Starkiller Base - Poe Maz SC Winner 21 Players 1.0

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Hey all,

John here from Starkiller Base on Youtube :) I've had a few people ask me about my list that I ran for the SC that I won at X-Planet Games in Mississauga, ON on June 3rd.

This is probably a pretty standard Poe Maz deck, with the exception of the battlefield. Why Frozen Wastes - Starkiller Base you ask? I did a lot of testing against Vader Raider and Palpatine - Galactic Emperor, which are two of the toughest matchups for Poe Maz in my opinion. The strength of the Emperor's Throne Room - Death Star II is consistent damage, but it also allows you for some "die control" in a sense. How is that? Well when you roll in a character that has 3 or 4 HPs left and get a good roll, I can claim the Throne Room and kill that character, effectively removing those dice. The issue comes when you have decks with characters with a lot of hps. Most times you can't use the Throne Room to kill off Vader or Palpatine to remove their dice. However, Frozen Wastes can.

When testing against Palpatine with Throne Room, I won about 75% of the games, but there were times when he got out Force Illusions and the like, or they got a great roll when I had no mitigation (like the 10 damage first round Palpatine put into me in this game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIYFJRLbGqE).

I tried out Carbon-freezing Chamber - Bespin and Frozen Wastes. The issue with CFC is that decks can slow down your deck rather significantly by removing a Poe die for a turn. However, with Frozen Wastes, I usually had resolved my Poe dice before my opponent was looking to claim, leaving only Maz dice for them to remove.

After switching to Frozen Wastes, I went 18-0 against Palpatine. Even a turn where you have Fast Hands on Poe, roll him in and resolve a special or a 3 ranged, Palpatine rolls in and I simply claim to remove one of his dice, that's still a good turn. Moreso if the die was showing 3 damage and I had a Planetary Uprising out. We're talking 4-5 from the Palp die and then putting 2 into Palpatine himself.

The difference between this version and the Throne Room version is that you are trading mitigation for a bit of consistency. The 2x New Orders is to help ensure that you get your Battlefield. If you did not get it at the start, then they function as a 2 cost Isolation, which isn't the worst thing in the world. Throne Room is also very dangerous to use if you have a lot of Darth Vader - Dark Apprentice and Kylo Ren - Vader's Disciple decks running around, as I find they can use it better than Poe Maz in some cases.

Knowing what I know now, I'd make a few changes to the deck. Launch Bay was great in some cases, like disrupting 4 resources to stop a Rise Again or dumping most of my opponent's starting hand, but sometimes it was a 2 or 3 damage card in my hand which is lackluster. I also found that the times when I did win the battlefield, New Orders were basically dead cards. Some people suggest running Hyperspace Jump over New Orders, and that can be good. My issue with Jump is that it costs more, and if you end the round and you didn't control the battlefield, you still don't control it the next round. Given that the deck relies rather heavily on Dug in and Defensive Position for some of it's survivability, that can be a bad thing. I also found that, while Negotiate was very helpful in some matchups like Palpatine and Vader, as soon as they get some cheap dice out, or in other matchups with a lot of dice, it was not very useful. I'd likely switch it over to Loth-Cat and Mouse so as to be able to target the most dangerous die. I'd also like to fit a Cunning and Maz's Goggles into the deck for a bit more consistency.

Changes I'd make:

-1 Launch Bay -1 New Orders -2 Negotiate +2 Loth-Cat and Mouse +1 Cunning +1 Maz's Goggles

Here's a quick tourney report:

I lost the first round of swiss to a mirror match that came down to a single roll where I had a ~65% chance of killing Maz and winning but I whiffed. I went undefeated in the remaining 4 rounds of swiss and finished 3rd in swiss.

The top 4 players were Poe Maz, Poe Maz, Vader Kylo and Quigon Rey.

Top 4 vs Quigon Rey

In the first game I did not see Fast Hands until turn 4, which definitely hurt. My opponent saw his Vibroknife early and made my Dug Ins useless. Most of his dice were rolling 1s and he hit several specials on his Handcrafted Light Bow, which I could not Defensive Position away, so it was pretty rough. I lost the first game.

The 2nd game came down to Maz killing Rey and was very very close. Game 3 did not go well for my opponent and I won that one hands down.

Finals vs Poe Maz

My opponent's Poe Maz deck was also running Frozen Wastes. The other 4 Poe Maz in the tourney were running Throne Room and none made the top cut, coincidence? Maybe!

This was another match that went down to game 3. The first two games were both close, and more or less came down to who saw their Fast Hands and Hit and Run sooner. I will mention that, when I have killed off my opponent's Poe and Maz puts down a Cunning when my Poe is still alive, it's awesome that the deck can still function more or less the same way (their Maz can focus Cunning to use my Poe to throw things at me, how rude!). In the third game, my deck was working like a well oiled machine and I managed to close it and take the win!

I know that a lot of people think Poe Maz is easy mode, and it surely does let you do well more consistently, but there are still a lot of tough choices to make. I mean, if anyone could win with the deck, then every tourney would be won by Poe Maz, right?

Thanks for reading my writeup, and be sure to check out Starkiller Base on Youtube and Facebook for some great Destiny content :)

https://www.youtube.com/starkillerbasedestiny