What a weekend. Not only did we get the kick off of the Galactic Qualifier season and new Spot Gloss cards, but Regional Season Kicked as well. It’s still very early, of course, and much will change over the winter as decks are found, explored, countered, and trashed, but seldom is there such an impactful weekend for our beloved game.

If you haven’t seen the new Spot Glosses, check these bad boys out:

FFG did a great job kicking off with cards that people actually play. Of these, Leia and Grievous are the most niche (which red legendaries aren’t?), but have still shown signs of greatness from time to time. Snoke, Luke, and Cassian are three of the best characters in the game who haven’t had spot glosses made, and DJ is right behind that tier and is likely just waiting for the perfect partner.

But, let’s get to the meta. The standard meta is far from solved, but there’s no doubt that there is a clear front-runner when it comes to decks to defeat in the meta. We put this as Enemy #1 in our gauntlet update last week, and we weren’t wrong. Thrawn Snoke is straight up dominating.

Thrawn Snoke has won 3/5 Regionals this weekend, has won two national championships, and were the two Standard Undefeated Decks at the GQ at PAXUnplugged this weekend. Hot Damn!

I’ve decided to showcase the list that Agent of Zion from Artificery.com ran to take down the Las Vegas regional. There are many like it, but this one is his. There doesn’t seem to be anything too spicy about AoZ’s list, it’s just very solid and piloted by a very good player – quite possibly the best player on the west coast. Normally I’d be able to say that this quality would get Zion to the top of the heap where others would fail, but Thrawn/Snoke is getting a lot of people to the top of the finish line too. My teammate and vote for best player on the east coast, HonestlySarcastc, went 6-0 with the list in the Standard GQ also earning a seat at worlds. I think top skill certainly helps with Thrawn Snoke play, and may be the trump card in the mirrors, so I would certainly get your practice in if thinking of taking it to your regional.

Thrawn Snoke wins by amassing a ridiculous amount of resources early, either spamming out four TIE Fighters or Fisting the opponent to death with the best support in the game. Its ability to crank out Battle Droids to up its health via Separatist Landing Craft is what truly puts it over the edge, as no other deck can easily up its health pool like this one can. Oh, and did I mention it can lock out your dice mitigation via Grand Moff and Jedi Temple, discarding three of your events per round? This deck doesn’t need to assemble Voltron to win, it just needs to do one or two of these things to lock you out of the game, overpowering its opponents with insurmountable advantage.

Beating this deck means bringing heavy damage combined with speed and disruption, which very few decks can muster. But one certainly can.

While there is plenty of doubt among the best players in the game as to weather Yoda/LeiaB is actually a solid counter to Thrawn/Snoke, there’s no doubt about its strength and place in the meta. While it didn’t get a ton of exposure in regional weekend #1, AoZ’s teammate from Artificery FlaccidBaron took down the Atlanta Regional with this beast.

Following in the special-chaining brouhaha that Hondo brought us is Boushh Leia who can steal resources like an Ezra and deal damage like a Thermal Detonator. Flaccid ran a very steady version focusing on Cunning and other two-cost upgrades with a damage dealing special side to “go off” by chaining Yoda into damage and then Hyperspace Jumping away twice per game. Twenty-one health is a bit suspect in the current meta so we see two copies of both Force Illusion and Second Chance here as well as 10 mitigation cards, though the deck wants to kill a character as soon as possible to truly speed up its clock.

Leia’s disruption can be a huge problem for opposing decks like Thrawn Snoke and other vehicle decks that otherwise don’t want to get outpaced in the damage race. Very similar to how Yoda Hondo ran, this deck can bulk up by getting all six upgrade spots filled very quickly if it pays Leia off, and if not opponents will see their life total dwindle considerably. With Yoda decks like this mitigation can cause a real problem, so I’m surprised not to see Friends in Low Places, but that card seems to always fall by the wayside early in the meta. I would expect it to start seeing some play as the weeks trudge on.

The third pillar is hard to define, as it comes in many forms. As we progress through the meta there could be upwards of a half-dozen of these style decks, and I’ve seen anything from Wedge/Lando2 to L337, Engineer, Engineer, but two stood out this weekend in the category of…

Pillar #3: Big Vehicle

eSnoke/eBazine/FOST

While this list did win a very small regional, an old compatriot of mine from my SWCCG days took it down: Brian Herold. Herold has been on the map before, and taken down some store champs if not regionals (if memory serves correctly). He’s a solid player that travels far and wide for Destiny, and even though he’s from Alabama, found himself in Maine to take down that regional. Herold ran this Elite Snoke, Elite Bazine, FOST deck made popular by HonestlySarcastc after stealing the idea for me.

This update does what Big Vehicles in the current meta aims to do, play Friends in High Places to spam out ridiculously strong supports and crush its opponents. We see this same strategy employed in this runner-up at the Las Vegas Regional who ran elite Snoke, Bazine, Ciena and Double Down to triple up on Chance Cubes and Firespray-31s.

While the Maine winner eschews the new Firespray P0em is all in on the Firespray’s Power Action spamming out Arc Casters and Triple Laser Turrets for free every round, then further resetting them with Ciena Ree when he can. This seems fairly busted, and with those dice having such high values it isn’t hard for this deck (or the Maine winner) to hit another big support off of FIHP.

The Maine list is much more all in on getting several big upgrades up via Delve and FIHP by packing 2 Umbaran Hover Tanks, 2 Hailfire Droid Tanks, and 2 AT-ST in addition to Planetary Bombardment and Slave 1, but either strategy seems strong. It’s tough to decide between the extra starting die and the extra copies of Cube and Firespray as better engines to run this kind of package, and then we’re further torn between a second Snokable Bazine die or Ciena’s reset ability; the choices!!!

Either way you run it, and like I said earlier, there are likely many more ways to pump out big vehicles with or without Friends in High Places, and we’ll see many more before the next set is out. However, there’s little doubt in my mind that this is the third pillar of the ATG standard format. This type of explosive start can compete with the resource piling of Thrawn/Snoke and doesn’t necessarily die to getting some early disruption from Yoda/Leia. I’ve been on the losing end of plenty of round one FIHPs and I’ve rarely, if ever, come back from that kind of a jump on board state. I expect this archetype to evolve even more so than the previous two and stick around as long as this meta is around. It’s very clear FFG and Lukas wanted to increase the presence of supports in the meta with this vehicle-themed set, and they’ve certainly got what they asked for.

A Step Behind

There are a few decks just a step behind these in my opinion, but ones to look out for: Jyn/Cassian and Vader/Greedo. You can read more about these in our Gauntlet Update from last week or on our Gauntlet Page.

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire