I plan to do these reviews every week during prime season. I’m not sure if I will be able to next week since I’ll be flying out for Worlds Wednesday morning. When we get back I’ll probably do a Worlds review but after that it will be Prime time!

This past weekend’s results were exciting with a few different archetypes winning primes. The results were compiled by the I Rebel podcast – If you want to see them in full go here. Also, go ahead and support I Rebel in any way possible. I’m going to look at the winners archetypes first but then I’m going to look at every deck that won a match in top cut. This might seem like a weird way to frame it but some of the events only had top 4 cuts while others had 8s. To count all top 4s equally is unfair but if you win a match in top cut you prove that you haven’t only been beating up on random jizz but that you can hold your own against top competition.

Winners:

eChopper/eC3PO/R2: 2

eRey3/eKylo3/Temporary: 2

e4Lom/Grevious3/Messenger: 1

eJango2/Palp3/LSMastery: 1

ePalp3/Jabba3/LSMastery: 1

Plo/Chirpa/Ewok/Hoth: 1

Both Chopper and Reylo are not surprising. The biggest surprises are the Palpatine variants that were off the radar. Having access to Fatal Blow at all times when you are going wide on upgrades is a beautiful thing. Sadly these decks are easy to hate out as they are generally unfavored against Reylo (unless you draw timely hate) and any blue Villain fool can play a couple of Mind Extractions and make you a sad panda. Am I telling you to do this? No, but that doesn’t mean that people won’t. Escaping the Sea of Jizz without having to face that guy that really wants to beat Palpatine is a real fear. The guy who’s best friend beats him with Palp all the time and he just wants all the Palps to burn to the ground. Perhaps his Palp friend is no longer his friend at all, maybe he stole his wife, dog and truck. He knows his friend will be at the event and he wants vengeance. Don’t judge this man for playing 2x Mind Extraction, you don’t know his pain. It’s his journey and he’s just there to restore order to the Senate and his life.

When I updated the Gauntlet I wanted to put the 4Lom deck in there because I knew it was pretty good but because it hadn’t put up any results I felt I really couldn’t. If I get the list of the winner or a 4Lom deck wins this weekend I’ll put it up. The big issue is there is a lot of debate about the best way to build this deck and i don’t feel confident one way or another. The 4Lom deck won the biggest prime this weekend and defeated Reylo in the finals and with that evidence I can say it’s solid. I’d expect people to play some version of it this weekend at primes.

Lastly a Plo/Chirpa/Ewok/Hoth Trooper deck won a Prime defeating a Chopper deck. I’ve been testing variants of these decks and they have been disappointing but I think Chopper is a winnable match up and this deck could be a good meta call if you can get it to a place where it beats Reylo and Chopper. The former is the big issue since Rey’s special is really annoying and they can quickly kill the small characters that make Plo actually good.

Top Table Metagame

There is a difference between general Metagame and top table metagame. You have to balance them both when preparing for an event. Even if you didn’t think Reylo was a top table deck you can’t ignore it because you will have to play it. A better example of this is Vader. I might not consider it top table meta but I do have to plan for them. If you play a deck that loses to these kind of decks but beats the top table you might want to reconsider your choice. The inverse is true – if I have a deck that beats random decks but loses to good ones then I should question it.

Looking at the decks that won games in top cut is what I will be calling the Top Table metagame. This should give you an idea of where you should be focusing your testing time.

eRey3/eKylo3/Temporary: 5

ePalp3/eWatto: 3

Plo/Chirpa/Ewok/Hoth: 3

eChopper/eC3PO/R2: 2

eSatine/R2/3CPO/Armored: 2

eC3PO/R2/Han3/Fateful: 2

eChopper/C3PO/R2/Fateful: 1

e4Lom/Grevious3/Messenger: 1

eJango2/Palp3/LSMastery: 1

ePalp3/Jabba3/LSMastery: 1

eMace2/eSatine/Built: 1

eMaul2/Maurader/66: 1

ePoe2/eAayla/Armored: 1

eKylo2/ePhasma2: 1

eJabba3/Wat/Messenger: 1

eGrevious3/Aphra/Messenger: 1

Plo/Chirpa/Hoth/Hoth/Bitter: 1

Its no surprise that Reylo had the most decks in the Top Table Metagame. I’m sure it was the archetype that was the most heavily played and on top of that its solid. That’s a solid 18% of top table. I suspect that in swiss you’ll have to play this deck more.

Palp/Watto made it without a win but the deck is similar enough to the other Palp decks that I count them in about the same category (feel free to tell me off in the comments or on social media). That’s a solid 18% of top table. I suspect that in swiss you’ll have to play this deck more.

I’m truly surprised by the amount of PloBurn that made top table. I suppose you’ll have to introduce that into your testing gauntlet. On top of that there was a variant that uses Bitter Rivalry and Arena of Death that made top table, I personally think this is the better variant. I tested it about a week ago and its fine but not a meta breaker. Still has issues into Reylo. Part of the success of this deck is your opponents unfamiliarity with it and when people test more against it I think the numbers will dwindle. That’s 14% of the top table meta and but in swiss I think it will be lower.

The Satine Droid AR decks are interesting but they are worse than previous Satine decks and are more vulnerable to Desperate Measures. They are still solid and should be tested against but they aren’t the world beater they used to be as shown by the lack of wins.

Hero droids with Han and Fateful also had a couple of people in top table. This probably as good as Satine AR but probably worse than Chopper if you use this week as a metric.

If you were to count all of the hero droids decks into one category it would be 25% of the metagame. This is a pretty big amount but chopper is an upgrade deck while the other ones have a mix of support and upgrades.

Jabba, Aphra and Kylo2/Phasma decks were lightly represented and this isn’t surprising. I think those decks needed work going into this weekend. Kylo2/Phasma lost to its best match up in the finals which must have been disheartening for them. The match up isn’t as bad as you would think and if you really want to hate out Reylo you’ll need to think about your deck construction on top of just playing a character that is inherently good against them.

I would take these weekend’s results with a grain of salt since its just the first week and I suspect we will see some shifting. I think people will start playing more decks that are good against Reylo and you’ll see more of a balance. The same goes for Palp, its going to be scary for Palp players out there. If Palp has another good week you’ll have to pucker your butt cheeks extra tight if you want to bring it to worlds.

Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any comments on here or on social media. Take care and as always…

Never Steal Your Friends Wife, Dog and Truck…That’s Just Rude.

-NJCuenca