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Hello there!

This one’s a bit late because I’ve been licking my wounds from the positively bloody clobbering I got courtesy of our local Star Wars Destiny community. There’s not many of us, but what we may lack in numbers, we more than make up for in lightheartedness and playing somewhat dated and monkey wrench decks. And we love it.

The comp that’s featured on this article’s cover was a qualified success (if you ask me) and the feedback I got for it was positive. Getting people together for SWD has always been a challenge locally, and 6 people is the maximum we’ve gotten in one place for it so I’m pretty proud of the feat and proud of all the participants and all that we’ve achieved so far.
Slow and steady wins the race.

The decks and people that took part in Episode I (we’re planning some form of Champ Trilogy here…) were as follows:

Lucian: Pondo (ePoe2/eHondo)
Diana: Pondo (ePoe2/eHondo)
George: Naked Palp (ePalpatine)
David: “Straight Outta Left Field” (Aphra/Bane/Jawa)
Razvan: Londo (eLuke2/eHondo)
Yours truly: 7th.exe (eSister/Exec/Exec)

As you can probably tell by the various tiers and character mixtures, we ran it all pretty loose and for fun (apart from Lucian and George who just dismantled everyone, but more on that later), and in the Infinite format that allows cards from across all releases so far. The player and card pool is reduced enough as it is, we don’t want limiting things even more, after all, so this works for our purposes.

Let me give you a very quick rundown of my experience during this whole thing:

Match 1: vs. Lucian 0-1

Pondo is still a beast to this day and a series of poor rolls and bad draws had me fall behind and unable to recoup in time. Lucian pulled a Second Chance on Hondo and between that and his armed-to-the-teeth Poe, I knew that it was pretty much over no matter what went down.
Note to self: go for Poe and keep paying up that Hondo special. And Vandalize. Definitely Vandalize. Vandalize Luci’s car if nothing else works...

Match 2: vs. David 1-1

Swinging back around from a complete and utter failure, my deck actually clicked this time, but so did David’s for a good while. I did away with his Jawa first and had the Execs roll back out to steamroll into a bit more damage, but by that point he’d shielded Aphra and Cad up pretty well. I managed to keep the Sister alive long enough and removed his Thermal Detonator die twice before having to take it full to the teeth, but pulled through in the end.
Surprising lineup with a surprising amount of bite to it from David.

Match 3: vs. George 1-2

This was possibly the most fun match of the day because of two reasons: George is a beginner with under 10 games to his name, and all of his matches so far have been against me (apart from a multiplayer endeavour). I don’t actually recall beating him more than once or twice while testing decks, and this time was just about as competitive and to the wire as usual.
I removed his measly 2 dice as often as I could and brought a heavy 13 damage (which probably translates to double that, counting shields) onto Papa Palp but he turtled up something fierce and I was one turn away from drawing my Dark Ritual and bringing Sister back for what would probably have been the late-game win. Instead, he pulled a double 3 ranged on the next turn and there was nothing I could do about it.
Solid plays from George and poor rolls from both of us had this going long and tense. Lovely stuff.

Match 4: vs. Diana 1-3

Another Hondo, this time piloted by my wife of all people…
We don’t pull our punches when we play each other, and Hondo was pretty much gone within the first two or three turns, even with a Second Chance, which put Diana in a bit of a bind as Poe wasn’t fully equipped due in part to us not having our Poe’s Blaster die with us… Whoopsie.
Still, with one Executor of mine pretty much gone within the first turn and a quick couple of Ambush plays later on, I was chalking up another loss before long.

March 5: vs. Razvan 1-4

Another surprise pairing and a surprise build with a lot of supports (including R2, and Chopper), and a Republic Cruiser that crapped up more shields than even George’s Palp was able to...
Hondo bit the dust quick, but so did my Sister because of pure hubris on my part wanting to keep an Ancient Lightsaber on her for one extra turn. By the time I whittled through Luke’s shields I was down to my last Executor and Razvan had enough damage to blow through him twice over. Solid win on his end.

Results

Lucian 5-0
George 4-1
Razvan 2-3
Diana 1-4
Costin 1-4
David 1-4

The day came to an end with a clear winner in Lucian who just blasted through everyone (including George’s tanky Palp) and took home the prize the guys at War Games Store so courteously offered up: a Store Champ mat.
It was an older model, but it checked out.

All in all, the day was a hit and I hope people had enough fun to keep coming to this, provided I bring in some alt arts with less rounded corners, but I blame these on poor communication with the printing place, so I plan on doing better…
I’d like to personally thank everyone who dropped by, Snakes & Wizards for hosting us, War Games Store for the 1st place prize, and I’d like to think that we have the makings of a great community, especially since we’re mathematically sitting on a pool of at least 10 people if we can get our schedules to work. Damn life and its getting in the way of gaming...

Thanks for reading, and have as nice a day as you deserve!

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