I met up with Mick Cipra on an icy, cold, but very sunny Saturday afternoon at the Fantasy Flight Game Center in Roseville, MN. As always, the place was abuzz with the cheer, laughter, and the general clamor of gaming. The Game Center is, of course, never as busy as it is during Worlds weekends. But, many non-locals would be surprised at just how busy the place is on the weekends; it is not as packed as Worlds, but sometimes it feels close to that. I was fortunate to have Sarah Paulsen, the 2014 FFG Regional winner , present also. Mick had seen some of the threads that I had posted, asking forum users to submit questions, so had an idea that some or all of those would be asked. But, I had not shown him my list of questions beforehand. It was a really nice afternoon and I had a lot of fun doing the interview. I hope that you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed conducting it and writing it up for you.

abUse the Force: Mick Cipra Interview. November 22, 2014

Abbreviations:

ATF: abUse the Force

MC: Mick Cipra (2014 World Champion)

SP: Sarah Paulsen (2014 FFG Regional Champion)

INTRODUCTION

ATF: First, welcome to abUse the Force. We're happy that you are taking the time to do this interview and we know that the community is thankful also.

MC: Thanks. I'm happy to be here.

ATF: To give the readers a better understanding of who you are with respect to card games, let's start off with a few general questions. What was your first deck-building card game?

MC: My first deck-building card game was Magic: The Gathering, probably in the summer of 1994. A couple of my friends had played it for a year or so; they had a bunch of Alpha and Beta cards. They taught me how to play and I thought that it was fun. I started getting into revised and played that for a couple of years, but I was in a small town and there wasn't a big tournament circuit. I liked the channel fireball deck. I remember trading with everybody to get those cards. That deck was really good.

ATF: Do you still have the Alpha and Beta Cards?

MC: No.

ATF: What card games have you played in the past?

MC: I played the old Star Wars CCG a little bit. I was very excited when that came out; I think I was a 9th grader. My friends and I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in middle school. Then, we saw a Star Wars role playing book, the West End Games d6 version. That was a phenomenal system. I started looking at FFG once I saw the Edge of Empire stuff being developed and I realized that they had the Star Wars IP. I eventually started playing Edge of Empire, which is a great game. It doesn't use a d6 system, but the spirit of d6 is still there. I also played the older Star Wars CCG.

ATF: Why the decision to get into the Star Wars LCG?

MC: Well, I really liked Edge of Empire. I had been having a lot of fun playing the Beta. I saw that FFG was developing a Star Wars card game under their LCG model, and I decided to give it a try. I bought it when it came out in the winter of 2012. I liked how it played, so I bought a second core set and thought, "This is amazing." But, it was tough finding people to play with for a while; there was no regular weekly gaming group [in the Minneapolis area] like there is now.

ATF: I received a core set of Star Wars in November of 2012 at Fantasy Flight Games Worlds and began playing immediately. If I remember correctly, it was released officially some time in December of 2012. I first remember meeting you at the first Star Wars Regionals in Spring of 2013, where you took 2nd place. That was a fun event. David Bergstrom, a close friend of mine, made the Top 4, losing to you as you went on to face Jim in the final round. Sarah Paulsen managed to Top 8, and I won the second chance tournament the next day. It was obvious to me and everyone else even then that you were among the top talent in the game. What are your thoughts and memories about the game in those early days? What are your thoughts on how things have changed? To me, the Regionals in 2013, the decks that were there, and the way that the games were paced, the flow of the game, it all felt so different.

MC: It really did, and I'm a little bit nostalgic for that, because there was that experience going there, and I listened to The Smuggler's Den, and I loved what Tiny and Ben did for the game; they were so influential in that formative period of the game. I went to Regionals 2013 [at FFG] and I think that I played the Smuggler's Den deck. They had their name on the deck, but in this pod-based system I think that many people independently came up with the same idea, especially at that time in the card pool. I had been playing that deck; I thought that it was really good, and then remember hearing them talking about it; I assumed I was going to go there and play against a lot of Smuggler's Den type decks, and then most people were on some type of vehicle build lists. It was really, really surprising, and I didn't know how to play against it, so there was a huge learning curve during the tournament. Now there is still innovation gong on in the game, but there is also such an echo chamber in the forums, where people identify a really good deck, and eventually there seems to be consensus that some build is "the best deck." So, you don't see a lot of rogue decks at tournaments.

