I’ve been talking about Snoke Bazine FOST vehicles for a while now and really liked the flexibility that it held in game and would’ve loved to have played it at Gen Con for NA Champs but it just wasn’t ready at the time. I’ve been beyond busy with my work life because my stores have been imploding due to my mismanagement so my usual grind just hasn’t been happening and I’ve really had to improve on my theory crafting in order to stay ahead of the game. UK Nationals had been won by Stealthmoose piloting one of my latter variations and through him and my buddy Yodaz, I was able to get a solid amount of information to make conjectures about the necessary adjustments to the deck.

Leading up to Nova (Convention that US Nats was held at) I thought I was playing on Thursday, but about a week prior I had checked my purchase history and I realized that I had decided to play on Friday which was Heat 2 of 2. I’m relatively happy with my decision to do so, because it allowed me to determine the meta adjustments that I wanted to make, which I’ll go over later.

The Deck: Bald Tires

I made the move from Hidden Motives to doubt based on the sheer number of Snoke’s in the field. I don’t really play removal against Mill so the only downfall here is against big dice and aggro. I also opted for Feel Your Anger and Mind Trick for the blowouts over Beguiles because I didn’t really like playing Beguile even though it often did it’s job. Slave 1 is amazing and running 2 of them was the bee’s knees. Deflect was run on account of everyone else loving Deflect who ran it… i hated the damned thing and wish it was a 2nd Mind Trick the whole day.

Round 1: Bernie Y. Escobar …. BYE!

Used my 1st Rd Bye card that I got from Nationals. Thanks 7th Sister Reset… damn you Daniel Weiser (sp?) for not calling it Blue Red OTK. 1-0

Round 2: Isaac Nichols – eYoda Cass Ani2

So funny story, there is another young man that is named Isaac and I often see him and his dad at big events. I thought I was playing him and totally misread the last name on the pairings sheet and asked him if his last name was Newton … everyone around me laughed because I was loudly asking for Isaac Newton. I got to the table and there was another young Isaac there and I read his name on his badge. WHOOPS!!!

He was playing Mill which I was very familiar with and he hadn’t seen my deck before. Bazine tore him up with disrupts and discards and I ramped into a bunch of vehicles. There is a non-flattering photo of me floating around that shows me and him playing. My comparative body size in differential to him was equivalent to my field vs his as well (I’m huge and he’s tiny and I had a billion vehicles in play and he had like nothing). WIN 2-0

Round 3 – Karl Magnuson – eAphra 2x Executioner

… there is a 3rd Magnuson brother when the hell did this happen???… Turns out that he is the cousin that they are visiting which makes much more sense

He was MIA for a bit at the start and he got to the seat and they started the round before he even took his bag off. Man i hated how fast they started the round clocks for the rounds. In most rounds my opponent and I haven’t even finished setting up, let a less getting through mulligans before the round started.

I punch Aphra for a pretty large chunk of damage via Bazine and FOST and I think I got a Slave 1 out to continually control his dice. He put a rather large dent into my Snoke and tried to Relentless Pursuit kill him, but both of my other characters only took 1 damage each, so it wasn’t for lethal. I Friends in Low Places his Relentless Pursuit after I left him take it back and he did something else. I had become aware of it (Relentless Pursuit) in testing against Drew Warren (eventual winner) the day prior so I had played around it pre-emptively. I gut her round 2 and the rest of the deck comes toppling down after. Win: 3-0

Round 4 – Paul Ragard (sp?) (Arrow Brook Gaming) – eSnoke, Aphra, BD

His hand wasn’t so good. I think he gets a 0-0-0 down (maybe not) but i FiLP away his crash landing and see 2 bubble shields, a probe, and hidden motive? I think I ramp out hard and Special his battle droid so that I can just knock it off the table Round 1 and lower his overall damage output. He really doesn’t get anything going and I think I jammed down a Slave 1 with some ramp and he whiffed again on anything feasible. The game is all but over after the 2nd round when looking at the damage counts and board state. Win: 4-0

Round 5: Drew Warren (Arrow Brook Gaming) – eSnoke Aphra, Battle Droid

I can’t even remember this game except that I Friends in Low Places and had saw like 3 pieces of removal and left a Deflect which I then had to play around for way too long. I got molly-whopped and it was nothing like the previous round. Between this round and the practice previously, the feeling I got was that I needed to spend less time ramping and more time pushing damage in. I could also focus heavily on early shields, but I got ruined a couple of time by Relentless Pursuit in testing, so I’m still not quite sure how to best attack outside of bursting Snoke down. LOSS 4-1

Round 6: Beren Aitken – eSnoke, Aphra, Battle Droid

Dammit, I have to play against this thing again. I quickly find out that it isn’t normal. His first move was a Force Speed. I roll out Bazine and a discard is showing. He plays Chance Cube on Snoke. I’ve never seen them run either card, so I know something is up at this point. I think I take resources and start to setup my ramp and damage engine. I believe I FiLP’d him for Crash Landing to keep him off of draw and he has a Delve and no big vehicle or maybe it’s the other way and I forget. He doesn’t end up being able to do a lot and takes pretty large chunks of damage. He eventually gets down a Planetary Bombardment I think and I remove the die and continue with my onslaught. Bazine is a big pain in the arse for decks like this because her discard and disrupt sides being Snoked cause a relatively large problem for them getting set up.

He was talking to someone about playing against a guy in purple who was really quiet, might have said the person was good or something and they figured out it was me, i forget but I got told about it later. I’m not very quiet, but you were talking about bad rolls or draws and I wasn’t quite sure how to respond without sounding like a jackass, so I decided to hold my tongue. Your sequencing was a ways off based on what I continuously represented whether it be triple discard / disrupt or the ability to Slave 1 Power Action. It is pretty hard to run the Delve / FiHP + Big Dice in an Aphra BD shell because you only have that 1 resource side on your Snoke-able dice so you really have to struggle with hard-casting anything big and then some disruption to your engine is beyond annoying and often a “Time Walk”. I’m glad that I was able to help keep your tiebreakers up and that you made Top 16 on Heat 2. Win: 5-1

Round 7: Jake DiBattista – eLuke3 eRey2

This is the stream of the match.

I’ve only played against Luke Rey with my deck one time but things didn’t go well. I went in just wanting to burst down one character so I could just overwhelm the other character. That plan didn’t work out so well, but I’ll be quiet about the match in order to not ruin any surprise factors.

Until Next Time

I still have Round 8 to talk about and Day 2 as well as the rest of the trip, but I really wanted to get my vlog out today for you as well, so I’ll stop here.

~HonestlySarcastc

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