All of my data comes from the fabulous I Rebel 2018-2019 Regional Championship Results Page. Check it out if you haven’t already (let’s be serious, you have).

There have only been five weekends of Regionals since the RRG dropped, nerfing Snoke, Ciena, and several other cards, and people have been acting like the Meta has been solved for the entirety of it. This is hilarious to me for a number of reasons. Let me tell you a brief anecdote about Magic: The Gathering.

When a new set of Magic drops there is a Pro Tour event shortly after to show off the games. But, first there are weeks of events with the new cards. Often in those first weeks, especially the first week, a ridiculously fast aggro/burn type deck wins or otherwise performs very well at major events like Grand Prix and Star City Games Open Series events. This is mainly because while many players are far away from a finely tuned deck, it isn’t super complicated to find 10 cards that do an average of 3 damage each, play 4x of all of them, and then jam 20 lands in and hope for the best. While piloting these decks does take some skill, the construction is fairly simple (and hasn’t changed much in the 25+ years of Magic). Then, THOUSANDS of Magic events are played all over the Earth for 4-5 weeks before the Pro Tour; there are plenty of data for pros to pour over from Magic Online and SCG events as they shut themselves in a house and playtest for two weeks in hopes of winning stacks of cash.

The Destiny equivalent is that in the last five weeks there have been 32. Thirty-two Regionals and a plenty of playtesting and local nights that don’t get published or reported anywhere. Our sample size is ridiculously small, and it’s why that even after 6 months of Legacies meta leading up to Worlds HonestlySarcastc was still able to bring a new deck and come in fourth place. Destiny is played so seldom that the meta will never be solved outside of lame-duck situations where all of the cards are already online and people aren’t actively trying to update the lame duck meta. But, I digress.

The comparison here is that Vader has been that aggro/burn deck trouncing through 5 weeks of Destiny regionals because everyone else is trying to figure out how to solve the matchup but haven’t had enough time to do so. Nobody is a professional Destiny player, so nobody is spending 40+ hours a week grinding to win a freaking binder. As such, Vader has won 13 regionals in five weeks (the first 12 coming in the first four weeks), and because he only won one tiny, 21-person Regional in Ontario, everyone thinks Vader is vanquished. Far from it.

The Vader Conundrum

Are we supposed to play Vader or are we supposed to try and beat him? Can we tech our Vader deck to win the mirror? Will enough people even play Vader that we need to tech? These questions are tough to answer, and the only one I can really answer with confidence is the last one: Yes, plenty of people will be playing Vader.

People think that because Vader only won one small Regional this weekend that Vader is gone, but he made top cut in EVERY SINGLE OF THE SEVEN REGIONALS THIS WEEKEND. HonestlySarcastc said something very poignant and apropos the other day in Discord: Skill is making the top 8 all the time, it takes Luck to actually win. If this reminds you of a certain dynasty, you are not alone. Just because Vader didn’t take down all of the regionals this weekend doesn’t mean I would count him out. Vader represented 17/77 (22%) of decks at the Minnesota regional, and 20-25% has been his wheelhouse; much like Rey/Aayla was in the Worlds meta – we thought Stairs would be the most ubiquitous deck at worlds, and we nailed it at that percentage. You can count yourself lucky if you don’t face a single Vader at your regional, because most of us have to expect to face two (at my two regionals I faced three, and two in swiss, and another in the top cut of Connecticut).

One reason I don’t recommend taking Vader this weekend is because of what did win all the regionals in week 7.

One of my favorite lines in Star Wars is the one linked above. I remember the first time I really watched Return of the Jedi as an adult, and was blown away by the line and wondered why it wasn’t a bigger and more discussed line. I forgot that the mystery only lasts about 15 seconds before Obi-Wan and Luke spoil it.

Anyway, Yoda/Leia2 won four freaking regionals in week 7. That’s a lot. It had one other top 4, and it’s second cousin Leia2/Lando2 had two other top 8s as well. Both Yoda/Leia and Leia/Lando had several top 8s in week 6, and Menion Kroll won the VA regional in week five with the deck. You can read his writeup on YOURDestiny.dk here.

One of the great things about Yoda/Leia is that it has a great match against Vader, even if it isn’t perfect. You can watch Agent of Zion battle in the top 8 with his Yoda/Leia at this link, he even battle through several Vader/Greedo decks to win the title. The matchup seems to come down to how quickly Vader can kill the first character; if a character dies early the mill deck has a lot of trouble closing out the game; but if two many rounds go by where no damage was done, the opposition has no chance. Force Jump is a big culprit here, as it continually blanks Vader’s dice making him unable to prock his power action or Retribution (if going that route) which otherwise makes mitigating his dice a huge problem. While Vader players hate the efficiency plays of things like Force Strike, it might be a necessary evil against soft mitigation. Between Force Speed and Force Strike Vader players should be able to set up some damage even after being blanked; Vandalize is also an easy include and gives you something nice to do with Vader’s blanked dice or a Greedo die.

If you want to get on this deck you now have to prepare for the mirror. Cards like Bewilder and Krayt Dragon Howl have generally been too low impact to include since they don’t actually mitigate dice when you want them to, but in a mirror situation might be strong. One thing Agent of Zion did that other players haven’t done has been to include speed cards like Hit and Run. While all of AoZ’s Hit and Run plays on stream were duds, being able to get your Commando Raids off in the mirror seems really important. If both players are on Taking Ground, the roll off for control of Occupied City is just a 50/50 proposition, with no real edge to be gained. That battlefield can be a huge blowout in the mirror, and I wonder if controlling it isn’t the most important part of the match, making the roll off, a virtual coin-toss, the most important moment in the match (this is also what Chiefs apologists will tell you).

The Return of Snoke

Did you know that Snoke made the top cut of 6/7 of the regionals this weekend? Despite his nerf, Snoke has been popping up in top cuts, but never more so than this weekend. In various forms: Snoke/Tarkin, Snoke/Ciena/Traitor, Snoke/Bazine/Battle Droid, and Snoke Thrawn all hit top cuts, with Snoke/Tarkin taking a regional trophy home. This deck is on the rise, and I expect at least one more win from the big, blue menace this coming weekend.

So, how do we prep for these last few weeks or regionals? To me, it looks like these are the three decks we absolutely have to be able to beat if we want to run the table. A lot of good players will tell you that no deck can beat every other deck, and they’re happy if they feel good about all but one matchup. However, we’re at the point in the meta where we might see each of these three decks twice or more if we’re going to go the distance, so it’s unacceptable to hope to dodge one of the big three pillars of the format. What’s the best way to survive the onslaught of Vader, not get mitigated into zero damage rounds by Yoda and Force Jump, but also be able to take down a 30 HP Snoke team that’s resolving two Vader’s Fist dice and two Umbaran Hover Tank dice every round?

My gut would say run Yoda/Leia and hope not to hit the mirror, because if we’re too teched for the mirror we might get crushed by the decks that can spike one of our characters off the table. Three wide also makes a lot of sense because it can easily deal with losing a character, and also has so many dice and so much hand disruption that it can stand against mill (though Brian Lindberg did beat Snoke/Bazine/BD in the finals of Minnesota). But, then again, Vader could just be really good if we play to our Rise Agains and add in Force Strike to deal with our dice getting blanked.

And, around and round we go.

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire

PS: If it were my regional, I’d play Vader.