This a tournament report by Bill Dicks, the 3rd place regional finisher at the OHIO regional. This is from a pre-nerf world but we still think it has value for the new format where people can just add Bitter Rivalry to maintain the same strategy. If you want to be a guest contributor to the the hyperloops send us a note at thehyperloops@gmail.com

I’d always been the kind of player who plays a deck to counter the best deck. This time I was determined to play the CLEARLY best deck – Thrawn Snoke. I did some initial testing and ended up liking the more aggro version (i.e. Yourdestiny version without Grand Moff). After going back and forth, I found the Umbaran Hover Tanks to be pure gold, giving me the extra punch I wanted. I really wanted to keep the Dorsal Turrets, but just couldn’t fit them in.

As typical, a few days before at a local shop, the deck crapped the bed (well that’s relative, went 5-3 in games) after 2 weeks of awesome testing. Even on the drive down, I was thinking of swerving to something relatively untested for me (Fat Firespray, which is super fun, or Talzin Beckett, which is surprisingly resilient and got there more than I anticipated when looking at it). Luckily, smarter people talked me out of that.

Here’s what I ran:

In my testing, Grand Moff just never held its weight, even against decks with valuable events (i.e. Yoda Boussh or Jyn Cass). Againts Yoda Boussh I’m almost always calling 2, so I can grab Entangle or Beguile early (or an upgrade on an event miss) and I always found that they had to roll out, do a bunch of actions to get enough damage to make a jump/retreat worthwhile and they weren’t fast enough compared to previous quick draw/hit and run style gun decks that ran it. So really it was just Jyn Cass and I had plenty of game there without it. I found I wanted a couple of midrange threats and the special on Hover Tank was a huge threat. Separatist Landing craft was just too slow and never made a difference for me, so it got cut early.

I did test Vigilance and it was fantastic in the mirror early. BUT I felt that removing either dice cards or removal put me at risk to lose swiss matches vs aggro/random stuff, therefore, Vigilance stayed on the cutting room floor to ensure better chance at top 8, rather than tech vs the mirror.

Stifle was cute but same evaluation as Vigilance and just not as good.

Regional Player and Deck Info:

There were 47 players with 9 of those using byes. With 7 rounds of Swiss 7-0 and 6-1 were getting in as were a good chunk of the 5-2. Here are the deck breakdowns:

10 Thrawn/Snoke

7 Jyn/Cassian

3 Vader/Greedo

2 Vader/Jawa

2 Rey/Luke

2 DJ/Snoke

2 DJ/Talzin

2 Boba/7th

2 Grievous/Royal Guard

1 Maz/Rex

1 Yoda/Cass

1 Yoda/Leia/Anakin

1 Iden/Beckett

1 Yoda Leia

1 Dooku/Talzin

1 Plo koon/Jedha Partisan/Rebel Engineer

1 Millpocalype

1 Sabine/Jawa

1 Han/Qira

1 Snoke/Qira

1 Han/Poe

1 Anakin/Lando/Rebel Engineer

1 Wulf Kylo

1 Talzin/Bala-tik/FOST

South East/Central Michigan sent 6 people and overall did fantastic (3 top 8, one 5-2 that didn’t make it on strenght of schedule, and a 4-3). 3 of us played Thrawn/Snoke (2/3 top 8), one played DJ/Snoke (5-2), one played Vader/Jawa (top 8), and one played Yoda/Boussh.

Onto the Swiss rounds:

Round 1 VS Vader/Greedo

My opening hand I kept Chance Cube and a mitigation, mull 3 for…..more mitigation. Make 6-7 resources and escape the round with only 2 damage. My hand for round 2….0 dice cards. WTF. I end the round with 11 resources even after mitigating a ton of dice. Thrawn’s getting lowish at this point. I start round 3 with 13 resources and draw Fist, Planetary, Hover Tank, a tie and 1 mitigation. He’s going to claim so I need to finish him this round, which I do – final 3 to Greedo and then deal 18 to vader to kill a full healthy vader with 2 shields. Solid start. 1-0

