We’ve been derelict in our duties to update the gauntlet lately, but no more! Today I take a look at the decks you need to be prepared to face at your upcoming national championship tournament, and several are imminent. Over in my domain we have the Canadian National Championships and US National Championships at NOVA back-to-back over the next two weekends.

Because it’s been a while since we did any work on the Gauntlet I want to make a few things clear. The list of decks I’m about to drop will each have some comments by me specifically about testing AGAINST them. That is the main concern of a Gauntlet, being prepared for what you’ll face. You might think there are more lists that should be on this list, or ones that you don’t think you need to test against at all; that’s all on you – all I can do is share my opinion. You know your meta, your playskill, and your experience in a unique way, and what you need to do is use that knowledge and understanding you best prepare yourself for your event.

Below are the lists I think you absolutely need to prepare for if you want to make the top cut of your national event. Thanks to YOURDestiny.dk for ALWAYS having the decklists we need, but not the ones we deserve.

Also, you can check out all of the streamed games from Gen Con at this playlist, the games feature many of the decks below facing off against one another. A valuable asset!

Ewokalypse, wow

This is the list that my teammate Serdapi and I ran at Gen Con, which earned me first place. I still think this is close to the best version of the list, though I would 100% put Convergence in the list for both testing with and against Ewoks. Here are some tricks for testing, if you’re running a yellow deck, or villain yellow specifically, you can cut the Crait Speeder for Convergence, as a good Ewok player likely won’t give you a meaningful chance to use Desperate Measures to blow up their Crait Speeder (unless they want you to). If you’re testing Reylo, cut the podracer as most Ewok players will auto pull the Crait Speeder against you since you can’t remove it from the table.

I thought Ewoks would go away, but both at the Sydney GQs and German Nationals it showed up in FORCE. Though these events were small, Ewoks made up a large portion of the meta. They were the most played deck at each event, making up a whopping 25% of the German Nats meta and 50% of its top cut. The time has come to tech against the fuzzy murder bears. You can read about how to do so via my article from last week or check out The Garbage Will Do podcast who also waxed ewok genocide two weeks ago.

For more information about my list and how the cards work in conjunction with one another, check out my Gen Con Tournament Report.

Get To The Chopper Droids!

This is the list that Jonathan Magnuson piloted to top 4 of Gen Con and Gerrit Backes subsequently took to a German National Championship this past weekend. The list is very tight. I swore Andrew Rothermel played a slightly different list but I can’t seem to find it. I know he at least had 1x Chewie’s Blaster which I think you might want to test against. This deck got a lot of hype following Gen Con, and for good reason; the deck is very, very good. Even though Ewoks have inexplicably increased in number, I would absolutely expect to have to face this deck at your national championships, if not more than once. I know it’s the number one deck I want to know how to play against for the upcoming season.

There’s a lot of nice content on the deck; you can check out JMag’s article about it on DestinyCouncil.com, as well as his brother LMag’s deck analysis of it for YOURdestiny.dk.

Droids a la Satine

The other major flavor of droids is Satine Droids, which put five lists in the top cut of Gen Con, mostly using the list of my friend and teammate HonestlySarcastc. Though there are many versions of the list, this is Chase Keaton’s from Gen Con top 8. I selected his as he made it the farthest at Gen Con with the deck. I think Scruffy is a pretty questionable call, but it can also be very good to test against, especially if your playtesting partner is both good and knows what your plan is.

Joe wrote a lot about the deck in his Gen Con tournament report, and Loops Patreon Subscribers will know that Joe has put out SO MANY HOURS of content on the list between gameplay videos and strategy/sequencing videos.

Droids + Han is a list I don’t think you need to necessarily prepare for, but it’s possible you will have to face it, so I would be remiss to not at least mention it. You can check out Luke Magnuson’s Write up on the list here, on their website.

eJabba Wat Sentinel

This is the Jabba Wat Sentinel I beat in the top 8 of Gen Con and I’m very confident this is the stock list to test against because of the 2x Umbaran Hover Tank. The refusal of ewoks to go away means that JWS decks have to pack two Umbaran to have any shot in the matchup, and thus testing against a version with it in a list is very important, especially if you’re testing Ewoks yourself.

This deck really came out of nowhere to show up in a major way at Gen Con and I don’t foresee it going anywhere because of its success against Droids. Agent of Zion wrote about their version of the list and his team’s run at Gen Con which saw Nick Tacster Obee place second in the North American Championship.

Three Dice Aphra

Many teams ran 3-dice Aphra at Gen Con but I really like this list because it runs 2x Act of Cruelty, but I really couldn’t find a version I loved enough to call it THE stock list. I would probably, personally, change the 2x Coruscant Police for 2x Fickle Merceneary, and then maybe cut the 1x Vandalize for a Corscuant Police or a Probe. I really, really like my teammate NJCuenca’s list for Gen Con, which was teched out versus Ewoks, but I’m not sure how good it is into Chopper Droids (though I really want to test that matchup from the Aphra side). I think Nick’s Aphra version is really rough on Ewoks which makes it a great choice for a National Championship run.

You can read all about Cuenca’s list via his tournament report, and you can read the YOURDestiny Deck analysis of the list here.

Kreylo

This is Jake Andersen’s list, which he wrote about on our website last week. Grandpa Jake top 16d worlds with PYW PYW (Padawan/Yoda/Wookiee Warrior) last year, and he’s an absolute beast when it comes to Destiny – we refer to him as the people’s champ because he does it all on his own, which is badass. I don’t love Jake’s list here, but there’s no doubt that it’s very strong. I talked a LOT about this list on the I Rebel podcast with Jedi Geek Girl and Sarah Evans a couple of weeks ago and you can hear us discuss our lists and decisions here. I think It Binds All Things is a huge liability because of Desperate Measures, but there’s no doubt that when you play against a non-DM deck that It Binds can help you “go off.” The deck can do some absolutely filthy things both damage and shield-wise if you sequence well, but Easy Pickings is an absolute Death Knell for the list and it can force you to skip your entire round for just one resource, which is really hard to come back from.

This deck has a good matchup into Ewoks (about 50/50 with this list, but can be teched to make it much, much better) and supposedly has a good game versus Chopper Droids. I’d be running Aquata Breather’s and Qui-Gon Jinn’s Lightsaber if I were testing Ewoks or Aphra into Kreylo because you’ll be able to evaluate just how hard it can really get, but a final list might not include all three of those cards at a major event.

That’s it for today, be sure to check out our Gauntlet page for all of these lists when you’re building out your gauntlet. Testing against these six decks will help you prepare for your National Championship and hopefully take it down!

Good Luck!! And, thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire