Aphra/Grievous/Sentinel Top 16 Worlds 8-0 Swiss

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
GAS 0 0 0 1.0
Top 4 - 2019 Brazil Grand 0 1 1 1.0

WGHunter 89

This was my list for Worlds 2019, which got me to top 16, and an undefeated Day 1A. First off, huge shoutouts to ABG and Nick Cuenca of the Hyperloops. Prior to worlds, I was poking friends here in Austin about Aphra builds after the primes, and they gave me a solid core of what those teams/folks had used, to the knowledge we had. I played Aphra all summer leading to Nova, so I felt I could use this in a pinch. I made a few swaps before the tournament, including switching out Automated Defense for A Sinister Peace, due to the resource cost mostly. The biggest change was using elite Aphra compared to elite Grievous. I got a lot of questions about that, and I don't think it's necessarily "right", but I wanted to try it out. It does a few things for me: 2 Shield dice to work with, and immediately usable sides. Grievous' focus is great, but 1 shield is mediocre and 1 gun is pretty bad as well. With Aphra, the 2 for 1 isn't great but later in the game can be a finisher, but the 2 Shield, indirect, resource, and discard are all great. It keeps heat off Grievous as well and makes sure I can run 2 Megas successfully. It also makes me play a bit different, rather than leaving dice out in the pool and letting them get picked off waiting for focus sides, I am willing to just resolve good enough sides. Plus, at the level players were at, Probe into 5 was a pretty common occurrence, so every odd discard side is potentially big for me.

I was pretty certain I was going into Worlds playing Palp/Motti leading up to the event, but swerved on Thursday, probably as late as I possibly could. Ultimately, my list was pretty bog standard and didn't have a lot of tech for the tougher matchups like Palp, but I avoided them. Better to be lucky than good in some ways, I guess!

Anyway, my matchups:

Round 1: Reylo

Felt like a pretty solid matchup for me, but I never take anything for granted. I was able to drop an early Fist turn one and it went south for him pretty quickly unfortunately. Probes decimated him 2 turns in a row, killing any comeback potential.

Round 2: Vader/Battle Droid

Vader is always scary, but I was lucky to have a lot of removal early, so I controlled dice with Crash Landings followed by Motives. I won on turn 2 with another Delved fist.

Round 3: Reylo

Another Reylo, but this round was rough as he hadn't had much experience against Aphra. I built a pretty bad board with both yellow droids, Megas, and an Assassin Droid, not much he could do to hold it all off.

Round 4: Chopper Droids FC

Another matchup that I consider solid for me, but I also got a nuts draw with a droid/Vader's Fist turn 1, and an early droid kill. Once that happened it was tough to catchup.

Round 5: Aphra/Grievous/Sentinel

This was the start of the 3 Wide Villain Gauntlet, as my last 4 matchups were against members of ABG who had designed the deck. Cody and I had nearly identical starts, both getting Respites, BT1 and Vader's Fists off, and we were damage for damage. I ended up winning with 1 life left, it was an absolute barn burner.

Round 6: Aphra/Grievous/Sentinel

I believe Drew's build was identical to Cody's, and it was equally tough. Once again it was down to the last life, an extremely stressful win.

Round 7: 4Lom/Grievous/Sentinel

This one didn't go like I expected, I thought the matchup was historically more difficult, but I hadn't had a chance to test it as much. One humongous turn for me came with 2 discard sides showing on Aphra, and taking that into a 4 card hand right after Dave took 3 resources for a Delve. I nailed both a Mega and Fist, ending the turn effectively. Another "lucky than good" moment for me.

Round 8: Aphra/Grievous/Sentinel

Kurtis from Canada I believe ended in Top 16 with me, and we had a great game on the Destiny Council stream. It went pretty standard for both of us, but I hit an extra Desperate Measures I believe. Hard to recall the details because I got a wave of relief when the game was over and I was 8-0.

Day 2

Top 64: Bye

In what was very weird, we had 63 people make the cut, and I was just lucky enough to get a bye.

Top 32: Chopper Droids FC

Biggie from the Hyperloops is one of my favorite guys to play, and I was super happy to see him in Top 32, regardless of the outcome. Our previous encounters have all, oddly enough, been in Infinite. First game he got off to a good start, but I was able to get a post claim Fist down off a Delve, and hit enough damage value to put the game away. Game 2 he simple didn't get enough upgrades, just mods on Chopper, and we closed it out.

Top 16: Aphra/Phasma/Sentinel Grand Design

This one I had seen floating around during the cut, and I think his friend was the other 8-0 from Day 1B. This was on the FFG stream. Game 1 I completely embarrassed myself, I started getting very tunnel vision-y, planning my turn way out, getting twitchy. Brian played a Fist, and instead of immediately DMing it, I let him roll it in. I then saw my DM again and groaned. After it looked like we were closing the turn, I was thinking "I should save this DM for a fist now". Then I said "Naw lets do it". And immediately after DMing a now used up Mega, he No Good to Me Dead into Delve into Fist, immediate karma. Game 2 I played much tighter, probably looking almost competent on camera. I ended up taking it after getting some heat down and blowing up his board presence. Game 3 I blew up some of his board, but didn't get a Delve target until turn 3, and by then I was a bit too far behind.

Ultimately, I am really proud of my run. I was able to match my top 16 from last year, but this year the competition level seemed stronger than ever, and simply making Day 2 felt like an honor. My team in Austin helped prep so much, and also played really well at the event. Huge shout out to the FFG staff for making the event bigger and better than ever, and now I found out that I get an invite to next year's even, so I'm looking forward to seeing everyone there!

For changes, I would look towards the ABG builds as a guide. No Good To Me Dead absolutely should have been a 2 of, and my lack of prep time shows in the fact that it wasn't. Had I gotten just a few more games with this version, I definitely would have seen that. My personal changes are:

-2 Fickle or Assassin Droid

+1 No Good to Me Dead +1 Scorched Earth

You can also probably sneak in an Embargo as well, or Act of Cruelty, meta dependent. Anyway, thanks for checking out the list, thanks to everyone who made worlds awesome, and hope to see anyone from Texas down at the Austin Prime Championship on November 9!

2 comments

Yahari 29

Hey hunter! Congrats on top 16 at worlds man! You really deserved it. I'm curious if you have any input on the palp matchup? I'm having some trouble with it. I've settled on scorched earth as my tech card. but I'm also trying to decide if I should run a mind extraction. Do you think it's working putting in? If so, what should I drop? I'm considering dropping a fickle for it. But I'm not sure. I know you have alot of Red palp experience. So I'm hoping you can shed some light for me on the bind I'm in right now.

WGHunter 89

So Palp is definitely a bad matchup, but I just haven't liked Mind Extraction as much as scorched earth. My updated list adds a Scorched Earth and another No Good To Me Dead over the Assassin Droid or Fickle slot. I will say ME works better against Red Palp since they have Probe and Counter Intel, but I think red palp is much less popular in general. Scorched also gets around protective suit which is starting to pop up