We here in the US got our first Convergence-Legal Galactic Qualifiers this weekend (check out the London GQ results from Milton Keynes for more listicles!), and so the competitive world must take notice. Today I’m just going to cover the Saturday decklists in hopes that one of my teammates will write about the Sunday lists later in the week.

In case they don’t or you don’t want to wait for them, have you checked out the Best Coast Pairings App?

BCP Player App on iTunes

BCP Tournament Organizer App on iTunes

BCP Player App on Google Play

Best Coast pairings is a tournament app that lets you register/check in, submit decklists (in many different formats, as we’ll see below), but it also lets people all over the world follow tournaments going on for a multitude of games, one of which is Star Wars Destiny. Often the decklists will be locked until the event ends, but once it does we get a release of decklists, which allows us to analyze those lists once we get a hold of them.

Today I’m going to take a closer look at the Saturday lists from the Denver GQ b/c as of 5pm on Sunday neither event is done yet, and I have to have dinner, re-watch last weeks’ episode of AGOT, and then watch tonight’s new ep!

Saturday Trilogy

Palpatine/Wat

There was only one 6-0 winner in each of the Saturday events, but the 6-0 player in Trilogy was a name competitive players will recognize as Regional Champion Jonathan Ruland, who piloted Palpatine/Wat Tambor

People are just starting to take notice that Wat is the better partner for Palpatine. For one, his 2 focus makes Force Storm absolutely broken, but his resource sides make hitting those high-cost upgrades even better. The red pairing here is outstanding b/c it offers such great mitigation in The Best Defense, A Sinister Peace, and Rout.

Ruland is an accomplished Big/Little player, previously wrecking people with Sabine, so I trust his build here. I like that he added the force moves, as they are pretty strong even without Lightsaber Mastery. One interesting call is Breaking Bonds to get rid of Mind Extraction, which absolutely shuts Palpatine down; the only issue is that if Palp already has 10 damage on him nothing will save him from Mind Extraction, but Ruland has so few upgrades that it’s possible he doesn’t get blown out too hard because he might only put 3-4 upgrades total on Palpatine. It’s the decks that spt 7-8 upgrades that really mess with Palp, discarding a ton even if he hasn’t hit 10 health. It is also worth mentioning that people won’t want to hold on to Mind Extraction to clog up their hand, and will play it when they draw it/can afford it, so Breaking Bonds certainly isn’t an awful call here.

The only card that I find really missing from the Trilogy build that we would maybe run in Standard is Logistics, but Ruland ran almost this exact same list in the Standard event, going 5-1, and he didn’t include Logistics. In fact, his only change was -2 It Binds All Things for +2 Treasured Lightsaber, otherwise the list is exactly the same.

Wat/Watto/Sentinel

I’m not super interested in Trilogy, but I was curious if anyone did well with Wat/Watto/Sentinel Messenger which I think sounds absolutely busted, and lo & behold, Agent of Zion from Artificery delivered a 5-1 performance with this list:

Here we get the three best characters in Convergence, all conveniently villain, put a ton of supports out on the table. Because we’re rainbow we can play all of the best supports: Starviper, Megablaster Troopers, and Entourage. Allies of Necessity wasn’t legal for this event, but we’ll have to keep an eye on Fickle Mercenaries vs. Hired Muscle (I prefer Hired Muscle).

Because Palpatine is such a beast in Trilogy we see AoZ pack 2x Mind Extraction, which we addressed in Ruland’s list above. I think two is a valid play if you’re really worried about Palpatine, but Force Storm is so good on its own that Mind Extraction might not be enough. I think that’s a competition we’ll have to keep an eye on as the meta develops in both Trilogy and Standard.

Saturday Standard

Snoke/Watto/Fost

Standard also featured one 6-0 player, Chase Campbell who rocked Snoke/Watto/Fost, quite probably the best deck we’ll ever see.

Snoke/Watto/Fost got this 6-0, another 5-1 by my teammate Brendan “Biggy” Devitt, and also won the Jackal Hunt by my other teammate and North American Champion Andrew Cox. The one really questionable choice here is Mind Extraction, but I guess Chase was worried about Palpatine. Palp can just go off, and when he does I’m not sure Mind Extraction helps enough. I would’ve liked to see a more controlling version with Slave I, but there’s no doubt that this deck absolutely cranks. I also question having just one Vandalize when you have access to so many character dice when you hit Megablaster Troopers, but it’s hard to screw up this list; Snoke and Watto are so strong that you can really just crank out resources.

Even if we face something that can deal with Watto’s dice, like Salt Flats or Suppressive Fire (among other things), Imperial Officer can help us line up some resource sides on our FOST die, but we can also just crank out damage by turning FOST to a 2 Range. The other day I was practicing with Reflex before his event and because I worked so hard to keep him off resources he just resolved his FOST die for 4 three times and crushed me.

