T4 CAPA CUP - Discard to Reroll Aphra (tournament report) 1.0

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Hinkbert will be doing one of these for the 1st place deck, which was almost an identical list to mine. So read his if you want to learn how to beat Palpatine (I have no idea how to do it). Round by round breakdown follows, but first a short summary of how this deck came together…

Our team spent the week between Worlds and Capa basically debating two card slots – Bubble Shields vs other events and Assassin Droids vs Coruscant Police. For context, the Aphra list we played the week before worlds that Krysis took to 2nd place in the Boonton NJ Prime had a full set of both Bubbles and Police. After that tournament, one of the takeaways for our team was how easily we had won mirror matches all day against Aphra decks clogged with MBTs and Assassins. We were somewhat surprised, therefore, to see the higher-cost version of Aphra seemingly be the more popular variant in the top cut at Worlds. We ended up on something of a middle ground for this week, keeping the Police and adding MBT as a 1-of. This worked out pretty well as both Police and MBT played a pretty critical role in Hinkbert’s final round victory over ForeverFett. I think Assassins are fine, but you can’t play them over Police without also playing 2 No Good to Me Dead. As a team, I think we prefer relying on Respite for resource generation and playing the cheaper more efficient dice cards.

As for bubble shields…after hours of debate we ended up running it as a 1-of. No matter how you configure the deck you basically never have trouble putting 3 damage on it. So, from a pure efficiency standpoint it is 3 health for 1 dollar – a good value. I think it is actively good in basically any matchup you are playing the control side of the game. This includes any Hero Droids variant (Chopper, Han, Other), any non-Palpatine Big/Little Villain deck (Maul, Vader), and it is obviously great in the mirror. In these matchups, Aphra has inevitability on its side. The power of your 0-0-0 self-damage engine means extending the match is generally in your favor. Bubble Shield is actively bad into Palpatine because Palpatine has inevitability on its side in the Aphra matchup. You are trying to damage race Palp to the point where it’s roll-in becomes uncontrollable. That leaves only Reylo, where I personally think it’s a medium card. You want to be damage racing Reylo overall, so in that sense it slows you down a little bit. On the other hand Reylo is trying to zero-out a single character as fast as possible to gain a dice advantage for the final rounds. Keeping damage off your characters and dice in your pool is good against the limited mitigation most Reylo decks can access.

Long story short… I still like bubble shield in Aphra even though most other teams running the deck have removed them entirely. Probably it is a preference thing, but I think the justifications for keeping them are reasonable. As for the actual matches….

Rd 1 vs IG88/Captain Phasma (win)

This was on the Golden Dice stream. My opponent opened r1 with multiple bounties and rolled 2r, 2r, 2r, 3r on their 4 character dice. I ended up eating 8 damage but developing a solid board state. In r2 I was able to control the dice they rolled damage on with mitigation events and pulled comfortably ahead to finish the match in r3.

R2 vs Han Droids (win)

My opening hand included Respite, 0-0-0 and delve/fist. My opponent did not disrupt my resources. It is very hard for Droids to win in this scenario. Even getting in some damage off Fateful activations, I just had too much of a board state in r1 for them to possibly race.

R3 vs eJango/General Grievous/Sentinel Messenger (loss)

My opponent was playing a support dice package, lest you mistake this for a matchup against a Fatal Blow deck. This is basically 4LOM with a different Yellow champion anchor. In this match my opponent landed delve/fist r1 and I didn’t put the combo together until r2. They also proceeded to roll 9 free damage off their r1 fist, while I rolled shield side multiple times in r2. It ended up being a very close match as I fought back admirably, but in the end the Fist discrepancy was too much to overcome.

R4 vs Nicky Morgan on Palpatine/Watto (win)

My only victory vs Palpatine on the day, this one was largely thanks to the end of r2 where my opponent claimed when I had 3 dice in my pool and 1 reroll still available. I promptly rerolled straight into 7 damage on 3 dice, putting Palpatine into the red zone for r3. Fist finished the job from there. I was glad Nicky managed to win his way back into top8 from here, as it undoubtedly helped my tiebreakers for top cut.

R5 vs ForeverFett on Palpatine/Watto (loss)

I don’t remember how I got dismantled in this game as clearly as semi-finals, but it probably had something to do with Paul playing Desperate Measures in r1 and leaving Watto on 2-disrupt to prevent me from hitting delve resources most of the game. In any case, I thought it was unlucky to hit my worst matchup 2 rounds in a row and knew I would need to win out from here.

R6 vs Krysis on Aphra (win)

Unfortunate to get paired against a teammate here, as we both knew it was an elimination match. R1 went very poorly for me as I lead with 0-0-0 only to get instantly DM’d. Kyrsis then dropped BT and hit his own 0-0-0 off of a Sentinel Messenger Activation. Down a murder droid in r1 we went to r2 with me heavily behind. I was able to assemble delve/fist in round 2 and started to chip my way back into contention, but I was behind in damage and behind on board basically all the way to the end of this match. This one came down to the dice. I was able to keep it close thanks to getting off a good Act of Cruelty for 2 discards and then landing Bubble Shield to force Krysis to find 3 additional damage and keeping him off an auto-win from BT activation in r4. I eventually rolled into the exact damage I needed to win just 1 action ahead. A very tough finish for my teammate, but a tightly played game that left me with a chance.

R7 vs Chopper Droids (win)

I was relatively happy to see Chopper and not another Palp deck in the final swiss round. This one ended up not being too close as my opponent didn’t have any dice upgrades r1 and I assembled both the murder droids. In r2 he went for a Mr. Bones, which immediately became desperate measure fodder, while meanwhile I put a Vader’s Fist on the board. A tough loss for my opponent, but it was enough to put me into top8 as the 6th place finisher in a field of 40+.

QFs vs Banana Crapshoot on 4LOM (win)

Another unfortunate pairing against a Discard to Reroll teammate in an elimination match. Banana had earned his way to 3rd place in Swiss with multiple wins vs Aphra on the day, but the variance landed in my favor for this one. In Game 1 he landed a Fist while I assembled the murder droids combo and I managed to find enough mitigation to win a tight damage race. In Game 2, I found the fist and Banana didn’t build much of a board state in the early rounds thanks to a slow draw and my desperate measures. So Aphra managed to take this best of three down. A very unfortunate ending for Banana who deserved better for his good play on the day, and probably would have had a better time in the SF round vs Palpatine than I did.

SFs vs ForeverFett again (loss)

This one went pretty similarly to our swiss round pairing. It was on the ABG stream and I’m led to believe Drew was commenting it, so I’d find the video and hear about all the mistakes I made from there. But in G1, I got 0-0-0 DM’d, then my second 0-0-0 discarded from hand. Paul also kept me off of Fist until rd 3, which was way too late. In G2, I again spent too many rounds trying to dig through my deck for Fist, while Watto and Palp did their disrupting/discarding best to keep me from building a board. Paul played this matchup really well, and I thought it was pretty unwinnable until watching Hinkbert in finals.

Well that’s it. Discard to reroll has now taken Aphra to top finishes at multiple Primes, and for our money it is still the best deck in the format. You have to play some hate cards for the Palp matchup for sure – probably multiples – but otherwise it is a very good choice into the rest of the field. Thanks for reading!