My man Justin “I’m not the 3rd Magnuson” Anderson was one of the first Loopers, if not the first one, that I talked to at Nova 2017 for the first Nationals event. I went into that event solo, as far as I was only team member there is concerned, but I remember hanging out and and talking to people and i felt welcomed by Justin. As per usual, here is a photo to let you know what he looks like:

Okay, so he isn’t Keanu Reeves, but he had a trench coat (maybe pea coat but i don’t think so) in my memory and it’s close enough. Justin also made Top Cut at Nova 2018, but unfortunately he and I matched up and I was playing a hard counter to his list. Anyways, he did the unexpected, he took Vader to Nationals and earned a slot in the Top 16. Here is his report:

Picking A Deck

My name is Justin Anderson, but you’ll usually see me around the different Destiny discords as JekPorkinsRed6. I’m the one person that made it to top cut of NOVA with Vader/FOST. Getting ready for NOVA I didn’t have as much time to prepare as I would have liked to. The month of August is always busy at work, and with 2 kids and coordinating summer camps, I just didn’t have a lot of time for Destiny. I was interested in running one of the Droids decks, especially Chopper Droids, but I just didn’t feel like I would be able to get enough reps to be comfortable with it. I also knew that because it was one of the top decks, it was going to be all over the top tables, and in the mirror matches it usually comes down to the better player and I knew I wouldn’t have the reps to beat the top Droids players. I did feel really comfortable with Vader though and had a lot of reps from the previous metas, so I figured that if I could make it to the top tables I would have a better shot against the Droids lists with Vader than I would in a mirror match. I don’t think Vader has a terrible matchup against Droids and Jabba because he can consistently get a kill early in Round 2, which usually disrupts their game plan enough to give that shot at spiking a character on Round 3. I knew Vader has a pretty bad matchup against Reylo, so I decided I would roll the dice (pun intended) and hope I didn’t run into a lot of Reylos.

Selecting the List

The question was Bounty Vader or Vader/FOST. I’ve been a big fan of Bounty Vader, but unfortunately in the Droids and Jabba meta I don’t think Bounty Vader is viable. Overall, I think the bounties you get access to are just too slow, and the ability to play Desperate Measures is great but doesn’t make up for what you get access to in red. With Red Vader you get access to the two best Vader cards: Seize the Day and Reach the Stars. Seize the Day means being able to roll-in and resolve or resolve Niman’s special for max damage and then resolve that max damage. That usually means a dead character, and with Droids and Jabba that can mean killing a character with no damage on it. Vader’s dice, and all the saber’s in this deck, have at least 50% damage sides, so you are pretty much guaranteed to re-roll damage that you can resolve with Reach the Stars. You also get Fresh Supplies and Best Defense, both great red cards.

Once I settled on Red Vader, I knew the Hyperloops had a Red Vader list in their tournament prep channels that would be a good option to run. BobbySapphire had posted a Red Vader list that he and Reflex (Adam Cox) had been working on July 20th, and after looking at that list it there really wasn’t anything that I thought needed to be changed so I just ran the exact list. Having played the list at NOVA the only thing I would change is switching out Vader’s Meditation Chamber for another upgrade. I would go with another saber, probably a second Dooku’s saber. There were multiple games where I was able to just play Dooku’s saber to kill a character.

Playing Vader/FOST

My strategy varied slightly based on the matchup but in general I was looking for 1 piece of zero cost mitigation, 1 ramp card and 1 upgrade in my starting five. My preference was always Fresh Supplies since most of the time you are controlling the battlefield Round 1, and that opens up using Forsaken round 1. I always threw Seize the Day and Reach the Stars back because you really want those in Round 3 and later. The game plan was to try and get a 2 cost saber or Niman’s on Vader Round 1 sink as much damage as you can into one of their key characters to set up the early Round 2 kill. I also avoided using Fear and Dead Men Round 1 (although if I had faced Ewoks that would be different). Although you can get off 12 damage with it early, you aren’t getting one of the characters close enough for the early Round 2 kill. I would usually rather wait until Round 2 to use the Fear and Dead Men, so you are killing the character with it while pumping damage into the other characters. I’m also usually trying to save a resource or two in Round 2 so that I can start Round 3 with 3 or more resources. This sets you up for the Seize the Day and Reach the Stars spike plays. Managing resources and ensuring you can pay for the 4X side on Vader is important in this deck. Likewise keeping Vader alive until Round 3 is critical, so don’t be afraid to resolve the 2 Resource and 2 Shield sides on Vader. I don’t normally prioritize playing Vader’s Fist, that is more of the insurance plan if I think I’m going to lose Vader before I can pull of the combo and need something to close out the game for FOST.

What I Faced

Round 1: Satine Droids – Win

I got lucky this round and the person I was playing readily admitted they didn’t have a lot of experience with the deck prior to the tournament. Things went as planned, I killed R2 in Round 2, spiked C3PO Round 3 and there weren’t enough supports on the board for Satine Droids, so I was able to close it out without any issues.

