19 Player SC Winner - Rose and the Boys (w/ recap & guide) 1.0

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Store Championship Recap

Sunday July 29th was the Crazy Timmy's Store Championship in Kirkland, WA. It was my first Store Championship of the year, so I was excited to finally get to play competitively in the new meta.

Deck Choice

Since the launch of Way of the Force, I have primarily played Thrawn / Snoke due to my particular love for Mitth'raw'nuruodo. However, I picked up Rose / Partisans about a week ago and started to really enjoy the deck and its flexibility. I also love playing Hero Yellow for the incredible package of Second Chance, Easy Pickings, and Entangle. I ultimately decided to bring it to the SC due to it's better matchup against Cad / Snoke and Mill decks. This choice ended up paying off because I played against Cad / Snoke in 6 out of my 9 total games in the tournament.

Swiss Round (4-1)

1. W vs Darth Vader - Dark Apprentice / Arihnda Pryce - Unscrupulous Governor (Sean) - A matchup that could be tough, but this match was one-sided in my favor from the start. We played on my battlefield and he didn't draw an upgrade until round 3. As a result, it was over pretty quickly.

2. L vs Cad Bane - Vicious Mercenary / Snoke - Supreme Leader (Brendan) - The deciding factor in this match was the Snoke power action on Cad's side, clearing my hand in both the first and third rounds. That titled me a bit and I later neglected to remove a Cad die showing which he power actioned for 3. That opened the flood gates and it was soon over.

3. W vs Cassian Andor - Rebellion Operative / Padme Amidala - Queen of Naboo (Brad) - My start was poor, dealing zero damage in the first round. He then started eating through my deck really fast and my concern for the game and for the tournament grew with each discard off my deck. However, thanks to Long-Term Plan I was able to slowly catch up in damage. I crucially had a clutch damage roll in the last round when I was completely out of cards. Whew.

4. W vs Luke Skywalker - Reluctant Instructor / Rey - Force Prodigy (AJ) - Overall the game was very close. It went relatively slowly until he had a hot roll (+3 on Ancient Lightsaber and both +2 on Rey) and took out a healthy Rose. The rest of the game I used everything I could to survive his onslaught. In the end, he discarded his final card and was 1 damage short of lethal. Whew, again.

5. W vs Cad Bane - Vicious Mercenary / Snoke - Supreme Leader (Matt) - I don't remember a lot of details about this match because it came right off the heels of the nail-biter in Round 4. Unlike my first match against Cad, my hand did not get discarded in the early rounds. This let me establish my game plan and I felt more in control throughout. I sealed the game near the end when I rolled a resource on a Partisan die, which turned into 3 resources and another Second Chance thanks to Long-Term Plan.

Top Cut (2-0)

We had five people at 4-1 at the end of Swiss. I narrowly made it in as the 4th seed, edging out Henry by 0.04 in Strength of Schedule. The top two seeds were both Cad / Snoke, followed by two Rose / Partisans. I was glad that the seedings were such that we didn't get two mirror matches in the semis!

Semifinals: Cad / Snoke

A rematch versus Brendan who gave me my only loss in the second round of swiss. This time the match went much better for me, as I started with 2x Suppressive Fire, the best card in the matchup against Cad Bane - Vicious Mercenary. I also had a Scrap Heap and a Resistance Crait Speeder, exactly what I want to see in the first round. Through the whole match, he was not able to get a Snoke power action on Cad's discard side. On top of that, he did not roll particularly well, which meant I was able to control and win a slower game.

Finals: Cad / Snoke

Game 1 (L)

Another rematch, this time against Matt whom I beat in the final round of swiss. In Game 1, I lost the battlefield roll off but I was feeling confident after keeping four cards in mulligan: 2x Scrap Heap, Resistance Crait Speeder, and Suppressive Fire. My fifth card was Friends in Low Places, which rounded out a perfect starting hand.

On the first action of the game, Matt played a blaster on Cad and rolled out, hitting a side on Cad. He played Truce and wiped away my hopes and dreams with a Snoke power action. As a cruel joke, it took the exact four cards I kept in Mulligan, leaving me with just FILP. The rest of the match I spent recovering from that tilt as he continued to roll well and quickly took game 1.

Game 2 (W)

Now playing on my battlefield, I recovered from the first match and took the lead in game 2 from the start. I kept his damage under control and ramped considerably. It soon felt that the rubber match would be inevitable.

Game 3 (W)

This game was probably the closest of the whole day. The match started slowly, which would be in my favor. However, it opened up when Matt hit double Force Speed specials and used those to kill a full health Rose in round 3. I was way behind on damage at that point, but I began to claw my way back into the game thanks to Long-Term Plan and some hot rolls.

In the decisive round, both of Matt's characters whiffed on their activations-- including triple blanks on two Force Speeds and a Snoke die. This allowed me to not only play my 2nd Second Chance, but also roll out my T-47 Airspeeder which hit its 2 side. Matt re-rolled and got some damage, but it wasn't enough. On my next action, I resolved the Airspeeder die for 5 damage using LTP and killed Cad. After that, I had enough mitigation cards left to control Snoke's dice and win the Championship!

Deck Guide

Game Plan: Kill or Mill?

My favorite thing about this deck is that you are actively working towards both of the win conditions of Star Wars: Destiny. The deck is a hybrid in that way, which makes each match feel like a new challenge. I think one of the hard parts about piloting this deck is that you have to be much more flexible in your strategy than you would be for many other decks.

The star of the deck is definitely Long-Term Plan. You will always spend the first two rounds ramping it up. At two resources, this is where the fun begins. Deciding when to use your +2 (or +3) can be a difficult choice because you often have several options. The most common use is to increase your damage, but my favorite is to use it to wipe an opponent's hand which removes mitigation and works towards the mill win condition.

This deck benefits from having a lot of resources, so using Long-Term Plan on a side is always a great idea. This pays for Second Chance, Entangle, and other vehicles to help overcome any early deficit.

The main weakness of the deck is the lack of sides, leaving you vulnerable to bad rolls. I'm considering adding a 2nd Maz's Goggles since the focus sides on that die proved crucial in sealing some wins.

List change post-SC

• -2 Runaway Boomas - I wanted these to work in this deck, and theoretically it should be better than Y-Wing. However, it definitely underperformed.
• +2 Hailfire Droid Tank - I initially thought it was too expensive, but I am convinced to try it after talking to a local player, Pedro, who also got top 4 with this deck.

Mulligan

Always keep:

• Scrap Heap - The primary resource engine.
• Maz's Goggles - One of the MVP cards, considering putting in a 2nd copy so I can draw it more often.
• Resistance Crait Speeder or T-47 Airspeeder - Dropping a 2-cost speeder round 1 is ideal.

Sometimes keep:

• Suppressive Fire - Keep vs. action cheating decks like Cad/Snoke.
• Entangle - I like to keep vs decks like Thrawn/Snoke which rely on early game ramp. Removing both of Thrawn's die really slows the deck down.
• Friends in Low Places - I would keep it if I already had 1-2 of the 'Always keep' cards. Helps ensure you can ramp without disruption.
• Anakin Skywalker's Podracer - Same as FILP. Helps consistently activate Partisans and Scrap Heap. Shield sides are also nice.

Tech Cards

• Vandalize - Good for removing things from Force Speed to Force Illusion. However, I feel I often need to get value out of my character dice so in most cases it might end up being a more expensive Rend.
• N-1 Starfighter - Good against vehicle decks.
• Scruffy Looking Nerf-Herder - Flexible card but biggest use case would be to get rid of game changing cards like Hyperspace Jump or Retreat.

Cards that missed the cut

• Rally Aid - Great card but Scrap Heap fills its spot nicely and allows the resources generated to be used for other things like playing mitigation.
• Y-Wing - Not as great without C-3PO. It also doesn’t activate Jedha Partisan's ability.
• First Aid - It can be great first round to heal 4 but I don't like that it's a dead card after Rose - Skilled Mechanic dies (and she is usually the first target).
• Resistance Bomber - I personally like this card but it doesn't fit in a deck where I'm only running 8 damage-dealing supports.