First destiny blog post. Days before a new set release and rotation, I play at a regional with the old meta



I went to the regional at Cerberus Games in Wellington, New Zealand on the 24th March 2019. There was only 11 people. Take that for what you will, we all had fun and there was some good competition for the trophy.

I somehow won this regional last year, so felt somewhat obliged to make the trip down again to try defend my title. About the same level of preparation, that is about 2 matches with the characters and deck before the event. Actually less this time, zero reps with the deck, or even 2/3 of the characters and minimal thinking/planning leading up to the event, as the newly released X-Wing toys were way more exciting.

With that said, I’m glad I had decent deck sitting in box ready to go a week in advance.

Decklist credit goes mostly to Poem from L8 Night Gaming. Very similar to an earlier version of his regional runner up Powerspray decklist.

Short premise of the deck. Mulligan for a mod. Use Armored Reinforcement to play Firespray, power action a mod onto it every round. Use Ciena power action reset the Firespray most rounds. Beckett power action to make money for this and removal. Firespray kills things, ridiculously quickly with a couple mods, and activating twice every round.

It’s a somewhat budget deck, actually quite low budget. No Vader’s Fist, Snoke or Yoda in sight, in fact only a single Legendary. I don’t play very much at all (no regular or irregular nights, event or players in my area) so want to minimize spending on the game.

But a budget deck does not equal a bad deck.

This odd trio look after a Firespray together. Thematic? Ah… nope.

Matches

Round 1 : against Ally with eBeckett + eIden

Younger player, trying out a new deck. Fairly one-sided game, she didn’t draw any removal to use with Streetwise for the first 2 rounds, even though the deck seemed to have quite a bit in there. Double Beckett Power Actions leads to a lot of money if you can spend it. Firespray went off, with a free mod twice, a Ciena reset (or 2), letting the deck do 23 damage in the first 2 rounds to win the game. Disgusting.

1-0

Pulled the Battle Droids out of the box for a more fun, casual game afterwards as the match was so quick. Gotta encourage the younger players to want to keep coming back.

Round 2 : against Marc with eAurra + FN-2199

Another newer player and one-sided game. I kept Aurra off her 3’s, forcing discards to reroll as well as discards for her ability. The Firespray went off again, the deck doing obnoxious things when the dice aren’t removed, dealing the 21 damage necessary within the first 2 rounds to win the game. Gross.

2-0

Round 3 : against Blair with ePoe2 + eBiggs + AR

I’ve known Blair from the X-Wing scene for several years, he’s a good player, even without having practiced with this deck very much. A little bit of scouting I saw this deck revolved around the 2-cost Black One, playing mods, focusing to it’s special, getting resets etc. Quick strategy thoughts were to mulligan for Vandalize.

I don’t think my turn 1 could have gone much better. Started with me winning the roll off (which seemingly never happens):

– My action 1: roll out Ciena

– His action 1: play Honor Guard (or something similar to this, don’t quite remember)

– My action 2: roll out Nightsister

– His action 2: use Armored Reinforcement to play Black One

– My action 3: play Vandalize on his Black One to all but win the game right then (but it’s never over til its over, see later in the day)

And I still had Truce in hand, and my battlefield to be able to use my own Armored Reinforcement to play Firespray round 1. Then it was just a matter of time, as I had taken out the 1-trick. Nightsister went down to his character dice, and it took a little longer than the previous games with my dice getting interfered with, but the Firespray continued to steam roll ahead.

3-0

Round 4 : against Keith with eRey2 + ePoe2 (R2P2)

I also know Keith from the X-Wing scene, and I played him at the regional last year, with him running the same character team.

My deck outputs too much damage, over coming the removal, shields and force illusions, and with needing to spend dice on Guards and Cautions etc, his damage was limited. Not too much to say, deck working as intended, Firespray doing Firespray things.

4-0. Finished top of swiss heading into the top cut.

Top 4 : against Keith with eRey2 + ePoe2 (R2P2) again

More of the same from Round 4, his deck didn’t really have any answers for what I was doing. One match here, both Ciena and Nightsister went down and I was left with just Beckett, but by that point the Firespray was fully modded up, and I got an Energy Bow (or 2) on Beckett and still had plenty of firepower, even without the Ciena reset.

Won the best of 3, 2-0

6-0 overall

Final : against Phil with eYoda + eLeia2

This was a match for the ages, would have been a great one to get on film. It more than made up for all the one-sided matches previously in the day. Epic close matches are way more fun the simply winning one-sided games.

*My memory isn’t perfect, which round of a game things happened in definitely stretched out or blending together in my head

Game 1.

This one wasn’t especially close. I lost with 3-4 health left on both Yoda and Leia.

I targeted Yoda first, didn’t really get anywhere. Force Illusion came down, and good amount of indirect damage getting placed on Leia. No Force Speeds this game, but EMP came down on Yoda pretty quickly which I had to make sure to remove every round. Used Nightsister action to keep Leia off the 2 discard (and Commando Raid) early.

His deck worked better than mine this game, I steadily lost cards without getting the necessary damage in.

0-1

Game 2.