Here’s Biggy’s list, which went 5-1:

I left this in its “mostly” original form to show you how you can submit your decklists on BCP in different ways, including a picture! I did rotate this for you so could see it a little bit better, but the glare is still killing us. I think the bottom right card is Imperial Officer and the ones above it are Entourage. The biggest change from the 6-0 list is the inclusion of the L-S1 Handheld Canon, which is a nice way to smooth the mulligan out and make sure the deck hits hard no matter what. I also like the inclusion of No Good to me Dead, but then again, this is a team list 😉

Phasma/Sentinel Messenger

My boy Hunter Shelborne went 5-1 with this list:

Man, these lists are eyesores! Okay, well we’ve been hearing a lot about Phasma with Sentinel Messenger being absolutely busted, and Hunter is packing Retribution to make it hurt even more. Sentinel Messenger is really freaking good, and might be the best 8 point character we’ve ever had. He gives us access to Vader’s Fist, Beguile, Forsaken, and Hidden Motive.

Logistics is huge here because there are so many dice to roll something should hit resource, and then we can pump out our Megablaster Troopers and Fists, putting out an overwhelming amount of dice. Retribution also works amazingly with the extra FOST dice because they are all character dice, which just puts out an absurd amount of damage. I like this version a lot, though I’m a little skeptical of its ability to get resources accumulated, but I’m sure it’s not too bad, it just can’t gain them too consistently so I can see our hands getting clogged with lots of high cost supports.

eLeia/Anakin/Ezra mill

Be still, my heart! AoZ went 5-1 in Standard with this masterpiece (apparently it’s adapted from ABG’s list):

This list is amazing, and I have to give props to AoZ for putting it together, it might be the Rainbow Mill deck we’ve been waiting for our whole lives. The only thing I’m not super into is the lack of potency for Leia’s Power Action, but we trade that for getting Blue cards like Pacify and Hidden Motive, a character to use for Into the Garbage Chute, and a bunch of extra health. It’s possible we don’t even need a lot out of Leia’s power action because we have things like Resistance Ring to recur No Answer and Anakin’s Podracer to mill extra cards to make up for it.

Forced Compliance is interesting. I’m not sure if that’s an effect I really want to spend a resource on, but it can keep our opponents off damage sides while turning our dice to nice non-damage sides. I think Resistance Ring is just absolutely bonkers and probably the reason this deck did so well. Props to AoZ for figuring out an awesome rainbow build!

Tacster Hero Vehicles

Every player who 5-1d the Standard Trial was a recognizable name, and Tacster is obviously one of the greats. Here, he’s on a bizarre twist on an archetype he almost exclusively runs: hero vehicles.

The battlefield wouldn’t fit in the screen grab, but it was Theed Palace. This is a very solid hero vehicles deck that utilizes a 5-dice start and rainbow colors. Every one of these characters is undoubtedly the best possible character in their color at their point cost, there are tons of resource sides to utilize, and Lor San Tekka can recur our mitigation for us. Systems Gauge is also recurring removal, even if it is expensive.

The vehicles in this list are a little underwhelming, but they all boast three damage sides and we’ve got a lot of focus sides between Lor and Satine to get us to those sides. I would perhaps like a little more focus, maybe out of an R2-D2 or a Senate Chamber, but there might just be enough here to get by. Obviously Tacster did well with it, but I’ll be interested to hear what he has to say about this build on his podcast.

Saw/Padme

The last deck I want to talk about that went 5-1 is Saw/Padme by Grandpa Jake Anderson, that of PYW PYW (Padawan/Yoda/Wookiee) fame, who took it to top 32 of worlds last year.

Brewers love working with Saw because he gives you an opportunity to build a deck outside of the normal, safe structure that good decks have used since the beginning of the game. With Saw we’re building a deck sort of like how we used to build Poe/Maz way back when, with big upgrades and supports that we’re just trying to discard, not even play. We see a little bit of this in Jake’s build with cards like Pirate Speeder Tank and StarViper that likely don’t hit the table every game, but when you can land an early Padme’s Starship and start resolving that two resource side things can get out of hand.

Because the rest of the meta is based around big supports it’s more likely that Grandpa Jake is discarding our opponent’s hands to both strip them from the big supports they want to play and hitting them for 3-5 damage. Of course, Saw only has one special side per die, but also has lots of indirect, so we can focus on swarming with giant indirect, upwards of 12 with just character dice! It’s likely that Jake didn’t work too hard to resolve specials and took them when he could. Target Acquired is pretty telling as to how he ran the deck, with TA we can melt our opponents pretty quickly. I love Aggressive Negotiations here, and almost want two, but I can understand it is tough to fit. It seems Jake went for a support killing package, boasting both N-1 and StarViper to destroy them with tons of focus and BB-8 to help set up those plays.

These decks with so much focus (Padme decks) can really play however they want, they can push out fast and use Impulsive or even just resolve the focus as Indirect damage, or they can sit back, mitigate and heal, then use their focus to push out max damage once their opponent is out of cards and options.

That’s it for today. Be sure to check out BCP for all of the decklists from this weekends trials, and make sure you let us know what decks you liked/disliked, and what you are looking forward to playing in Atlanta in a few weeks!

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire

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