Grandpa Jake has written for the website before after doing amazingly well at worlds with PYW PYW and he’s back again after making Day 2 at the Star Wars Destiny 2019 North American Championship, but this time he ran eRey3 and eKylo3. He is pictured below, but unfortunately we didn’t catch him with the BB8 Mickey ears.

Alright, so that really wasn’t him, but when people meet him for the first time, the name Grandpa Jake tricks everyone. You’ll understand one day. Anyways, he’s been a long standing member of the Destiny community and he’s always been a pleasure to be around and talk with. I’ll stop talking now though and let you enjoy his write up. He did play one match on stream at the event if you want to watch the match and even see what he actually looks like!!!



As an avid fan of blue melee decks, Reylo was a deck I had to try as soon as Spark of Hope dropped. It played like some of the classic middle-middle decks of destiny past, and the mix of shields from blue hero and pings from blue villain let you maximize your survivability and kill potential in such a fun way. After getting some games in on TTS in preparation for the Game’s Dead Invitational at FFGC in July, I knew I’d found a deck I love. I ended up finishing second at that event, and when I saw the crazy power of the Rey and Kylo specials rerolling, I knew I’d found my Gencon deck. Finding my final 30 was a whole different story though.

While a lot of the talk about Reylo leading into Gencon was centered on how you generally know what to expect when playing against it, there was nowhere near a consensus on how to build the deck. Access to blue cards from hero, neutral and villain means there are tons of options for weapons, supports, and events, and it’s tough to know what the best ones are. Thanks to Rey’s special side, anything that uses, gives, or even references shields is worth considering, and the massive list of options for damage out of hand just makes deck-building that much more difficult. With all of these options, it’s no wonder that while three Reylo decks made it to top 16, the lists themselves were significantly varied.

The Venn diagram above shows the distribution of cards across the three top 16 Reylo lists. As you can see, there was a core of staples that we all ran, with good removal, ramp, and two cost upgrades being something all of us could get behind. However, once you get past these core cards, you can see that we all took different approaches to our extra upgrades, removal, and damage events.

For my own list, I had a mix of strong personal preferences and meta/flexibility calls that informed my deck-building. To start off, I had to include R2-D2 and Qui-Gon Jinn’s Spirit. I love cheap supports in a middle/middle deck, since activating them can be like a safer pass and a way to feel out your opponent without exposing multiple dice to removal. In Reylo, they were also the perfect way to turn on Forsaken without having to resolve dice. Plus, I felt like this deck was the closest thing I’ve gotten to Qui-Gon Jinn from the Awakenings days, so I had to have Qui-Gon involved, if only in spirit. When it came to upgrades, I was focused on a mix of solid dice and redeploy. Without consistent focus, I don’t feel that Treasured Lightsaber or Yoda’s Lightsaber really the first category, so they didn’t make the cut, while things like Obi-Wan’s Saber (the mirror-winner) and Heirloom did. As for events, I love Steadfast, even for just 1 damage, and consistently found huge value from my two copies of The Force is With Me and Adapt. I settled on one each of No Mercy and Draw Closer, mostly because I saw moments when one was basically dead and the other was perfect and vice versa too often to know which I preferred, so they each made the list.

So, how did the list do?

Round 1 – eIG-88, Dengar, perilous escapade – He was able to get good bounties down and trigger his battlefield, but I spiked too much damage with specials and damage dealing cards and took out IG-88 in round 2. Single die Dengar didn’t have enough oomph to even keep me off full shields, and the game was over pretty quickly. 1-0

r2 – Enfys Nest, Enfys Nest Marauder x2, No Allegiance – He rolled a lot of money early, but I was able to extract the value from Rey’s dice with the help of indirect damage. The game took a while due to his large health pool, but I was able to take out Enfys fast enough to make the rest of the game a slog for him. 2-0

r3 – Drew Warren – Aphra, Wat, Sentinel Messenger, Grand Design – Stream game. The Aphra matchup is generally pretty good since indirect can help us maximize Rey. It gets even better when you hit specials like crazy, as I did in this game. Rey’s dice got tons of value, and while he was able to kill her eventually, I was too far ahead at that point and finished it out. 3-0

r4 – Andrew Cox – Chirpa, Hoth Trooper, 3x Ewok Warrior, Armored Reinforcement – The damage was flying hot and heavy from the start in this game. If I recall correctly, he asked how much he’d dealt, I said 8, and THEN he played his Strength in Numbers. I was able to get the rerolls and value to pull back into the game, since both my characters could stay alive through the indirect, but I wasn’t fast enough. He ended the game with a Truce into Rigged Detonation, which caught me off guard. 3-1

r5 – Andrew Rothermel – eR2-D2, C3-PO, eChopper – He was able to disrupt me for two resources in rounds 1 and 2, so I was stuck just using the character dice and power actions to get value. Luckily, Rey and Kylo have solid dice, and I was able to put a healthy amount of damage into Chopper while keeping my characters alive. By round 3, I’d taken out Chopper and was able to trade damage and removal back and forth the rest of the game to pull out the win.