ATF: It felt like everyone online was complaining around the time of worlds 2013 that everything was so homogenous, complaining about the "Sith Trinity", and how it seemed that everyone was playing Super Friends and Sith control, complaining about Vader, Emperor, Executor, etc.

MC: I remember noticing that Super Friends wasn't as prevalent as I thought it would be. There were a fair amount of speeder decks and sleuths and "hammer them with vehicles" type decks. Light side was pretty diverse even then and it still is now.

ATF: From the old days until now, would you say that the game has gotten more homogenous, less homogenous, or stayed about the same?

MC: I think that Light Side is wide open, and that you can do a range of effective things with it. You can have these incredibly aggressive Light Side decks that can hammer the Dark Side so hard and so fast, that Dark Side really needs to be able to defend an objective from getting blown up turn one, and if they can't do that, then they are pretty behind in the game. So, Dark Side needs to be able to have a strong opening turn where they can deal with a Light Side main unit, either by focusing it down or killing it with unit damage. On the other hand, Light Side decks can now "build" much more effectively and draw the game out until they have a really strong board position.

ATF: For a while after the game first came out, I remember feeling that a pivotal moment was that first turn. As Light Side, whatever you played first turn, if you pushed with it, and you didn't get anything through…maybe you lost that first edge battle, maybe you dropped Luke, a Han, maybe a Chewie…if for some reason you went in, but didn't get anything through, the games could feel quite hopeless…now you had to endure another turn of letting the Dark Side build up the board. As LS, if you couldn't make anything happen on the first turn, things looked really grim. So, it has been cool to see the Trench Run deck and some of the other Light Side decks this year; the way that the meta is now, there are some very powerful Light Side decks that can play a unit or two on first turn and simply pass, not feeling like they have to be so aggressive all of the time.

MC: Yes, it took me a while to change play styles and get to where I needed to be with that Light Side deck [the Trench run deck]. I think that, right now, anything with Yoda, guardians, and Leia [Jedi] can afford to slow down a bit. Leia puts the Dark Side in an awkward position of attacking when they don't really want to. I started with John Herr's GenCon deck, attempting to understand why it was so good, and then when we couldn't play double Gamor anymore, I put in Ferris, and saw that the games could get really long; Light Side didn't need to be super aggressive early on. I was noticing that the accumulation of units on the board between guardians, Ewoks, combined with shields, created late games where Asteroid Base was helping close things out.

ATF: Let's rewind to Worlds 2013. What was your experience like there?

MC: I played standard Super Friends. I had liked Jedi-Han since the beginning of the game; that style of Light Side mains has always been really fun for me to play. At that time the deck was Han, Chewie, Falcon, Luke and guardians. That deck was very resilient, it had a lot of protection, and heavy-hitting mains with targeted strike, and Chewbacca.

ATF: Did you place?

MC: Yes. I made the cut to Top16, and then I played against Jarrett McBride, who was running a Sleuths deck. Against those types of builds, you have to be really cautious blocking, given Swindled and Rebel Assault. That was a grueling game. I remember a very awkward turn in it, where I attacked with all of my units to turn off both of his copies of Raise the Stakes and used my Sith Holocron to Force Lightning a Sleuth, instead of playing the Emperor and just sitting back and building. I gave him a turn to tee-off against me, but was able to turn off those objectives. It was a really tough game. Then, I advanced and played Tom Phillipi, and we were both running the same Light Side deck, and he just rolled me with Chewbacca.

WORLDS 2014

ATF: Let's talk about the lead up to Worlds 2014. I remember us talking a lot and tinkering around with a lot of odd ideas. When you said the words "Trench Run", I remember not taking you very seriously, thinking that it was another one of your bizarre experiments or a joke or something.

MC: I think you responded via text, "Trench Run. lolz." But, it was sort of a joke in the beginning; I didn't think that it would be that good.

ATF: Can you tell us about the process that led to the deck in its final form? What else did you play around with, etc.?

MC: I had been experimenting with all sorts of Dark Side decks against essentially John Herr's deck with one Ferris to make up for the loss of one Gamor.

ATF: For the readers, remind everybody of who John Herr is.

