HonestlySarcastc and The Ridiculousness Of List Lurkers

As most of you know by now, I’ve had to deal with the following after both my 2nd place finish at the Artificery Online Store Champ and our dominating 1-2 team finish at the North American Championship.

I’ve had a lot of support in people understanding of me not wanting to share the list and give up my advantage. As of a couple of days ago, I’ve already posted my TTS Season 2 Winning List and the Artificery 2nd Place list on swdestinydb.com. “The Ridiculousness of List Lurkers” is TROLL btw in case you didn’t notice. Now you’ll follow me on my journey of creating the “dark horse” that dominated on it’s way to the win of the NACC.

There was a lot of work that went into this list even since before Spirit of Rebellion launched. It started as a full on 20-22 Weapon Combo deck of Unkar / Nines / Nightsister back in early April (the 6th I believe if you check our youtube videos) and I toiled away at it until it turned into a more complete combo package of 16-18 Weapons, then Resource generation, a Draw engine, and removal + Friend in Low Places. I came to the realization that I just couldn’t rely on a 3 die start or for my opponent to have cards in hand for me to “plutt” away, so I converted to good old Bala-Tik and made some corresponding adjustments to be less combo oriented and stable.

Tabletop Simular Season 2 Top 48

Come May 20th, it was time to submit a decklist for the Tabletop Simulator Season 2 Championships (Top 48 cut). I was torn between Vader Raider, Poe Maz, and yolo-ing with Rainbow 9’s. At the time, I liked the deck a lot but it had a really tough time versus Poe Maz and every game was a race. I locked in the following list and decided that if I was going to lose, it would be with me playing “My Deck” and not a mirror match due to unfortunate draws and inexperience.

This was the deck at the time. A total of 6 removal was more than enough during the Fast Hands Meta and most of the time it wasn’t even useful, I just wanted to be able to guarantee myself 1 in my opening as an available option. I found that 14 weapons was about the sweet spot for starting with 2 weapons. I had the full set of available Redeploy Weapons (8) because FN-2199 is the main target for single burst decks and Poe Maz could decide to spread damage or just go straight for FN, so i needed a fallback plan if he went down Round 2. This is the base list that all of my variations have originated from and the “math” should check out for having a decent starting hand. I more or less gave up on the Lightsaber modified melee side unless a Z6 or FN die was in the pool and I was okay with that. I quickly found that Ewok Village wasn’t the best field for the deck, but it did help against any Mono Blue Hero decks that I would run into and made them pick their own Battlefield. I required the utmost consistency from the deck to be able to have a good game and I learned all of the ins and out.

Fast Forward to a month or so later (early July) and I’m crushing Store Championships with a new and improved version and considering the change to Royal Guard because of Vader/X and Palpatine having greater showings and Poe Maz not being allowed into our top cuts (they were all getting crushed, people had learned to play against it). I’m being convinced daily that Royal Guard is better than Nightsister and protects Bala-Tik and Nines better. I still hadn’t made the switch at the time, but a local of ours, Josh, had crushed his way to a Store Champ Finals match with me and he was piloting the guard version (altered to his liking). At that point I really have to consider if that is a superior deck, but all of my testing said that it doesn’t fit my style of squeezing out every last bit of damage and available. I win 2-0 but it was backed by him not being familiar with the Rainbow mirror. He attacked Nines as his primary target, and when I was on the back foot, I killed his Bala-Tik as the primary target and made a comeback. The next game he targeted my Bala-Tik and I instead targeted his Nines and he lost again. He attempted the same strategy that I did in game 1, probably assuming that it was the best way to attack the match-up since I just did it, but unfortunately, I realized his intent and didn’t let him have his way. I was very happy with the deck and asked my group if I should drop from the TTS 2 event to hide the list. I was told that I’m crazy for even thinking that, but in the back of my head, I knew i wanted to keep it a secret.

At this point I’m feeling like maybe Guard is the better version. It was just too good against all of the current mainstream decks. It’s time for my Top 4 match for TTS Season 2 (video is here) and for now, it doesn’t matter because I can’t change my deck anyways. After this match, I’m fully convinced that Royal Guard can never take the place of Nightsister in my heart. When push comes to shove, Nightsister will be a martyr whilst pushing her buddies forward for the win and I prefer to have an “out” when things get really bad. I’ve been testing with my group and my deck looks like the hands down best deck available. A lot of my time is going into testing specific match-ups to A.) make sure that there isn’t a glaring weakness I’ve ignored and B.) being able to break down the data for the team so that I can give them a proper mulligan and play through guide on each individual match.

Artificery Online Store Championship

So I didn’t intend to play in the event. Elrathion did a pretty amazing job at rounding up players and of convincing me that there wasn’t anything to lose if I played since the list wouldn’t be published. A couple of people I know needed to drop from the event, but wanted the Matt Radar Technician and were giving their slots away as long as they got it, so I really became curious at that point since I could just get some FREE final testing in on several cards over the course of a large event with other people playing Top Tier lists. I actually ended up paying out of pocket due to some miscommunication, but a friend of mine (Yodaz who also Top 16’d the event) that I’ve been teaching the game for a week (he’s joining me at Nova w/ my extra ticket) was able to take one of the freed up slots. I’m very skeptical by nature and always look for the bad, but I couldn’t really think of anything going wrong, but just in case, I made several adjustments to my list to mask it as well as get “final testing” on specific cards to determine if they had any merit.

As you can tell, it looks like a very weird brew, but I’ve played with every single of the “One of’s” in the deck before and already knew how to adjust accordingly based on what I was given. I 8-0’d swiss and then was in top cut. There was a discrepancy at some point about both top 4 matches not wanting to be streamed and for some reason I couldn’t hear everyone talking, so i closed out discord and came back and said to flip a coin for it. Someone said they flipped a coin, but I’m not going to believe something I can’t see, especially when we have access to a virtual environment where we can do it. A roll off occurred and I dodged stream again. I won a close set against Tacster (Nick Obee who got 2nd at Worlds and later Top 4’d NACC) and was in the Finals. FlaccidBaron (i thought it was Bacon the whole time) and I figured out a split for prizes and it was 2 AM for me and i wanted to go to sleep (it would double as dodging stream too), but Elrathion and Agent of Zion asked that we play it out and although I didn’t want to, I did it against my better interests just so that they don’t have to deal with rioting viewers. I wanted to make it a best of 1, but that didn’t work either. I considered taking a huge dive, but that wouldn’t be respectful to my opponent, myself, and any one rooting for me. I played, I lost, I moved on…. or so i had thought. I was given the option to decline having my list published and I chose that option. That is where things took a turn for the worse.

Drama w/ Decklists Debunked – Skip to next Header if you don’t care

This might seem out of order, since it occurred prior to the event, but I felt it was a bit more accurate in the timeline to put it here. I talked to Elrathion who is a good player that I sometimes play with on TTS; he was in charge of the Artificery Online Store Champ. This is a couple excerpts from our chat just to show that the entitled people who wanted my list were clearly in the wrong based on what I was being told. There was also some fact-less garbage spewed around the 36 minute on a specific podcast , especially about the posting of the Winning deck, but the list had already been published prior to us doing it, not to mention that we’ve been posting Store Champ Winning deck lists for how long now?? Thanks for the vote of support… at least I know who to “war” with when I decide to turn full Heel.



(I had to fill out the white space in the second snippet in case people are wondering why the divider line ended) Edit: Just realized i cut off “who knows” into “who know” when trying to reduce the spacing.

Gen Con and the North American Continental Championship

Thursday

We had many troubles with the hotel and also figuring out how to pick up our badges from Arthur, but thanks to Bowie the badge thing was settled since he went and picked it up for us. At this point, BobbySapphire was in between Rainbow and Poe Maz Retreat as his deck for Gencon, Tiny still tries to reinvent FuNkar but it just isn’t good enough, and NJCuenca somewhere along the line fell off from Poe Rey after demolishing me in a local Store Champ and is on that Emo twins life. We get some testing in prior to the Thursday 4pm $500 qualifier and Tiny (FuNkar) is getting stomped by BSaph (Rainbow). Pairings go up and it’s Tiny and I paired up in the 1st rd in a Rainbow mirror match. I end up way ahead, choose not to kill his NS with a stray bullet (huge mistake), decide to not flank his new Rocket Launcher showing a 3/4 from the NS ping, and the game got thrown away from there. I 4-0 the rest of the event and I’m in the top cut, BSaph 3-2, NJCuenca 3-2, and Tiny 2-3’d? We go over a lot of the decision making tree and correct mulligans. At the Thursday 8pm $1k Qualifier event I lose a mirror to Royal Guard in round 2 or 3 but win the rest and make top cut as 4-1. BSaph is on fire and everything clicked in finishing 5-0, Cuenca 4-1, and Tiny 3-2 and also qualified.