r6 – Sean Aguilar – eJabba, Wat, Sentinel Messenger – He had a fairly slow start, and the Megablaster Troopers that he got out were not rolling well, so I was able to just play my game and resolve dice for good value. He was digging pretty hard, but I think Jabba may have been a double-edged sword for him, shoving his bombs back into the deck. I was able to take out characters at a solid pace and beat him before too many powerful supports came out in what is otherwise a pretty scary matchup. 6-1

r7 – Brian Hourigan – eSatine, eC3-PO, R2-D2, Fateful Companions – I don’t remember much about this game, but I know that rolling 8 damage thanks to a bunch of two sides and specials played a big part in helping pull out a tough match up.

r8 – – eSatine, eC3-PO, R2-D2, Fateful Companions – This was another back and forth game, with both of us getting some damage going early and able to drop upgrades. While this is generally a tough matchup for Reylo, I was able to get good value out of my character dice and maximize the rerolls off specials, which helped keep me in it against the droid abilities. Late in the game things were playing tight, and he dropped a Mr. Bones when both of my characters were fairly low. Luckily for me, that Mr. Bones refused to roll 2 damage for him despite numerous rerolls, and my characters survived into the next round, allowing me to roll out their dice and get the kill, finishing 7-1 and in third place after swiss.

T16 – Nick Obee – eJabba, Wat, Sentinel Messenger – 0-2 – Game 1 was a textbook example of how hard that Jabba deck can ramp. By the end of the round, he’d played a Vader’s Fist, both Entourages, and a Fickle Mercenaries. I was able to kill two characters while doing whatever mitigation I could with cards like Beguile and The Force is With Me, but his supports were too powerful and I went down fairly quickly. He didn’t start quite as hot game two, but he still dropped a round 1 Fist on me, and was even able to Embargo my The Force is With Me this game, so his dice were getting resolved pretty easily. I tried focusing Jabba first and was able to kill two characters again, but this game wasn’t very close either, and that was the end of my run.

I’m super happy with the finish, and was pumped to win that beautiful Mysteries of the Force mat. I picked Reylo knowing that I would be able to maximize the fun I had playing in the tournament while still giving myself a great shot at the top 16 mat. My plan worked out perfectly, and I wouldn’t change my deck choice if I had to do it again. That said, I’m not sure I think Reylo has what it takes to take down a Grand. There are certain matchups (like the big supports matchup from top 16) that are very difficult, and dodging those in all of your top cut rounds is going to be tough. That said, there might be some glorious build out there waiting to be discovered, so don’t stop trying things out! I’m not sure what changes I’d make to the list I played, but that Venn diagram should give you plenty of ideas to start with.

I want to clear up something that I’ve heard said a couple times about my Gencon performances. While I’m flattered by the kind words of others, I need to clarify that I am definitely not “doing this on my own”. Beyond the invaluable online resources I consume in the Hyperloops discord and with podcasts like ABG and i Rebel, I have a group of locals that I would put up there with some of the best “teams” in the world when it comes to helping prep for a big event.

A group of four of us have been playing locally basically since release, and early on it was easy to see this would be the group that would define the “competitive” local meta. We pretty quickly made a Facebook group chat, and have been sharing lists, thoughts, and results with each other for over two years now. While we don’t put out content or travel to big events together much due to the busier schedules and family commitments of others, these guys are my core playtesting group and are outstanding players.

Ben Kiefer is our local aggro expert, and I’d consider him one of the best two-wide aggro players in the world. He top 8’d the first Destiny Worlds, and day two’d in 2018. I jammed so many games against his aggro lists in preparation for 2018 Worlds and Gencon, and he made my Boba/Seventh matchups back then autopilot victories, because no one was playing it as well as him. Jarred Pine, or Smerle, is the original master of mill, and is the biggest Aphra fan I know. I feel totally confident in Aphra matchups thanks to countless games against his innumerable Aphra builds at locals. And finally, Chris Fragale, my most frequent travel partner and the master of picking up a deck and getting great at it and evaluating it quickly. It always seems like he’s picking up a deck the week of a tournament and making a cut with it. This proved invaluable as we were trying to evaluate decks for the Gencon meta, as it seemed like he’d tried everything.

These guys bring it every week when we break out our competitive decks at locals, and are always willing to loan me cards and bring in matchups for me to prep for. While I’ll admit to mostly traveling on my own and playing an awful lot of TTS, I have to credit them with helping me go into these big events so well prepared. Mayhem for life!

Well there you have it folks. His NA Champ run may have ended but you’ll be sure to hear more from him in future events. Let us know your thoughts and we’ll be sure to forward any messages / comments. Thanks go out to all of you for reading and especially to Grandpa Jake for sharing this with us.

~HonestlySarcastc