Before we get started, I want to thank all of the community members who helped put together our stream this week. Especially Ashten and the guys from Jackalmen Games who let us use all of their equipment, commentated, ran logistics, and fixed everything we didn’t know how to. Almost 500 people tuned in to watch the finals, and we had nearly 2000 uniqie viewers on the weekend. Thanks also to Manny, Ace, Inception, and Jack from GoldenDicePodcast, and anyone else who helped without my knowledge because I was at the event. I’m so hyped the community responded in such a massive way, and I’m hyped to run the next one, maybe at NOVA?

Secondly, I want to once again thank everyone who reached out to me following the tournament. I’ve been very fortunate to have such a successful Destiny career that I’ve received these messages before, but they hit me in the feels even more profoundly after a win.

Okay, on to the report.

Initial Testing and Frustration

I started testing for Gen Con about six weeks ago. I had been working on X-Wing quite a bit because my local scene was conducting a six week league that I find really engaging, and there just wasn’t a lot going on in the Destiny world until Spark of Hope dropped. As always, I knew that HonestlySarcastc would be working on a three-wide support deck, and it was clearly evident that he would be playing eSatine/eThreepio/R2D2/Fateful Droids very early on in testing. Being able to generate 6-10 resources per round and put out 16 resources worth of stuff is pretty outstanding, and I made it my job to throw as many things at it as humanly possible to try and beat it.

I tried Droid Mirrors, Palpatine, Vader, Maul, Mill, Beckett, Qui-Gon, Mace, Biggs, IG-88, and more. The long and short of it is that nothing really held up to what Joe could do with those resources, and I really struggled to match him in the mirrors. The droid mirrors felt like we would both work to action-cheat kill someone at the start of round two, but doing so without actually holding up the ramp was an issue. Whichever one of us drew the most mitigation after round one also seemed to be able to turn the corner better, and he was much better at winning the Fickle Mercenaries subgames than I was. All of this put me in a position where I really didn’t want to run droids as I expected to see it several times in the swiss at Gen Con.

I certainly regret not giving Chopper a fair shot. I knew his ability was good, but I certainly didn’t see the matrix on making that deck work. After seeing and facing the Destiny Council deck I certainly have some ideas, and considering how good that deck was for them on the weekend I’ll be giving it a look in the coming weeks. Most of my work in the action-cheating areas of the meta were trying to make Biggs/R2D2/eSatine/AR work. I really liked the deck as it set up a nice chain of Ewok Ambush to Roll Biggs, to Roll the Falcon, which rolls R2-D2, and if Satine brought out some Conscript Squads with her previously I wound up with quite a few dice in the pool. However, when I rolled bad, or got disrupted, the deck fell apart. I really felt like unless I hit Logistics I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do, even with AR, and I just kept coming up short.

The only thing that felt really good into Droids was Vader, but only when I won the roll-off, which was not at all guaranteed. I also gave Palpatine some serious consideration as it also put a lot of work because Droids didn’t do a lot of round one damage, so I could really get ahead in the damage race as well as the health race, simply by playing out my deck the way it’s supposed to be played, getting out lots of abilities.

At the height of my Palp love leading up to Gen Con, Shane “Serdapi” Martin, one of the guys on our playtesting team, and the guy who did most of the testing for the event with Joe and I, threw down Ewoks with AR against me. I was getting absolutely broken Palpatine starts, resolving two Force Wave specials round one, but the game was still auto-ending by round two because of his ability to always get Arena of Death. Part of me was frustrated that what I considered to be my front runner was getting shellacked by a janky ewok deck, and part of me thought that inevitability is exactly what Ewoks needed to be tier 1.

Feel The Burn

Shane’s initial list had a lot of the pitfalls that most of the Ewok decks I’ve seen have – they just have a bunch of shitty cards that don’t do anything. Cards like Ewok Ambush were the first to go, and I did several of what I call “Deep Dives” on SWDestinyDB.com where I go through every available card to see if there’s anything overlooked that can do serious work. One card that I found that nobody seemed to have is Armored Escort. We ended up cutting one because it was an awkward pull late game and made those important mid-to-late game rounds inefficient, but I think in the right meta the card is really, really insane. It just didn’t make any of our bad matchups better, and it’s especially bad against Vader (though it does have some applications there), but it helps us trigger our Diplomatic Protections and sets up absolutely bonkers Our Situation is Desperate plays. I also added two Ammo Reserves (though some of the guys only ran one), which was a card that my teammate HonestlySarcastc gave me; the card is really awesome, it’s basically an Ewok for one resource. I can’t remember who added the Hasty Exits, but it’s a card I’ve always loved and used, but I swapped the Flanks to Near Miss, since Near Miss doesn’t screw up our sequencing and is alive for a really long time, especially if people pick off Hoth Trooper early, which is a common move.

