Jabba/Jango Blitz (Writeup/Guide) 1.0

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• 1.0

Rogue Villain exists in this interesting space where it tends to be overshadowed by Force and Command in decks that play both (or all three). It's usually used in a support role, but as a color, it’s surprisingly strong and can hold its own when built correctly. Where Red has It's a Trap! and Blue has No Mercy, the big draw to staying mono-yellow is Infamous (and to a lesser extent Bolt Hole and Fight Dirty). For some reason, the color combination doesn’t get a lot of love, outside of Unkar Plutt - Junk Dealer.

Today, that will change. Jabba Jango is an old pairing from Awakenings that hasn’t seen much play in SoR Destiny, as players have been preoccupied with Maz, Unkar, Palpatine, and FN-2199. However, Jango Fett - Lethal Mercenary is still great, and his ability is still excellent, even more so now that the format has sped up considerably. With the powerful additions of Loose Ends, Fast Hands, and Blackmail, Jabba Jango Blitz has all the tools it needs to present a fast, consistent, streamlined attack.

Strategy

Jabba/Jango Blitz is a mill deck “first”, but doesn’t play like traditional mill decks that lose their main character and then suddenly have to cobble together damage to try and win. Instead, Jabba/Jango looks to play as fast as possible, mitigating and resolving dice, discarding cards, and staying on the claim to put our opponent on a fast mill “clock”. Jabba the Hutt - The Great and Mighty takes Blackmail and Fast Hands (and the one Datapad), but Jango takes every other upgrade, as we’re looking to still be competitive after Jabba dies. Rather than trying to mitigate every source of damage, the goal is to sneak in a few damage here and there with Jango in the early rounds while also taking cards from our opponent’s hand and deck. By progressing both angles of attack at the same time, we can take down an opposing character in the midgame in response to their activation, which will more than make up for some extra damage Jabba might take along the way.

Cards

Infamous is essential to our strategy, as it lets us mitigate two dice with one “action”, speed up our game, and dump our hand for Lying in Wait. By playing as many cards as possible as fast as possible each round, we generate advantages by just simply doing more things than our opponent, as our cards are affecting the board and theirs are getting discarded. Our opponent will claim aggressively against us to slow down our mill, so ambushing in a He Doesn't Like You or something similar to save some damage and then claim immediately is a core play of the deck.

Bolt Hole is surprisingly effective and absolutely uncuttable in this list. Turning an extra Jabba focus into two shields to build our own free Armor Plating, turning blanks into health, Bolt Hole does it all. I often find myself in situations where I only have time for one action to still get the claim, and won’t be able to use Jabba’s focus to turn another die to something relevant, and then resolve, and then claim. Bolt Hole is particularly great in these situations, and even better when we have Infamous. Our opponent thinks he has the claim, and we gain two shields out of nowhere and take it out from under them.

Swiftness is, in most cases, the third Infamous, but it actually does a lot more than that. Infamous is one use per round, and oftentimes there are situations where we really need to dump our hand faster, either to claim or mitigate multiple dice. Infamous to Electroshock a die, Swiftness to Doubt another one, then He Doesn't Like You is a common play we’re looking to set up, especially against decks that flood the board with dice like Kylo/Vader or Baze/Snap. In addition, we can use Swiftness to burn through our hand quickly, setting up a huge Lying in Wait turn to take our opponent’s entire hand. Like this potential play:

1. Opponent activates, activate Jango in response with On The Hunt and Fast Hands.
2. Hit special, remove a die with Fast Hands, take my action.
3. Infamous in He Doesn't Like You, Unpredictable my blank.
4. Loose Ends to make him mill 4.
5. Swiftness in Lying in Wait to make him discard 5.
6. Activate Jabba, maybe resolve something if I have the other Fast Hands.
7. Opponent takes an action, I can resolve dice or claim Command Center for another two. There goes 11 cards.

Classic mill decks tend to sputter out when the “main” goes down, but with Command Center - Lothal, Lying in Wait and Loose Ends, we can keep the mill going long after Jabba dies. With Bolt Hole and Armor Plating providing shields, as well as all our mitigation and On The Hunt and Jetpack potentially mitigating dice, our “fail-state” of a dead Jabba with only Jango left is surprisingly resilient. I kill through damage just as much as I do through mill, which the same can’t be said for other mill strategies.

Usually our opponent targets Jabba, which we’re fine with, as most of our upgrades are going on Jango and we can play to the one on one without too much trouble. Jango, like my Dooku decks I’ve published, is usually favored in a one on one fight, as we have On The Hunt and Jetpack to potentially remove dice, and can activate in response and immediately He Doesn't Like You from an “empty” board.

Finer Points

Datapad is a great card and I would hesitate cutting it. We want a cheap die we can use for He Doesn't Like You, but beyond that, gaining resources and turning On The Hunt or Jetpack to special, and then immediately resolving is a great way to mitigate some dice. We’re normally looking for Infamous in our opener, so Datapad is a great card to play on turn 1 to start generating value from that leftover resource.

I tend to keep Infamous/Datapad/On The Hunt and look to play them together on my opening turn. If I don’t have those cards, Jetpack is what I’m looking for, and normally signals moving more towards damage in that game. Jetpack is great as 4 of the 6 sides provide excellent value for the cost, to the point where I like it a lot better than Holdout Blaster.

I rarely discard to reroll unless my opponent has already claimed, we know they have no mitigation and we’re digging for something important on our dice, or we have the potential to kill a character this round. Don’t forget that discarding to reroll is essentially a wasted action, as we’re not making an impact on the board or generating any value from dice. If you have a ton of blanks I can see doing it, but I’ll leave blank dice on the table if it means I get to resolve a damage die and claim.

Usually, I leave Infamous for a flurry of events after my opponent has activated. If I have Jabba suited up with Fast Hands and Blackmail I might potentially Infamous down a Jetpack or On The Hunt on Jango to prepare for the free activation, then roll in Jabba for the potential disrupt resolve. Outside of a couple situations I want to save Infamous for opportunities to disrupt multiple dice in one action, or get in some mitigation and then quickly claim ahead of my opponent. This deck tends to not do much until our opponent does something, and then it takes a ton of actions all at once.

If I already have some damage on a character (3 or more), I will often use Jabba’s reroll to get another shot at one of Jango’s character or upgrade dice. Rerolling a Jabba focus in the hopes of hitting the discard 2 or resource isn’t the best use of the ability, I’d much rather take a chance at turning a Jetpack disrupt into a +2 or +3, an On The Hunt miss into a special, or a Jango resource into some actual damage.

Honorable Mentions

Fight Dirty is a great option for turning a few Yellow dice into a surprise kill out of nowhere, but currently I’ve found myself hesitant to play it. That kind of card really isn’t great until Round 3 at least, and we’re burning through cards usually, so I don’t want to draw it early and have to hold it for a few turns. It pushes me down an Aggro path that I’m hesitant to devote cards to, as it doesn’t let me play both roles. Lying in Wait is different as its discard and mitigation, in the sense that they can’t play those upgrades or discard to reroll blanks.

I want to play Bait and Switch, as its free, has ambush, and can push my dice to the correct side, but it doesn’t work with Jetpack, On The Hunt, or Blackmail. That just leaves character dice, Holdout Blaster and the Datapad as potential targets. Classic case of “great option, on theme, incidentally doesn’t work out”.

Cheat is great in theory at getting back a Loose Ends, but I hesitate to trade two cards and an action for that kind of effect. While it’s true we can Infamous it in, most of our cards are fairly redundant as far as their effects go, so we would really only want it as the third Loose Ends. Usually, I’m milling them too quickly to find the second copy and get it off before they’re down to just cards in hand. While having a “third” copy will mean I’m finding the second one faster, so far I’ve found more success in just making sure I have enough mitigation and letting the game play out at its pace.

Speaking of which, One-Quarter Portion is fine mitigation that we just don’t have room for, and probably don’t need. I’ve messed with the numbers a lot and found that 8 mitigation events is just the right number, in addition to Jetpack and On The Hunt. Any more and I find myself left with copies in hand that are rotting away, making my Lying in Wait worse. I could see playing a copy, but so far I’ve been happy with the numbers.

Scramble is a pet card of mind that gets a lot of hate that I don’t really understand. Free events should always be investigated, especially if they have an actual effect on the board, unlike something like Bombing Run. Scramble is essentially Friends in Low Places plus potential mitigation, if we’re making our opponent discard to reroll bad rolls. Play it after they focus a die to a side, play it instead of two pieces of mitigation if they got good rolls. Play it with ambush thanks to Infamous and mitigate away any of their rerolls that hit. I had it in the list and moved away to try Swiftness (and I wanted to get below 9 pieces of mitigation), but I could easily see bringing it back. This is the on-deck card.

Matchups

With the new rules update restricting Fast Hands to yellow character only, this deck becomes one of the few decks in the field where we can still play Fast Hands at full value. One Punch Vader, Unkar/FN/Trooper, Vader/Raider, and Poe/Maz all took a little hit, but this deck remains untouched.

Speaking of Poe/Maz, since I know that’s the gorilla in the room, our matchup is great. Bolt Hole and Armor Plating are cheap ways to soak up damage, we claim quickly, and are well suited to discard the stuff Poe/Maz is looking to throw. Usually, they will target Jabba, which gives us more than enough time to kill their Poe and go into the one on one facing down Maz. Now that they can’t Fast Hands a hit immediately, we are well suited to remove both their Poe dice and go about our business. This matchup is GREAT.

Vader/Raider is a solid matchup as well. Vader/Raider is a classic high floor/low ceiling deck. All of its cards are focused around turning its dice into threes, but it relies heavily on its events to get it there. The times of Holocron into a loaded up Tusken Raider are over, and they are weak to discard assuming we can also handle their character dice. Just like Poe/Maz, our deck is built to remove whatever the roll and keep going.

Against most of the midrange decks, we can play our mill roll and slow down any damage they try and cobble together, which leads to a win pretty handily. Unkar is poor against all our free events, and discarding a hand full of upgrades is the best way to take FN-2199 down a notch.

Against other control decks, we are claiming ahead of them every time, and we play Loose Ends.

Conclusion

Jabba Jango is a quirky, streamlined, powerful deck that does something unique, attacks the field from an unknown direction, and does well against the top decks. For those looking for something different to play, I think this deck is a great option, and I would run it at Store Champs if I wasn’t set on my FN/Dooku. Mill is always the “Tier 2” option in a game as Aggro focused as Destiny, but I’ve found that of all the mill decks, this one has given me the most success. Let me know what you think, I’ll answer any comments or questions you guys have. Credit as always to Smerle for listening to my rants on Discord.

Thanks,

Trevor Holmes

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