This is something I wanted to address immediately, and was able to contribute to when I saw the design team had conjured up a new Boba Fett / Jango Fett / Slave I package.

Awesome. I was so pumped. However, I wasn’t super impressed with it’s efficiency and power compared to the Home One. Without a Verrack errata, this group of cards was going to take some work to be a powerhouse. One of the problems with the package lacking power was that since we were making assassins a potential tier 1 deck, we wanted a Boba Fett who could be good on the ground and in the air (and he is). We wanted the package to be efficient, and to pull itself, and we ended up making that very likely to occur with the game text of Fett and the Slave I.

But, I really wanted this Jango to be kind of awesome. The previous Jango isn’t great, and Jango wasn’t great in the movies unless he was piloting the Slave One. I took this into account when I took a look at the designed Mandolarian and made the following suggestion: Since Jango has a propensity in the movies to work with other characters (Zam, Dooku, Sifodyas, Boba), why not make him add a destiny. Just add one. All the time. +1 battle destiny. So that’s what we did.

Also, Jango was a beast in the Slave I. A beast! Did you see him in that asteroid field? Don’t you remember the sound quality of his siesmic charges? I do. They rocked. You couldn’t kill Jango in Slave I when he was rocking the control panel with Boba cackling at his side.

So without further adieu, I give you The Mandolarian, Father of Fett.

•The Mandalorian, Father Of Fett [Lando System? (V)] 1
[Virtual Set 8.1 –Dagobah – R]
CHARACTER – ALIEN
Lore: Trade Federation. Assassin. Scout.
POWER 4 ABILITY 3 ARMOR 5
Text: [Pilot] 3. Adds one battle destiny. While piloting Slave I with Boba (unless your [V4] objective on table), it is immune to attrition <9. SD-17 Homing Missile fires for free (and may be lost when fired), is a matching weapon for (and may deploy on) The Mandalorian.
DEPLOY 4 FORFEIT 6
[Pilot] [Warrior]
Set Icon 8.1

The main reaction to this guy has been, DAYYUM. COOOOL. Then people say, why make the missile go lost?!?! It’s so you can redeploy it with things like Gift of the Master and 3,720-1 (v). The missile is excellent becuase it can hit vehicles and make characters lost, but since you can’t stack it on Imperial Gunrunner and missing your pull with it is a huge boner, we decided to make this weapon really work repeatedly for The Mandolarian and make him someone who could do some serious damage.

This Jango is awesome. I really wish he wasn’t destiny 1, but for a destiny 1 guy, at least he absolutely beats the world.

First off, too many characters have been drawing if not able to otherwise for years to get around silly things that stop destiny. Eff that, it’s made characters so watered down. Jango coming in and playing well with everybody on the dark side is excellent. Yes, it’s a bummer that he’s still not a bounty hunter, and I wish there was a way to make him one and still have awesome game text, but there isn’t, and that’s just something we have to deal with from a design standpoint.

All in all, this is my favorite card in the set. I think it is one of the most flavorful, the most versatile, and I haven’t even had to mention the fact that he makes the Super Slave I immune <9, putting it in territory with the Super Falcon and the Super Home One as being a ship that is extremely hard to kill. However, you’ll notice that we restricted it from working with Hunt Down V. Even though I don’t have a lot of experience with HDV, my gut reaction when helping develop these cards was that a super efficient super falcon-ish type card was going to be a beast in a deck that was already hyper efficient. So while you can still play this awesome combo and allow it to terrorize your skies, you won’t get the Immunity <9 bonus, which kind of pre-balances the combo.

Now, if only this guy had an insanely high maneuvered starship to pilot that made him deploy for cheaper….

Hrm.. Assassins; we’ve seen that word before as there certainly is a card named Guild of Assassins. But, we’ve seen the word assassin as early as Premiere in the lore of Ket Maliss and Djas Puhr, and in the very next set with soup-eater Dannik Jerriko and the non-unique Rodian. All four of these characters are assassins, as are any other characters you find with Assassin in their lore: Snoova, Guri, Dengar, Keder the Black; and it doesn’t stop there. All the IG-88 personas are assassin droids and thus assassins, as are all those characters way back in Jabba’s Palace who have “Plotting to kill Jabba” in their lore. We’ve made a slew of new characters Assassins as well.

The idea here is that we wanted to start focusing on making “smaller” characters better, and that starts in 8.1 with Assassins. We’ve tried to push the envelope a little in terms of non-mains, and as a result you’ll see things like a forfeit 6 Aurra Sing with strong game-text. You’ll see a pipe-smoking Bounty Hunter who is always a Black Sun Agent and also an Assassin. Ket Maliss is an assassin who causes direct damage. We’ve been careful to keep power up among these non-mains (as that is important when trying to Assassinate characters), but there is no restriction on which characters you can play. However, you will face having non Assassin characters deploy +3 because of the objective.

Oh, yeah. There’s a new objective.

The current set-ups for dark severely lack in comparison to light setups, and we took that into account when developing Contract Killers/Feared Throughout the Galaxy as a hopeful tier-1 dark deck. However, what we really wanted with a dark side deck was sheer power. I don’t know how many other objectives grant you direct damage, immune to Simple Tricks and Nonsense retrieval, force drain bonuses, cross-galaxy site-to-site movement, defense value bonuses, and most importantly, outside-of-battle character removal.

The idea here is that if we’re going to be using non-main characters to flip our objective, but we also didn’t want to develop another swarm deck similar to Mystril or Agents of the Black Sun. We wanted a dark side deck that focused on the scum of the galaxy and their propensity to work alone trying to make their way in the universe. Thus the focus was on Bounty Hunters and that word again, Assassins, to be playable characters similar to mains, fighting on their own and at times in pairs, and of course able to gang up on the light side for serious damage potential.

Obviously there was some room for this deck to be extremely abusive and making sure this didn’t happen was a serious concern for the development team throughout the D/D process. One of the most challenging things about the objective was making the out-of-battle-character-removal fair and balanced while still creating double-sided card worth playing. We struggled a lot with a way to get the objective flipped and keep the objective flipped and what we’ve created is a pretty versatile and unique flipping system we think you’ll enjoy. It’s something I haven’t seen employed on a purple card before, and I really think we pushed the envelope in terms of creating something new, interesting, and powerful when it comes to the “Flip this objective” text. It was by far the most challenging part of making the set when you take into account we want this deck to reach tier 1 at some point (if not right off the bat).

One of the most fun parts of making this deck better was coming up with a new, unique character pool that drew on previously printed cards in both the decipher and the PC era. I didn’t even know Rodian (v) was a card, and now it’s showing up on lots of playtesting lists because he’s an Assassin and he pulls 4-lom (you can thank SoCal for the technology). Having it dawn on me that IG-88 w/ Riot Gun might be an Assassin because he is an Assassin Droid was a fun part of deckbuilding that you can’t find by searching for keywords on PolarHaven. I also remember being a teenager and ripping open packs of Jabba’s Palace and thinking it was sweet that some aliens had “plotting to kill Jabba” in their lore, but bummed out because it didn’t actually mean anything. Now those characters are finally being used and open up limitless opportunities for virtualizing in 8.2 and beyond. But, we didn’t just focus on making old card playable; by making “Assassin” a keyword has also allowed us to create powerful support cards with sharp focus that allows us to help alien decks, but not push things like Agents of the Black Sun back over the edge in terms of power. So as we continue to design and develop more Assassin characters, alien decks in general will get stronger and our hope is that scum, and other alien based decks can rotate back into power among the dark side.

As you can hopefully tell, we’ve tried to put a focus on characters who aren’t mains and allow them to function as mains. If Sith are your bag, then you can feel free to pack them into the deck, and pay a premium for them to hit the table. If not, you should have a lot of fun and win plenty of games Assassinating light side characters (even if they’re hiding in vehicles), and chewing bubble gum (tastes better when pried out of a cold Jedi’s hands).

Yadda, Yadda, Dark Side:

First up, the Tank Stuff.

I find it both cute and telling that our two tank helpers were made by members of SoCal.

