Birmingham Regional 2nd Place (6-0 in swiss) - Full Report a

Simulador de compra de cartas
Chances: 0% – 0% mais
Derivado de
Take 3 - Post EaW Release 62 52 17 1.0
Inspirado por
Luke tries his hand at a survival based deck. 1 1 0 1.0
eQui Gon & eAnakin (for Alex) 0 0 0 1.0

Kr0ozin 1292

Before I get started with the deck explanation, tips, and the tournament report, I wanted to give a few shout outs. The first of these is to the crew over at The Knights of Ren. These guys provide excellent coverage at every event, and have some of the best podcast content out there. Not only that, but I think Sugi is just an incredible ambassador for the game. The dude drove 10+ hours through snow and traffic just to provide coverage of the tournament, and I can't overstate how much I appreciate everything he does to help grow the community for this awesome game that we all love.

I spent the most time chatting with the KoR guys, but I also want to thank the other content creators that were there this weekend, as they ALL provide fantastic content, and I really think that is the most important thing to help grow a game. The folks at Artificery (who not only have great content, but put together awesome TTS tournaments), Double Blanks Gaming, and The Jedi Trials all provide amazing content, and I highly recommend checking them out.

And of course I would be remiss if I didn't thank the guys who ran the event at Card Addicts in Birmingham. The tournament was ran extremely smoothly, and the prize support was amazing.

OK enough of that, let's get on to the deck.

Card Choices

A decent portion of the list I brought was pretty standard, but there are a few cards that I want to highlight that were either unique to my build, or have been a point of discussion I've seen for QGK.

Force Speed - I've seen some conversations back and forth about whether or not this card is necessary in a QGK deck. I'll start by saying that I don't think it's necessary, per say, but I do think it's extremely strong. I mostly enjoy this card for a couple reasons.

First, it's a very strong play on Kanan Jarrus - Rebel Jedi. His ability is already extremely flexible, which I believe is one of the biggest strengths of the deck, and Force Speed just opens up so many more options when you can take multiple actions at once. Not to mention the non-special sides are both very useful, since a may as well be a damage side.

The second is it is an upgrade that I always feel safe putting on Kanan. No one ever targets him at the start of the game, and if they do, I'm usually very happy to see it. That means I get full value from this upgrade throughout the entire game. I can see an argument for cutting it, but it has been an MVP in my play testing for my personal play style.

Handcrafted Light Bow - 90% of QGK decks are running this already, but I feel the need to emphasize this even more. This card was already very strong, and in a shield heavy meta like this one, it's an auto-include. Just slot it in and move on.

Vibroknife - This is the first card that I haven't seen any other QGK list run. I think there is some psychological reason for this, as people generally shy away from a card after it has been nerfed. The thing is, though, this is still an insanely good card. A shield heavy meta with people running Force Illusion everywhere, it's just the perfect tech card. This single handedly won me at least two games in this tournament, and I think it fits nicely in the list. It's also another upgrade that I'm comfortable putting on Kanan, since I generally want to save upgrade spots for blue weapons on Qui-Gon.

It Binds All Things - I actually got the idea to add this originally from a Knights of Ren podcast. I have no idea how I hadn't thought of this before, but this card is incredible in this deck. Being able to play an upgrade AND have resources left over for die mitigation every round is extremely powerful.

Flank - OK here's where it gets a little different. This was added as a meta tech, and the idea actually came up when I was play testing with Jimmydehand the night before the regional. We were both practicing against Kylo Ren - Tormented One, and I was getting consistently destroyed by it. We decided the best way to combat it was A) Removal, and B) Grey cards. I already played QGK a little slower than most others, so Flank was a perfect fit. All of a sudden a matchup that seemed unwinnable turned into a pretty even match. After adding that and the next card I'm about to discuss, I won 3-4 games in a row against it, and felt much better about the matchup.

Sound The Alarm - Once again, another grey damage mitigation card to combat Kylo. The funny thing is I actually never ended up facing a Kylo deck, but this was pretty good anyway, because if you weren't aware, this is just a really good card. Being able to play an upgrade turn one and still have an answer to some damage is huge for this deck, because you REALLY need to ramp early to get your damage engine going.

General Tips

Every player is different, so I recommend playing with a deck to get a feel for how it fits your play style, but there are a few general tips I can provide from my extensive play testing that I think can help improve your decision making with this deck.