The latest, greatest tech that was added was a one-of Resistance Crait Speeder. As soon as Shane recommended it I was on board; my stance was that every card in the deck should do damage, and while some mitigation is needed, I really wanted to max on cards that brought the pain. Crait Speeder was a good pull against non yellow decks that we don’t need to worry about Desperate Measures or Dismantle, and it was another very strong 2-cost play along the lines of Strength in Numbers. Sometimes we just draw a hand that can’t use all of our money, and being able to have Crait Speeder exist as another strong card was great, and it of course allows our ATGs to swap the battlefield. I made use of the card all weekend, and it did serious work in the top cut. Against Rothermel in top 4 I was able to pull it after he had already discarded a Convergence and didn’t have two resources anyway, and against Tacster in the finals he claimed early in game 2’s round one, so I was able to play it and resolve the die for +1. We were already on my battlefield, so if he wanted to DM it he’d have to take five total from the vehicle, which is a trade I’d be happy to make. We cut our 1x Convergence for the speeder, which was a bit painful because Convergence was a great catch-all for us in testing, but we only missed it against Umbaran Hover Tank, and I was much happier to have the added damage in the deck. It really put the deck over the edge for me the night before the event.

Here’s the final list I ran. Keep in mind that Andrew Cox and Adam Ramsay who both went 7-1 in swiss ran -1 Ammo Reserves and +1 Lightspeed Assault, which is a very spicy tech card, but they didn’t play it once all weekend.

Inevitability

Inevitability isn’t something I’ve written much about at all. I feel like I have, but when I searched on the website I definitely haven’t. Even in Discord the only time I’ve mentioned the word is talking about Sabine back in 2017 where having Running Interference gave the deck inevitability as whenever you drew your Never Tell Me The Odds the game would end instantly.

The inevitability of Ewoks on Arena of Death might be the best inevitability the game of Destiny has ever had, and I don’t say that lightly. The auto-damage that Ewoks provide doesn’t go away when on Arena of Death, and in some cases a dead Ewok Warrior will have hit you for two if it’s able to activate and claim in the same round it died. Since these Ewoks only have 4HP they start dying early, and the earlier I can proc that double-damage round from them the sooner I can start to close out the game. Once three of our characters die a claim does three indirect, and while it’s really easy to see the double-claim to deal six when our opponent is at six or less health, when we can start to compare our damage available left in the round to the battle field damage and cross reference that with the amount of damage we can do before our opponents in the next round, we can really start auto-winning from 12+ damage left in certain match-ups.

The engine to get Arena of Death is simple, we use the Armored Reinforcements plot to pull a 1-cost ambush vehicle (free with the plot) and use the ambush action to play Across the Galaxy. We chose Across the Galaxy x2 instead of one and one Shortcut because the freeness of ATG is so important. The entire Vehicle+ATG combo is free when our opponent controls the battlefield which means it doesn’t prevent us from playing cards that cost money, because our cards that cost money, especially Rigged Detonation and Strength in Numbers, are so strong. Shortcut would have only been nice in the finals where Tacster Embargoed ATG at the beginning of each game taking me off my battlefield plan, but his deck is so slow in both actions and its ability to shove damage that I don’t think it much mattered. If his deck had contained Umbaran Hover Tanks or something that could end my damage early those Embargoes would’ve been a death knell, and in the future one of each battlefield switcher may be warranted.

The List

The Burn

These are the cards that deal the damage in the deck, and every one of them was used to huge effect over the weekend. Ammo Reserves is one that gets a lot of questioning looks, but it’s essentially an Ewok Warrior for one resource since most Ewok Warriors are only living 2-3 rounds anyways. Rigged Detonation does a lot of work against Droids, and while we need to aggressively claim the battlefield to trigger the Arena of Death damage, holding a Rigged Detonation in hopes of drawing one of the two Hasty Exits can end up in up to five damage, which I hit several times over the weekend. The key with Rigged is to not get greedy (though I will always Truce into Rigged if I have it), and I routinely Rigged for 2 and 3 throughout the event. If we think about how big Strength in Numbers is when it deals six for two resources, dealing three with Rigged is the same damage output per resource, anything more than that is gravy, but in testing I got blown out by trying to do the max only to have my opponents drop a 3-cost blanking the rigged.

The free burn cards from Spark really put the deck over the edge though. Inflict Pain is great, especially when we have a Diplomatic Protection out, but Glider Attack is my MVP for the event. Glider did three so many times, but it’s also great when you need to disrupt them a bit. It was only dead for me in one match, but then my opponent played a Vader’s Fist and it was godly again!