This game started off fairly poorly. He action cheated out an EMP kill on the Firespray round 2. Yoda with 2x Force Speed, EMP on Leia. Rolls out Yoda, I remove the only Yoda special and leave the force speed special (because I only have so much removal), to make him actually roll the EMP special. Nope, plays Hit and Run, activates Leia, resolves Force Speed, focus EMP, kill Firespray.

I hadn’t lost too many cards, but I haven’t done much damage at this point, so it looks like game over. Pure cliche, it’s not over til its over . There are 2 more vehicles in the deck I can play mods and reset.

Next round I draw nothing, roll out my 3 sad character dice, do maybe a little bit of damage, accumulate money. Following round, I draw Slave 1, slam it down with a TLT asap. I think I kill Leia this round (though maybe the following round) with the Ciena vehicle reset.

It still looks grim, I have very few cards left. I get a Senate Chamber down, maybe an Energy Bow, and start going to town with the epicly built board state, and getting to play without needing cards in hand. I had a lot of actions/power actions on to use: Nightsister, Ciena, Beckett, Slave 1, Senate Chamber; there are a lot of tools. I play it out. With 3 cards left in hand, none in deck, I Entangle both Yoda dice to remove all the discard sides from the table and guarantee another round. Slowly work through shields and removal, but get there in the end to force a game 3. Still a bit of disbelief as to how I pulled that one out.

1-1

Game 3.

Onto Game 3. The dream is still alive.

End of round 2 or 3, having finally worked my way through all his mitigation, my Firespray and 2 ARC casters god roll into about 10 indirect damage, putting both Leia and Yoda down to 1 health each.

I have plenty of cards left, he has 2 health, should be game over, right? Right??

The following round ends with a dead Leia, and 2 Nightsister rerolls on a TLT, needing a single base damage side to kill Yoda and win the game, each roll a 50% chance. I miss, and am still unsure if killing Nightsister here was the right play. Nope, onto the next round with 7(?) cards left.

I play something, down to 4 cards in hand, 2 in deck. He gets a surprise Commando Raid off on a Senate Chamber discard side, puts me down to 1 card in hand. Force Meditation the last 2 from deck, and has a Senate Chamber power action available to turn a die to discard. (turns out Senate Chamber is pretty good) Despite all my tricks, I end up 1 damage short, with Force Jump, Force Illusion and shields keeping Yoda alive through that round. There must have been a misplay or 2 from me in these final couple rounds, I was so far ahead, but can’t put my finger on anything.

1-2 (7-2 on the day)

GG to Phil. Excellent series of games. Best of three is the best way to play.

Also, thanks to Cerberus Games for hosting and Hayley for judging.

Deck and Cards Discussion

All 3 characters, amazing. Beckett making money, Ciena readying the Firespray, Nightsister fixing dice, and all contributing a little damage, with their 2 damage sides each. Beckett didn’t even die all day!

Obscene amount of die removal (Beguile, Entangle, Flank, (S)he Doesn’t Like You, Hidden Motive, Pinned Down, Nightsister action, Senate Chamber power action, Slave 1 power action) and you can easily afford it from round 2 onwards once the Firespray has been played. Resources are generally only needed for Ciena power action and mitigation after round 1.

Weapons Factory Alpha – it’s basically Theed for vehicles decks, and has been around and abused 3 sets longer. A free resource round 1 is pretty hard to top.

Senate Chamber – like C-3PO, but works for villains too and isn’t rotating any time soon. Consistency is amazing. A very good argument can be made for putting this in every deck with red.

Vandalize – I love this card . Hits 0-cost nonsense, Force Illusions and even cheap supports. And it isn’t going anywhere with rotation. A very good argument can be made for putting this in every deck with yellow

Vehicles – Firespray, Slave 1, Count Dooku’s Party Yacht Solar Sailor. While Firespray does almost all of the heavy lifting, I definitely need the extra vehicles there, just in case. I think Solar Sailor was the only card I didn’t play on the day, but still wouldn’t drop it. Having a few extra cards to spend money on if Ciena goes down fast is also a good thing. Would love to run a second Firespray, but threat of Flames of the Past is too great.

Unlimited power (actions)! building a board state that lets you play without needing your hand is pretty cool. Power actions are just that, powerful. Beckett power action, Ciena power action, Nightsister action, Firespray power action, Senate Chamber power action, Slave 1 power action. Power action tokens, despite not being a thing in any rules document, are absolutely necessary!

Deck improvements?

Despite all the tools for combating mill, I still lost. I would maybe want to add a card I can return to deck, or bounce back to hand to buy one more round against mill. At Odds, Chance Cube, Mandalorian Vambraces or something, but none of those seem like perfect fits.

Energy Bow didn’t feel the best, I would replace with DH-17s for the extra base damage side. I found modifier sides to be more of an issue than pay sides. LS-1 Handcannon would also be a good option here, but it was outside my tiny budget for the deck.

Onwards and upwards to rotation!

-Nathan

Requested RSS feed still on the To Do list. If anyone wants to get in touch and do it for me that would be awesome. It looks like a 5 minute job for someone who knows what they’re doing (which I do not).

(I’m just going to leave this note here everytime until I get around to sorting it out)