Are You An Angel?

My story with mill starts before the world championships in May; I really liked Rieekan/Yoda mill going into the event but I was worried about time. That version of mill was slow and plodding, and really relied on constantly shielding up to churn through the opponent’s deck. There was nothing aggressive about it, and I didn’t think it could reliably win in under 35 minutes at the most important Star Wars Destiny tournament in the world where people would be playing methodically to not get eliminated.

Everything changed when the latest set, Way of the Force dropped. The most recent set is full of overpowered characters and vehicles, and the meta shifted to support heavy three wide decks and two character Kylo decks with his two new stellar support characters. One of the best characters in Way of the Force who has struggled to find a place in the new meta is Cassian Andor. Cassian is a great damage dealer and a stellar card discarder, but it was a mystery as to where he would fit best. Blue Yellow hero has long been considered the best color pairing, and his ranged sides don’t fit well with any blue character when it comes to stringing damage together, but coupled with the milling power of Yoda’s special side, Yoda and Cassian can discard upwards of 6 cards per turn without any help from any other cards or dice. That’s 20% gone with four dice. The drawback of the two character elite Yoda elite Cassian pairing is health; 20 health isn’t a lot and in a world of Kylo’s and Hailfire Droid tanks 20 health can get burned down pretty quickly.

My eyes were opened during one of the store championship weekends when, on Facebook, I noticed someone running a three wide Yoda Cassian Anakin deck. I hadn’t really considered the combo because I’m not super into Anakin, but once I saw the true power of Anakin’s Podracer I was instantly converted.

With Anakin’s Podracer on table we can start every round by rolling it, and then immediately rolling Anakin and turning the Podracer die to either 1 Discard or 2 Shield depending on the situation. In a heavy damage deck, getting two shields and discarding a card from hand (or milling one from the top of their deck) is really busted; adding 6-10 health while still keeping with our discard plan is simply overpowered. If we’re doing great on health we can be really aggressive with the discard side, taking two cards from their hand very early in the turn. This can put really pressure on the opponent to drop upgrades early in fear of losing them and can prevent rerolls into maximum damage. This combination is so powerful that unless he has upgrades on him, you may not even end up rolling Cassian out if you’re able to get a card from their hand with the battlefield claim as the tempo of getting out ahead of the opponent is often an important aspect of playing mill.

Starting with 27 health, 10 from Yoda and Cassian each, and 7 from Anakin seemed like the best way to run the deck. In testing damage decks really, really struggled to get past all the shielding, two Force Illusions and two Second chance. Second chance is even better in the three wide version as we have two targets to place it on, and is a huge blowout if you can slam it on the character when they are close to death to prevent yourself from losing important dice. My favorite strategy is to put a Force Meditation on Cassian as early as I can, and place my shields 1 and 1 on Yoda and Anakin (fun fact: at the three major events I’ve played in, NA’s twice and Worlds once, I’ve never NOT had the shields during a swiss game), making Cassian the juiciest target possible. I won several games this weekend by slamming the Second Chance down for one, overwriting the Meditation which is only necessary for two or three turns anyway, setting my opponents so far back on damage that they have little chance of winning.

Because this version takes so many actions it’s a huge underdog to the two-wide Yoda Cassian mill deck, which is kind of scary, but it isn’t unwinnable. Outrun (Adam Ramsey) beat it twice on the weekend, which is pretty savage. During the weeks leading up to Gen Con the deck was heavily playtested by myself, Outrun, Biggy (Brendan Devitt, top 8 at worlds), and Shane (Serdapi) Martin, with Reflex (Andrew Cox) mainly testing two-wide versions. Outrun, Reflex, and I all ran the same 34 cards, I think Biggy may have too, and Shane ran one or two cards different. We all made day two, and in the top cut we only lost to each other in exact (or near exact) mirror matches, and of course, ended up winning the event.

In the end, the five of us who played the three wide mill deck went 32-8 during swiss, an 80% win rate. Our places were:

Me, 7-1 in 3rd (lost to Cassian/Yoda aggro)

Shane, 7-1 in 6th (lost to Obi/Maz in the last round)

Andrew, 7-1 in 7th (lost to the mirror vs. Shane [Andrew’s only loss])

Outrun, 6-2 in 27th (Lost to Launch Bae and Rose/Jedha/Jedha)

Biggy, 5-3 in 69th (Lost to 2 Wide Mill, Aayla/Yoda BTL, and FN/Talzin)

Most impressively, in the top cut we only lost to each other. Outrun eliminated Shane, then me. And, Andrew eliminated Outrun on his way to the championship.

I couldn’t be more proud of this crew and our performance. I think we showed up big, and I’m especially happy for Andrew, Outrun, and NJCuenca for their top 4 performances on the big stage.