MC: John Herr is a part of Team Tarkin with Matt Kohls. He won GenCon 2014. I think that he has been the swiss winner of both GenCons.

MC: So, I was noticing that Asteroid Base was really good, but was wondering if I could go up to two copies of it, because then you get four of those droids, and the objective, A Deep Commitment, just feels like a blank. There was a thread on CardGameDB; Noonerz commented something like, "I made a bet, and I lost it, and I'm going to play Trench Run at the next Regional, because it would be hilarious and it's awful, so give me some Trench Run ideas." So, I started thinking about Trench Run. It's a funny card. But, you get covering Fire, which combos with Asteroid Base. And, you get Rebel Assault, which often serves as removal, and the objective itself serves as resource acceleration. I didn't think it would be very good. The original version had two copies of Trench Run and two copies of Evacuation Procedure for Hoodie Han's ability to tutor up a Trench Run, and then Leia, guardians, and Ferris. That deck was pretty good, but the resources could slow you down a bit, if you didn't get enough Jedi in your opening flop. There are some turns where you need to be able to play two guardians, or a guardian and Leia. And Han could get you the Trench Run, but not an Asteroid Base or a force Barrier. So, I put in Yoda, which seemed to allow the deck to draw the game out long enough for me to find various pieces of the engine that I needed.

ATF: We've gotten some excellent questions from Budgernaut on the FFG fora.

ATF: Budgernaut asks, "Do you think this deck is 'the deck to beat' or do you think you just made the right deck for the right meta?"

MC: Many of these tournament-winning decks are simply powerful decks, and the archetype will always be floating around for a while. Sleuths were very popular last year, and I don't think that there were any Sleuths that made the cut [this year], but I think that they will always be around, and I'm sure we'll see them win a Regional in the future, or going far in tournaments. If Dark Side can effectively cause some heavy disruption early in the game for the LS board, it will be hard for that style of deck [referring to the Trench Run deck]. If you face a Navy deck that can blow up two objectives on turn two, and then take a third and fourth in the early turns, you're not going to be able to set up a Trench Run that way. So, I had to convince myself going into Worlds that I wasn't going to see a lot of aggressive Navy or TIE Fighter decks. Also, things like Force Storm and Force Shockwave can wipe out a lot of teddy bears and lizards.

AFT: Budgernaut asks, "You mentioned on the forums that your Trench Run deck has some trouble with TIE swarm decks. Do you think you could expound upon that?"

MC: If they see what they need to see, they can just be so aggressive that, if I don't have effective blockers, the game can be done before I have anything substantial on the board. But, if I can get Yoda out and take the force, he can slice a TIE fighter in half and focus another…you basically force them to start crashing into you, start killing units, and then push when you're ready to strike back. TIE Fighters are not "the counter", but it can be a tougher match-up than something like Sith, who try to build a wall, and the Trench Run deck is perfectly happy to also just sit and build. But, an early Vader, especially an early Vader with his lightsaber, can be rough too.

ATF: This one was asked by both Budgernaut and also NorthMaester on the CardGameDB forum:

"As I understand it, you won with the Trench Run 8 out of 9 games you played. In some of the streamed games, though, it seems you could have won without Trench Run. Can you tell us a little about your decision to close games with Trench Run over taking out 3 objectives?"

MC: Well, I told Josh before the match that I was going to blow up his Death Star [laughs]. But, there does come a switching point with the deck from when you go for objectives to when you go for a Trench Run. And, in none of the streamed games do you really see it. But, in some games, you're able to just clear out the Dark Side's board with Leia's Command and Rebel Assault, and you're getting unopposed damage everywhere. And, X-Wings can do quite a bit of work in that scenario; you'll just accumulate a ton of damage, draw into an Asteroid Base, and then swing in for more damage and blow up three objectives. Trench Run is great later in the game, where I don't have a lot of objective damage established; it lets you just funnel everything into one attack. And then there's a sort of middle ground, where you have the option of playing Trench Run, but you've taken out one objective and perhaps have some damage on others. What can happen then is that they might have Palpatine on the board, and you have a ton of units with shielding…often times Dark Side will win an edge battle…but, it's not going to matter too much, because you have so many shields, an Asteroid Base…Palpatine's going to die. So, if you're going to try to go for objectives, Palpatine, knowing that he is going to die, will just focus down the other units that you left behind for your attacks on other objectives. It can just be really tough to figure out how you're going to blow up the necessary objectives, given that you're going to lose an edge battle against Palpatine that turn. At least if you're trying to win on that turn. If you can do another turn, then maybe that's fine. The deck is very flexible that way and there are a lot of options.