Round 2: Reylo – Loss

In Round 2 I got paired against Jonathan Magnusson and his Reylo deck. This match wasn’t even close. I was able to get 8 damage into Kylo Round 1, but after that he was able to shield up Kylo and Rey and just start pumping damage into Vader. I lost Vader early Round 3 I think and that was all she wrote.

Round 3: Jabba/Wat/Sentinel – Win

This match was against Vika on the Artificery team. I focused on Wat in this match to hope to limit the impact on his PAs. I was able to kill Wat early in Round 2 and then just focused on Jabba. He couldn’t get enough supports on the board to threaten Vader and that was that.

Round 4: Chopper Droids Mill – Loss

My second loss on the day was to Chopper Droids, but the mill version. This was played by Eric Borghe another longtime member of the Hyperloops discord who is a great player. He was able to Convergence my Niman’s Round 1 and then a Vader’s Saber Round 2 and that just put me too far behind. He was able to consistently remove one of my Vader die and against a mill deck Vader’s PA is pretty much just helping their game plan. I was able to kill Chopper but just didn’t have enough to get to 3PO and R2.

Round 5: Chopper Droids – Win

This was a fairly standard Chopper Droids list. Again, the game plan worked well here, killed Chopper early Round 2, was able to kill R2 and put some decent damage into 3PO Round 3 and that was it.

Round 6: eJango/Grievous/Sentinel

This was against Jonathan Ray a great player in the Northern Virginia area, who always brings his own spicy deck lists. I was nervous about this match since I really had no idea what to expect. I focused on Jango first followed by Grievous after the Wheelbike hit the table. It got close, but I was able to finish things out with a couple of health left on Vader.

Round 7: Jabba/Wat/Sentinel

In this round I started with Fresh Supplies just to have an extra resource available, but they thought I had a Vader’s Saber in hand and ended up playing Separatist Embargo on Vader’s Saber. This match was close, but I was able to get Vader’s Fist on the table Round 2 and was able to resolve it all three times in Round 2. He ended up killing Vader in Round 3, but I had gotten him down to just the Sentinel by that point so Fist and FOST were able to finish him off.

Round 8: 3 Die Aphra

This was the crazy round where all the combos came together exactly when I needed them. Going into the last round of this match my FOST was dead and Vader had 4 life left and a Vader’s Saber. He had 3 damage on Sentinel and 2 Damage on Aphra. I had 5 resources to start the round and drew both Seize the Day and Reach for the Stars. I played Seize the Day and rolled 2X and blank on Vader and the +4X on Vader Saber. I resolve the 2X and +4X to kill the Sentinel, then pay one resource to roll in Vader’s die with the Vader Saber ability. The Vader die rolls 3X. My opponent removed the 3X, so I used Vader’s PA ditching A Sinister Peace, and rolled 2 Shield. He rolled one of his supports, and I played Reach the Stars, where I rolled 4Xr1 and blank, and then with my second reroll I rolled the other 4Xr1 and that was the game. On to the Top 16.

Top 16 – Chopper Droids (eChopper/eR2/C3PO) – Loss

In the Top 16 I was facing Kyle from ABG who had a much different Chopper list than what I had been seeing. His was super aggro and played Mr. Bones, which was a great call and was a great replacement for Chopper when Chopper died. My big mistake in this game was focusing on Chopper in game 1. In this list you really must kill R2 quickly or he just focuses to max damage every round. Game 1 was pretty close, but I ran out of removal when I needed it and when it was down to FOST and C3PO, I couldn’t find Fist and FOST couldn’t close things out on his own. Game 2 wasn’t really close, and he was able to kill Vader quickly. Kyle is a great player who didn’t make any misplays and that was that.

Conclusions

Overall, I had a great time and was happy with how I performed. I didn’t think I would actually make Top 16 but felt that I had a better shot with Vader then with anything else. That would be my biggest recommendation to anyone going to a high-level competitive event. If you don’t have the reps/feel comfortable with one of the Tier 1 meta decks, but you do have them with a Tier 1.5 or Tier 2 deck I would seriously consider going with the deck you are more comfortable with. Based on the level of play at the Top tables I can tell you I wouldn’t have made Top 16 with Jabba, Droids or Aphra because everyone was playing those decks better than I could.

I used to say it frequently, but I can’t put enough emphasis in how much I love the fact that he ran the deck that he was comfortable with and understood the most and took it the distance. Like sure, it isn’t the same because he didn’t win the event with Vader, but he ran “off meta” and took up a piece of the pie that is the top cut. Play what you know people, because going in with a deck you don’t understand and will fumble around with is just asking to get decimated. Many thanks to Justin for writing this and the “I’m not a Magnuson” nickname is because when they wrote his name on the prize sheet, people were trying to figure out who the hell the 3rd Magnuson was. I’ve actually had the pleasure of playing the Magnuson cousin who is the actual 3rd Magnuson last year at Nova. Share your thoughts and love in the comments and I’ll be sure to forward the info.

~HonestlySarcastc