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I don’t actually have a long or amusing story to tell about my deck selection process this time. What I will say is that if Nick “Tacster” Obee hands you a vehicle deck, tells you it’s a monster, and that you should play it, you may want to listen. Tacster threw the list at me the day prior to my regional, and after a few test games with Rusty Shackleford, Hexen, and Elrathion I was completely sold. I have never had so much fun playing a deck before, and surprisingly didn’t grow to hate it (as I often do) even after an 11 round win streak.

Hero Vehicles have always been a “fun” concept to me, where Hera specialing out big cards and trying to get stuff done with them is a great time even if it was somewhat glass-cannony and overly reliant on draws. I had shoved it into the corner of my mind where other “not quite there yet” decks live (looking at you Yoda/Zeb). Switching the character suite out and a couple of cards from the stock standard Mazherati deck catapulted it to the very forefront of competitiveness, as evidenced by my win, Tacster’s 2nd Place finish (losing to the decks worst nightmare in the finals), and Hexen missing top 8 in the same tournament as me solely on strength of schedule all running the same deck card-for-card.

A somewhat less optimized list (in the Artificery crew’s collective opinion) also placed first at another regional the same weekend, proving that even with a few key cards taken as one-ofs or even missing entirely the core concept and viability is wholly proven by fire.

At any rate, here is our deck.

Round 1 vs The Bye Guy

I don’t know what this guy was thinking, but man he was garbage. Didn’t show up to table 0, didn’t submit a decklist, and I could tell his heart wasn’t in it because he dropped after round 1. Easiest game all day, it was like I didn’t have to do anything at all for the win.

Jokes aside, having a bye is ridiculously good. The first couple rounds of a tournament are crucial in FFG’s system with a relatively small cut and what perpetually seems like one less round than what is needed to draw a clear line in the standings. Losing round 1 puts you almost at the mercy of that one opponent for the rest of the day, in addition to reducing each and every subsequent strength of schedule addition you receive. This is the fate Hexen suffered, and came very close to climbing his way out of but unfortunately fell one 66% chance reroll short of which was brutal to watch. In addition to the clear statistical advantage, getting a bye round 1 gives you 35 minutes to settle in without any mental drain. 10/10 would do again.

Round 2 vs Brandon W.

I sat down thinking this match was going to be… Well, not easy per se, but in my favor with inevitability even with shields eating my indirect damage early. Don’t get me wrong, QGJ/Yoda is pretty dope, and quite resilient against most non-Kylo2 decks, but it is unfortunately for Brandon one of the very few decks that needs nearly as much time as me to start doing real work. He got a pretty convenient resource off of QGJ’s rollout which enabled a turn 1 Force Throw on Yoda prior to his activation, and my attitude got corrected with a quickness.

I mentally calculated his Force Throw die as worth three damage per round since I was working towards getting my opening Resistance Bomber out of hand, and maneuvered my turn in such a way that he had every reason and opportunity to use the throw earlier. It’s a tough call whether or not to throw Aayla’s, Rose’s, or an Airspeeder’s two damage side knowing that a Res Bomber is going to be activating next, and a nearly impossible choice when it comes to a potential future 6-damage throw vs. a Y-Wing special right now. A couple opportune Easy Pickings/Garbage Chutes later and he was on his back feet.

The one misplay that tilted the game in my favor can be summed up as a single misapplication of indirect damage allowing me to use C3PO to deal 2 Melee damage off of a Maz’s Goggles die to kill Yoda, which was made even worse by the fact that the action prior he had played an Ancient Lightsaber on him.

Round 3 vs RobGuyDay

The matchup I was most prepared for and had the second strongest advantage against came to me early. This also happened to be where I made one of my two self-identifiable mis-plays throughout the day.

The game proceeded much as you would expect, though RobGuyDay opted for additional weapons over the more often seen Cunnings and Second Chances. Blasters out, Hit and Run, Defensive Position, and Hyperspace Jump all made their appearance throughout the game.

In the most crucial turn, he had claimed his own BF to get a second Honor Guard in play, thinking that I had no additional threats. Rally Aid and Tech Team worked their magic to get me a free Resistance Bomber with a C3PO showing focus. The bomber naturally rolled max damage, but where I messed up was resolving a 6-Indirect side as melee damage against Hondo to kill him rather than resolve it as indirect which would have killed both characters. I had a sort of mental block, thinking that Hondo had four damage while Poe had nine, which led me to that decision but in reality Hondo had six damage on him already. I was too far ahead at the time for it to really affect the outcome, but it was still really bad of me and might have been interpreted by my opponent as me fooling around for no reason.

I cannot explain why I made the mistake, but for the rest of the day I counted everything twice you can be sure of that.

Round 4 vs Chris L.