Mulligan - There are a few cards that I keep in my opening hand almost regardless of the matchup. Namely, these are It Binds All Things, Jedi Robes, Force Speed, and Caution. The ramp that Binds provides is extremely strong, and you want to get an upgrade out ASAP. The Robes helps with this ramp (overwriting it later), and provides shields (and free damage) right off the bat. Force Speed is just a free upgrade turn 1 that can help you claim faster and do some tricky things your opponent can't prevent.

If I get a good upgrade to play on the first turn, I'll usually look for zero cost control like Guard or Sound The Alarm, because more often than not, getting an upgrade down on the first turn is more important than controlling a die. This deck wins by getting big upgrades and dealing consistent damage, since sides are just as good as most of the time.

Using Kanan - Qui-Gon is the damage machine that the deck is built around, but never underestimate the power of Kanan's ability. He is so flexible as a character, and the options he opens are almost endless.

The key to unlocking his full potential is to adapt how you use him based on your opponent. Playing against a villain mill deck and afraid of a Buy Out? Resolve every single side he rolls. Afraid of a big burst of damage but need to spend your two resources on an upgrade? Leave Kanan's showing so you can gain a resource and play a 1 cost removal without giving your opponent the opportunity to disrupt that resource. Need some burst? Use the to get that sweet, sweet +3 side on your Ancient Lightsaber and unleash the heat. And of course everyone knows about the combo of the plus Force Misdirection.

I see a lot of people who try to reroll a lot to get everything to show as much as possible, but the beauty of this deck is that you really rarely need to do that. Qui-Gon has 4 damage sides and a resource, and 4 of Kanan's sides are always useful (maybe you don't want the in some situations), virtually every side of every die in this deck is useful. So don't be afraid to resolve what you have and save your key cards for when you need them.

I could go on for days about this deck, but the best way is to just play it for yourself. So with all that said, let's get into the games!

Tournament Report

Round One - Quinlan Vos - Dark Disciple / Count Dooku - Devious Strategist

To be honest, there isn't much to say about this game, so I'll keep it short as this is already going to be a really long article. I was surprised to see this character combo, since Dooku's ability has direct anti-synergy to Quinlan's side. He rolled that special a couple times in our game, but could never deal damage with it as I always had more cards. He rolled a decent amount of damage and got 8 onto Qui-Gon before I was able to finish him off. My opponent was a very nice guy, and he took the loss well, while we both discussed how we wished Asajj Ventress - Force Assassin had just a FEW more health to pair with Quinlan.

Record: 1-0

Round Two - General Rieekan - Defensive Mastermind / Padme Amidala - Queen of Naboo / Jedi Instructor Mill

I played a lot of intense games in this tournament, but this was easily the most stressful single game of the day. I forget my opponent's name, unfortunately, but I believe he was from the Hyperloops (another fantastic content creator, by the way), and he was a very strong player who knew his deck inside and out.

Oddly enough I had a decent amount of practice against this deck, as Jimmydehand had played it quite a bit in our local meta, but the build was very different than his. I targeted Padme Amidala - Queen of Naboo first (don't go for Rieekan), but he put a Protective Mentor on his Instructor, which made it very difficult to burst her down. Add in a Air Superiority and that deck can be VERY tanky.

Going into the third round I had Qui-Gon loaded up with Ancient Lightsaber, Handcrafted Light Bow, and Shoto Lightsaber, while Kanan had both copies of Force Speed. Padme was dead, and I had ~3 damage on the Instructor with about half my deck left. I was feeling pretty good.

........and then he played Fall Back. That hurt. So there I was with just a Light Bow and I had to burn through a lot of health still.

In the end, it came down to the final round. I had two cards in my hand and no deck, while he had just Rieekan left and a C-3PO. I knew that he was going to use 3PO to discard my last two cards anyway, so I had determined my only chance was to use them for rerolls to try and get the damage I needed. I pitched my first card and came up 2 damage short. Realizing that I was going to discard anyway, my opponent used 3PO to get two shields, so I had to go for it with one last reroll. Luckily for me I got the side on my Handcrafted Light Bow, which gave me EXACT lethal an won me the game. My heart was racing, and I was thrilled to escape that game with a win.

Record: 2-0

Round Three - Thrawn - Master Strategist / Jabba the Hutt - The Great and Mighty

So much for that meta I prepared for, huh? My third off meta matchup in a row. But oh man do I love Thrawn. Easily my favorite character in the game, so I was happy to see him sitting at 2-0.