The Mitigation

These are all pretty standard. Easy Pickings is just too good not to run, and Hasty lets us claim to do damage and have two free mitigation cards that also turn on our Rigged Detonation plays. I didn’t use Our Situation is Desperate a ton over the weekend, but it was mainly because I didn’t draw it. Anytime I did draw it I used it to solid effect, and I would even consider running two of the card. In the top 8 I was able to remove four dice with it, and it was an absolute blow out, basically ending my opponent’s round!

Near Miss was just a great call over Flank, which I mentioned before, and Armed Escort is just a great free card that lets us spread damage and keep our ewoks alive as long as possible and/or pops our Diplomatic Protection

Technology

I already talked about the ATG/Podracer combo, but both Target Acquired and Diplomatic Protection were all stars over the weekend for me and my teammates. Diplo is a must in the mirror, but it can also be a game ender vs. Aphra if you get it early enough in the game that you aren’t going to just lose to Act of Cruelty. Target Acquired was just massive for me as it allowed me to make round one kills on characters like Yoda, Satine, Jabba, and Chopper where those characters would’ve otherwise taken over games.

Resource Gen

These are the unsung heroes of the deck. For one, disrupting Ewoks is a great strategy as our opponents are just trying to keep us off of Strength in Numbers, but the deck sometimes needs three resources or it has to have one to play Across the Galaxy before it gets paid back to you. But really I used Truce all weekend to different effects: I did it to add a damage to and then play Rigged Detonation, to set up a Vehicle into ATG, to sneak attack a Strength in Numbers and to sneak attack mitigation. Kinship only gets us one resource in this build, but it’s just so important sometimes to get the resource that you need it in the deck, though drawing too many of these might mean you simply lose.

The Tournament

My swiss rounds were rather uneventful, but kind of weird. I played against FIVE Satine Droids list, one of which was HonestlySarcastc who knew the exact game plan and how to beat us. However, I gave him a good run and got him to five HP left before he was able to put six shields on his guys before the next round. After that the game was just too out of reach as we drew a fully dead grip. I went 3-2 vs. Satine Droids overall.

My other swiss matches were against Aphra twice (once with Grand Design, once with Double Down for THREE Bubble Shields), and eYoda/Gungan/Marauder/AR. None of these games were very close, and Target Acquired was big in all of them.

I finished in 8th place and faced a rematch against Manten from ABG, who I had beaten on stream during swiss. I felt pretty good about the match, but then he got a game loss for a decklist error and had to run 2x Crackdown instead of 2x Crash Landing. Then, once I saw he only had one Act of Cruelty in the list I felt really good about the win and we got there pretty handily.

My top 8 match was vs. DJStormtrooper Tyler Fultz. He beat out Reflex in a close match in top 16, mainly because he was able to stick several Umbaran Hover Tanks. He did this to me round one, and though I mitigated one of the dice and used Diplomatic Protection to mitigate the other special, he still absolutely crushed me by getting two out in round one. However, he couldn’t find both in the other games and I was able to pull out the match.

My top 4 rematch was against my arch nemesis Andrew Rothermel from Destiny Council. We hyped it up a bit for the twitch, but Andrew and I also faced each other last year at Gen Con, he defeated me through action cheating into 10 indirect to spike my Yoda in a game I felt otherwise in control in, but more to the point, we got along just fine last year, as we did this year. I know I have a bad reputation because of one incident, which is fine, but we had great games, shook hands several times, and while I think healthy rivalry is fantastic, I don’t think there’s much bad blood left between us. These games were fantastic as we traded haymakers in games 1 and 2, and then I was able to pull out game three because Andrew gave me my battlefield. I still opened game 3 with Rigged and ATG, so if he took his battlefield it would’ve been even worse, but the deck really came together and I thought I played super tight by not claiming early as he was doing things like healing and dropping Riot Shields late in rounds.

You can watch the semi finals and finals at this link, but check out our YouTube page for all of the games streamed at Gen Con!

The finals vs. Nick Obee were pretty lame. I won both games in 35 minutes total. That Jabba deck just can’t hang with the damage we put out, and even a first-action Embargo on Across the Galaxy couldn’t stop the onslaught of damage. My game 1 hand was absolutely insane, Target Acquired which went on Jabba followed by Glider Attack and 2 Inflict Pains meant I did 12 damage round one and was free to pull the Crait Speeder since spot yellow was gone for DM. In game 2 he claimed early when I had a resource and so I was able to pull Crait Speeder with no hand and luckily rolled a 2 (3) indirect, so even if he wanted to DM the speeder round 2 it had already done its job damage wise.

That’s it for today, as 3000 words is where I think it gets a little exhausting. I don’t think this is really the Ewokalypse as it’s pretty easy to tech out to beat it, but Gen Con 2019 was the perfect weekend to bring it, and I’m happy I did. It means a lot to finally win a tournament, and I’m sure you’ll hear me talk about the deck more in the coming week as I’ve already scheduled five podcast appearances. Apologies in advanced for getting sick of me!

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire