Talzin Rainbow 6-2 Portland Regionals #12th of Swiss 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

First off this was a deck designed for a unique meta for the Portland Regionals, the second regional event to allow Legacies to be legal, but due to limited availability of the Luke and Boba starters, the starter exclusive cards were NOT legal. It is unlikely this particular card pool will every be used in another tournament. That being said I still think this deck is good when those cards are available.

So I was contemplating options for Talzin after finding her a very strong character in Talzin / Kallus and Kylo / Talzin with her ability to manipulate dice consistently if the deck was built with mostly odd numbered cards. With her low point cost, I knew 5 dice was possible and was brainstorming pairings before settling on the set up of Talzin / Bala-Tik / FOST to get the rainbow. Bala-Tik is obviously a staple character for 5 die villain decks and FOST gave access to red to play key cards like DH-17 and The Best Defense. The goal of the deck is of course to play out guns and generally overwhelm your opponent with more dice than they can mitigate and burst down characters as quickly as possible to try to get resets off Bala-Tik before he dies. Talzin helps with the consistency of the deck substantially and allows you to also mitigate your opponents die in a pinch especially with Crystal Ball.

After discussing the deck with my friend Nick (Shoutout to him for making the cut at 8 seed with his Poe/Aayla that we assembled the night before the tournament!) the week prior to regionals, I went home and threw together a list and uploaded to TTS and played about 10 games for testing. Initial testing was mixed but there were some good wins and two games where my opponents table flipped or rage quit which I took as a good sign the deck had tournament potential. It still needed work though. The initial version ran two Chance Cube and more expensive cards like Rise Again, LR1K Sonic Cannon, and Endless Ranks. I was inspired by a Kylo / Talzin deck I had been losing to on TTS that used Talzin with chance cube to great effect.

Two days before the tournament I had shifted to other decks and was planning on running Obi/Maz or a 4 die variation of this deck with Captain Phasma - Ruthless Tactician and one less Talzin die, but I ran into Cody Hill (Rank #4 of swiss with same 6-2 record but best strength of schedule of the 6-2s) at a casual local playtest spot and observed him dismantling a Poe/Yoda deck with his version of eTalzin/eBala/FOST. His version was quite a bit different with I believe 12 even cost cards, but from watching him I noted the power of Backup Muscle and On The Hunt in what was likely to be a shield and Force Illusion heavy meta. That night I made some key tweaks to the deck, removing the 5 cost stuff and putting in those two cards. I did some quick testing on TTS and won 3 games so felt pretty confident.

The night before the tournament my confidence was shaken by playing my friend Jeff (Rank #9 of swiss with his Poe/Hondo) who destroyed me 2 games in a row by mitigating the Chance Cube die turn 1. I took them both out and put in Holdout Blaster which I had previously avoided, trying to keep odd cost cards to 4 or less, and played again, eeking out a win in our 3rd test match. After discussion with Nick and Jeff, we added back one Chance Cube but planned to throw it back in the mulligan and avoid it turn 1 (way more important to get a gun out turn 1), and added Crystal Ball to increase the ability to mitigate the opponent.

On to the report!

Morning of I was super nervous because of my poor test results vs. my friend, but it would turn out Poe/Hondo was an extremely strong pairing on whole and proved tough for many other decks at the tourney as well.

Round 1 - Gustav Schwarz - Mace/Maz - win. Quick win taking out Maz early turn 2 and got some value out of Bala Tik before he died. My opponent did lay out two Shoto Lightsaber on Mace but I was able to Vandalize one, denying him 2 shields a turn. With mainly the two Mace die to deal with each turn, I was usually able to control one and it was smooth sailing from there.

Round 2 - Bob Estabrook - Padme/JediInstructor/Reikan - win. The mill match which proved a bit more scary than I had hoped. In retrospect my battlefield which I had intended for mill defense was actually terrible, because it would allow opponents to cycle their Vandalize'd C-3PO. Realizing this, I picked his battlefield Otoh Gunga - Naboo, which proved bothersome as I tried to kill of his Padme Amidala - Queen of Naboo before Second Chance landed. Luckily I was able to do so. I also got off beautiful Sustained Fire play removing 5 shields from Reikan and the Instructor, but this was a close one that I was able to close out with just a few cards left in hand. My opponent said Vandalize on the 3PO was key.

Round 3 - Yoda/Zeb - Mike Lynch - loss. As I sat down I noticed my opponents spiffy playmat and asked him where he got that - well turns out he won the NorCal Regional just a while back - not intimidating at all! I was able to take down Yoda fairly early with some good rolls but Bala fell soon after. He then played a couple Easy Pickings to great effect, removing 4 damage each time, and pumped 7 damage into Talzin. I put out a Force Illusion and in a bit of a misstep I was one action too late at resolving her die, thinking I was safe from Zeb's damage which would require two turns to resolve (lightbow special and a 2+2 melee damage), however an Infamous into Vandalize into Handcrafted Light Bow special ruined my day, killing off Talzin and wiping her dice from the table, and leaving 4 damage to pump into FOST. The brave trooper held on only slightly longer but after that play the game was pretty much lost for me. Kudos to Mike!