ATF: For me, playing the deck, playing against the deck, and watching it played, it was really cool to see those types of situations. Palpatine is widely regarded as the best unit in the game. But, when you see Palpatine against the Trench Run deck, staring down all of those shields, it can be a little bizarre. I remember one of my first times playing against the deck, seeing that wall of shielded units come at me…I push Palpatine forward as a defender…and I realized…I can only stop ONE unit with Palpatine. Usually, as Sith, you push Palpatine forward to defend with a full hand of cards, and you feel pretty good. I remember that being the first time that I had ever pushed Palpatine forward and thought, "Wow. I'm still screwed."

ATF: Budgernaut asks, "Could you tell us a little about your thoughts as you went through the tournament? Did you think you would take the title of World Champion when you showed up? Or at what point did you start thinking, 'Hey, I could win this!'?"

MC: Going into the tournament, I was just really hoping to make the cut again. Regionals season was immensely fun, but it was a little bit rough this year. I participated in two regionals; I did the one here at FFG and made the Top 8. In the Top 8, I played against Sarah Paulsen, who won the FFG 2014 Regional, who drew into some amazing cards very early; I lost with the dial at two. That was our first game. So, I wanted to put up a fight and play a second game, but really there was little reason to play it.

MC: After that, I went down to the Missouri Regional, which was a lot of fun; Zach from Team Covenant was there, Matt from Flip the Force. I think that there were four people from the 2013 Worlds Top 16 there. I think I ended as the 2-seed and then we went to Top 8. I was really impressed by all of the players down there during that regional. The quality of play, across the board, has just improved so much and people who had only been playing the game for a few months were playing very, very well. I was impressed with the Tulsa group; four of them came out, and all four of them made Top 8, and some of them were pretty new to the game. In the Top 8, playing as Dark Side, I drew an awful opening hand, took a mulligan, and drew a hand that was equally bad, if not worse. My opponent dropped two wookies and a resource, had Trust Me and Gamor out, and then proceeded to drop Falcon into Lando and then Falcon into Han, and it was just over. Regionals season was fun, but you could really get blown out by some bad draws. So, I was a little bit nervous about that potentially happening during Worlds [2014], where they draw really well and I draw really poorly; if that happens in a couple of games, you're not going to make the cut. I knew that I had some pretty good decks and that it was going to be a lot of fun, but I didn't know if I was going to make the cut.

MC: During the first round, I played against SkatePharmacy, and I was playing as Dark Side. The first game took about an hour, and it came down to me being able to hold off a single point of damage using Mara's shielding. So, going into the second game, I thought that it was going to go to time. But, a few turns in I managed to strike at the Death Star four times with an Ewok and close out the game. I think that really surprised him, and I felt good that I swept the first round, but I was uncertain about using a Dark Side deck that takes an hour to win with.

SP: Do you feel that 70 minutes is long enough, for swiss rounds during a World Championship?

MC: I think that I would be comfortable with 75 minutes. If I would have played a slower, force-lock style of Light Side deck, a lot of my games would have ended up going to time. The Trench Run deck can take a number of turns to win, but most of those turns are simply spent playing out units, committing things to the force, and passing the turn, so they don't take very long; most turns you're not trying to figure out complicated attacks.

ATF: Yes, the time issue was very frustrating for me during this Worlds tournament. I had two rounds that were about 5-10 minutes from netting me six points when the officials announced that play would only go until the end of the Light Side turn. Both of those rounds were frustrating and heartbreaking for me; I was playing as Dark Side, with the entire board locked down and only a few clicks to go on the dial until winning, but being denied those points due to the time rules. Had the rounds been 5-10 minute longer, those would have been full sweeps for me instead of four points. Technically, if the rounds had been a little longer, I would have gotten that first sweep, but then the entire day would have been different. But, you get what I'm saying.

