The following is a guest tournament report by Jeff Jeakins, Star Wars Destiny Canadian Nationals top 8 competitor. He played an innovative decklist of Palpatine, Galactic Emperor he has dubbed Naked Palp. If you go deep in or win a big tournament we’d love to host your tournament report! Send your entries to thehyperloops@gmail.com. If you missed yesterday’s post we featured a Thrawn/Mother Talzin tournament report that top8’d the Seattle regional.

While I’ve logged near 400 games in my local league of friends, Canadian Nationals was only my second organized tournament. I decided to play my own take on Palpatine, Galactic Emperor.

Who needs upgrades?

This deck is about protecting and resolving Palpatine’s very powerful character dice while controlling your opponent with a massive suite of removal/protection tools.

I found the standard Palp build to be too slow for my taste. This plays fast with a very high claim rate and uses Taking Ground to get the battlefield of choice.

It has some great sneaky plays, such as Swiftness into Use the Force for 5 damage or Alter for 10 damage!

People who play Palp and other mono blue decks get worried about Kylo2 decks but this has a healthy amount of grey cards to protect against his ability. Holding those cards until Kylo has died helps the match up quite a bit.

I have tested many cards in this deck and there were a few last minute cuts… such as Force Speed, Snare and Isolation. With Vandalize/Rend being well represented I like to deprive those cards of a target by leaving out Force Speed. It’s also nice to play more cards that directly affect the board state.

The deck is actually very cheap to put together too although that wasn’t a consideration when developing it. I think the most expensive card after Palpatine is Force Illusion.

The Night Before the Tournament

I drank too much wine the night before and slept terribly but on game day I was ready. The adrenaline was enough to propel me through the long day and I didn’t feel any mental fatigue.

Round One: (Sabine / Yoda)

I was crushing in this game and was feeling quite comfortable. Yoda was long dead and I had already gone through one of Sabine’s Second Chance and was left with only three HP.

Palpatine was still sitting pretty with only 4 damage.

Then came a terrible misplay. Instead of claiming, I passed my turn. He had two dice left on the table and I was hoping to mitigate after he rerolled. Sadly, he claimed. On the next turn I picked up my Rend, but it was too late. He went first, and blasted into 13 unmitigatable damage with Never Tell Me The Odds and Running Interference.

It was a painful way to begin, especially as it was avoidable. Now I would really have my work cut out for me. (0-1)

Round Two: (Boba/Phasma 2)

This began very badly and my opponent resolved heavy damage early. Resilient got my dice back at important times and I was able to turn it around with a big Alter play. (1-1)

Round Three: (Luke Skywalker – Unlikely Hero/ Princess Leia)

A very interesting deck that I had never seen played. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Leia played at all. I easily could have lost this game had my opponent had a bit more luck with her rolls. (2-1)

Round Four: (Aayla / Rey2)

I don’t remember too much about this match except one time my opponent resolved his Aayla special while I had only one Palpatine die in the pool on blank. My opponent believed turning my die would be optional but we called a judge and it was not optional, this got me another resource and 2 extra damage. It was unfortunate misunderstanding for my opponent and I was able to win the game later rounds. (3-1)

Round Five: (Talzin / Kylo 2)

Remember when I said there were plenty of grey cards for Kylo? I was able to use the 9 grey cards in my deck very effectively and was fortunate that my opponent whiffed almost every time by calling blue with Kylo and finding grey. (4-1)

Round Six: (Aayla, Rose, Ezra)

I discarded key vehicles with Palp’s die and removed others via claiming. He just wasn’t able to get the critical mass of vehicles down before death. (5-1)

Round Seven: (Boba / 7th)

Versus the reigning Canadian champ Jon Chan and there was only space in the Top 8 for one us so the pressure was on but I remained cool and collected. I rolled very well getting my guns and was able to control his Maul Saber and Boba dice with my removal cards. (6-1)

I did it! I made the Top 8!

But alas.. the work was not done. Now I needed to reserve my ticket for Worlds by winning the whole thing.

Top 8 vs Qui-Gon / Yoda

Game 1: I didn’t draw Resilient and my opponent was able to control my dice. I was able to kill Yoda but his Qui-Gon was almost untouched. My opponent handled me rather easily.

Game 2: I killed Yoda quickly and his draw/rolls weren’t as good. On a pivitol turn he rolled in big damage but I was able to Switness into Alter to hit for 10 damage and take down Qui-Gon for the win.

Game 3: I started very strong, I dealt 10 damage on turn one! In the end, I had him down to one hit point remaining.

Sadly my Palp die on the table was blank.

He had just hit me for a Synchronicity that got me down to 1 remaining HP. He had 2 shield dice that represented 1 damage using Qui-Gon’s ability and one melee side but my Force Illusion could absorb one damage. I just needed to reroll my die and hope for something… I needed damage I think because he still had an Ancient Lightsaber heal play.

Sadly it was all for naught as he had a second Synchronicity in hand that went right past my Force Illusion like a knife through warm butter. And thus, my match ended.

My opponent’s deck ended up winning the tournament (his brother made top 8 with the same deck) and I was very close but came up short. It was the first time I have played a game on a live stream so that was a cool experience. I had a really great time participating in the Canadian Nationals on Sunday. Doing it with an off-meta, custom brew involving Palpatine was just extra awesome.

Thanks for reading!

-Jeff Jeakins (owner http://cosmictoys.ca – selling Destiny singles and Star Wars toys!!)

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