NOVA Open 2019 Top 8 - Murderbears - Chris Kirkpatrick

Simulador de compra de cartas
Chances: 0% – 0% mais
Derivado de
Nenhum. Deck feito pelo autor.
Inspirado por
Ninguém ainda.

dralikin 56

This is the deck I ran to a top 8 finish at the 2019 NOVA Open.

This deck should be pretty familiar to everyone as it is pretty much a carbon copy of the deck Mike Gemme ran to a win at Gencon this year. As others have mentioned, it's pretty hard to improve on this thing but I did make a few choices that proved fruitful so I thought I'd write something to explain those choices.

Firstly, as Claus Staal mentioned in his article, the first change was swapping to a single Across The Galaxy and a Shortcut to avoid getting hit with a Separatist Embargo. Throughout the tournament I think I was only not on my battlefield a couple of times, one of which was actually against Philippe Paquin when I won a roll-in somehow against his 3-die Aphra, and the other by choice in my second top 8 match against Joe Colon. I think most people have shifted to attacking this deck by taking the Arena of Death - Nar Shaddaa to gain shields on key characters to try to stall the Target Acquired, and in fact that's the same tactic we took in testing to a pretty good success rate. These cards aren't as critical as they were when people didn't understand how to combat the deck as well but they still come in handy. I did get my Shortcut discarded in a game and THEN hit by Embargo which wasn't part of the plan but I was just able to get through that game.

Second, two Convergence. I have heard some debate about how much these can slow the deck down and I would agree that they have to be used sparingly in critical situations. The aforementioned game where I got my AtG embargoed also featured a Sonic Detonators that was focused to special just before getting Convergence'd and basically saved the game for me. Also, as mentioned in Moophisto's article I was able to take Force Wave off the table in both of our top 16 matches as well as a Force Storm. I think the Convergence is an invaluable addition to deal with high impact cards. I did use it lazily a few times when facing Fickle Mercenaries disrupt die just to use the money before it got taken, but other than that used them pretty sparingly.

Third, a second copy of Our Situation is Desperate. This should be self-explanatory, the potential for blow out mitigation specifically against decks like Chopper and Satine that tend to keep several dice in the pool seemed like a solid strategy.

Lastly, two Crash Landing which I felt were the MVP additions. At first glance it seemed like finding ways to ADD damage to my lineup might be a bad idea but these actually helped out in a few key ways. First, they provide more directed damage to use to get Diplomatic Protection off which I was able to do way more regularly in this tournament than I was even able to do in practice. Adding 6-8-10 health to an already healthy deck is a fantastic swing and to be able to do it regularly is huge. Second, the spread damage allowed me to distribute damage across my shields, and more importantly when used early allowed me to increase the effectiveness of Our Situation is Desperate which was being regularly used on 2-3 dice without the limitations of Easy Pickings.

I have only been playing Destiny since Convergence came out and ultimately chose this deck because I felt like while it has different lines of play, the end goal really is to just maximize your own damage output while forcing your opponent onto a timer and into bad situations. For my first major tournament I really wanted to limit potential decision loops for myself and minimize how much I needed to interact with my opponents decks outside of pile damage on. If I really understood how badly the deck performs against players who know how to play disrupt I might have changed my mind. Sometimes ignorance is good, right??

Huge thanks to Todd and Sugi from Knights of Ren for helping me get ready for the tournament. Also want to thank Tommy Carlson, Addison Hudson, Menion Croll, and all the local players down at Todd's shop, Total Access Games in Ashland, VA for the help and good vibes before, after, and during the event. To everyone I met at NOVA looking forward to catching up at Worlds!

2 comentários

nickthebug7777 1381

Nice list! I'm trying to find space in mine for a Scruffy or two because I find there is a card in every deck that just wrecks me and if I can draw it out I would win a lot more matches. The list is so tight though, any suggestions on what to drop? Do you think scruffy is worth playing?

dralikin 56

That's a tough call and I am not sure where exactly Scruffy would fit in but I do think it has some potential, especially if Probe makes a comeback or to get those Fear and Dead Men/Act of Cruelty/Sudden Impact's that can really hurt. I think the card I used the least through the whole tournament was Rigged Detonation but it's hard to give up damage out of hand even if it's not on all the time.