Every deck has a weakness, and the vehicle weakness is Mill. I won this partly due to luck I suppose. He didn’t get a Scrap Heap while I had Tech Team and Y-Wing in my opening hand, and Flank to avoid special chaining only works if I roll my other two characters out.

Even so, it was still a test of skill for both of us. He was able to assign damage in the ways most beneficial to him, and got out both Chance Cubes and C3PO relatively early. “Losing Value” on my Easy Pickings and Entangle to get rid of his 3PO for three rounds is the thing that won me the game, but the fact I also stubbornly refused to reroll even once the entire time played a part. His Hyperspace Jump didn’t help entirely too much because he was required to do so very early in a turn because I was rolling my heavy hitters out first.

Round 5 vs Travis W.

Much like the Jango/Veers of yesteryear, Boba/Phasma is incredibly effective at dismantling the decks that rely on one main character to accomplish their goals. Great damage, decent reliability from B&S, and all the speed in the world with Quick Draw.

The downside is when you run into a high-health three character list that doesn’t have a care in the world for any one particular character past turn 1. In a game where both players can mitigate the same number of dice each turn, whoever pulls ahead on ramp is more likely to win which is what happened here. Vehicle flood and prioritization on Republic Cruiser specials kept his board development and damage dealing on the back-burner respectively, and I closed it out having lost only Aayla for my trouble.

Round 6 vs AmishWarrior

I started this round staring down a Ciena/Bala/Nightsister deck. Not Good.

We both draw, I keep my opening five as an overly aggressive hand with both Rally Aids, two damage vehicles, and a Maz’s Goggles. Shaky, but acceptable.

He keeps all five of his opener as well. Ohhhh boy. Here we go.

Then it comes up that two people had submitted an incorrect match slip in the round previous, forcing a re-pair and having the side effect of the TO pulling his hair out for the next 20 minutes while he gets things sorted out. 94 people were inconvenienced for twenty minutes each from that, and even worse? I had to make small-talk in the meantime, no small feat for a 30-year-old socially awkward man-child. I don’t know who it was that made the match slip error but If they want to sign more stuff without actually reading it, I’ve got bills of sale and bad contracts in my back pocket. Failing that, there was a military base literally across the street and I bet that individual would start reading before signing after a quick trip to the recruitment center….

But I digress. The re-pairing landed with me playing against Kylo2/Talzin. Kylo2/Talzin is Vehicles’ single best matchup by a million miles. Kylo’s ability is pure luck of the draw, Witch Magic is barely adequate mitigation once I get my ramp going, and Rise Again is almost a pipe dream against Y-Wings. To add insult to injury, AmishWarrior was forced to use Talzin’s ability in very sub par ways to avoid Easy Pickings blowouts. A turn 1 garbage chute started things off in my favor, and even though he didn’t make a single mistake that game, it was almost a forgone conclusion.

Round 7 vs Daniel L.

My bullet-dodging repairing from the round previous was only a temporary reprieve, but I won this where I should have lost it 100%.

I don’t like to harp on my opponents mistakes. If someone asks for advice after a match, I’m happy to give it but if you’re not a personal friend then I don’t offer unsolicited tips. I don’t really appreciate “hey you messed up” conversations myself, and when it is someone you just lost to it can at times seem like gloating. I’m socially awkward enough already, and don’t want to be an asshole even if it is unintentional so I usually just keep my mouth shut when it comes down to it.

It’s only because of Daniels great attitude concerning this and otherwise stellar performance in the tournament (Top 8) that I feel comfortable sharing a mistake of this magnitude. In as few words as possible, he forgot to reset Bala and lost.

The long version is that going into the last round of the game he had all his characters still alive, though wounded and three upgrades on Bala. Aayla was dead, Rose was hurt, and even Ezra had some damage on him from a Crash Landing. I knew if I could live through the turn I might have a chance of pulling out the win, but I was facing down nine dice right off the rip, and an almost guarunteed additional five dice from a Bala reset. My second identified misplay of the day was rolling Rose out when I had no need to which took my Flank offline. I mitigate and shield up, but he kills Rose, and throws four more damage into Ezra leaving him with one HP remaining. He has one card left in hand but no more dice left in the pool and I am completely out of mitigation except for a Republic Cruiser die showing blank.

I pause for a few seconds. “My turn?”

“Yeah, your go”

And that was pretty much it. Republic Cruiser gives Ezra two shields which allows me to roll out a Rally Aided HWK-290, then C3PO makes Ezra’s resource side into a focus that chained into 2-focus off of Maz’s goggles, which was just barely enough damage to wipe the board when the smoke cleared.

After the game he told me that he’d been playing against two-char lists all day and it slipped his mind entirely. Three lessons can be learned from this.

