Star Wars Destiny Worlds 2019 met and surpassed my expectation. This is somewhat odd as I didn’t make Day 2 which was my realistic goal for the event. I think I played fine with one incredible feel bad moment which at the time I thought was a mistake but after thinking about it I’m not as sure.

Overview

Going into the event I was expecting to play Aphra or 4Lom with Reylo being a $werve possibility. I ended up chewing the ear off of the ABG guys regarding their list and pretty much ran what they used with my sole inclusion of Separatist Embargo which was meant mostly for the Palpatine match up with it having applications in other match ups. At the end of the day the card wasn’t that great although I would have won a game if I had known my opponent had drawn a Vader’s Fist. This is the ‘mistake’ that haunted me after but we were racing for damage and its reasonable for me to have been worried that he would kill me before I killed him. The thing that is most upsetting is that I didn’t even think of it, I don’t know what I would have done if I had thought of it. In fairness my opponent went first and did not play his Fist as his first action, had I gone first in the round there is a chance I would have thought of it. Aside from that I was pretty happy with my play and while I dodged Palpatine I ended up playing four 4Loms which I consider to be an unfavorable match up for Aphra (when they know what to mull for and if there deck is built the way that makes the match up unfavorable), I went 1-3 against it getting eliminated in the final round of swiss by Vika who ended up being the finalist of the event (congrats to him on his great run).

I have no reservations about playing Aphra although I wish I had tested 2 die Aphra some more because Hunter ended day 1 undefeated with his version. In this respect I went with consensus which is usually not my style but most of the Aphra players I knew went with elite Grievous and I figured the choice was mostly match up based anyway.

Now that I got that overview over with I wanted to do a “props and slops” section. This in old MTG writing format where you give people “props” for certain things and “slops” for others. I’ll start with Props since many of the Slops are set up by the Props.

Props

1. Andrew Rothermel for winning Worlds. Most knew he was a great player and now even more do. He had some spice in his Chopper build which I’m sure helped him out.

2. FFG for having great prizes on their prize wall.

3. All the Loopers that made Day 2. Its great to see all of the players even the ones not on the main squad do well.

4. Mill making top 4. It seems to be in a great spot if you can dodge all of the Choppers and Random Ewok burn decks.

5. JT Money for recording my Karaoke song. I freaking love Karaoke and I was super excited to have performed my #1 smash hit song for everyone.



6. Jeremy for coming out to Kareoke. I had never hung out with him outside a FFG event and he’s a chill dude.

7. Everyone who complimented our content, I was blown away by all the people from around the world that said they read it even if their first language wasn’t english, that was super cool.

8. BobbySapphires heartfelt toast at the Looper dinner. We don’t always feel like playing Destiny but sometimes we put in the effort because of our readers and patrons. Also he made Day 2 of both Destiny and X-Wing, that’s just unreal.

9. Artificery for hosting such a great meet up. It was literally like Discord but with IRL people sharing laughs and drinks.

10. Cheers to everyone who bought me drinks, specifically Claus, Drew and Platform. If my liver shuts down in the next couple of days we will know why…I will miss you all.

Slops

1. HonestlySarcastc for putting ketchup on his steak. It was admittedly a diner steak but still… This was the inspiration for the slops list.

2. FFG didn’t feature one Looper in any of their top 64 stream.

3. Mill making top 4. Mill players are happy but everyone else will be sad.

4. Even though Jeremy came to Kareoke he didn’t sing.

5. My belligerent one man peer pressure wasn’t strong enough to get Jeremy to sing, I guess I need to work on that.

6. Me not making top cut. I prepared harder for this tournament than I have for any event in recent history. I tried so hard but in the end it doesn’t even matter.

7. Tropo saying I had a “Business Beard” not a real one. My beard is magnificent. (I’m not really upset about it but I need to fill this list.)

8. The convention hall for selling 5 dollar waters. At least they had fountains and reasonably priced breakfast sandwiches. This isn’t unsual by any means but it never stops being annoying.

9. FFG for not having a faster turnarounds in between the ending rounds. Our patron meet up was delayed almost 2 hours which gave us less time than we wanted at our meet up.

10. FFG for making Star Wars Destiny worlds invitation only next year. Before worlds I would have thought that was a good idea. From a competitive perspective it makes sense to have the best of the best battle it out but after seeing everyone have such a blast I worry this will turn people off from coming. Some people expect there to be last chance qualifiers and side events but I’m still worried that this will make the event less attractive as a destination. Seeing all the content creators under one roof during the Artificery meet up really made me realize that it should always be like that. This past weekend had such a different feel than any other high level event I have ever been to. If the event is held somewhere smaller we will know it was a cost cutting measure but if its still in a large auditorium like this year I’ll be surprised. Feel free to write FFG and voice your concerns.

I kind of reached with some of the slops but a top 10 slops list is hard when the weekend was so much fun.

Take care and good luck at your primes. You certainly have a lot of decks to choose from. My advice is to play something you are comfortable with and test the match ups – figure out what cards are good, bad and what you should be mulliganing for.

And as always…

May the rolls be with you!

-NJCuenca