This guest post was provided by Christopher Dale Bates, winner of the 2017 Winter Destiny Shapers Tournament.
This is the deck I used to win the 54 person Winter 2017 Destiny Shapers Tournament at the Fantasy Flight Event Center in Roseville, MN. This is a Vader/Jabba deck that focused on mill and Crimelord as its main way to win the game but can still do some damage in a pinch. While I went undefeated during the event, I have to admit that I did not face any heavy agro decks (like anything with Jango in it). This deck would have difficulty countering the strength of Jango.
The Deck:
Character (30/30)
1x Darth Vader (AW10)
2x Jabba the Hutt (AW20)
Battlefield
1x Imperial Armory (AW169)
Event (12)
2x Ace in the Hole (AW92)
2x Electroshock (AW159)
2x Enrage (AW81)
2x Feel Your Anger (AW82)
2x He Doesn’t Like You (AW97)
2x Unpredictable (AW162)
Support (0)
Upgrade (18)
2x Crime Lord (AW23)
2x Datapad (AW62)
2x Force Choke (AW13)
2x Force Throw (AW57)
2x Hunker Down (AW164)
2x Immobilize (AW14)
2x Mind Probe (AW60)
2x Sith Holocron (AW16)
2x Thermal Detonator (AW67)
Character choice is pretty straight-forward. Jabba is key to the deck. He doesn’t do any damage, but his strengths include two 1 focus sides, a 2 disrupt side, a 2 discard side, a 1 resource side and a blank. For purposes of this deck, you are trying to hit and resolve either his discard side or disrupt sides as needed. I’ve equated hitting discard on both dice and being able to resolve akin to doing about 6 damage! Vader is chosen for his amazing die and ability. The ability to discard one card each round just by activating is very powerful and normally equates to between 6-9 cards. Most people will go after Jabba first. This means that you get to toss all the lovely control upgrades on Vader’s 13 health frame to try and finish off the game.
Battlefield choice was a tricky endeavor. Arguably something like Command Center or Jedi Temple would help you more towards your mill goal, but I have found this deck to be super slow. If you aren’t rushing your turn to try and claim those “good” battlefields, they are being used against you. Imperial Armory is something I don’t mind used against me. Most of the time my opponent won’t have any cards left in their hand, let alone any upgrades to play by the time they claim the battlefield. If I am able to claim, I have a lot of upgrades that would love to be played for cheaper!
Events are typical blue/yellow control cards. Ace in the Hole is to be paired with my second crime lord if I played the first, or both if Jabba dies early, or with Thermal Detonators. The card that found the least use at the tournament was Enrage. I typically didn’t find myself needing one more resource for crime lord or upgrades.
Upgrades are the meat of this deck. Getting early control upgrades on Vader or Jabba is key to success. You need to have Immobilize, Force Choke, or Force Throw out in round one to help mitigate damage coming in (obviously, Holocron in your opening hand helps with that!). Datapad is there to help make money or change die into discard or specials, depending on need. The best control card in the deck is Crimelord, if you are able to utilize its special ability. Even when you are opposing three character decks, being able to resolve Crimelord against one of those characters helps you to live long enough to mill.
uring the tournament, the weakest upgrade was Mind Probe. I put it in the deck for the 2 Discard side but in both of my close wins of the day, Cunning was used against my Mind Probe to do 4-5 damage each time. I have since replaced Mind Probe with Cunning to help trigger my own specials. While this works well, Cunning has to go on Jabba and can’t be brought in via Holocron. These are both significant weaknesses.
Overall, I think the mill/Crimelord combination is a viable strategy but, like most other decks, if you can’t control consistent damage then you won’t last long enough to mill or hit the Crimelord. I love the play style of being in control and reducing my opponent’s options, so I will be working on more versions of mill/control.
It was a great tournament- thank you to Michael Spaulding and Bowie Sessions for running it!
Thanks for reading.
Christopher Dale Bates
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