ATF: Budgernaut asks, "I imagine that as you get closer to the top, your nerves really start to build up. How did you deal with that? Were you pretty nervous going into the top cut? What advice would you give to other tournament players to help deal with nerves?"

MC: My advice would be to just have fun and hope that you and your opponent get draws that match up well against each other so that you can have a very enjoyable game. I had so much fun over the weekend. It was great to see so many people from all across the world playing this game at a high level. It's too bad that you only get to play one round against your opponent; sometimes those draws just don't work out well and lead to a satisfying game. So, after making the cut, the reality is that you could be out at any time.

ATF: Budgernaut asks, "Between your Light Side and Dark Side decks, which deck did you feel more comfortable with going into the tournament?"

MC: I felt more comfortable with the Light Side deck. Light Side, from the mid to end of the Echoes cycles has felt very powerful, with lots of different potential archetypes. With Dark Side, I felt like I was just trying to decide what deck I liked losing with the most. Knowing that Dark Side would have trouble winning, I needed a deck that could at least steal a few games from Light Side. But, I had no idea that the Trench Run deck would be as effective as it was. It was tremendously fun to play. It was amazing to have the best players in the world come to Roseville, Minnesota, and blow up their Death Stars, with Ewoks [laughs]. My Light Side deck was a lot of fun to play. But, even in the weeks leading into worlds, I wasn't convinced that the Trench Run deck was any better than other Light Side decks that I was playing, I just enjoyed playing it more.

ATF: That question is a nice segue into some talk about the DS deck.

ATF: You talked a bit about what led up to running that DS deck on a recent interview with Flip the Force. But, for the readers that didn't hear that, could you discuss that a bit?

MC: Well, you mean other than you sort of twisting my arm and insisting that I play it, saying 'Try it, it's really, really good", and me saying, "I don't know…"? [laughs]. Well, I've always liked Dark Side swarm decks and just having a lot of units out on the table, particularly units with tactics icons. Plus, the card draw from Salvers and being able to manipulate what your opponent draws can be a lot of fun. But, if you don't get that engine running, it can make the deck drag a bit. But, I like that archetype. When you first presented the list to me, the Jeric splash really confused me. I thought that the resource split and running Sith affiliation would be a problem; the deck runs six Sith objectives and only four Scum, and you can potentially get locked out of Scum resources. But, that doesn't happen often enough, and, even if it does happen, you still have access to the strongest components of the deck. And, I think that people look at the affiliation and objectives too hard with respect to the potential of getting locked out of a particular resource type. But, what you need to think about on some level is having enough resource match on the table to do what you need to do. For example, in a Jedi deck, some turns you need to be able to play both a guardian and a Jedi main unit.

ATF: Right. And, in that deck, the Galactic Scum cost one, the Jawas are free, so you really only need to see one Scum objective for most things, and you also have the Slaver Holding Cells floating around in there.

MC: Jeric and Force Storm, when they first came out, were just put into a sort of mono-Sith shell, due to him being Sith affiliation only. So, you could splash into a Navy deck or something, but it was just never as effective as it looked like it would be on paper. Earlier on a lot of Sith stuff felt like that. Many of the pods have one major unit, a smaller unit, and then kill events and fate cards, and that left a lot of hands where you would be forced into playing only one unit. But, paired with Galactic Scum and Jawas, you can play out a lot of units. And Force Storm helps in match-ups where Light Side can accumulate a lot of units of their own and they are not all participating in combat.

ATF: Mikado on the CardGameDB forum asks, "For your DS deck, did 6 damage capacity affect Slave Trade and Tatooine Crash objective choice? Did you choose them for Slave Cells, Jawa Tactics and Wolverine for the card draw? Why not Counsel of the Sith?"

ATF: My opinion on that is that the six damage capacity is really just an added bonus; it wasn't the driving force behind including them. The abilities on the objectives themselves are amazing; once you get a Slaver out, the card draw is excellent, and it is way better than the card draw that you get with Counsel of the Sith. Vader is not in the deck, so there is no reason to want to chain-draw Force Chokes. So, when you think about Counsel of the Sith, given the capture dynamic and that the Slavers are in there, and that Vader is not in there…plus, you've got the Slaver Holding Cells, the resource in Mara's pod, the resource in Palpatine's pod…so, when you think about Counsel of the Sith, you've got the Force Choke that you don't really need, the resource that you don't really need, the card draw, which is mediocre compared to the draw that you get from the Slaver, so really all that you're getting out of it is the Twist of Fates.

