Invasion/In Complete Control has a really bad rap right now.

And it’s really not a bad deck.

really.

I first got the idea to build one of these off decktech.net when Phil Otter posted his In Complete Control deck from the European Championship. Taking a look at the new virtual cards for that deck and his list, I thought I could make it better, and I thought it could be a very playable deck.

There are a lot of tanks played in my area, and we’d been testing with Lee Edwards a lot who has been running Endor tanks for a few months now. I’ve witnessed the tanks’ power first hand and decided they could most easily go in this deck, so I put in three tank commanders and three tanks and made some other meta calls and came up with this list:

Starting (10)
Drop! (VCool
Invasion/In Complete Control
Naboo
Blockade Flagship
Naboo: Swamp
Droid Racks
Prepared Defenses
3,720 To 1 (V12)
At Last We Are Getting Results (V12)
Crossfire (V9)

Locations (3)
Naboo: Battle Plains
Naboo: Theed Palace Throne Room
Blockade Flagship Bridge

Characters (23)
3B3-10
3b3-888
3B3-1204
Battle Droid Officer (x3)
Darth Maul (x2)
Darth Sidious
Daultay Dofine (V12)
Nute Gunray, Neimoidian Viceroy
OOM-9
OWO-1 With Backup
Rune Haako, Legal Counsel
P-59
SSA-1015 x2
SSA-719 (x2)
Tank Commander x3
U-3Po

Starships (2)
Maul’s Sith Infiltrator (2)

Vehicles (3)
AAT x3

Effects (5)
Ability, Ability, Ability (V6)
Forced Servitude
Imperial Justice (V10) (x2)
The Phantom Menace

Interrupts (10)
Cease Fire! (x3)
Masterful Move & Endor Occupation x2
Stunning Leader (x2)
Take Them Away
We Must Accelerate our Plans x2

Admiral’s Orders (4)
Nothing Can Get Through Our Shield (x3)
Commander Ping AO

This list started tearing through everything we had. The toughest matchup for it was QMC aliens which pretty much went 50/50. Either they left you alone at the system while you made all your drains, never lost more than 2 to their drains, and was able to hit and run on cloud city, or they moved over to naboo, and you moved over to bespin, flipping you back but making them pay for all their drains, while you continue to not have to pay for yours and if you play it smartly, can still go over to cloud city and do some serious damage, especially when all your droids are deploying for 1.

The major problem with Invasion is holding the system. Having to control two specific locations makes this deck very vulnerable, and your inability to play a decent space package makes holding naboo that much harder. One card that went in, and gets pulled turn 4 in just about any game is breached defenses (v). This really puts a hamper on all those light decks that just run HCF x2.

Activation was becoming a problem, especially if I couldn’t get the bridge out fast, so alternate methods needed to be researched and I came up with security Precautions V. THough you have to be tricky with this card because if you’re adding to your generation at the throne room, SSA-1015 won’t be making those jedi deploy for +4. So what I generally did, if I had a tank in my hand, was go down to the battle plains with a tank and a tank commander and grab Sec Prec V with crossfire to get some mass generation going. That tank is pretty safe on it’s own, and it allows you to save some serious force to deploy a nemoidian and enough droids to make it stupid for your opponent to come down to the throne room. The trick here is that you just throw the throne room on the other side of the swamp so that your Sec Prec V isn’t affecting the throne room, thus allowing your SSA-1015 to neuter the jedi who make it harder for you to hold that site.

There was still the problem of space, and to be honest, I played this deck at PA states this past weekend because there’s really nothing you can do against HB matching pilots. I can chuck as much forfeit fodder on there as I want, but it just slows you down. I suppose you could sit there and not flip until you had the Blockade flagship with Daultay and OOM-9 Piloting with Sidious, P59, and two random battle droids and/or tanks as forfeit fodder, but it just weakens the rest of your deck. The Chasm shield made the best thing going for this deck (The change to the battle destiny ruling) go right out the window, basically making imperial justice unnecessary.

After some more subtle changes, here’s what I ran at PA states:

Starting (10)
Drop! (VCool
Invasion/In Complete Control
Naboo
Blockade Flagship
Naboo: Swamp
Droid Racks
Prepared Defenses
3,720 To 1 (V12)
At Last We Are Getting Results (V12)
Crossfire (V9)

Locations (3)
Naboo: Battle Plains
Naboo: Theed Palace Throne Room
Blockade Flagship Bridge

Characters (24)
3B3-10
3b3-888
3B3-1204
Battle Droid Officer (x3)
Darth Maul (x2)
Darth Sidious x2
Daultay Dofine (V12)
Nute Gunray, Neimoidian Viceroy
OOM-9
OWO-1 With Backup
Rune Haako, Legal Counsel
P-59
SSA-1015 x2
SSA-719 (x2)
Tank Commander x3
U-3Po

Starships (2)
Maul’s Sith Infiltrator (2)

Vehicles (3)
AAT x3

Effects (7)
Ability, Ability, Ability (V6)
Forced Servitude
Imperial Justice (V10) (x2)
The Phantom Menace
Breached Defenses (v)
Security Precautions (v)

Interrupts (7)
Cease Fire! (x2)
Masterful Move & Endor Occupation
Stunning Leader (x2)
Take Them Away
We Must Accelerate our Plans

Admiral’s Orders (4)
Nothing Can Get Through Our Shield
The Deflector Shield is too strong x2
Commander Ping AO

Nothing can get through our shield blew because it makes all your droids in space forfeit zero, but it was still huge against I’m With You Too (v) so I had to leave one in. Deflector shield is too strong makes my tanks forfeit zero in space, but since there are only 3 of them, it became the go to Theed Admirals Order, which is what makes Daultay Dofine (v) so strong.

So my first game at PA states I got matched up against Bordier playing MWYHL space with hit and run Rebel Techs. He started squadron assignments so I was pretty fearful. I ended up just bulking up at the system with the full package, daultay, 00m, sidious, p59 and 2 droids. So no matter what he threw at me, I could hold the system for at least two turns. He was really hampered by not being able to complete his jedi tests (every time he drew destiny it was a 1,2, or zero and every time he lost a card to a drain off the top it was a high destiny interrupt). He came to fight me in space later in the game, but My bulky forfeit and the droid racks, along with all his immunity being -3 (Dash is immune to destiny <1 ftw) I was able to hold off and win.

My second game I got paired off against my partna Justin Desai playing light senate. Now Invasion had beat his light senate every game we tested whether I was flipped or not, but I still wasn’t feeling very confident in this matchup because he made his Senate a little heavier hitting on the ground lately. Either way I got stomped with some really bad luck in this game. First turn I activate 5 and go to deploy Daultay Dofine and he’s in my force pile, that’s never happened. and it’s 1:10 odds, so I started drawing and wasn’t in the bottom card in my force pile? shitty. So I beef up at the system a little with some forfeit fodder while I save force for a few turns to deploy 4 guys to the throne room. and I’ve finally gotten enough to do it and isn’t the throne room in my force pile? and isn’t in 8 cards down? so now he’s activating a ton and i have to start saving force again and it just slowed me down so much that he was able to go to endor with luke and start draining, which forced me to go down a little eariler to the throne room than I wanted (even so late in the game) which meant his EPPs were able to clear me out turn after turn because i was only generating enough force to pull 2 guys off the racks and deploy them both to the throne room.

Eventually he got enough time to set up a drain at the 3-2 site and I lost by 17. I don’t know if I necessarily couldve won that matchup, but I know it was winnable and I know i got royally screwed.

My third game I got matched up with Hidden Base, which is just an autoloss. This deck just about cannot beat HB. He came down with a huge beatdown squad a little sooner than I expected and was able to clear me out of the naboo system pretty early (and made me take mass overflow while doing it). Though I was spread out at all three naboo sites, I didn’t have enough time to probe his system and do enough damage, while he was spread out at every system with an xwing at each.

So this deck really isn’t bad. In fact I think it’s pretty good. The only thing that will consistently beat it is hidden base with matching pilots and even then, if I had the correct Admirals order out I wouldn’t have taken any overflow against Kingery and I mightve been able to do a bit more damage. Either way, it’s probably too weak against HB to play at worlds, but if you can figure out a way to definitely hold that system, give it a shot. The deck beats house on the ground, any time your opponent draws an interrupt for destiny you place it out of play for some neato direct damage, it drains pretty heavily if they leave you alone and the tanks made a world of difference, really making this deck top tier in my opinion. Their ability to go and fight, or hold a site with just two cards while doing damage with We’re in Attack Position Now, is hella-strong.

Give my list a shot next time you want to completely thrash Invasion.