Baktoid Amor Workshop – This is an interesting card, allowing you to essentially start four effects in a Combat Readiness V Tanks deck. Being able to start the Tatooine System and Watto’s Junkyard then pull the Desert Heart is very good. Being able to start Endor and The Dark Forest then pull the Forest Clearing is probably even better. God forbid we use CR-V to start the bunker, use Blizzard four to pull Derdram V and move him inside, and put a Perimeter Patrol on the Sanctuary Moon… GG’s Light side. I’m not going to spell the whole start out for you, but it’s pretty damn good.

But Gemme! A deck like that can’t activate well, can it????

Of course it can, with the OOM Command Battle Droid – This guy is very good. He adds a dark Icon wherever he is AND he adds one to your force drain. While his forfeit isn’t as nice as the tank commander, and he won’t give you the ping off We’re in Attack Position Now, he still draws you your two destiny in the tank. Him on Endor giving you drains of three at each of your locations (Dark Forest, Forest Clearing, Back Door) is disgusting. Did I mention he pulls either Cease Fire or Defensive Fire once per game? That’s what I thought.

Floating Refinery is a very good card. With the recent addition of storm clouds, giving us this to put retrieval back into cloud decks that are lacking any real activation advantage. Dropping the Obsidian TIES to each of your cloud sectors while protecting them with Talon Rolls is a quite good strategy against the heavy Capital-Based space packages out there is very good. It doesn’t take too much to keep these guys safe. The added activation basically makes up for having to pay to drain, and the retrieval makes up for your having to turtle. Let the Protocol Failure combined with some Propagandas and undercovers deal with the ground and let your Refinery retrieval deal with any space drains your giving up. Turtle at one ground site and make it extremely hard to attack you there (maybe Jabba’s unbeatable crew at the Audience Chamber, maybe Greivous somewhere with his helpers? You figure it out), and let that Storm Clouds force drain bonus get you there.

Your Powers are Weak Old Man, Sidious’ Lightsaber, Cyborg Commander’s Lightsabers - Cute plural on that last one, and cute card choice. Much applauded. It seems the PC has realized just how damn good they made Master Kenobi and now give us three cards (in addition to the four or five cards that already exist) to stop Kenobi’s Army from moving to their used pile in order them to be abused by 3P0 with his parts showing. The lightsabers are pretty balanced since they are relegated to characters who are pretty shitty. The interrupt is great b/c it can go in any deck as a one or two of, not kill the destiny, and have applications with its second effect, though I think it’s pretty lame that it’s a lost interrupt. It’ll get used for sure, but I don’t think it’s so strong that it couldn’t be used once per game instead of lost.

Where are you taking this… Thing? - another cute card title/pic. PC is killing it this set. I think this is pretty good. It’s a decent response to Nabrun, but it’s a pretty awful answer to Master Kenobi and Resiliance. This is one of the few instances where the PC actually made something stronger for dark than it did for light, but it’s not a whole lot; the only advantage really is that it can be pulled by Fanfare, but with all of the other Immediate Effects you need to pull right now, that’s not much of an answer. That already only makes it just slightly better (or at least just more timely) than Oota Goota Solo? Neither of which are event close to as good as the bad ass light side card Quite A Mercenary.

Cards for both sides:

Desperate Counter V & Hindsight V - These cards are pretty great and I think they are a must include in any deck now (I told you we had too much to pull with Fanfare already). They can stop a big drain of three that would otherwise really put you in a tough spot early, they handle things like blowing the bunker, Center of Tyranny, and Hindsight combined with an Atrocity follow up makes the dark Hoth objective look downright stupid to play (if it wasn’t already).  Giving the opponent any card is pretty moot when you can soak this amount of damage at a key part in the game. The other game text is almost irrelevant, except for maybe late game to stop some tracking, but few games go to that level without already having used this to soak damage.

Light Side:

Rebel Sacrifice - Communing is already so good that I don’t really see what the death star is adding for you. Your activation isn’t going to be very good, and you can almost definitely find something equally strong if not stronger on Tatooine, the system with the most related sites in the entire game. This also eats up a starting slot. Sure, you can use Path of Least Resistance to run guys around, but if that’s your plan, why aren’t you just playing QMC anyway? We tried to make this work at the beginning of the month but found that tatooine and exterior sites with nice text are just almost always better.