Friday

Friday hits and I just meander around meeting up old friends, BSaph is doing X-Wing, and NJCuenca is doing Epic. Tiny is grinding out the Noon $500 Qualifier w/e Poe Maz and I believe he goes 4-1 (made a misstep against Rainbow and got killed for it). The Top 32 for the $500 event starts at 4pm Cuenca and I won, but Tiny rolled pure garbage and lost. Top 16 the rest of us lost. We were pretty down about it or at least I was. The meta wasn’t anything like I was expecting between the two days. It started off as a ton of Rainbow 9, then converged into a lot of Mono Blue Villain, and then finished up as a crazy amount of Poe Maz. FuNkar just didn’t seem to exist at all. I wasn’t feeling very good about the deck and Cuenca and I set off to counter the format and we took an old list of mine that absolutely got crushed by FuNkar but seemed like it could run all over the current decks. First test game and it was as glorious as you could imagine, it curb-stomped everything. I’m a bit lost as to what I want to do deck wise, and whether I make the shift to Royal Guard, but Mike is there for me and has me rationalize that I can’t win every single time that I play and there are some losses that can’t be explained. I was battered and broken, but he helped me glue the pieces back together. Thanks! #squadlyf

Saturday

Saturday arrives and as the tests went on that morning though, things weren’t going so well with the “meta destroyer”. Between not having enough reps, and not wanting to gamble, we decided on sticking with what was time tested, but we made some minor alterations based on the feedback I was getting and for what we expected. We’re (Tiny, Cuenca, BSaph, Stephen Calomino, me and maybe 2 others) all hanging out waiting for the line for entering to decrease substantially. Calomino says he’s running Rainbow and I offer to take a look and update his list. We make some adjustments to stick in all of the key cards and then I notice that after the changes his deck looks REALLY REALLY GOOD. He had 2 Award Ceremony decked that I could NOT find space for and I couldn’t think of a single thing that he was missing. I’m literally sitting there speaking out loud wondering if he just sold me on Award Ceremony, so I look through my deck trying to figure out what card was missing…. it was Friends in Low Places. I stop, i put his deck back and think long and hard about cutting them…. NOPE, couldn’t do it. I was SO close, but it wasn’t happening. Mike and I had identical lists (i technically converted to his change because I added in the 2nd Flamethrower over a piece of removal to get to 15 Weapons), but then I change my mind and cut Vibroknucklers for a 2nd Vibroknife. I really dislike knucklers in most situations and it was an easy cut for me, but no one else decided to follow suit. We turn in our event tickets and decklists and await pairings whilst complaining about it being an 8 round event instead of 9 and that 8 would be fine if they just handed out the Vader promo and let people who wanted to drop drop immediately and not screw the strength of schedule up.

1-0 vs Poe Maz (SirToastsALot who top 32’d IA and X-wing), 2-0 vs Poe Maz (Logan Mack), 3-0 /4-0 vs Han Rey and Rey Quigon, 5-0 /6-0 vs Phasma and FuNkar. There was a point about 2-3 rounds before that where Elliot Lusk, I, and Ira Fay had set up a victory formation and sat in the same seats next to each other each round. People didn’t know, but as long as we were in that formation, we were unstoppable. After Round 6, the standings were posted and Elliot and I had the best tiebreakers by a good chunk. Round 7 occurred and it was Ira vs Me and Ira screwed up the formation so he won, but Elliot and I lost. I stopped Ira from getting a 3 drop weapon in the 1st round, but he boundless’d out of it and I ended up losing. I felt like I played the later rounds incorrectly, but I didn’t think about it too much and moved on. Post Round 7 Standings go up and Elliot and I still had the best SoS by a solid 7-9 percentage points, luckily. Round 8 vs Tacster w/ Phasma – I blow out his guardians but misstep really hard by not rerolling FN’s dice to make him finish off Nine’s (when he was showing lethal) so that i can redeploy to the readied Bala-tik. I allowed him to reroll and fix his dice a couple of times in a row and he lit into Bala, the game fell apart and after that he had shown lethal the next round after the first action. Elliot and I both make Top 16 as 6-2 with our crazy strength of schedule.

