General Mills - Top 16 NorCal Regional (70-some people, 5-2 1.0

• Versões
• 1.0

This is a deck that I've seen floated around a couple of places, and in testing it seemed to have pretty good matchups against the common decks of the meta (with Rainbow #5 as my least favorite matchup), so I decided to see how it went.

Round 1 I faced off against an R2P2. I hit Threepio and Chance Cube early, and with no real burst to speak of coming my way, he was quickly milled out, all three characters still standing at the end.

Round 2 was against a Rainbow #5, which if it explodes out the gate can be really problematic. My opponent's start wasn't too dreadful for me, but they had brought Ewok Village - Endor, and in avoiding getting blown out by that battlefield I was frequently having to claim early, and wasn't able to take advantage of the numerous extra actions and activations that churn out the health and shields. The end of the game was closer than it seemed like it was going to be, with the Nightsister dead and only 3 cards remaining to him, but with the amount of damage he had available it would have taken notable luck (or a 2nd Dodge) to survive the final turn.

Round 3 was against Palpatine, normally a fairly safe matchup, but I didn't really hit any of my repeatable shields or healing until near the end of the game, so while I did defeat the Sith Lord, it was by a very thin margin (one fewer Honor Guard or one more god-roll and I would've been sunk).

Round 4 was against a Qui-Gon/Kanan. Just like with R2P2, this deck can frequently outlast other grindy hero builds since their additional healing and shielding doesn't do much to protect their 30 health. My opponent was very unfamiliar with the deck, and ended up a bit on tilt towards the end of the match, which certainly didn't help matters. This was closer than it probably should have been due to a simple (but silly) miscounting of damage that allowed him to pick off Rieekan a turn earlier than I should have allowed, but in the end I was able to close things out, though with only my Jedi Instructor left alive.

Round 5 was against an original flavor Emo Kids deck that simply blew me out of the water. Padme was left at something like 1 health at the end of round 1, and on round 2 when he played his second Vibroknife there wasn't really any way to save her. I was able to get him down to 2 cards in hand and one in deck by the end, but was realistically still a turn away from being able to get rid of them. I played badly around his battlefield (Emperor's Throne Room - Death Star II), and should have more aggressively removed problematic dice no matter what face they were showing. Twice I had available removal that I procrastinated on playing only to get blown out when he left a couple unimportant dice in his pool to resolve a painful Baby Vader or Mind Probe special.

Round 6 was against the Too Emo deck (aka New Emo Kids on the Block, aka Crybabies). I tried to keep a good rainbow in hand, so Kylo2 didn't hit very often against me, and once both Rise Agains had been milled, there was no way of retrieving some of his more damaging upgrades from the discard pile. This matchup generally works far better for me than original flavor Emo, since Kylo2 isn't very consistent with his color guesses, and isn't as likely to simply flatten me with damage round 1.

Round 7 was against Rainbow #5 again, though this time with Secret Facility - Scarif, and we fought on the War-Torn Streets regardless. This match had a much more explosive start than my round 2 attempt, but I was able to stabilize nonetheless, Dodge's resilience to Friends in Low Places was key, and the threat of getting blown out was able to keep him from putting together the large chains of damage necessary to break through my wall of shields.

Sadly 5-2 wasn't enough to guarantee a spot in the cut, but I was still quite happy with the finish. I don't think this deck is about to unseat the established favorites, but I do think that it has far better odds, especially against R2P2 and Quigon/Kanan, than most people give it credit.

Apologies to my opponents if I've misremembered anything - it was a long day even without elimination rounds!