MC: Yes. What Counsel of the Sith does for you is already being supplied by other things in the deck. Counsel is very good, and always worth considering, but it was just redundant in this particular Dark Side deck.

ATF: Scwont on the CardGameDB forum asks, "Your dark side deck contains some interesting choices, and seems to have some specific counters to the shielding deck you played for LS. To what extent were you specifically teching against the shielding deck, and did you expect it to be a more popular choice at Worlds given how powerful your Trench Run deck was?

MC: I didn't expect everyone to be running a ton of shields. I expected everyone would be playing a deck similar to John Herr's deck. And, what I was notching with that deck is that it can accumulate a ton of smaller units and not attack all that much, and Force Storm helped clear out the board that that style of Jedi deck could build. The fact that it works well against shield decks is just a bonus. It's a strong card, but definitely very situational. It's expensive, and you don't necessarily want to nuke your board either. It's good, but you need to have it at the right time and play it at the right time. Often I am willing to simply pitch it and then get it back later with Palpatine.

ATF: After your final match, Tim Bunn, who was commentating for FFG, mentioned how innovative and interesting it was to see a DS deck without Vader. Zach Bunn and Steven from Team Covenant After your final match, Tim Bunn, who was commentating for FFG, mentioned how innovative and interesting it was to see a DS deck without Vader. Zach Bunn and Steven from Team Covenant also commented on how interesting this was . When I had presented the build to you initially, did that jump out at you as odd?

MC: No. It didn't strike me as odd, because I had been on the fence about Vader too. Before Worlds 2013 I had played around with some other Dark Side decks that didn't have Vader. Sometimes, though, if you move away from a set for a while, you can lose perspective about why that set is so good. Vader, having two black units damage and four health is decent, but it's really his reaction and lightsaber that can help him dominate a board so much. There are many situations where Light Side thinks that it has all possible damage accounted for, and then you pull that Force Choke or Vader's Heat of Battle, and that extra one or two points of damage just decimates their board. So, Vader is still really good. But, when Light Side started getting four-health units, he just didn't seem as powerful for a while. He's good, but you need to see the cards in the right order. An early Vader and drawing into Force Chokes for a few turns is amazing. But, it often doesn't happen as often as Dark Side needs. So, it didn't strike me as odd that you were pushing a deck that didn't have Vader in it. Did you think that it was strange?

ATF: I think that I started looking at Vader differently when the tournament rules changed. When I look at Vader, I see that he has two blast damage that I don't really care about anymore. So, in and of himself, I see five-cost for two black unit damage. His lightsaber is nice, but you already have Targeted Strike with Mara. The Force Choke has seemed a little less useful as Light Side units have become a bit more beefy. Fall of the Jedi allows for some nice filtering and draw, but when you have the Slavers mechanic going it loses value. So, with the rules change, I felt less inclined to take objectives as Dark Side, and for some reason just found myself not wanting to pay Vader's cost for what he is. He's also less likely to be able to be played on the first turn. His reaction always felt minimized by things like guardians and Lightsaber Deflections, and less effective with more 3-health Light Side units. It's hard to really put my finger on. I just often felt myself drawing the cards in his pod during games and wishing that they were other things, so decided to just let him go for a while and start substituting in other sets.

MC: Well, blowing up objectives as Dark Side can still be really, really good. It lets you end the game sooner, before Light Side finds what it needs to absolutely wreck you. Dark Side decks with little or no blast damage have no way to close things out and can struggle quite a bit. But, in this build, you get that between Emperor, Mara, and Rage.

ATF: Your streamed games were amazing to watch. I imagine you were quite stressed knowing that you had to win two games in a row in order to seize the championship. Going into those last two games, did you think you were going to be able do it?

MC: I had just been happy to be back on Light Side going into Top 4. I didn't know how far I was going to be able to go, but I wanted to try to blow up another Death Star. I was having fun at that point. I knew that Flip the Force was a good player, and then I would be on Dark Side. So, all of those Top 4 games could have gone either way, really.

ATF: Some more general questions:

ATF: Majestaat on the CGDB forum asks, "Are tactics icons shaping the game and deck building (especially for DS)?"