My Games

Round 1: Riggs w/ Hera/Yoda/Maz vehicles – I’ve played Riggs before, at the NJ regional where I got second and eventual North American Champion Andrew Cox won his regional both with the same Sabine/Ezra list. He was playing the same lineup and Suppression Field which was really good against my Sabine deck and he almost beat me in a close game 3 in the top 4. Riggs always plays the same vehicles lineup so I knew what to expect as soon as Riggs sat down. I was a little worried about Hera’s ability preventing me from actually winning the game, since a vehicle she cheats in goes back to his hand at the end of the round and I don’t have an opportunity to remove it, but I was able to Flames of the Past his Chance Cube in the mid game, and in the last round after rolling Hera Riggs chose to roll in yoda for the special chains rather than Maz for the instant resolve, and I was able to finish off the game pretty handily. Bully for RIggs, he ended up winning his next six games and making day two, reaching the top 8.

Round 2: Chi w/ Aphra/Fost/Talzin – Interestingly I also have played Chi before, at PAX Unplugged in a Galactic Qualifier. She’s a pretty solid player, but the vehicles matchup is too strong for the Podracer start that I got. She struggled to get any damage in with all of my mitigation. One thing I loved about her list is that she ran the deck with Docking Bay as the battlefield, which allowed her to jam down two Hailfire Droid Tanks two rounds in a row, for two resources each with the battlefield claim, from the discard pile. It was actually pretty savage of her deck to be able to do, and I could see vehicle decks swapping to this battlefield to counter the mill decks that will surely rise up after this weekend. Unfortunately the Hailfire tanks came down too late, and I was already through too much of her deck for her to have enough time to kill all my characters.

Round 3: Kylo/Snoke – The swiss rounds blurred together pretty badly since my deck runs the same no matter what it plays against making the game details lack uniqueness. My opponent rolled into Easy Pickings or Entangle with his Kylo dice multiple times in a row and it really limited the amount of damage he could do. He was able to eventually take out my Yoda but not before the last round and Cassian and Annie took it home for us.

Round 4: Andrew Rothermal w/ Yoda/Cassian Aggro – Andrew and I had a pretty contentious match at worlds in a game that went to time and he called me a staller. Neither one of us were aware of the clock, and strong words were exchanged, but Andrew is a really good player and a formidable opponent (though he needs to work on his decklist writing – I guess in the top cut he was forced to play with blank cards because his deck included two cards that weren’t on his list, he eventually lost in top 16 to Riggs). I was pretty tipped off that he was running Aggro because of his battlefield (Comm Tower) and my knowledge that the local Minnesota meta was very into the deck (thanks JediGeekGirl!!). I felt like I was in the drivers seat the whole game, and I think Andrew thought he was in trouble too, but he rolled a Yoda 2 focus and force speed special that I was forced to mitigate, and it left me with no resources, so when he rolled his Cassian into 9 natural damage he could delete any character he wanted before I could stop him. I might’ve gotten too aggressive with an upgrade play earlier in the round which left me broke, but that god roll was improbable. In the end I was too far behind and wasn’t able to mill him out before he got the rest of my characters with Cassian’s indirect damage stacking up.

Round 5 – Gentleman from Chicago w/ Snoke/Piett/Rebel Traitor – My third vehicle match of the day was an interesting one. Rebel Traitor doesn’t mess with me too much, and I got a force Jump on Yoda round one so I was happy to roll him out first every round. The one thing Traitor’s ability does really well is that it makes his die unmitigatable, allowing you to Snoke it without mitigation. I think my opponent missed some great opportunities to nuke my resources with Traitor’s disrupt sides which allowed me to mitigate all his dice. Force Jump did a ton of work in this match, mitigating like 10 damage over the course of just a few rounds. Jump doesn’t work against Hailfire Droid Tanks because they have no blanks but the rest of my mitigation took care of it and I got the win moving to 4-1.

Round 6 – Andy w/ Cad Snoke – Andy got to live the dream round one by discarding my entire hand of upgrades and mitigation after I led on a one cost upgrade (can’t remember which) but he didn’t get any damage in round 1 in. He got really unlucky the next couple rounds as he could not find a gun to give him his action cheating and I was able to mitigate all his damage. I think he didn’t do a single damage til round 4, which isn’t going to win any games vs. Mill. This matchup has actually been pretty easy as well as long as we can get our Force Illusions and Second Chances down preemptively. 5-1.

