Smugglers Run Gaming, resource choke deck, 10-1 over 2 event 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Very consistent deck. Resource based decks struggle severely against its barrage of disrupts and removal cards.

is there any particular reason to play LR-57 over hailfire droid?

The cost is cheaper with the LR-57. Having the 2 ground battalions already costing 4, I didnt want to increase that to 4. Also, using Anakins activation, I can flip to the special which increases damage everytime you use it. I got it up to 7 damage in my final match. I had the hailfire in there when I originally built the deck but took it out since I'm not running very many supports or droids to make use of its other abilities

@Queklaine love the deck. Off The Sensors especially is a very clever include - looks like it pulls a lot of weight in this deck.

Is the choke just the R2-D2 double disrupt play? Other than R2, I can't see any other disrupt symbols on your characters/supports (except the one on Mr. Bones)?

@Queklaine also, do you mostly target 3PO's dice for the battlefield, or do you use it opportunistically for re-rolls/soft control?

Since you get to roll in both charaters to begin each round, I activate R2 first hoping to roll the disrupt and the 2 melee. Whichever im missing, I will flip to. If I dont have either, I prioritize the disrupt. Then I roll in C3PO and use his ability twice because of the plot. This lets me use the single disrupt to take both resources from my opponent. For the second dice that I get to resolve, I will do either 3 melee from the second R2 dice, or if I want more money to play whats in my hand, I will instead resolve a C3PO dice at +1 if it rolled into a resource. Leaving the R2 dice on the table also lets me flip it back to a disrupt if my opponent rolls resources. Most of the time, I just do both R2 dice for disrupt and melee. R2 actually does a large portion of the damage throughout the game. The 2 disrupt and 3 melee damage that you can do with each dice can also be increased once you get the salvage arm on R2 as well

Once in a while, your opponent will get to play something, either because they got the battlefield and went first, or the rare occasion that you dont have an action cheat to start. Thats where vandalize comes in. Its funny to see your opponents face drop after they finally played something just for you to blow it up. You will get a similar reaction if they do something like truce into a tech team or in binds all things only for u to get rid of it.

For the battlefield, I ran the numbers for using it with Anakins dice and 1 dice from C3po. You pay 1 to use it and out of 36 possible combinations, 26 of them get you 2 or more resources back. 8 of those 36 give you 3 resources back. This is in addition to whatever resources are showing on the dice. That leaves only 10 out of 36 that you dont hit for the battlefield. However, 5 of those 10 will be a blank and a resource which means you break even. So only 5 of do you not get a resource back. 2 of those however have a focus side. So 3 out of 36, you wasted your resource and got nothing back in return.

I think all those figures are accurate. I might have messed up one of those somewhere but its pretty clear that the battlefield works great with them and since your keeping your opponent off of resources all together, they wont have that initial one to trigger it themselves which makes it completely useless to them if they have it. In addition to all that, you can use it just to make your opponent reroll dice and possibly still get lucky and make money doing it. I used it in a match to reroll my C3po dice and my opponents dice. We both rolled blanks and I got 3 resources for it lol

Sorry for the delay. I had intended to post my write up on this deck on the dice commando channel like I said above. There was a change of plans and that never happened so I'll go ahead and do it here.

The whole idea behind the deck was to try and find a way to duplicate the lock that could be done with military camp to keep your opponent off resources. Once the restricted list came out, I went searching for a way to do that and found the ground battalion. This card guarantees that you will go first every turn. Then you can action cheat and take your opponents resource with your first action and theres nothing they can do about it.

The trick is not to activate the ground battalion unless they claim. If they do, you simply activate the ground battalion and take it back. If you dont activate it, they are forced to keep passing, rather than claim. Once you are done doing things, you can claim yourself and get the battlefield. Or if you already control it, simply pass which ends the round and keeps them from doing anything else. You dont get the die from the ground battalion, but you will go first every time which is key to locking down there resources.

Its actually possible to run up to 10 action cheats in the deck now (2 copies of 5 different cards). After testing, it felt like 7 was the right amount. I went threw the entire tournament last week and didnt have an action cheat in my hand at the beginning of a turn, maybe twice all night. Instigate, off the sensors, and droids day out were easy 2 ofs. I did seize the day as the 1 of because its the only one I might not beable to play on the occasion that I dont have the battlefield. The one I left out all together was drop in. Its great in that is free to play, but its a dead card if your unlucky and lose the battlefield roll of in the beginning of the game.

I think the combo for taking everyones resources is common knowledge by now, but just incase, I'll give the basic turn one that your trying to do. You start with any action cheat so that you can roll in R2 followed by C3PO in the same turn. Regardless of whats rolled, you use R2s ability to flip one of his dice to disrupt. Then when you roll in C3PO, you get to resolve that dice at a plus one value meaning you take both of there resources that they got at the start of the turn. Using the plot here also lets you resolve a second dice at +1. Depending on my hand, I will either do melee damage with the other R2 die, or I will take 2 resources from one of C3POs dice, assuming he rolled one. Whichever dice I dont use here, can later be flipped to whatever when Anakin rolls in

Some of these includes are common sense so I will explain some and just briefly touch on others. The only upgrade is Salvaged Arm which is amazing in this deck. It stacks with C3POs ability which means you can disrupt for 3. its not uncommon for your opponent to find a resource somewhere near the end of there turn. So being able to hit that one as well as the other two leads them to another non turn. It can also be used to increase the R2 damage to 3 or 4 when combined with C3POs resolve

Other than the ground battalion, I made sure my supports with dice were droids so Anakin could flip there dice when he activates. Being able to turn the LR-57 to its special over and over gets very painful, very quickly. Of course, your opponent could remove that die. But if your keeping them off of money, theres only so many zero cost removals in the game. Bones is another pretty obvious include given his sides and the fact that hes a droid.

Removal package is pretty straight forward. I like to run 8-10 in most of my decks. I have 8 here plus 2 suppressive fires which are a great way to remove a dice without taking an action and then following that up with another removal. Its also great against vader who is always a threat to jusr roll hot and blast someone off the table. What makes this deck so hard to play against is the fact that you cant play anything so you have just your character dice. If those get controlled, you've got nothing left

The remaining cards I havent mentioned are field medic, logistics, and vandalize. Field medic is self explanatory. Theres really no red hero deck that its a bad include. Despite all the resource sides in the deck, I wanted to be sure I could afford all my removal and still work towards other things like supports. Logistics is in there to make sure I can afford the removal and also makes it possible to drop the ground battalion on round 1 even after playing removal. Vandalize can just crush your opponent emotionally. Once in a while you wont have an action cheat to they begin a turn with the battlefield and are able to play something. Now you dont need R2 to disrupt so you can flip him to damage. Then you use the vandalize with the other dice to remove what they just played and they are back to square one. Its especially deflating when someone does like a truce into a tech team and you just destroy it.

I explained the battlefield choice and the math with using it in an earlier response so you can refer to that for my reasoning with it

When it comes to strategy this deck is more complicated than it looks. Ive had 2 friends try to use it, thinking they could just pick up and play, and both were admitted making countless mistakes and that they were mostly lost in the beginning trying to get used to what to do with each action and when. When the game begins, I'm trying to draw at least one action cheat in my opening hand. I will pitch pretty much everything if I dont have it. The one exception is I will usually keep the ground battalion in hopes of playing it before the end of the first turn. After getting both of those, its all about the removal. You need to control there dice so they cant recover from your resource lock

When rolling out at the beginning of a round after playing an action cheat, the ideal result on R2 is 1 disrupt and 2 melee. If I have 1 of those and not the other, I just flip to it. If I have neither one, obviously I will prioritize the disrupt. You will find that a large portion of the damage you deal with this deck comes from R2. Because of the +1 you get from C3PO the R2 dice can be resolved for 3 damage each turn. If you happen to have a salvage arm, then the disrupt can be 3 and the melee could be as much as 4. The only time I deviate from that strategy is when I can flip both dice to damage and eliminate a key character by doing 6 or 7 in one hit. Just make sure that its worth it when you do because you will be giving them a turn with money by doing so. Despite the droids having only 8 health, its surprisingly hard to bring one of them down with all this control of money and dice. They key is not to get greedy and just slowly pick away with 3-7 damage per turn on average and its very difficult for your opponent to get out from under it.

I tried to cover everything since it took so long to get this out, but feel free to ask if you have any questions about anything about it

Great writeup @Queklaine, I had a play with this deck and love it - it is a really original playstyle to weaponise the . It felt very knife edge play: as the damage output is quite low, you have to be on your top game non-stop to kill the opponent in their tracks.

Do you think this deck needs any changes, or do you think it's just right. It's such a tight deck, that I'm tempted to think that it needs to stay as it is.

I really want to add in a Fickle Mercenaries as the opponent cannot buy it off you, and the sides are solid for this deck ( and ) or something else to up the damage a bit (I played a mill deck that discarded both my LR-57s and Ground Battalions and only really won because I got down 2 Salvaged Arms) but cannot work out what I'd cut.

Also @Queklaine I checked those battlefield numbers. Spot on. Great choice - for resource bump and soft control if necessary. I'm starting to love the Casino in general - I think it's a great BF and especially good here.

Fickle would be a good addition. I wanted another droid to flip with anakin but couldnt find one I liked. I've had people actually play fickles down against me in a scoundrel deck. I just steal them immediately and they never get them back. I think ideally, I would like 1 more dice support card in the deck. 5 feels low which is why R2 does a lot of your damage. The problem is everything else is so tuned and has a specific purpose, I just cant justify taking anything out. Cant take out removal or action cheating. That leaves field medic, logistics, and vandalize. I'm never unhappy to see any of those 3. If I had to pull one of them, I think it would be field medic, but that just feels like a bad idea. I think the deck is best just as it is personally