September 2, 2019

Emperor Palpatine is widely regarded as the “big bad” in Star Wars. Though characters such as Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader may be more iconic, the Emperor is definitely the series’s ultimate antagonist.



And just like in the movies, it looks like Palpatine is back.



I was one of two players to make Top 16 at US Nationals with Palpatine. Another guy by the name of Jonathan Ruland piloted a red version with Conan Motti as Palpatine’s partner right into the top 4. I did not make it quite as far, but I took a yellow build featuring Watto into the Top 16 before very thematically falling to Ewoks.



Damn Dirty Murder Bears.

I will talk about the tournament in a future article that I will put out later this week, but first I want to talk about the deck and how I got to it. To begin with, here is the list I wound up running:

I actually “swerved” to the deck about 6 days or so prior to the event. I had been on a build of Han Droids (Elite Han 4/C-3PO/R2D2/Fateful Companions) and had been practicing and refining that for weeks, but was finding certain match ups miserable. Still, I did not feel comfortable piloting Jabba/Sentinel/Wat based on some prior reps I’ve had with it, and of the three droid lists, the aggro-style of Han was most in my wheelhouse. Not wanting to play Jabba and feeling like it or droids were the most powerful decks currently in Star Wars Destiny, I had resigned myself to playing Han, even though I felt like I’d need a lot of luck in pairings to succeed with it.



Then Euros happened.

A Great Disturbance in the Force



A guy by the internet handle of Cibor took a Watto/Palpatine build to the Top 32 of European Continentals, and I was immediately intrigued. I had played a lot of Palp 3, both when he came out in Convergence (when I paired him with Watto and then eventually changed to Wat) and when Spark of Hope came out, trying to make him work with Motti or Wat to take advantage of Admiral). I could never get the list to work for me though, so I had abandoned him prior to Gencon. Looking at Cibor’s list though, I noticed something:

Cibor’s Top 32 Palpatine List from the European Continental Championship

Cibor ran exactly two removal events, relying primarily on a defensive Force Power suite to survive and mitigate – and it was genius. One of the hardest things about building a Palpatine list is you have 30 slots and a TON of options. Not only that, but Palpatine begins the game very weak at a mere 10 HP and 100 percent of your game plan – ensuring he survives long enough to beef him up with Force powers or other abilities is a delicate balance with having enough threats in your deck. However, by achieving mitigation through ability cards, you not only buff up the Emperor’s hit points by playing them ,but you get to use them repeatedly, freeing up prime real estate in your list for not only bombs like Force Storm and Force Wave, but also “gotchas” like Fatal Blow.

Building the Deck – on a Clock

For those keeping track at home, I had been working on my Han Droids list for about 3 weeks. Day one of thinking about swerving to Palpatine was literally thinking about swerving to Palpatine. I had some ideas, and Cibor’s list was a starting point (though I knew I wanted to change quite a bit), but I didn’t give it any serious thought until I was showering that night.



Over the next few days, I went into hyper speed mode. I built a list, edited the list because it looked wrong, played a few test games, revised the list some more, went to work next day and messed with the list on my phone, played more test games, etc. It consumed me, but I think it had to with so little time left. Quickly, though, the deck became to come together.



I need to stop really quick here as well and give a shout out to Bobby Sapphire of The Hyperloops. I knew he had been tweaking a Watto/Palpatine list, and I messaged him during my frantic revising and we spent a few minutes looking at each other’s lists and talking it out. I will say this right now: Bobby’s help accelerated my deck refinement process, and I don’t think I’d have gotten there in time without being able to compare notes.

The first real draft of my deck (after I just started putting cards together and tweaking it before actually playing it) had a lot of the same cards that were in the final version but was also very much different.

The First Draft

The list above was my first foray into a current build of Watto Palpatine. It was not good, but I think its helpful to see the starting point and what I was trying to do to understand the choices I made and how the deck got to where it wound up.

The first thing you probably notice is my event suite was considerably different from Cibor’s. I ran more mitigation and FOUR economy cards. I also ran Vader’s Fists, which were one of the the reasons for the economy cards. Aside from Vader’s Fist being able to win games, my mindset was it also could close out games if Palpatine went down – after all, Watto is not going to win the game on his own.



I quickly found out a few things – I didn’t feel like I needed the economy cards to make the money I wanted to make. I also came to realize that as good as Vader’s Fist is, it was going against my game plan because I had to invest 5 resources to play it and often additional resources to resolve its die sides. In other words, I was spending money on things that didn’t allow Palpatine to achieve unlimited power.

The last point about the game plan is very important. The under performance of Vader’s Fist – and through it, realizing what the deck needed to do to win – lead me to a very important epiphany: I needed to play Control Warrior.

“Heh, Greetings”

I play a lot of Hearthstone. It is my second favorite currently active card game behind Destiny. My favorite class/deck in that game is Warrior, and in most of that game’s metas the pre-dominant archetype for Warrior has been Control Warrior, sometimes called Wallet Warrior. Both names fit – the idea of just about every iteration is to control your opponent’s board state until you can overwhelm them with your big drops and/or superior resources. (Wallet Warrior actually refers to the cost of the deck, but that’s because the best big drops are usually Legendary cards).



The hell does that have to do with Destiny, you ask? Yellow Palpatine is a control warrior. He wants to survive and be an immortal cockroach until he has amassed a board state that cannot be dealt with – peppering your opponent with multiple Force Waves or Force Storm dice until you beat them into submission. Then, only in the end will they understand the true power of the Dark Side.

Now, Destiny is a very different game from Hearthstone, so of course I am over simplifying it, but the concept rings true. Still, if you backpedal too much in Destiny you can become overwhelmed yourself (I will talk about in the upcoming Tournament Report article regarding a couple of my losses and how I could have improved the build). So you also need offense yourself – this isn’t a game where you just wait until you have 9 or 10 mana and drop a dragon and force your opponent to deal with it – especially given I just said I cut the dragon that is Vader’s Fist.

Emperor Palpatine rose to power in the galaxy behind the scene. He was subtle. He had dirty Sith tricks. And that’s what the deck needed. Tricks like Fatal Blow, which allows you to practically (or sometimes literally) one shot one of your opponent’s character’s once you’ve amassed a handful of upgrades. Cards like Free-For-All, a great way to turn all of your defensive upgrades into damage to close the game out. Cards like Force Focus that serve dual purposes, both making your bombs more consistent and acting as soft mitigation to your opponents dice.

Of course, you have to make room for all these toys. Over several revisions, I swapped out the Fists for Palpatine’s Lightsabers, which gave me a way to more quickly ramp my offense and without costing me anything in most situations. I cut the economy cards that I didn’t need. I trimmed down to one doubt and cut out any mitigation that wasn’t free. The list looked something like this:

I knew that wouldn’t be the final list but I needed to see how it ran to know what I could cut to make some final adjustments. For example, I knew I wanted Desperate Measures in – the card is really strong generally, and even stronger in this deck since you don’t mind putting damage onto Watto. Further, it is very important against Red Villain – Force Wave or Force Storm falling prey to Separatist Embargo is bad, and Desperate Measures is the perfect solution to take care of Separatist Embargo to clear the way for your bombs.

I also found that Forsaken was under performing, Skilled players could play around it’s play restriction with their dice, and it was hard to set it up with my dice, which if things were going well would be a massive pool of blue and yellow (After round one or two, depending on board state, you typically want to roll Palpatine out before Watto). I was weary to cut more removal, but I realized Dangerous Maneuver would serve a very similar role to what Forsaken can do, especially since it heals two and Forsaken at best hits a dice of two value – yes, there are times Forsaken can prevent more than two damage by taking a base side away from a modifier, hitting certain specials, preventing a resource from being taken to power a big side, etc – but the downside was making it an awkward card for me. Dangerous Maneuver, on the other hand, was almost always on – and if it wasn’t, it either meant Palpatine had no damage on him or Watto died first, both things that I was ok with.



Ultimately, I made the final changes seen in my tournament list: I cut one of the two Free-for-Alls (its really only good to end the game), I swapped the two copies of Forsaken, and I cut a Force Focus, which I had gone up to two on. (In the future, I’d consider running a second Force Focus instead of Niman Mastery to avoid the Soresu/Niman Form conflict, but that would only be in conjunction with some other changes I need to to make to boost my offensive capabilities, which I will talk about in my follow-up article).

The deck definitely has legs, but I also still have a lot of room to improve it. I will talk about that in the next article though, as I plan to reflect on the tournament, my performance, and if I’d play this deck again competitively in future.

WRITTEN BY:

MOOPHISTO