Round 2 pairing: Jyn/Cass

The details are fuzzy, but I pull it out with 2 cards in deck and 2 in hand. I don’t think the half-in half-out mill plan works – other than one first-time surprise SC win in Michigan, the Rose Jedhax2 deck suffered from the same problem of being almost good enough both ways. 2-0

Round 3: Beckett/Iden

I don’t do a lot of action cheating other than the ambush from TIE, so Iden wasn’t super strong in a TS meta I don’t think. That said, doubting 2 Beckett 3-for-1s and having them both roll the 3-for-1 again made it closer than it should, but Hover Tank and Fist > guns. 3-0

Round 4: Jacob Waters playing Vader/Jawa

This game I needed to play small ball to win as I needed most of my resources for mitigation. TIE and Snoke indirect did most of the damage here. 4-0

Round 5 and 6 – both Thrawn/Snoke mirrors.

One round was Ice Cream Lando, not sure on the other opponent, but Hover Tank worked them over both games. 6-0

Round 7: Wynalazca from discord, mirror.

I wasn’t super into this game mentally after he won the rollout and dropped first action Vigilance. He got easy resources. I discard to reroll 3 times on 1 Thrawn and 2 Snoke dice to ZERO Snoke focus or Thrawn resource, so I was way behind the whole match. Not to take anything away – even if I played my best, he had me fair and square from the start. 6-1.

So due to early round pairings and not being allowed to play each other a second time in swiss, there were no 7-0 (probably a sign should have been 6 rounds but I would have been top seed either way), so there were 3 x 6-1 and 5x 5-2 in top 8. Decks and players were:

Seed 1: Me, Thrawn/Snoke with Hover Tanks and WFA, no Moff

Seed 2: Jacob Waters with Vader/Jawa/Retribution

Seed 3: Andrew Webber Thrawn/Snoke (was thisWnyalazca on discord? Must be)

Seed 4: Tony Bugoci Thrawn/Snoke with Moff + 1 Hover Tank

Seed 5: Ice Cream Lando Thrawn/Snoke with Moff

Seed 6: Mike Hill Wulf Yularen/Kylo Ren

Seed 7: Brian Deakin Thrawn/Snoke with Moff and Vigilance

Seed 8: Hunter Liptrap with eTalzin/eBala-Tik/FOST

Top 8 Match vs eTalzin/eBala-Tik/FOST

Game 1: A few turns in, I realize that I’ve paid for and announced I was paying for my Chance Cube, but forgot to roll the die out when activating Snoke. My opponent and I validate through cards and resources that I DID pay for rolling out the Cube. He thinks it should go back to my hand, I think I should roll it out since he didn’t mitigate any dice or have any mitigation after I’d pulled it first action. We call a judge who tells me “it’s your call” [to me]. Huh. I was going to accept whatever he decided without much argument, but it seems that the judge should make that call. But since I paid for it and had announced I was paying for it, and I don’t believe you’re allowed to NOT rollout an upgrade die, I rolled it out. Of course my rolls and rerolls were garbage the rest of the game, so Karma. 0-1 match score. In retrospect if it came up again, I’d just leave it not rolled in.

Game 2: Mind Trick!! There was a specific die I wanted to remove (On the hunt special as I had 3 shields on Thrawn, so it was worth 3 damage) and he put an extra die with that one, so win for me. Hover tank wrecked him. 1-1 match score

Game 3: I got a Hover Tank out and did 6 damage before Time was called. In the final round a 2ND HOVER TANK!!! did 12 damage for the win. Mind Trick again removed 3-4 dice and wiped out what would have been a massive round for him.