Round 4 - Rose/Wedge/OuterRimSmuggler - Matt - win. Not much to say about this one. My loss sent me down to the middle table where I lined up against a 3 wide vehicle deck I had never seen before. My opponent never got out any impactful vehicles and I was able to pick of his characters in short order, taking minimal damage in the process. I began to worry about my strength of schedule.

Round 5 - Hondo/Yoda - David - win - Clawing my way back up to the top table this one was a major confidence booster as my opponent also had a flashy playmat from the Boise Regionals. Recognizing the power of Hondo Ohnaka - Respected Businessman's special to wreck my deck's economy and/or HP, I went after him aggressively and also used Vandalize on his Cunning. I got 8 damage in fairly quick and my opponent shielded him up but a Backup Muscle at the end of a round followed by a claim sealed the deal, because next turn I Tactical Mastery'd to roll in Bala, then activated the Backup Muscle, killing Hondo and resetting Bala. Yoda was no joke to deal with wielding a blue weapon (Obi's saber or lightbow, cannot recall) and Force Throw. I was able to use mitigation such as Subdue, The Best Defense..., Flank, and Talzin's activation with Crystal Ball to keep the Force Throw die locked down and close out the game again with the second Backup Muscle

Round 6 - Tarkin/Seventh Sister - Alexander - win - From playtesting I knew this was a good matchup for my deck as I can spread the Tarkin damage over my 3 characters large HP pool and Feel Your Anger was quite impactful. I tore through Seventh Sister, wanting to avoid as much directed melee damage as possible, and feared a scenario with 3+ seeker droids in the pool. Meanwhile Tarkin got loaded up with is own seeker droid, a Dark Counsel and Force Push via Sith Holocron. Witch Magick was great this game and I got the full 3 health off of both copies and secured the win without too much difficulty. At this point I was again in the top 10 tables, and flanked by my friends and playtest partners Nick and Jeff who also won their games, making us all 5-1! At this point we knew we'd probably end up pairing off against one another, unfortunately.

Round 7 - Poe/Hondo - Jeff Hubbard - loss. Well here it was my nightmare matchup from the night before but I also knew every card in his deck which was an advantage for me. I know his deck included battlefield control cards (Defensive Position) and is pretty fast, but Vandalize can be really good to get rid of 3PO and other key upgrades, so despite his Docking Bay - Finalizer giving him the option to cycle them, I begrudgingly took his because his deck has a habit of putting out 8 damage turn 1 and I know I needed Bala to live more than a single turn so I needed them -ee dees. I was able to kill Hondo before the Second Chance landed, lucking out, and kept Mother Talzin - Nightsister Matriarch alive an extra turn with Force Illusion, but she soon fell to relentless Y-Wing and Poe Blaster specials. Eventually I ended up using Disarm on the blaster and Vandalize on a Y-Wing, but unfortunately he played out a second Y-Wing! The illusion mill also came back to haunt me as I ran to the end of my deck. I was forced to claim early a few rounds to prevent cycling of Honor Guard or a return of the Y-wing due to docking bay, and eventually Bala was alone with an LL-30 Blaster Pistol vs. Poe. Bala had 2 HP left and Poe had 3. I rolled out and whiffed with Bala in the last round, and he rolled out with the 2 on Poe - very very close match and literally came down to one roll off.

Round 8 - Obi/Maz - Matt Poole - win. I feared this matchup because Obi can be quite explosive and kill a character very quickly and I had not won this matchup in testing. He got started right away, aggressively using a My Ally Is The Force to do 6 damage to Talzin with one Obi die turn one - luckily he missed the maz focus roll and I was able to get a resource and put out a force illusion on Talzin before she died. She went on to live two more turns and Bala got a reset off Maz. Obi decided to become a pacifist in the later game and on one rollout he rolled in triple blanks on Obi w/ his saber, and I cleaned up the game with 2 copies of Backup Muscle.

All in all a great day and was very proud to have my close friends and travel partners all end the day 6-2, with Nick making the cut at #8, while Jeff and I were #9 and #12 respectively. The three of us open boxes together and have a somewhat shared collection. We only opened 3 boxes of Legacies. We open all the packs and snake draft the dice cards. It was Jeff and Nick's first tournament for a CCG ever, and especially considering our limited collection (we're far from a full playset), I was extremely happy with our performance. This Rainbow Talzin deck will be a great budget option for newer players. The only legendary, the Z6 Riot Control Baton, is totally replaceable. I think I only played it in one of 8 games in the tournament. I would consider cutting both the 3 cost upgrades for 1 cost ones instead, in fact. Redeploy is nice but when all your mitigation costs 1 you rarely can afford these unless you get Chance Cube out. Consider Dark Counsel, Crystal Ball, Bartering, or Hunting Rifle.

Other cards on the consideration list are of course Bait and Switch and perhaps some 0 cost mitigation, but it is hard to compare the value of consistency with Talzin and Witch Majick vs. the value of the 0 cost events. I chose to avoid them.

Today at the side event drafts at the Portland Game Store, I was able to draft a Talzin as first pick, and proceeded to draft an all odd cost deck with 2x Nightsister Coven and 3x Witch Magick which was super fun and good enough to win my pod and get me an acrylic FOST! A fitting way to end the weekend.