Star Wars Destiny North American Championships is next week and we are hard at work trying to find the “secret sauce”. I’ve spent most of my testing time out on the deep end since that where the true treasure is usually buried while my teammates have been mostly working on the more “obvious” good decks. At some point I’m going to give up on all the experiments and lock into something that will seemingly be less cooky but maybe I’ll get lucky. Time is a luxury I don’t really have anymore since we are firmly on the Highway to GenCon.

Last week I wrote about using Admiral in Standard. I didn’t break the format but I did come up with a deck that is close to being respectable.

Two drop unique upgrade into support R2-D2 is the best opening this deck can have and it does somewhat reliably. Unfortunately when you don’t draw r2 early the deck feels just like any other Mace Admiral deck I’ve tested. If you have a local and this appeals to you try it out because I’m not dismissing it out of the realm of tier 1.5 and its a lot of fun. I played a similar list in the TTS league and lost a close best of 3. When you almost win a game by readying a 3po with 4 upgrades you start to think you might be doing things right. If I end up thinking something like this is good enough you’ll be seeing me at GenCon grinning ear to ear but its not quite there yet. Losing to a Reylo deck in the league made me think that this was completely dog shiz but in hind sight that deck is really only good at hating on shields and this deck really needs them to buy time to set up a gross admiral. That’s an issue of beating the “Sea of Jizz” which is really important when picking a deck for a big tournament. Sometimes you might be soft to a random deck and that can be fine but you need to know that going into the event.

Philosophically speaking this deck is so good because of the c3po/r2 upside which really makes me question whether that is worth it since there are probably other decks that are better at doing R2 and C3po things. Regardless, I give myself a pat on the back for making this since it is quite powerful albeit one of the main things that makes it dank is very draw dependent.

Another new card that has been on my radar to try is Conan Motti.

He fits nicely in a Mill deck as all of his sides work well in that style and his ability is just awesome at keeping you alive. I would even like to try him in an aggro deck that could have a possible backdoor mill win condition vs decks that draw too many cards (you know who you are!) but those decks are rarely viable.

I looked at all the possible villain mill characters and knew I wanted Wullf Yularen as he’s just a monster for mill decks. After that I was pretty flexible on who it would be but I finally landed on Nute Gunray. Nute is on plan, can carry a Grand Moff to make him deadly and his two disrupt is pretty great at stopping opponents who want to go loco with money and is self serving to his ability. This deck is limited by its color choices but there are plenty of cards that are worth considering that aren’t in this list. Two cards that I tested and didn’t love were Separatist Embargo and Counterintelligence. Embargo is fine and could go in, if there is a card I am particularly scared of leading up to the tournament I’ll consider it. Counterintelligence seemed like a windmill slam but I found I wasn’t scared of any events and since it puts the card on top of the deck you might not be able to get to it in the next round. Admittedly Ewoks might give me a reason to reconsider but we have plenty of time to make them discard with our characters. On top of having plenty of red and grey cards to consider all the other 8 cost characters are pretty underwhelming.

Sentinel Messenger is the best 8 cost in Blue for mill. Four of its sides do something and its ability can gain you an extra card which can be beneficial. Nute can wear a Grand Moff and take The Best Defense to the chin. Wearing G.M is a huge deal since that card generally mills for about four because of our battlefield and can occasionally pay for itself with resources, make them discard faster or focus our dice. Sentinel becomes the de factor guy you kill last since all he does is get you a little more value and Automated Defense – A.D is welcomed but just becomes a swap for Near Miss. Hidden Motive is the big winner for Blue with Dark Scheme, Forsaken, Mind Extraction, Beguile and Respite being cards to consider.

That’s right, this is the best yellow character at 8 which should make you cringe. He has 3 sides that are live for mill, discard being better than any other non resource side Nute and Sentinel have. The biggest allure to Tracker is that he gives you access to some pretty stellar yellow cards. Deja Vu, Cocky, Desperate Measures, Bartering and Skilled Tracker up the power of the cards you draw. I haven’t tested this up but its on my short list.

Adding yellow does make Grand Moff worse which is one of the better cards in the deck. The deck doesn’t have a problem discarding cards from hand which makes Cocky not as important but with Deja Vu that can be a blowout. He also can’t take the Best Defense which makes that card worse. Near Miss is worse but could probably subbed out for other mitigation which makes it less of an issue.

There are plenty of other combinations for a villain mill decks. Plots open up the possibilities of pairings enormously. You can play Clawdite Shapeshifter and Seperatist Conspiracy but those extra cards you draw from it might go to waste since you need to discard cards to use them. Sly Moore is an interesting character as she can similarly provide defense and discard like Motti but the special is harder to get to and I doubt she’s better than Wullf or Motti. I’d love to hear your takes on villain mill since its one of the things I’m working on. We have videos of me playing these two decks on our youtube for our T-Prep Patrons if you are interested in seeing them in action on top of the Meta decks. Take care and as always…

May you always roll discard with Motti, it feels bad when you don’t.

-NJCuenca