Welcome to a new series of articles that will deal explicitly with exploring every crevice of the decks that are current defining the meta game. You’ll be seeing these crop up over the course of the next several weeks as we start to see the medley of Galactic Qualifiers that lead into the culmination of Worlds. Each article will take an in depth look at the deck in question, identifying its strengths and weaknesses as we fill our roster of tournament winning decks that crop up across the world.

We’re going to start with one of the newest character suites to make its way to the top tables: Seventh Sister and Boba Fett.

The Deck

The first list appeared at the Chicago Regional and was posted by the TO’s of the event at Pastimes. The second list was piloted by Destiny Council for a 1st and 2nd finish at the Fargo Regional.

While there are some key differences between the decks, the core mechanic is fairly self-explanatory. You’re looking to mulligan into your Maul’s Lightsaber and play it on Seventh Sister in the first round while making it progressively more difficult for your opponent to handle Boba Fett once Seventh Sister goes down.

Overview

If you remember way back when, the Artificery crew was super into a casual deck involving Boba’s daddy that never quite got off the ground in that meta. This deck has a lot of similar ideas behind it: play solid upgrades combined with good removal and out pace your opponent. It’s the crux of Destiny. The game plan is simple, clean, and it doesn’t have any complex lines of play to consider outside of playing good, solid Destiny. Unlike the 7th/Jango deck from Empire at War, 7th/Boba has cards like Maul’s Lightsaber, Heirloom Lightsaber, and even Vibrocutlass that help make this deck have the oomph it needs to survive in the brutal landscape of round 1 character deaths that is Legacies. Boba Fett also conveniently has a killer that helps keep you at pace with your opponent’s high value damage sides, including your own Maul’s saber.

I definitely feel like the Destiny Council list is a bit more fine tuned, but the presence of two Feel Your Anger, the absence of Truce or Vandalize, and the decision to only take one Doubt all make me a little nervous. That said, the exclusion of ID9 Seeker Droid is something that I’ve long since come around to in most lists involving Seventh Sister. The value on the second droid die can be incredibly lackluster without the power of OTK’s reactivations, and the value only continues to diminish after Sister dies. I’ve stopped including the droids in my 7th Tarkin and I don’t think any of the crew bothers slotting them in during initial deck building involving Seventh Sister.

I really like the call on cards like Vibrocutlass, Vibroknife, Close Quarters Assault, and Abandon All Hope, though. Cutlass provides much needed power for Boba once Seventh Sister bites the bucket. Vibroknife deals wonderfully with staple cards like Caution and Force Illusion. CQA has been a staple of melee centered decks I’ve been playing since Awakenings and I’m always happy to find a slot for it despite 7th/Boba’s mixed damage sides. You’re usually averaging 2 cards per use of CQA and there’s huge blowout potential if you can hit 3 or 4. Abandon All Hope is cute and in rounds where you don’t have anything else to play, it can be a massive boon while dealing splendidly with cards like Rise Again before they can be a problem.

As for the battlefield, there are two very different takes here. Ewok Village deals with the shield driven play styles that hero decks typically revolve around and generally ensures that if your opponent chooses your battlefield, they’re not going to get a great deal of value out of their shields unless they’re Sabine/Ezra. However, B’Omarr Monastery is definitely a unique take; it lets the medley of upgrades the Destiny Council guys were running to resolve one of their modified sides at the end of the round. This could be especially clutch with a Vibroknife sitting on +2 while an opponent has a Force Illusion lingering on the battlefield. I’ve also personally experimented with Emperor’s Throne Room, which isn’t an especially exciting battlefield (you’re probably only going to use it on Boba’s dice), but can really give you the edge against an opponent that is pushing to resolve their own Maul’s saber and it gives a leg up on the OTK match-up.

Things to Look Out For

Removal. No matter what the build may be, 7th Boba has access to some of the best removal cards in the meta game with a variety of different prerequisites. He Doesn’t Like You can sacrifice a blank die or Sister’s droid die to get rid of your most threatening die and even break up a modified die with its base partner. Doubt and Hidden Motive are the big, non-conditional hate cards that mess with your dice. This is just the tip of the iceberg; expect to have at least one of your dice removed in every round. You should actively try not to give your opponent the ability to hurt you with their removal. Be attentive of when your opponent starts passing and don’t play into 7th Boba’s removal by flipping a die to a +4 side when you could just as easily take the 2 side and avoid hating yourself for the round.

Hand Hate. The combination of Friends in Low Places and Close Quarters Assault can make for a pretty devastating hit to your hand. There’s not much you can really do about getting hit with FILP; your opponent is going to use it at the beginning of every round they have it unless they’re pressured to do something else. This is a card that lends the deck a great deal of consistency in that it typically gets rid of either a) your removal or b) one of your consistency engines. However, Close Quarters Assault is definitely a card that you need to be attentive of when you’re playing 7th Boba, because you can sometimes anticipate the play and (hopefully) ditch a card for another reroll or use your removal proactively. It’s especially devastating when CQA is combined with Bait and Switch to turn a side to and sweep your hand for the round while fixing dice in one fell swoop. Use your cards in hand early, especially if your opponent rolls out a boat load of .

Resource Sides. Speaking of Bait and Switch… you need to be aware of when this card can be used to kill a character and put you behind. Unless you know otherwise, side needs to be treated like a damage side if that additional damage can be used to deal a killing blow. Don’t get greedy with your Force Illusion and removal because you think Seventh Sister can’t connect base damage with her +4 Maul’s saber showing on the table. You should always consider what your opponent can do to kill you, and Bait and Switch should almost always be on your mind.

Shield Dodging. Whether your opponent is running Frighten or Vibroknife, they’re likely going to have an answer to you shielding up a near dead character or throwing a Force Illusion on them. Be cognizant of the fact that this deck is going to have shield hate and don’t bank everything on getting another round out of one of your characters just because they have three shields and one health.

Disrupt. You won the battlefield roll. You have a Lightsaber Pull in hand, but no other upgrades. Or you have a Well-Connected in hand and a 3-cost upgrade. You want the shields from playing on your opponent’s battlefield, but do you? If you take your battlefield, Seventh Sister rolls out first action, and one of her three dice hit , you’re so far behind for the round because you don’t get to play your upgrade. Every last one of the starting dice on 7th Boba has a side, and while that’s arguably the most “useless” side to find on most dice, effective use of can seriously, well… disrupt your entire round. Don’t underestimate 7th Boba’s ability to choke out your resources.

Maul’s Lightsaber. Look, I get that this is obvious, but Maul’s saber is the way 7th Boba wants to win the game. Getting three or four uses out of this die by using its Power Action and Boba’s can be utterly devastating. If you can somehow get rid of this card or keep your opponent from playing it, you absolutely should.

Things to Exploit

Play Wide. 7th Boba likes eating up character suites that focus on one big character with high impact character and upgrade dice — these decks like to play with a “tall” character and “tall” dice rather than “wide” ones. Playing with character suites that have a lot of character dice and a lot of cheap upgrades can help stifle the effectiveness of Boba Fett’s while ensuring that your first character death won’t necessarily lose you the game. Decks like 3-wide blue heroes, Talzin 5-dice villains, and hero vehicles all do a good job of playing “wide” and not obsessing over their one good character. Making Boba’s into just another damage die with a value of 2 can have a huge impact on ensuring a victory against a deck that, in certain cases, wants you to roll really well with your highest value die.

Vandalize. The biggest hate card against Maul’s Lightsaber right now is Vandalize. This goes hand in hand with playing wide; the more expendable character dice you have, the easier it is to play Vandalize without breaking the bank and ruining the effectiveness of your turn. Stealing 3 and an entire round of resolutions from Maul’s saber is such a huge boon that it’s more than worth killing three of your character dice to disrupt your opponent’s Maul-centered game plan. Losing that saber early can be devastating. It’s not necessarily wrong to hit a 2-cost upgrade before it can become a monstrous Maul’s saber or get overwritten into a Redeploy upgrade that finds its way onto Boba after Sister dies.

Disrupt. 7th Boba is just as susceptible to having its resources disrupted as any other deck that wants to churn out upgrades. While a lot of this deck’s best removal is 0-cost, that doesn’t make it immune to feeling the hurt when they get disrupted at the beginning or end of a round. When you hit , think about whether or not it’s worth keeping the die on that side instead of trying to reroll into damage, because it could be the difference between your opponent getting a Heirloom, cutlass, or Maul’s saber. Ezra Bridger should constantly be threatening to take resources from your opponent.

No Interaction. Sabine Wren has the unfortunate reality of having a 3 for 1 side that Boba Fett loves to see and generally being wet tissue paper against this deck, but she represents a big subset of cards that can typically play around Boba’s . Maz Kanata has similar power in that she typically doesn’t care what Obi-Wan rolls because she’s just going to fix it anyways. Force Speed into Concentrate? Hot. Impulsive on a to resolve your damage sides? Solid. Kanan’s into a resolution? Nice. Make your opponent feel silly for letting Boba Fett’s die hover on the while you throw damage at his face.

Seventh Sister is a target. But she’s not always the goal. Seventh Sister obviously activates the Maul’s saber, but if she’s stacked with two shields and has a Force Illusion sitting on her, sometimes it’s best to just get dice off the table instead of trying to deal with her immediately, especially if you’re playing decks that have a great deal of damage that are looking to ramp into the mid- to late-game. There’s also the threat of your opponent throwing down a Vibrocutlass and giving Boba Fett the potential to be almost as brutal with his yellow weapon as Seventh can be with Maul’s. This deck doesn’t run Rise Again, so you don’t have to worry about getting into the late-game and having your opponent slam down the card to help prevent those last few points of damage from dealing a killing blow.

Conclusion

Altogether, 7th Boba has the potential to be an incredibly bursty deck and does a great job of dealing with its opponent’s damage spikes while meting out its own. This is a deck that we feel has a pretty strong match-up against the OTK list that has been making its rounds in a few regionals and it does a great job of weathering the tide of damage that other lists can output.

If you’d like to join the discussion about 7th Boba, deck techs, and Worlds, make sure to check us out on Discord if you haven’t already. We’re constantly engaging in chat about the game and our plans for the future. We have several tournaments over the course of the next few weekends, so be sure to keep a keen eye on our events page — we’ll be doing a tournament every Saturday for the next three weeks in preparation for Galactic Qualifiers and, eventually, Worlds!