I went into this game fully expecting it to be a mill deck, so I resolved ever that I rolled on Kanan and tried to get the damage ramped as quickly as I could. Jabba was the first target, but he slowed me down at the start by using Imperial Inspection on my Ancient Lightsaber. Luckily It Binds All Things was there to save the day and I was able to put it back shortly after.

I got Jabba down to 5 health and claimed to ping him down to 4 at the end of round 2, and he decided to roll out his Hound's Tooth and put three shields on Jabba. Unfortunately for him, I already had my Vibroknife in my hand, and on the next round I rolled a 1 on the Vibro and a +3 melee on the Ancient. Vibroknife MVP. Getting Jabba out of the way relatively early went a long way to helping the matchup.

The surprise for me was that right after Jabba went down, he used Ace in the Hole to roll in his Crime Lord with a already showing on a Thrawn die, 5 resources, and having already seen my hand to know I have no way to remove it. So, Qui-Gon was going down. I had no choice but to maximize the damage I could get from him, put my Ancient Saber on the bottom of my deck, and try to finish it off with Kanan.

At the start of the next round, he played his other Imperial Inspection, so I decided to overwrite one of my weapons (the Vibroknife, if I remember correctly) with a Handcrafted Light Bow to play around it. At this point it was a race to deal the last bit of damage to Thrawn before he got his second copy of Crime Lord, and I won the race. Another close game, another great opponent.

Record: 3-0

Round Four - Poe Dameron - More Than A Pilot / Kanan Jarrus - Rebel Jedi

Now THIS was an interesting deck! I actually knew my opponent in this game (Caleb), from a number of Store Championships we had played in together. He is also a carbon copy of Kanan himself, so we were literally playing Kanan vs. Kanan....with Kanan.

I'll give a recap here, but Sugi actually interviewed us after the game, and we talked about it a lot there if you're interested.

His deck was built around Planetary Uprising, Drop Zone, and his battlefield, Main Plaza - Vashka and boy is it scary. It forced me to play a lot differently, and there was more than one occasion where I left 2-3 dice on the table just to prevent him from claiming and hitting me with a bunch of damage. I was also sure to move damage to him instead of healing whenever I claimed, to keep the burst potential as low as possible.

This game came down to a blowout turn where I was able to remove 3 really strong dice by playing Force Misdirection on blanks, and then rerolling into damage to give myself a big edge. Really fun game and cool deck, and Caleb played it very well. He would also get his chance at revenge in the top 8 cut.

Record: 4-0

Round Five - Guavian Enforcer / Ciena Ree - Adept Pilot / First Order Stormtrooper / First Order Stormtrooper

Oh MY this deck is scary. I actually had to play against this deck 4 times in this tournament, and every game (except for this first one), was a slog fest. Andrew, the guy who piloted this deck, was an extremely strong player who knew exactly how the deck ticks. I'll go into more detail later when I talk about the re-match we had in the semi-finals.

Unfortunately this game wasn't very interesting. I targeted the Guavian first, then Cienna, and made sure to kill both Stormtroopers at once so he couldn't play Endless Ranks. Sadly for him, he didn't draw one of his big, damage dealing vehicles until the 4th round, and by that point it was way too late. Just bad luck on his part. It was clear he'd been there before, and he took it very well.

Record: 5-0

Round Six - Qui-Gon Jinn - Ataru Master / Kanan Jarrus - Rebel Jedi

The final round was a mirror match against Dan. Finally, a meta deck I prepared for! This game was another slugfest, as we both had some off-the-beaten-path tech for the meta. Where I was running Vibroknife and Flank, he had Lightsaber and, to my great surprise, an Yoda's Quarters.

The first turn was pretty standard. We both got down an Ancient Lightsaber, dealt some damage, and he was able to claim first. Round 2 I was able to control some damage and put out a Shoto Lightsaber using It Binds All Things, and we pretty much just traded blows again.

In round three we both killed the other's Qui-Gon's. I killed his under the shields with my Vibroknife, but he overwrote an upgrade with a Lightsaber to get the redeploy onto Kanan.

At this point it is Kanan vs. Kanan, but his just has a Lightsaber while mine has a Lightbow, Force Speed, and Ancient Saber. He was able to heal a couple times with the Yoda's Quarters when he rolled something he didn't need on Kanan, but I was able to eek out enough damage to finish him off right as time expired.

Dan played a fantastic game, and I loved seeing yet another iteration of the deck doing so well, proving how flexible this deck can be to fit your play style.

