3PO

-NJCuenca

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