Every single one of us have all made an “obvious” mistake like that. Whether it’s missing lethal to kill Hondo, forgetting Vader’s discard trigger, or forgetting an Obi shield. We are all human, and it was round seven. It happens. Daniel hadn’t played in weeks he said, and if you look closely there wasn’t a single Legacies card in his deck. Yet he still made top 8. Had he been practicing there’s no doubt in my mind his muscle memory on Bala would have been honed and ready. Make your triggers muscle memory. I don’t think I was strictly required to do so, but if you have an opponent willing to make something so abundantly and verbally clear by asking “My turn?” then you probably want to check your board state before responding.

Round 8 vs Alex V.

Since we were both a lock for top 8 at this point and I actually checked the SoS and stuff this time to make sure, Alex and I had a pretty fun game. As we shuffled he said that he actually had some tech for vehicles in case he ran into it and that he had considered playing vehicles himself. My response was that Disable was pretty sweet tech that can act like a mini-Retreat in the early game, but god help me if he had Rocket Launchers. I was laughing the whole time.

He played Rocket Launcher turn 1.

I stopped laughing.

He Vandalized my Rally Aid turn 2.

I started crying.

As good as my matchup is vs Hondo, his version was packing heat. With one exception all the good stuff came his way, and the only reason I came out ahead was due to back-to-back Garbage Chutes getting the Rocket Launcher off the table in addition to another damage die. I eventually brought Poe down with some opportune Airspeeder damage, and though he had blasters and Second Chance to threaten me with on Hondo, the worst was over and I eventually ground it out.

In the bottom ten cards of his deck were two Hit and Runs.

Top 8 vs Will G.

I absolutely hate mirror matches, but I had the edge here though I didn’t realize it until after the fact.

If you’re in a mirror match, the person who gets to do what they want to do first is going to pull ahead and once in the lead will tend to stay in the lead.

Will wanted to play U-Wings, Pirate Tanks, and Ghost and was teched for anti-melee with the two Defends. I wanted to play “cheap stuff”. Assuming both players have Y-Wings out, which we did in both games, “cheap stuff” wins pretty much every time when it also doesn’t have mostly-dead cards in the deck.

The one skill thing I did was to try and confuse him. Neither game was a matter of dropping key characters for either of us and was instead a battle of aggregate health totals. To that end I employed my devious strategy of “use indirect damage to clear all the shields then attack someone new”. It’s not really a strategem that is useful very often, but it is one I had figured out in my head when I was considering the 3-wide Blue Hero matchup. By shifting targets constantly, even erratically in the late game I figured that Caution and any other defensive play would be incredibly awkward, and that the assignment of indirect damage would get weird.

I can’t say for sure that it was particularly effective, but I was able to snipe out my actual preferred target (Ezra) in game one by pump faking a couple melee damage into Rose early leading him to Caution her (with an Aayla die, bonus!) and dump some indirect into his other two chars. This made his single Flank dead in hand, and his Easy Pickings was dead in deck, giving me an effective 4-card edge. Playing even slower than him by nature of having more durdley things to do with cheap vehicles kept his Loth Cats inopportune for the most part.

Game two started off on shakier ground with an opening hand of four removal cards plus rally aid after a mulligan, at which point removing Rose dice starts to look pretty attractive. Thankfully I got a bunch of money that turn, and exploded onto the scene with three heavy hitters the following turn and never let up the gas.

Top 4 vs Brian M.

If anyone wants the best Obi/Maz list in the format at the moment, send Brian a thank-you card. This baby is the real deal, and he had the skill to back it up 100%.

I lost the first game of the day due to massive blowout plays (Maz roll into Force Speed into Concentrate/Resolve times two will do that) that edged around my Easy Pickings and Garbage Chutes. Through use of FILP. Not. Even. Close.

Game two was a slaughter the other direction, where I was convinced that Aayla and Y-Wing had six special sides. From turn one until the end of the game I was resolving a minimum six indirect damage per turn. Although I did miss two Rally Aids back-to-back because of my refusal to discard Garbage Chute my board was pretty flooded already and it just prolonged the game by a turn.

Game three was the hardest game of the day, we both pretty much knew eachothers decklists by heart and I know he’s going in on Ezra right off the top. My first action is to play Rally Aid. Both his characters roll nothing useful between that and my subsequent Rose activation so I resolve a couple Rose dice for money. You know what breaks my heart immediately after? Fair Trade.