Round 7 – Norman w/ Drive By Shooting – I know Norman from our discord and he seemed to be a solid player and DBS is likely the one vehicle deck I’d be worried about. Norman was able to FILP my mitigation round one and roll a shitload of 2’s throwing 8 damage into Cassian with a meditation. In round two I immediately rolled out Cassian, he mitigated the Meditation, and I quickly overwrote it with Second Chance. I also got pretty unlucky as twice I discarded cards from his hand leaving him with just one, and both times he got a Y-Wing out via Rally aid. Y Wing is an absolute beating and we played a game of cat and mouse, me taking shields incessantly with my Podracer die and him dealing Y Wing special after Y Wing Special. In the end I pulled it out, clinching Day 2 (Norman would go on to win a tight game in Round 8 vs. Will Klein of Destiny Council that put Will on tilt, slamming his cards on the table and raging like Kylo Ren screaming about the game being stupid #tilt).

Round 8 – Nick w/ STEPS – Nick was a good dude that introduced himself earlier in the day, when we got paired up he called his deck Steps, so he has my love forever. This game went about as badly as possible as I was just able to mitigate everything between the deck being full of miti and opening on Force Jump. Jump isn’t good against Luke3, but it’s dope against Rey’s sides which struggle tor oll damage. I don’t think I was in danger of losing any of my characters and I ended up 7-1 and in third place.

TheHyperloops team crushed, as we finished in 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 23rd, and 27th. That’s insane. Four of us on the mill deck were in the cut and Biggy finished in the top 64. Cuenca was in fifth with his mad scientist Aphra deck and Joe was on DBS with some bonkers changes.

Top 32 – Daniel Trujillo w/ Snoke/Piett/Rebel Traitor – I was glad to have the experience of playing against this during swiss, but Daniel had the strategy of disrupting my resources by Snoking Traitor repeatedly. This was strong, but I was lucky to roll a lot of specials with Yoda to keep myself with enough money to mitigate his dice. In both games he was able to get a bunch of vehicles out, really putting pressure on me to play tight and mitigate all the dice as best I can. Daniel also had Partnership in his deck which allowed him to go off with Ground Battalion and Ark Angle to put a lot of dice in the pool at once, then steal the battlefield to get another cheap vehicle out. There were a lot of triggers and Daniel missed some at times, which may have set him back just a hair. In the end I was able to win 2-0, but Daniel was a great guy and we had a fun time talking and jamming our favorite game.

Top 16- Ira w/ Yoda/Cassian Mill – This was a bad matchup for me, but Ira, just like he did last year, elected to concede to do other things at the convention. He can’t go to worlds, and wanted to get lunch and play in other events he had scheduled. I guess some plebs in the KOR discord were raging about this, but maybe they should read The Handmaid’s Tale and learn about Freedom To and Freedom From before they start telling people how to live their lives. haha.

Top 8 – Outrun w/ Yoda/Cassian/Anakin Mill– This was an exact mirror, and game one I squeaked out, game 2 he blew me out, and game three was really tight. He correctly identified that his last card was Flames of the Past, I didn’t really look through his discard to figure it out, not that there was anything I could do about it. He had four cards in hand, none in deck. I rolled my Anakin pod, he rolled his. He Flames of the Past my Podracer to discard it, and I had one chance to roll two discard sides, I needed the 2% on the Yoda dice to hit Discard Discard, then claim to win. I missed, and Adam got me. He eventually lost the exact mirror in the semis to Andrew, who took it down against Jordan McClure in a tight game three you can watch here on the Team Covenant Facebook Page.

The Deck

As I mentioned earlier the decklist was a team effort. A true team effort. I’ve said it a million times but I love the team of guys I work with on building decks, talking strategy, and following opponents into the bathroom. This configuration was made specifically for this event. The last change made, the night before, was adding a second Clandestine Operation over a second Hyperspace Jump. I was worried about time, as mentioned, and thought Clandestine would speed us up. The card ended up being pretty good for us, but I’m not sure I’d run two again. If you have any “Why did you run this?” or “Why didn’t you run that?” questions, I think the answers are pretty self explanatory, this was the configuration we thought would be best for this event, and we were right. The deck won the event, and only lost in the top cut to the exact mirror. I’ll let that sink in.

That’s all I got for now, I’m sure my teammates will have their reports throughout the week, and we’ll have plenty more to say about the meta and mill. You can check out our vlogs from the event at www.youtube.com/thehyperloops for more on our thoughts throughout the event.

Finally, congratulationsto my whole squad, especially Andrew for winning, and Outrun and Cuenca for making the top 4. Making top four of the North American Championship is a huge accomplishment, and these great players have been due for a big finish on the national stage for quite some time. I had total faith in them as teammates and players and there isn’t a shred of surprise in my mindgrapes as to their stellar performances this weekend.

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire