Jimmydehand 410
First off – I would really like to thank Card Addicts in Birmingham. They ran a great tournament. Their shop is nice, well lit, clean and open. It was a top notch place to hold the event, and their prize support was very generous.
I’d also like to thank the Knights of Ren guys for treating our little neck of the woods event as a premier level tournament. Live streams of games, interviews, judging and general merriment made for a very fun day.
So – back during the SoR meta I was scattered. I didn’t want to be “that guy” and run Poe/Maz or any of the 9s decks. I played in 6 or so store championships and my best placing was 4th. Each one I ran a different list that I might’ve practiced 10 times before putting it together. To say this had a negative effect on my performance would be an understatement. So when EaW was announced I told myself that I was going to build out a list that I thought was fun and consistent, and practice it until I “got gud” so I wouldn’t embarrass myself during the regional season.
Early on that deck was Kylo2/FN2199. Yeah, I felt dirty running it, but it was head and shoulders above any other deck that could be run. But then the new RRG went into effect and threw things for a loop. I spent some time running a Riiekan Mill deck, a little time with Mazherati and dabbled with Rainbow #5 but didn’t love any of those lists.
Then I started hearing rumblings about how solid the Two Player Starters were, and that even with mixed damage the Rey2 Poe2 list was still good. I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t want to play a “slow” deck, and without actually putting it together the R2P2 build appeared to be just a lumbering mess of mixed damage….and then PAX happened and the Galactic Qualifiers showed that the deck could compete at a high level vs top tier competition. I was immediately intrigued. I built a version that night (essentially copying Ed Chen’s Medical Droid version) and played a few matches vs some of my friends who were running other meta decks at the time. I won some, I lost some, but I saw a lot of potential in the special chaining aspect of the deck and really fell in love.
When I started working on my version of the deck my first issue was the lack of resources. I toyed with the idea of Logistics, but felt that was counterintuitive to the deck – the goal is to fix your dice and resolve them as damage as much as possible…and while I’m not opposed to resolving a resource side, it isn’t the ideal. That left It Binds All Things as the obvious choice to help with the economy of the deck. And, when combined with the Docking Bay - Finalizer battlefield it synergized well. So, out went the Medical Droids and in went the two IBAT.
My other major tech that I added was based more on my local meta – decks where I am tend to run high on removal cards. It’s not uncommon to have 10+ removal included in certain decks. So, when I roll out Poe and his blaster I tended to see those dice mitigated before I had the chance to chain my specials. Enter Hit and Run. This card was a game changer for me. Being able to roll out Poe, immediately resolve a special to change another die to a special, give one of my characters a shield and deal damage helped the pace and reliability of my deck a ton. As I playtested though I found that I would roll Poe’s 2 focus side and be torn about using it during the ambush action from Hit and Run. So, after some hemming and hawing I decided to cut 1x of my force illusion to add in one All In. The blow out potential of the card made it worth the occasional dead spot in my hand. I could regularly convert one resource into 8+ damage on a good roll out.
Tournament recap:
I admit, the day started to become a blur after 5 or so very tense games of Destiny. I’m going to do my best give an accounting of the matches, but details might get fuzzy. Also, I apologize in advance because I remember exactly two names out of the nine opponents I played. I apologize – you were all amazing competitors, my memory is just crap when it comes to those things.
Game 1 – eQui-Gon/eKanan. I was nervous coming into this game. My main testing partner (and 2nd place finisher at the tournament) runs Qui-Gon/Kanan, and I know that I have about a 50/50 win ratio against it. Well, this game definitely went towards the loss end of the ratio. I could say that my rolls were flat and his rolls were good, but plain and simple I had the jitters and made some misplays that he capitalized on which blew me out. 0 - 1.
Game 2 – R2P2. I was upset after that first game. And to top it all off I was going against a mirror match for my 2nd round. I thought I was snakebitten luck-wise with my draw. My opponent was awesome, but he admitted he was still learning the game. We took it slow, I walked him through some of the stickier rules points, and scored a win. Side note to this game – the guy’s card pool was limited, and he decided to run Jedi Temple as his battlefield. I don’t necessarily recommend this as a tactic, but him killing 1-2 events out of my hand every turn didn’t feel great. 1 – 1.
Game 3 – ePhasma/Guavian/FOTrooper. After I got my first win under my belt my nerves settled quite a bit. I knew going into this game that it could get rough, but I was confident that my un-guardianable special sides would help me keep putting damage out vs. my opponent. That combined with his uncanny bad luck with rolling helped seal the win. I really felt for the dude. He was clearly skilled with the deck, he just had a really bad run of luck. 2 – 1.
Game 4 – ePalpatine. During testing I probably lost to this deck nine times out of ten. I just couldn’t find a way to control all that damage, and the shields help, but damage output can come kinda slow sometimes for R2P2, and there is very little I can do about a Palp player’s resource building to hit Rise Again. I lucked out in our game in that he didn’t draw a Holocron until way later, and his Palp would roll paint, but not ranged damage sides. If we had played a best of three I don’t know if I would’ve made it, but I was happy to pull out the win with the matchup. 3 – 1.
Game 5 – Sad Boys (eKylo2/Anakin). At this point in time I was getting kinda fatigued. My last meal had come around 6ish hours prior, and I was fading a bit. So, my memory of this one is a bit sketchy. I know it was the gentleman that drove up with Sugi from KoR, but for the life of me I can’t remember his name. He played a great game, but whenever I’m in a Kylo2 matchup I try to keep at least two non-blue cards in my hand at all times. If I can keep his chances of hitting that pull for 2 damage to at least 50ish percent I’m happy. After that I focus down Anakin and hope the game ends quicker than his damage can put one of my characters down. I wish I could remember more about the game because I recall really enjoying it. 4 – 1.
After my 5th game I took a minute to walk around the shop, chat it up, grabbed a drink (stay hydrated! Nothing saps your skill faster than letting yourself “dry out”.) and collected myself. Without a break in between games other than whatever time is left in the round you need to do what you can to stay limber mentally.
Game 6 – R2P2 mirror. This game was a doozy. As I stated earlier I was already getting fatigued and was beginning to make mistakes. The start of my game went great. I killed Poe around the same time he killed mine, but my Rey had 2x lightbow and an ancient saber equipped while his just had one ancient and a shoto. I also had a 3p0 on board to fix my lightbow rolls. So, I had that game in hand, right? Helllllll no. For the next 20ish minutes was a clinic in futile rolling on my part, frenzied healing on his part with 2x medic droids and his ancient, and an eventual threat of mill. It wasn’t until about 5 minutes left in the round, when I thought he was going to mill me out for the victory after I had him on the ropes for 2/3rds of the game that I finally remembered I also had an ancient saber and saved my loss by starting the cycle. With about two minutes left my opponent called it because there was no way we could mill each other, and he couldn’t keep up enough healing to beat me out on damage before the end of the match. Closest and most stressful game I had all day by far. And I give a very heartfelt shout out to my opponent (I want to say his name was Andrew? I hope that’s right…) because he could’ve just given in at any point with the way the board state was, but he fought it out until the end. Had I not remembered my ancient at the last second he would have certainly won it. 5 -1.
Woof. That was a long swiss round. No real breaks, just a grind of 6 super stressful destiny games. I went into the top cut as the 5th seed, and being able to say I made that helped me immensely. The last game really gave me a jolt to the head. I had been running on cruise control for the last couple of rounds and needed to wake up. I upgraded from bottled water to a Diet Dr. Pepper at that point to get a little bit of caffeine in my system before the best of threes began and I was ready to roll.
Once I had reached my self-stated goal of making the cut a lot of the stress of the day was lifted. If I lost at that point I’d have been cool with it. I felt like I had already achieved what I had traveled to the tournament to accomplish. I really think that mentality was what gave me the edge in my later games. I wasn’t as tense, I was clearer headed, and I was able to read the board state better than I had been by a mile.
Quarterfinals – eJango/ePhasma. I was worried about this one. I hadn’t really prepped against this style of deck – and while I’m familiar with the concept (I was a Jango/Veers veteran from back in the Awakenings days) I had no idea how R2P2 would fare against it. Also, action cheating with a Jango equipped with 2+ guns is terrifying. On top of that my opponent was running Ewok Village as the battlefield which didn’t bode well for my survivability. Luckily for me though, my deck is slower than molasses when it wants to be, and I definitely wanted it to be that game. At one point I remember rolling in 3p0, hitting a resource, then discarding to reroll his die into a blank just so I didn’t have to activate either character until he was out of things to do other than roll in Jango or pass. In both games I was able to kill Jango by round 3 at the latest. At that point it was normally a badly hurt Poe and a full health Rey vs his Phasma. After two quick matches (Jango/Phasma either burns you down quick or loses quick) I was on to the Semis. I also finished my games quick enough that I had almost an hour break to decompress, laugh at the content creator terrible deck Royal Rumble and prepare for the next round. 7 -1.
Semifinals – Sad Boys (eKylo2/Anakin). Hey, I remember this guy’s name! Justin Martin was my opponent. I sorta remember seeing him and his brother at some other events in the past (Louisville maybe?) I believe they’re from the Atlanta area and are both legit competitors. I already wrote up one report about Sad Boys, so I won’t go into the same basic tactics for this game, but I will say this – Dark Council served Justin well in this matchup. And in both games I would play Caution, and he would immediately Intimidate to clear the shields. So frustrating. But, when he was having trouble hitting the Kylo pulls, and I was able to push through damage onto Anakin I knew the game was in my favor. If he had been a little luckier with his blue calls things would’ve been very different for me. And, I hate to say this, but I believe fatigue was getting to him as well. He would notice/call out his misplays that he normally would not have made. At that point in time I think we were going on 7-8 hours of non-stop Destiny playing and it was taking its toll on everyone. 9 – 1.
Finals – eQui-Gon/eKanan. I was fortunate to have my local meta partner and deck testing gauntlet runner make the finals with me. Not because I knew his deck inside and out or anything (even though I did), but because we were able to just split the prize pool and not stress about another best-of-three matchup. I took the Nationals Bye, he took the extra $$$. But, for the sake of the stream, and for the honor of claiming the plaque we decided to play one game for all the marbles. I won’t go into my mindset for the game, instead I’ll just link to Sugi’s live stream so you can watch it all. https://www.facebook.com/knightsofrenpodcast/videos/1595192937227129/ They were seriously the best rolls I had all day long, and I don’t think Brian stood a chance in that one off. A best of three might have been different, but thankfully I won’t have to find that one out. 10 – 1.
5 comments |
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Why did the store not run 7 rounds like it says in the tournament rules for a regional? |
What do you think about Reaping The Crystal instead of one of the It Binds All Things |
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Congratulations! Good write up as well.