This was devastating to my plans and I spend my one remaining dollar to flank a focus away leaving me with no money to combat his reroll of both Obi dice a Maz die and an Ancient saber die. Of course it rolls 3, 3, and +3. At this point I had a Y-Wing, an Easy Pickings, and Crash Landing in hand, and I go into my thinking tank for a minute. Eventually I figure that If I Crash Landing, Ezra is as good as dead on the second action the following turn, a free Y-Wing is nothing to sneeze at, but if I hit the jackpot on Easy Pickings, I can still salvage my turn one while effectively nullifying his. So 33% of doing the thing that keeps Ezra alive anyway, 33% of free Y-Wing plus a reroll of it and Aaylas dice, and 33% of massive value.

Massive value achieved. Aayla gets me a resource and some damage, and I draw into my second Easy Pickings for round two with caution backup, then Garbage Chute turns three and five. Ezra actually ends up being the last remaining character with two health left because of his shield disincentive, and I end the match with a board state that was auto-win so long as I didn’t roll out a fresh HWK-290.

Throughout all three games, Brian was an absolute blast to play with. We had established very early game one that neither of us was going to get offended by trash-talk or racy jokes so they were present in full force. I think this was partly due to the fact that we were going on the 11th hour of Destiny play that day and a bit silly from fatigue. Definitely an NSFW table. Definitely a table I would want to be at.

Finals vs AmishWarrior

This article is long enough as it is, and I still want to cram some general thoughts at the end of it. Both game one and two were largely a repeat of our round six match, though he did kill Rose in game 1 round 2 with No Mercy. The cost was excessive however, and I was able to kill Talzin in the same round, leaving Kylo with nothing but an Heirloom saber to take swings at my table full of close air support.

One amusing thing about the match was by far the unluckiest (though ultimately non-impactful) Force Illusion of all time. He uses it to block three damage, and Rise Again, No Mercy, and a Witch Magick come off the top of his deck. Brian was watching the final match, and had some colorful things to say about it. No-one disagreed.

My day was over, I had won.

Deck Reflection

I love the deck. I don’t hate it one single solitary bit, and it isn’t because I only dropped one game out of the fourteen I played that day. I can do very well with a deck and hate everything about it, see my Hondo/Yoda article for reference. I would play this deck again in a heartbeat, and I don’t think I’m even going to unsleeve it any time in the coming months.

I fully believe this is the current best list for hero vehicles available, and would only make a couple of changes in any given circumstances.

Once Rivals is legal, the Millennium Falcon (LEG) becomes inferior overall to the Fang Fighter in this deck, and I might be convinced to take out a single Resistance Bomber to take a second copy. The damage sides are roughly comparable unless you’re richer than rich, and the Fang’s ambush and other reasonable die sides are pretty attractive.

On the event suite side of things, I think two Vandalizes may prove necessary in preparation for the mirror matches which will be all but inevitable moving forward. They will also help the Mill matchup to a certain degree. Crash Landing and your choice of Maz’s Goggles or R2D2 are the best candidates to be cut.

Entangle is a flex card, and could just as easily be a single Block or Dodge (not Defend or Dive, the tempo doesn’t matter) depending on your local meta. Entangle is by far a much more flexible card though so I would think the switch through very carefully before you make it.

Playing Against Vehicles

Most people, by which I mean all but two people (My Top 4 and Finals opponent if that lends my statement any weight) targeted Aayla first. Don’t target Aayla first.

You want to kill Rose or Ezra depending on your deck. Decks that have a viable late-game plan against vehicle flood should kill Rose. Off the top of my head I’ll say that any deck running Holocrons or deal their damage through specials should aim for Rose and reduce her actually relevant damage, discard, and money sides impact ASAP. Then when you shift your focus to Ezra, the vehicle player has to use Aayla dice for Caution.

Anyone who needs to close the game as swiftly as possible (or Bala) should be killing Ezra. Turns Easy Pickings off, turns Entangle off, and makes Garbage Chute incredibly painful to play. It’s also the swiftest path to Flank unreliability.

If you can run Vandalize or Force Rend, do so. Rally Aid is the primary target but getting rid of Tech Team is great as well, and even C3PO in the bin is one less thing to worry about.

Regardless, practice against vehicles. They will be a part of the meta moving forward, I guarantee it.

And as rude as teasing without showing is we do have a deck brewing underneath the surface here at Artificery that so far has a very good win-rate vs Mill, Vehicles, and Hondo decks. Once we shore up the Kylo/Talzin and Obi/Maz matchups more to our liking stand by for an in depth look.

Final Thoughts

The San Diego regional was a blast to play in. Huge props to Jim who was the TO for the day for running it smoothly, and a major thank you to Tacster who put in all the hard work on getting my deck to nearly a turn-key solution and Hexen who was my Guinea Pig test partner. I’m happy I was able to win my home-town regional and even more happy to continue to meet new and fun people, some of which drove upwards of six hours to make the event as massive and fun as it was. The Destiny community is amazing, and this past weekend was no exception.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

-Agent Of Zion