We get invited to a dinner event with Reflex (Andrew) and his friends. I’ve mentioned it in some v-logs that may or may not have been aired, but that was some crazy grandiose shit that I may never forget. Ed you’re an MVP to us. Definitely some next level stuff and I’m going to attribute our 1-2 finish to having the best food i’ve ever eaten at St Elmo’s. I heard that they needed an extra Gen Con badge and I set out to find one for them to return the favor for the invite. I get a hit on a Patron leaving around noon and willing to give up his badge when he leaves. Mission COMPLETE! We get to the hotel and I’m still wondering if we are dreaming and then I start to think about how i’m going to deal with Ira and the mirror in the morning.

Sunday

It’s the wee hours of Sunday morning, I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. I go to the hotel gym to do a short workout (10 minutes) just to get the blood pumping and all I can think about is this impending mirror match. I make a vlog, lamenting about the situation, go back to the room and wait until the Hotel Breakfast is served. We fuel up and get to the con. It’s getting close to 9AM and I don’t see Ira at all. I start to think lowly and hope that he doesn’t show up and wonder if he knew it was at 9AM. He pops up and I lament to Ira about him dipping out Round 8 for another event and that leading to us playing each other. He informs me that he has a flight and won’t be sticking around and that he will concede because of that. I’m happy about getting the auto-win into top 8, but I’m upset at myself for hoping he just didn’t show up. We’ve talked a bit online about Rainbow 9’s as well as his website for Release Notes (which I wanted to integrate into TheHyperloops website) and wanting to get a win due to someone oversleeping or not knowing the time is pretty awful. We tell the judges what is going on, but sit there and play anyways to see what would’ve happened. We split 1-1 before the rest of the Top 16 finished and we stopped there, never to know what would’ve happened! Ira ended up donating his badge to our buddy who needed one for his girlfriend (assuming relationship status, sorry if I’m wrong). Too many MVPs!

Top 8 is me vs Tiny w/ Rainbow 9’s. I talk about it a bit on a v-log that stealthily went out today. He made a fatal error in Round 1 and got set very far behind. He attempted to climb out of the whole that was dug, but I wasn’t going to give him the chance to this time. Game 2 he played much tighter, but his inexperience with the mirror showed it’s ugly head at an opportune moment again and I levied that into being able to finish the game. He took off hoping to make it to the $1k event (which Mike and I gave up on because we were Top 4), but sadly he needed to lose about 5-10 minutes faster to make it in time.

Top 4 vs Brian w/ Old School Poe Maz. What I mean by old school, is that it didn’t run any of the fancy Retreat or Jump events and was just pure unadulterated raw damage. Game 1 everything is looking pretty normal, but then Round 2 I kill Poe and the game was over. Game 2 I make an attempt at going off, but it took something like 6+ rerolls of IQA to get something I could use and I still didn’t hit much damage, then I died easily. If Game 3 was recorded, it might have caused instant errata’s after people watched it and knocked down FFG’s doors rioting. Brian Friends in Low Places my hand and takes my Enrage. He rolls out a 2 Ranged and X (didn’t matter) on Poe, a 1 Ranged on Maz, and a Resource. After his claim for Thermal I have 5 damage on Bala (took 6 damage had a shield), 2 on FN (took 3 damage had a shield), and 3 on Nightsister. I go completely bonkers in Round 1 and Boundless ambition whilst lighting up Poe with weapons, I swap into a Flamethrower and throw down an Aftermath, I kill my Nightsister to reroll the Flamethrower while Poe is at 8 damage so that I can get the resource, a 2 melee shows on FT and I resolve that and overwrite it with Rocket Launcher to kill Poe, untap Bala and get like 1 damage or 1 resource. Round 2 Brian Scavenge’s the Thermal, Casts it on Maz then takes out Bala and has 5 damage on FN, then he Planetary and claims to put FN to 7 damage. I make an attempt at killing Maz, but she ends up with 1 HP left after I exhaust all of my rerolls trying to finish her off. Brian starts Round 3 with a 2nd Planetary Uprising and now it is my turn and Maz needs to die here or I lose. I overwrite my weapon for a Vibroknife, hit discard, resolve it and overwrite with Holdout Blaster, a 2 Ranged for a resource hits and it is game over, i won! I had another Rocket Launcher in hand ready to go for the 66% chance if those both missed (85% for the win overall between the 3 of them). I wake up out of my trance to see everyone crowded around going ballistic. Mike (BSaph) also won his Top 4 match and we have a Hyperloops Final!!!! Mike tells me that he couldn’t see what was going on and he was jumping up and down 2 rows back and fist-pumping like a madman. Neither of us even cared at that point any more, we did it! 1-2 finish, the thing you dream about but never get to accomplish. Ash Ketchum vs Gary Oak in the finals, if they ever got along and Ash wasn’t a scrub! This would be the perfect moment to break out this (if we knew it)

