My Ackbar HG HG - A Good Deck; Beats Tier 1 Decks Plenty

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Derived from
Ackbar 'Money bags' 72 57 41 1.0
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AnotherWitch 46

I love Admiral Ackbar/Hired Gun/Hired Gun, but there are a lot of version of it floating around that I think are kinda sub-optimal, and that makes me want to post my own thoughts on it.

Credentials for the deck: I’ve tested a lot of versions of this deck in my local area, which is reasonably competitive and active; we have a decent turn-out tournament anywhere from 3 to 6 nights a week around here, with a lot of dedicated and solid players. And this deck holds up in that crowd. It holds its own against Vader/Raider, Kylo/Dooku, and Jango decks, as well as everything else. I’ve both lost to and beaten all those decks, but because I am a decent player, I beat those decks more often than I lose to them. I win more games with this deck than I lose, by far.

So let’s talk about the deck.

The Basic Reasoning Behind It: All four dice have two resource sides. So you’ll make a lot of money. And what can you do with money in this game that actually wins games? Buy firepower: Upgrades, supports, and offensive events like Reversal.

But! Three characters? In Destiny, having 3 characters is often a liability, because each of those 3 characters is going to be more fragile than the average Destiny character, which means you’re going to lose character dice and the attached upgrade dice earlier and more often. And in a game where dice win games, that’s bad. So for every 3- or 4-character list, you have to deal with that problem by asking: What (if anything) can I get from these characters that mitigates the inherent problem in 3-character lists?

Here, the answer is twofold. First is what I’ve already talked about: Money. These characters were born to make money, buy you expensive supports that can’t die, and then to die having done their job. The expensive support dice can’t die, meaning you’ve circumvented the problem of fragility leading to lost investment. Second is the card Second Chance. Since these characters are yellow and they’re moneymakers, you can legally use and almost always easily pay for Second Chance.

So since our strengths are money and expensive things, let’s play to our strengths with the cards we put in the deck: Moneymaking cards that play off of dice (Logistics, Play the Odds), the Millennium Falcon, Black One, Second Chance, and Reversal are all excellent choices.

Strategic Planning has to go in because if you’re going to pay out for the Falcon why would you not include the card that lets you get the most use out of that 5 bucks?

And since our characters are fragile, we’ll be conservative and smart with our upgrades. Holdout Blaster is fine because of redeploy, DH-17 Blaster Pistol is fine because it’s not too much of an investment to lose when the character dies, and Jetpack and DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol because they’re just so dang good that it’s worthwhile to invest the resources even if the character only lives to use it for a couple turns. Plus, Jetpack and DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol can be overwritten for 1 or 0 with a Second Chance, so there’s often no value lost there at all.

How to Play the Deck:

Mulligan: You usually want to hard mulligan for the Millennium Falcon or Black One. The only cards I will keep if I draw them but not the Falcon are Logistics and Play the Odds, because they increase the chances you’ll get a big support out early if you do draw it, which is just as important as drawing it.

But! That all goes out the window against, specifically, Jango Fett General Veers or e General Grievous Count Dooku, or any other glass canon kind of deck, ya know, decks that front-load their value. They set the pace of hard and fast hits early, and you can’t play the game the way you normally would against these decks. Here, mulligan for a couple guns and a couple moneymaking cards. I’ll explain further down how you play differently against these lists.

Battlefield roll and choice: You will rarely claim, so play to that.

If you win, you want shields a lot of the time. The exceptions are: --Emperor's Throne Room. Too dangerous. Don’t let them have this battlefield.

--Imperial Armory. Your goal in this deck is to out-big-dice your opponent. Don’t give them a tool to roll out their own big dice.

--Separatist Base. Obviously.

--Frozen Wastes. Obviously.

Against those battlefields, choose happy, bland Mos Eisley Spaceport. A judgement call is against Starship Graveyard. You can use that to your own benefit to loop Second Chance, but do you really want to let Rey loop Holdout Blaster? Up to you.

Usually: First two turns: Your first two turns are spent making money and playing out good big dice like the Millennium Falcon, maybe a DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol. Try to get another gun out too. Don’t pay money for Hired Gun 2-damage at this point; reroll that into money if you can. You may want to go ahead and actually use 3-damage dice sides from the HGs, but keep in mind that you are going to win a lot more games where you get to turn 3 with some good stuff purchased than without. Don’t put upgrades on Admiral Ackbar, because 9/10 people will target him. If someone does target one of your hired guns, good for you. You’ll have 2 focus longer. At that point feel free to upgrade Admiral Ackbar.

After that: Hit with Hired Gun and support/s. If Admiral Ackbar is alive and you roll 1 2-focus side, judge what your opponent has in their hand in terms of removal and use that information to decide whether to do Ackbar’s 3-focus trick or not. Make sure you have enough gun upgrades out at any given moment. Use Second Chance. Play DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol when your opponent has dice in the pool. If a character dies and several upgrades die with it, make sure you play some upgrades elsewhere to make up for it, because you’ve got to have good gun dice in the pool to win. If you draw Reversal, plan the turn around it; it’s a huge swing.

If you’re playing against Jango Fett, roll the support/s first. If you’re playing against literally anybody else, roll the support/s last; draw out removal dice from your opponent with damage rolls from the Hired Gun and their upgrades, so that maybe they don’t have removal left when you roll out your best dice. Good opponents won’t take this bait, of course; but all that means is that you get to get good hits in from your Hired Gun.

If possible, roll the Millennium Falcon or a highly-equipped Hired Gun (those are your two biggest sticks) only when your opponent has no resources (and no dice in the pool if they’re Villain Yellow). Stall for such a moment using everything else on the board. Often, in the fog of war, your opponent won’t know they should be conserving their mitigation resources and will blow them early. This dice

A great fun move is playing Strategic Planning after your opponent has claimed. Don’t worry about it if they don’t claim, though. Still play your Strategic Planning when you draw it. Few players have an answer for the Falcon dice twice in one turn.

Random notes: --If you see a Sith Holocron special, remove that shite if humanly possible. You want your upgrades and supports to be bigger and better than your opponent’s. Don’t give them free Mind Probe. And always, always remove a Holocron Special on a Tusken Raider.

--When you draw Defensive Position, you will almost never have the battlefield that turn. But keep it in your hand, claim that turn, and use it the next turn. It’s such a good card, it’s worth adapting for a little.

--You are protected against Dodge in this deck by the fact that you roll so many dice one or two at a time. They may Dodge a few dice, but you’ll have others yet unrolled. Deflect, however, is a major problem. The only thing to say about Deflect is that sometimes you’ve got to weather it. If you think your opponent has a Deflect in their hand, you may very well just have to roll out and let that happen, so they don’t have Deflect in their hand anymore.

Against Jango/Veers or Grevous/Dooku: Play guns, do damage. Use Ackbars dice to fund Gun’s damage dice. Ackbar will probably die early. Play Second Chance only after they’ve committed to a Hired Gun, but don’t delay in playing the Second Chance once they have committed.

Once Grevious or Jango dies, slow down for a second and refocus on your board; make sure you have the upgrade or support dice out to push through the rest of the game, then push.

You probably won’t play your crazy supports early in these games, because you don’t have time to focus on accumulating money, but you do want to try to play them at some point because so much of your deck is about them. Just stay flexible and do what you can, but remember that you need to get Jango/Grevious off the table quickly.

Potential changes: Cunning. I haven’t tested this extensively. But it would be good with the Falcon. More chances to get free Reversals. I haven’t tested this because I just don’t know what I would cut for this. Rearm. You could switch DL44s for IQAs and one Jetpack for another DH17 and use Rearm instead of Logistics or Play the Odds. Haven’t tested.

Changes I have tested that I didn’t like: Switching one Hired Gun for a Rebel Trooper: Less health overall and less firepower overall means you may delay Ackbar’s death a little bit, but in the end you just have two characters dead sooner.

Giving up the expensive supports in favor of more guns: There just aren’t enough redeploy weapons or tricks in this deck to overcome the problem of 3 characters (which I mentioned above) unless you’re rolling out hard-hitting supports. That’s just the only way this deck has available to get and keep good dice in play long enough to win games.

Now all that being said, I would love it if anyone engaged with me about the deck! I know I can always learn new things and improve stuff.

2 comments

amustoe 47

thanks for the extensive write up. I enjoyed reading it. Ive been trying to make this combo work, and you're right on in terms of not rolling out the falcon too early against Jango & co. I am surprised that you don't have any all in or hit and runs though. Although with a 30 card limit, something has to go! Well done sir.

Flaxative 375

Good write-up! Interested in more detailed thoughts about choosing your battlefield when your opponent's bringing Separatist Base.

The way I see it, choosing your opponent's battlefield instantly makes a 4-life swing in your direction. You get 2 shields and they don't get 2 shields. Since all Separatist Base does is deal 1 damage, they need to claim it 4 times just to remove that advantage, and a 5th time to actually accomplish something. On top of that, you choose where their damage goes. I play a similar deck (Ackbar Gun Trooper) and I'm always happy to pick my opponent's Separatist Base. What do you think?