Lucky Shot - This card is almost unnecessary. It’s not amazing, but it’s a card light side needed. One of the only things dark side can do is give their ability 3 characters big forfeit because of Light’s ability to draw lots of destinies easily with very little to stop it. A Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith can be really difficult for Jedi-Based decks. This takes care of them pretty hard. I don’t really understand the Close Call cancelling, but Outflank has been a blowout before and this is just another utility card with a decent destiny that a deck like TRM or the 2/2 deck can use to it’s advantage.

Yavin 4: I actually don’t mind this system. I don’t know why you’re playing it, as it seems like it takes a LOT of energy to liberate the entire galaxy. I do like it however for any decks that are looking for a second system and don’t want to have to pack anything for Lateral Damage. Lots of players like to have an extensive space package in their mains based decks, playing this with Kiffex makes it extremely hard for you to run into problems in space with things like Artoo in Red 5, Dash in the Outrider, the Super Falcon and the Home One, all of whom are already fairly impervious.

Temporary Foothold - This is the perfect card for a deck like 2/2 or TRM. Or really any light deck that can easily hold a system and a site (think Home One and an immunity Jedi). It stops the protocol failure combo, This is Outrageous and control, but you still have to be able to handle undercovers. I don’t think this will see too much play, but the aforementioned decks or say, Profit or COT, might really benefit from this card.

Mace Windu - Now this is a card. A destiny 3 fully Immune Jedi? This is an excellent answer to Darth Vader, Betrayer of the Jedi. Forfeit unable to be reduced is an extremely strong mechanic and his retrieval and total weapon destiny +1 text are also solid. This takes a lot of oomph out of the very strong BOTJ, but I think that he was one of the few advantages dark had on the ground versus these guys. Mace Windu goes next level and negates half of Vader’s very good text.

Booster Terrick - I don’t know what deck is going to play him, but if you can find him a home, stealing a star destroyer is straight up stupid. Imagine getting your hands on a Conquest?? Thank youuuu.

Combined Fleet Action - This is a great card to have active so that your opponent only has to do about 14 damage to your life forces for a win.

That’s all I really have to say. I’ll be sure to post more exciting things after the MPC and my return to serious tournament play after a two year absence. Between the MPC and World there is plenty of time to talk about decks and plays, so this was mainly a dry run to get some awareness going into that.

Deck

1) Video streaming for major events

Yes, I do want to get this going. I’m not sure yet if we will use something like justin.tv to do a livestream, or something else, but this is something I am looking to implement (maybe even for MPC).

2) More facebooky type features

Right now the only way to get a hold of someone or talk to them is to pm them through the forums. I wanted to include a social networking aspect in case people wanted to IM users directly if they were online, similar to how facebook does it.

Neither of these are really on the docket yet, but they are things I’ve been thinking of.

Sunday morning I was discussing some of the changes I had made to the deck.  HAYBHv was Adam’s idea, and I filled him in on the rest of my changes.  He then came up with some awesome tech for my deck.  I was running Scum, but I also had some big guys like Choke Vader, Galen, Maul w/stick and Cyborg Commander, which would make Scum kinda worthless.  Or so I thought.  Enter Evacuate (v) –  Text: Use 1 Force to target your character of ability > 3 alone at a site.
USED: During any move phase, take target into hand.
LOST: If opponent has exactly one non-spy character at target’s site, place target in Used Pile.

This was going to allow me to drop down one of my non-scum friendly guys as back up or whatever, and then pull them back into hand as necessary and still be able to retrieve with Scum, which can be extremely important late game with the deck.  I pull Hutt Bounty v (which I never was able to deploy before) and put in Evacuate v.  I felt like I was ready to go now.  While we were waiting for people to cut out their vslips and get their decks ready,  I thought that I would want to do a TR.  I also realized that I was sitting in the chair that Hunter had played almost all (if not all) his games in the day before.  I pointed this out to Hunter, and told him I was trying to gain some of his knowledge via osmosis and he replied with: “You’re soaking up the legacy” and the title of this TR was born.  Because my memory is terrible as far as turn by turn reporting, I grab my notepad and pencil and prepare to take play by play notes of each game.  This sounded like a good idea at the time.

Game 1 – Trandos vs TRM.
Deja vu.  I’m paired up again against Matt Thornton and his TRM deck.  I was hopeful that I could actually win this matchup with the changes I had made to the deck.  My opening hand I start with all three copies of Boba Fett, Relentless Bounty Hunter and Fett’s Blaster Rifle in hand.  I had a hard time ever getting him in most of my games the day before so now I know that I’m probably set for the rest of the game if I want Fett on table.  Unfortunately, Matt deployed Goo Nee Tay and without Chu (v) I was hurting pretty badly the rest of the game.  My first turn I get down the Sail barge and most of my activation, Matt draws some and says go.  I then deploy a Mercenary Pilot, Trando, and Jabba to the barge and get Scum out.  Matt then drops Screaming Lando and EPP Obi at the Slaving Camp and battles.  When everything is said and done, Obi and a lone Trando are left at the site.  My next turn I deploy Fett again, this time at +1 (+2 from Goo, -1 from Scum).  I initiate battle and Fett is Clashed.  Not looking good for me.  Matt then deploys Mace, my next turn I redeploy the barge and another Trandoshan and battle.  Fett goes away again and I’m left with just a Trandoshan (possibly 2) which I move down to the passenger deck.

Matt then comes and wrecks me by deploying Corran and Stiffy Luke to the Passenger deck and battles.  I lose a bunch.  My next turn I drop down Fett again and deploy his gun from Lost.  I finally hit someone, stacking Corran on Trophy Of A Bounty Hunter.  Unfortunately at this point, I realize I’ve pretty much lost the game.  Time is called and Matt takes his turn and with only about 10 Force left and no way to get any characters out, I concede to Matt.  In both of my games vs Matt, Bossk never was deployed, stupid git.

Game 2 – WHTv vs QuesoSpice
Hoping that my WHTv deck will do just as good, if not better than the day before, I’m feeling confident about this matchup.  This is also where my notes start to get fuzzy.  I get off to a good start with Yoda and a Jedi Advisor to the Council chamber.  Jerry sets up the KSS and activation.  I drop Fallen Jedi and Jedi Survivor at the Extraction Facility.  Jerry gets set up for mining and Spices NOOOOOOO.  I made a big mistake of not going after the Admin early on.  I’m able to get Mace and a Jedi Saber and Lightsaber Proficiency somewhere on Coruscant.  Jerry keeps building up space and his Kessel sites.  I’m totally set up for Menace Fades on Coruscant with only one small problem, I can’t find Menace Fades.  Eventually, Jerry simply drains me out and the bonuses from Spice mining are just too much for me to keep up with.  Jerry wins and I’m 0-2.

Game 3 – WHTv vs BD Invasion
I’m paired up with Matt Thornton again.  When I see he’s playing Invasion, I feel good.  I beat Invasion the day before, so I think I can do it again.  Here my notes (and memory at this point) simply fall apart.  All I remember is that I squeak out a win by a few Force.

Game 4 – Trannies vs MeatFlaps
Yep.  Basically I lost this one too.  McGee played well and without being able to do anything about his speeders (none of my weapons could target them), he pretty much owned me all game.

Game 5 – WHTv vs BHBM
It was late and I’d been playing a lot of Star Wars at this point, so the details are pretty much non-existent.   My objective prevents me from taking damage for not giving up Luke.  We have several battles, I lost a few and had 3 or 4 cards stacked on Insignificant Rebellion, but it doesn’t really do Shaun much good beyond removing cards that I can’t retrieve when I initiate battle.  The game ends with me winning by a few.  However, we were supposed to have played opposite sides than what we did play.  That was my mistake as I had misheard the pairings or probably because I didn’t realize that it was a new round, so I played the opposite of what I had just played.

Game 6 – Trandos vs TIGIH
So we get pairings figured out and Shaun and I just end up playing each other again but switching sides.   When Shaun sees me setting up Scum, he thinks that I probably don’t have a Vader or Imperials and that he’ll never flip.  I actually did have a Choke Vader in hand when he mentioned this, and he came down and captured Luke.  Had I been thinking more clearly, I probably should have just tried to clear Luke from the site.  I did end up doing this a few times during the game, but he kept coming back.  I was finally able to get a few guys stacked on Trophy, and the power and DV boost helped keep my BHs on table.  Still, in the end it just wasn’t enough.  I lost the game by a difference of 1.  I couldn’t believe it.  Two days in a row, my last game of the day, playing my DS deck and I lose by 1 Force.  Frustrating to say the least.

Well, there it is.  Sorry that the last few games are lacking any information, but I was having a hard time keeping up with my games and taking notes at the same time.  After the tournament, we still had a bit of time before the store closed and most of us stuck around and signed cards and chatted before going to dinner at the Buckhorn Exchange.  After a very unexpectedly expensive and extremely tasty dinner, I returned to Jerry’s place to crash for the night.  Jerry was not only kind enough to offer me his floor to sleep on, he also Max Rebo’d me.  Ugh.  Now I have to figure out how to get rid of this blasted card.

Well, that’s about it.  It was a great weekend and I feel like I improved my SWCCG skillz.  Thanks to all my opponents for some great games, I hope you enjoy your prizes.

Saturday - CO States

Pre-tourny prep: I arrived in CO Friday morning, where I met Schoenthal  and we were then picked up by The Hollywood Kid and Queso.  Matt was having some issues with his car, so he dropped it off at the repair shop just around the corner(ish) from Jerry’s house.  We then proceeded to walk to Chili’s for lunch.  After lunch Matt needed to visit the bank, then we discovered W B Unlimited (a bird supply store), walked through Big 5 Sporting goods, and then it began to rain.  Hard.  We waited for about 15 or 20 minutes for the storm to pass, during which time it was decided that if we had to resort to cannibalism, I’d be the first to go as I was the thinnest of the group (no one wants leftovers).  Shortly after lunch Master Jedi Adam arrived and we then headed down to the Springs.  During the drive we talk some tech, upon arriving in Colorado Springs, we meet up with Jesse and Woody.  Jesse is a local but hasn’t played in a tournament in about 15 years and Woody is visiting from DC.  After talking strategies and working on decks for a while (unfortunately we didn’t have time to test any games) Adam and I head back to his place for some dinner and final deck prep.  I decide to play a WHTv deck for light and my own little creation of Kashyyyk CRv Trandoshans for dark (which I titled “Cannibalism”)

Game 1 – I’m paired up against Matt Thornton who is playing TRM.  I hate TRM.  Right as I sit down and start shuffling my deck, I get a phone call.  Thinking it’s probably just my wife wishing me luck for the day, I see that it is in fact Scott Lingrell with an emergency (Mike Girard needed a high res file of the PC logo).  Luckily I had my laptop with me and was able to get the file onto my phone and email it to Girard.  We then start our game.  It’s a slow game, neither of us really able to get anything major going.  I was able to get a few pings in on Kashyyyk, but it really just grinds down to the time.  I end up losing the game by 2 Force.  I had some non-unique Trandoshans, but never found Bossk to deploy, so my Trandoshans were pretty weak.

Game 2 – I’m paired up against Hunter.  Light Side dominated game 1 and won 5 out of 6 games, so there was a lot of pairing up/down (however you want to look at it) and I was lucky enough to face Hunter’s Watto deck vs my WHTv deck.  I had decided to go with a The Signal v start so that I could get Honor in play turn 1.  Having Honor out in this game helped for a few turns before Hunter could find and deploy No Escape.  This game was basically one mistake after another.  Considering I hadn’t really tested my deck, that’s not surprising.  I started with a Control & Tunnel Vision in my hand and no Speaks, so I stupidly use the Archives text to pull it and play it to find Yoda.  Hunter quickly grabs Speak and I never found my other one all game.  I was fortunate enough to draw into several of my Jedi, so I wasn’t too worried about it.  My next mistake would be to never play The Professor shield, which Hunter quickly pointed out to me when our game was finished and he had ultimately deployed 3 or 4 star destroyers for free.  Another loss for me – not sure by how much, but probably somewhere in the vicinity of 20.

Game 3 – WHTv vs Invasion.  I”m paired up with Woody.  He had been trying to find 14 or so Destroyer Droids.  He wasn’t able to find them (I did offer to let him borrow the 2 I own) and had to play BD Invasion instead.  I don’t remember much from this game other than I was some how able to miraculously get the one copy of Qui with stick down to Naboo, AJR him, retrieve AJR (also my only copy in the deck), and get Qui down again, with some back up, for a few battles.  It was enough to win me the game.

Game 4 – Trando’s vs Communing Restoration.  Paired up against Adam’s Restore Freedom Communing deck.  The night before I had talked alot about the tricks and things my deck wanted to accomplish, but Adam never really saw a full list.  While I was cutting out my vslips Friday night, I was also helping Adam build his LS deck, so I had a fairly good idea of what I was up against, although I didn’t know card for card what he had in there.  Basically, his Rogues just wouldn’t go away and I couldn’t hit anything to stack on Trophy Of A Bounty Hunter to help keep my BHs on table, so another slow grind to time and I lose by less than a handful of Force (I think 3 or 4).

We then go to lunch and come back for games 5 and 6

Game 5 – WHTv vs EOPs Speeder Bikes.  I see that I’m up against EOPs, and I’m not sure if my space package can hold up, so I start out relying on going to ground and invading Endor.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any of my Jedi for a few turns, and Bryce starts deploying biker scouts (unique and non-unique ones) to the Endor Docking Bay.  The only locations he ever deploys are his starting locations, so I’m generating about 20 or so to his 7 or 8, but it’s too late.  The two or three Jedi I find can’t match the 10 or so speeder bikes + pilots he has at the DB.  I throw a Jedi Pilot and Republic Starfighter at Coruscant and one at Naboo, plus a squad at the Senate Landing Platform and drain him out for the win.

Game 6 – Trando’s vs Profit.  After playing all day, I don’t remember much from this game.  I started Mara w saber and Boba Fett, Relentless BH at the AC.  I deployed Aurra Sing v from hand and I was able to get the Sail Barge set up on Kashyyyk and said go.  He deployed Obi with Saber and Journal and said go.  My turn I move my squad over to Obi and try to take him out with Aurra.  Unfortunately I missed.  It was kinda down hill from there.  Some drains on Kashyyyk and battles on Tatooine.  I couldn’t hit anyone all game and it becomes another slow grind to time, losing by 1 Force.

Saturday – Trando’s: 0-3  WHTv: 2-1

Adam and I head back to the Springs and talk tech for my Trando deck to make it better.  We decide that it needs some help in hitting guys, so we add in a He’s All Yours Bounty Hunter v along with a few other changes (Defensive Fire v, Gift/Blaster Rack v).

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
(coming soon)

-Vegas was a great place to play. I didn’t get a chance to go hang out with the group as much as I was with my gf for most of the trip, but it was still enjoyable.

-Kevin Shannon and I were officially introduced to each other, despite having played at 3 major events together. Now we are bestest buddies (until at least he realizes that I’m not dan kim or aaron nelson).

-Jeeps was not nearly as nerdy looking as I was expecting. I am thoroughly disappointed

-Everyone was as classy as I expected them to be. Despite the massive acrid feeling one sometimes gets when ppl argue about star wars cards on the forums, actually playing at events continues to be filled with stand-up, great guys.

About Games:

-In choosing my deck, I had my rogue deck created for some time, but I had no idea what to play for dark until I was on the plane to vegas. Basically, I made a snap realization that if I could not beat rogues, I would not win any games with dark side, so I constructed a ds deck that would heavily mess with rogues, I felt that HDv was a good platform for that, as galen would cause 2 direct damage per swing to keep the rogue tank from preventing too much force loss, and draining of life would also provide ample means of clearing guys and keeping him from flipping. i had some anti-bd cancelling tech in there, but in retrospect, it was not enough.

-John Anderson’s first aid tech with wedge was super hot. I thought it was super clever.

-ICBHGv was super broken in space. Loading up the home one and adding 5 power would lead to rediculous battles where I had an unnecessary amount of power. Even if he had the immunity, he wasn’t getting around me outpowering him by like 15. I think I topped out at 45 power, from h1 + the falcon, Ackbar, and a rebel leadership. 5 destinies and 5 power on top is stupid. stupid awesome! well for me anyways