Top 8 Cut

Quarter-Finals - Poe Dameron - More Than A Pilot / Kanan Jarrus - Rebel Jedi

Well this looks familiar! I met up with Caleb once again for a rematch of the Kanan's.

In game one, Caleb won the roll off and decided to use his battlefield (obviously). I was relieved when he rolled in both characters without playing his Poe Dameron's Blaster, but became less enthusiastic when he instead used those two resources to play Planetary Uprising. For the rest of the game, I did everything I could to speed up my turn and claim before he was able to. Force Speed on Kanan really helps with this, as you can imagine. I had another blowout turn similar to the Swiss game where I got rid of his Handcrafted Light Bow and Force Throw by using Force Misdirection on my Force Speed .

Force Illusion also came in huge in this game, keeping Qui-Gon alive much longer than he would have been otherwise to deal a bunch of damage and take out Poe pretty early.

Game two Caleb was able to choose the battlefield, since he lost the first game and once chose his. This time he decided to switch it up and go after Kanan first, quoting the definition of insanity, if I recall correctly. Now, in most cases I'm extremely happy to see someone do this. But in this matchup, Kanan is the one who gives me the ability to really speed up my turn and claim early, so taking him out would make it harder for me to do so. He got a Poe Dameron's Blaster on the first turn, and was able to take out Kanan pretty quickly, despite my use of a Caution on Qui-Gon's die to add some shields.

By the time Kanan went down, he had Planetary Uprising AND a Drop Zone in play, so I was on a very serious clock. At the end it came down to a situation where I was going to die no matter what I did, because if I healed with Ancient Lightsaber he could kill me over two turns just by claiming, and if I took shields, he could kill me with his Drop Zone damage. He took game 2, and I had my first loss of the day.

On to game 3, for all the marbles! So this time I actually got to choose the battlefield since I had lost the previous game and was happy to not have to worry about the damage from Main Plaza - Vashka. With that out of the way I was able to play slightly slower (at least until he put down an Uprising), which let me use my removal more effectively to mitigate some damage. He claimed each of the first three rounds, getting shields onto his Kanan, but by that point I had a Handcrafted Light Bow in play, so I wasn't terribly worried about the shields. I focused Poe down hard, and if I remember correctly, I actually killed him by activating Qui-Gon and double pinging with my Shoto Lightsaber / Shoto Lightsaber combo.

The remaining details of this game are kinda fuzzy, but I remember it being another really close one, and breathing a sigh of relief when it was all over. I have a ton of respect for Caleb in this one. He brought an off meta deck and piloted it brilliantly to a top 8 finish, coming very close to a top 4 finish. That's pretty darn impressive.

Semi-Final Round - Guavian Enforcer / Ciena Ree - Adept Pilot / First Order Stormtrooper / First Order Stormtrooper

Another rematch! This was probably the deck I was looking forward to facing the least, as I knew I got very lucky the first time around, and that Andrew was a very strong player.

Game 1 was kind of similar to our game in Swiss. He actually did get damage dealing vehicles out in round 2 this time around, but at that point I already had a couple upgrades on Qui-Gon, and the sheer consistency of the damage in the deck was shining through. I took down the Guavian at the start of the second round, before he was able to get an extra resource from his Hound's Tooth trigger, I resolved Kanan's to slow down his ramp even more, and I got a decent chunk of damage onto Ciena Ree - Adept Pilot. From there it was a matter of saving key mitigation for his big vehicle rolls and playing around the Endless Ranks again.

Game 2 was very different. He managed to get out of the first round with just 2 damage onto his Guavian thanks to some key removal pieces like He Doesn't Like You. At the start of round 2, I rolled out my Kanan with two Force Speed on him and rolled . Now, on the surface that seems like an awesome roll, and it is....for the most part.

The thing about this matchup though, is that I don't care at all about speed. I could take 6 extra actions just for fun and I would still be able to claim every round, so the extra actions from the Force Speeds weren't very useful. Nonetheless, I didn't have any removal in my hand that required dice in the pool, so I decided to take the opportunity to play an upgrade and try to resolve as much damage as possible without fear of removal.

At the end of it all, I believe I had killed Cienna (I targeted her first this game), and had nothing left to do. I passed a whole bunch to bluff removal, but all I could do was sit back and watch as he played huge vehicle after huge vehicle and just blasted damage at me.