MC: I don't know if that is shaping the game, necessarily, but a Dark Side deck with some access to tactics icons feels more powerful than one that doesn't have that. I've noticed that in playing around with Trooper decks. I often have lots and lots of unit damage, but it leaves you vulnerable to "distraction attacks." You don't need a massive amount of tactics icons, but you need some. You can't bury all of their units all of the time. You need unit damage to actually remove things, and some blast damage to close games out and deny Light Side a turn or two.

ATF: Majestaat also asks, "How does this affect Navy, can it become a popular competitive faction?"

MC: Those aggressive Dark Side decks that attempt to win games by just crushing multiple objectives early seem like they are just an objective set or two away from being a viable build. I think that those decks will be good against decks like my Trench Run deck, or really any deck that has guardians, Yoda, and Leia; Trench Run is just one version of that. If a Dark Side build can really be aggressive and just start crashing into Light Side turn after turn, then it becomes a race. So, if Light Side has something like a Sleuth build, then you end up just trading punches. I think that once Navy gets a few powerful objective sets that they will be able to compete against the slower Light Side archetypes, and then the meta choices become more interesting.

ATF: And, from Penh72 on the CGDB forum, "Do you have ideas for the card that you get to design?"

MC: I need to talk with FFG about what I can do and what I can't do. I have some ideas.

ATF: Let me guess…an Ewok that has a special ability allowing it to have two or three shields on it?

[Laughter]

ATF: OK, so no specifics yet, and that is understandable. Multiple people have asked Dennis Harlein that as well; we still haven't seen his card. Maybe you should make the crying Rancor keeper…

[Laughter]

ATF: As an aside, I thought that Fantasy Flight's decision on the Worlds 2014 promo card, Palpatine, was amazing. I have blasted them a lot online for many of the past promo card decisions. When they do a special alternate art card, they should make it a card that sees heavy use. I also thought that the Emperor's Royal Guard promos were awesome. Also, to get on my soap box for a minute here, I think that the decision to give out cards as the participation prize is brilliant, and I think that they should continue to do that. All of the players are there because they love card games. It is also in the spirit of the LCG model that everybody in attendance gets the cards.

SP: And, to decrease the number of people who play the first round just to get a card and then drop, they could simply give out both of the participation cards at the end of swiss rounds.

ATF: After listening to Flip the Force talk about it and thinking about it more myself, thinking about the people who just play to get the promo card to sell it, I think that is a great idea, to give both at the end of swiss.

ATF: Your play style and innovative deck design made this championship one of the most exciting card tournaments I have ever been a part of. The Twitch stream was flooded with people cheering you on, and people amazed that a Trench Run deck was in the finals at the World Championship. Tim Bunn, the other FFG commentator, people standing around, and people watching the live stream were just shaking their heads, saying, "Trench Run?…Trench Run is winning the World Championship?" Your play style and innovative deck design made this championship one of the most exciting card tournaments I have ever been a part of. The Twitch stream was flooded with people cheering you on, and people amazed that a Trench Run deck was in the finals at the World Championship. Tim Bunn, the other FFG commentator, people standing around, and people watching the live stream were just shaking their heads, saying, "Trench Run?…Trench Run is winning the World Championship?" Eric Lang, in his interview with Team Covenant , said that it made him quite happy; to quote him, "Did he throw an Ewok at the Death Star to win?...Did I see Ewoks being shot into the Death Star coming? No...What happened today was [mind-blowing]." In many ways, you've set new standards for innovative deck building and shown that there are many things lurking in our card pool that could become quite competitive if synergized in the right way. People were definitely not expecting to see their Death Star dial blown up in an Ewok Trench Run in the finals. Congratulations, again. To win the World Championship is one thing, but to win it with a deck like that is just on a whole other level. It's epic.

MC: It has been a real thrill, and unbelievable for me too. I'm happy to have been that part of Star Wars LCG history.

ATF: Congratulations from the entire Star Wars LCG community. We would like to present you with a custom t-shirt on behalf of ourselves, abUse the Force, the Minneapolis Meta, Team Tauntaun, as well as the entire Star Wars LCG community. Thank you for making 2014 Star Wars LCG Worlds a tournament to remember, and for your continued enthusiasm for and support of the game!