Top 4 Match vs Thrawn/Snoke

Game 1: He gets Chance Cube. I do not. We both diddle with each other’s dice, but he gets a few resources. We both kept a Fist going into round 2 that we never got to play. We both call 5 and pull a Fist and we BOTH have 2nd Fist. But he’s able to mess with my dice and keep me off 5 resources and I am not due to Cube. I grind back and have a chance, but he’s decently ahead on damage. I get a big turn where I get ATST and Hover tank down, but he gets a ATST down too. He doesn’t roll special but has a focus. I roll out my ATST needing natural special (he’s out of removal) and get it. So remove his ATST, but his Fist and a few TIEs win the damage race. Hover tank ALMOST pulled it out for me. 0-1

Game 2: Total Brain Fart. I play Chance Cube instead of roll out calling one and he first turn Vigilance’s me. GG. Again, I grind it out and Hover Tank ALMOST got me there, BUT he also had one Hover Tank and was able to play that + Beguile to close me out. I’m 85% certain I would have pulled this game out if his Hover Tank had been something more expensive or standard (Planetary, Landing Craft, etc). 0-2

So finish 3rd place. Given that I’ve just started playing in July I’m happy (though not satisfied, if that makes sense) with that finish. I am kicking myself for the top4 brain fart, but long day fatigue is a thing, we saw it in other top 8 matches too.

The Top 8 played out as:

1 seed Thrawn/Snoke (me) win over 8 seed Talzin/Bala/FOST

7 seed Thrawn/Snoke win over 2 seed Vader/Jawa

6 seed Wulf/Kylo win over 3 seed Thrawn Snoke

4 seed Thrawn/Snoke wins the mirror

Top 4 played out as:

4 seed Thrawn/Snoke wins the mirror

6 seed Wulf/Kylo wins vs Thrawn/Snoke

Setting up a Wulf/Kylo vs Thrawn/Snoke final, which got taken down by…..Wulf/Kylo!! Props to Mike as he went 8-3 on the day vs Thrawn/Snoke (2-1 swiss, 2-1 top 8, 2-1 top 4, 2-0 finals), though with a double ID10 mishap in one game.

Thoughts on my decklist:

I was super happy with the direction I went – no Moffs and Hover Tanks. My decision to not run Vigilance and more gas/removal definitely allowed me to win early rounds and get out of the random decks and into top 8. It’s strong for sure vs a lot of matchups, but I like the direction I went.

Deck MVPs: Umbaran Hover Tank and Mind Trick. Mind Trick is just ripe for letting your opponent screw up and give you an extra die to remove. The Hover Tank crushed it all day. I would ABSOLUTELY play a 3rd one if I could.

So that said……I’d totally be in favor of testing out cutting TIE #4 for one of the old school 3 drops like ARC starfighter. I think in some of the matchups I lost, I was trying extra hard for big resource/big drop rounds and should have played more small ball, though the Hover Tank is sort of medium ball. I think the Round 1 massive turn vs Vader/Greedo led me down a big-turn play that wasn’t doable vs decks with more removal.

Deck LVP: Deflect. Was never useful when I needed it. Almost everyone focused to indirect. I got to use it once on a 2 in my top 8 match and it was not a factor. I’d rather have The Best Defense or The Force is With Me.

Post Nerf Thoughts:

I believe this deck is still totally viable. The 2 damage from just jamming Bitter Rivalry in hurts as does the extra starting card, but the strength of the engine is there. I played a few games with BR vs the Vader deck that was the #2 seed from Ohio and went 3-1.

One option that seems interesting to test is replacing Thrawn with Wullf, which allows us to play Armored Reinforcements. Health is the same (10 vs 12 but 2 damage from BR). Wulf has the same 2Focus 1 Focus sides as well as a resource side (yes it’s 1 less resource), but now we can drop a 1-cost TIE or 2-cost Hover Tank turn 1 (or 0 and 1 cost respectively if you win the rollout and play on your WFA) and can possibly run fewer TIEs. We miss the discard from Thrawn, but we still get perfect hand knowledge from Wulf and an early pitch/discard of a key card like Fist puts playing the 2nd one at risk, and if we don’t have any gas, we can Snoke a 2for1 or 1 discard can destroy their hand. It’ll be a choice between ramping or hand destruction, but it’s an option if you get a crap draw + mulligan. When I test this I’ll replace probably 1 TIE and Deflect with 2 Dark Presence or Questioned Loyalty (probably DP). Even removing Deflect, you still have 11 removal events + 2 Force Illusion. I think that’s something that can have legs.

Also, props to the store. it was a good space for a tournament. The tournament ran smoothly except for the head judge needing to leave due to illness. Thanks for reading.

-Bill Dicks

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