Toward the end, he was down to just his storm troopers, but he had smartly used The Best Defense... twice earlier in the game to get one of them down to 1 health. This allowed him to use his Backup Muscle to kill his own trooper, gain two resources with Aftermath, and bring it back with Endless Ranks. I did everything I could to play around it, but that's hard to do when your opponent does all 7 damage to his own trooper! A very well played game by him, and he took game 2.

Game 3 was a slugfest. I don't remember the exact details (give me a break, there was a lot of Destiny at this point) but I know he had a Slave I and a First Order TIE Fighter out at one point, and I was able to mitigate a ton of damage by rerolling both with Overconfidence. That, combined with a Deflect held him off long enough for me to deal the finishing blows.

Overall, Andrew was one of, if not the strongest opponent I played all day, and my god that deck is terrifying when it gets going. I fully expect we'll be seeing him at the top tables in future events.

Finals - Poe Dameron - More Than A Pilot / Rey - Finding The Ways

In a crazy turn of events, the finals matchup actually ended up being against my play test/gauntlet partner from my local meta. We knew each other's decks in and out, after playing each other countless times, and even switching decks a few times to get a fresh perspective on them. In fact, he was the one I brainstormed with the night prior to add Flank and Sound The Alarm to my list.

Since it was just us, we decided to do a split of sorts. I took the larger cash prize, and he took the bye at Nationals. But, the people demanded a game, so we did a best of one game for the stream, that the Knights of Ren put out. You can watch it here, if you're interested in seeing it, it was a pretty crazy (albeit short) game.

At the start of round three, he got a god roll with Hit and Run and All In to blow away Qui-Gon in one shot, and as unfortunate as that was, I think it's important to point out that while this was unlucky on my part, it was also the result of good deck building on his part. He tech'd in that one copy of All In for just this purpose, and it worked wonders for him.

You can watch the game for the full break down, but there is one thing I'd like to point out that I think is a brilliant lesson to learn from.

At the start of round 1, I was on auto-pilot and hard casted my It Binds All Things, even though my opponent was running the Docking Bay - Finalizer battlefield. I already had a Force Speed in play, so I was pretty sure I would be able to claim before him.

Had I done that, I would have been able to 1) Get my It Binds All Things into play for free, 2) Prevented him from removing my Kanan 2 die the next round, 3) Activated first to have dice in play for removal. It wouldn't have won me the game, but it's the perfect example of how one small decision in a game of Destiny can have a huge impact throughout the game.

Overall I had a fantastic time at this event, and couldn't be happier for Justin for taking down the whole thing.

6 comentários

futantshadow 15

use a word program to write so you can save every so often then copy/paste in the future. vibroknife is an interesting include in this list, i'm curious how it performed. and also what changes you would make moving forward.

Kr0ozin 1292

Yeah @futantshadow I unfortunately learned that the hard way, but I was sure to do that for the re-write.

Vibroknife was amazing throughout the entire event, and I would 100% include it again if I had to do it all over.

The one card that seemed to be hit or miss was Sound The Alarm, but I think that was mostly because I faced so many weird off meta decks that didn't have many damage sides. In the games that I got to use it in, I was generally happy with it.

runningonion 1022

i was the thrawn/jabba player. In the 6 matches i played, your kanan was the only character i didn't get to Crime Lord (i lost one other match where both characters were crime lorded, but i didn't survive the round).

I think that the Vibroknife was mvp in our match, and i can definately see how it wrecks the shield / force illusion meta.

Congrats on the strong performance.

Kr0ozin 1292

Oh wow, that's pretty darn impressive! That deck looked like a ton of fun to play, and you piloted it really well. I'm gonna have to try it out at my local store. You're right though, without that Vibroknife, that would have been a VERY different game.

And thank you! Hopefully I'll see you again at a future event.

Dave Sharona 601

But only ONE Synchronicity???????? That's my favorite card in the list! I would have to drop one of the 11 mitigation cards for a second copy.

I really like Willpower in this list as well, since I almost always use it as a snipe.

Belsnickel 356

@Kr0ozinHey great write up, I was your round 2 mill opponent. That was a great game and you played it perfectly. Unfortunately for me I realized after the game had i not taken the shields with 3p0 and just taken the resources I could have hyperspace jumped out with 1 health left! Dumb mental mistake but that's the game. Great job on your preference that day. Hopefully we can play on tts some time you were a great opponent.

Ps I'm actually from the Indianapolis group The Nerfherders which I blame for my mental mistakes I drove down that morning 7 hours so I was a little fried before we started haha