We were given some time to unwind and get waters so we discussed a split whilst walking to the concession stand and wondering where the hell the 3rd Musketeer was hiding at. Mike throws on his Star Wars jam getting himself prepped for the showdown whilst I durdle and talk to the judge about not assuming I won if I show lethal, because I’ll most likely scoop since I may not be able to attend Worlds. I have two stores and sell “cellphone and cellphone accessories” so my trips get cancelled some times. At some point, I inquired about that with Lukas and splitting / giving that to Mike in advance, but I believe the answer I got was a “He can’t make that decision”. I win the roll off and elect to play on Mike’s Battlefield and took the shields. He rolls out Bala first and I Friends in Low Places him to find his Enrage and 2x Three drop weapon. He realizes that not casting the Enrage to start was a huge mistake and I don’t let him stick an additional resource. I go crazy with Double Boundless ambition in the 1st round and he has been passing for like 12 actions in a row with double dice showing 2 Ranged for a Resource and he is broke. Somewhere in the middle of me using my 15 cards, i injure my Nightsister til she has 6 damage and then he springs into action and rerolls his FN die and it hits 1 Ranged damage. I didn’t even consider that play while he was passing and only thought he wanted to be able to mess with any big damage sides that I show. My Nightsister dies and he gets to ready Bala-tik and take another chunk out of my Bala. I was still finishing up all the stuff I was doing and Round 1 ended with both his Nightsister and Bala dead, my Nightsister dead and my bala injured a bit. The game was over next round with a few Rocket Launcher shots to his FN. Game 2 was a huge back and forth that ended with both of our FN’s at 9 damage each, but I had the battlefield and started off with a Z6 overwrite that showed a 2 melee… within a second of the 2 showing, I’ve already got congratulation messages on my phone popping up that I can see as it lights up for each notification. I wanted to figure out the Flight / Hotel thing but it was already too late, I’m being handed the trophy and without having resolved the die, I was already declared the winner.



This is my favorite picture of Mike. He’s the man and just exudes confidence and was ecstatic, win or lose.

I wanted every single picture to be with my homies. It was a team effort and I wanted every one to know it. They did make me take some solo shots, but I’ll break into their house and delete the footage at some point. We met and hung out with Jenna Marion after who became another BFF of the group, then we separated and went to a German Pub Restaurant to celebrate our accomplishments with the same group as the night before (minus a few people). Gencon was great, I enjoyed meeting everybody and being able to attach faces to the screennames for people that I talk to. I can remember a play by play of a game for the most part, but I can’t remember the names of all the great people that I met and spoke with. It was a pleasure and I hope to see you all again! There are so many thanks that I want to say / give and this is already the longest thing I’ve ever written (probably over double) so I’ll leave it as a huge thanks to everybody, especially my fellow Hyperloops members (Tinyloops too) for dragging me to the next level when I thought I was retired and done with the CCG life. #squadlyf

P.S. The hiding my decklist thing reared it’s ugly head again after Gen Con. I’ll give it up this time, but the next time, I’ll just throw it behind a paywall for the faithful until w/e big event is over. The gag order has been rescinded. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal!

~ HonestlySarcastc

Our Patreon is already out of Coaching Tier slots, but Tournament Prep tier is still going on strong with a lot of How To Questions on Rainbow 9’s Nightsister, weekly exclusive content and access to our members only Discord. Come join the party in our Discord!

Edit: We moved to 5 coaching slots, but they may still be taken by the time you read this.

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