Sooooo.. yeah… Errata happened.. and well, my original ongoing series got, well… murdered! Maybe not murdered per se, but the deck needed to be changed since eCad/ePhasma was no longer a legal deck. I took another vote… this time even branching outside of just the The Chance Cube’s hangout (Shameless plug to become a Patron!). The voters were VERY clear on who they wanted me to work on and it was eKylo (TP1)/Grievous (AW3).
So last night I decided to run a version of my own making, taking with it what I have used before in other decks that are similar.
The Setup
http://swdestinydb.com/decklist/view/15774/ongoingkylogreviousv10-1.0
I decided to go with a little different approach after I had done a little testing with the deck at a store that didn’t fire after we only had four people, but I had made some small changes after getting some games in with the local peeps!
So last night, I went up again the following in a ten person tournament.
Round 1 – The Mirror
My opponent Mike is running… eKylo/Grievous. He and I have become good sparring partners over the months of playing and we usually have some just damn good matches between us. This was one of those matches. He starts out with a Crossguard Lightsaber (TP7) on his Kylo, taking away one of my shields I had from going first. I counter with a Vibroknife (SR57), call Blue, hit his Kylo with the two free damage, and move on. Mike goes for my Grievous first, while I went with going for his Kylo. The reason I go against his Kylo is two-fold, he starts with two dice in this deck, and his ability is free damage throughout the game. Also I had my sights set on that saber he’s put down.
Basically the rest of the match is a blue.. I take out his Kylo, he takes out my Grievous, I was able to play two Ancient Lightsabers (EW49) on my Kylo after Grevious was dead to heal him for four. We go into our final round with me needing to land a single color choice for the win, he has 3 of 5 cards in his hand that are blue (obviously, I find this out later) and I call Blue and pick a Red. He had already rolled in Grievous and we were both near death, he rolled a modifier on Vibroknife and nothing else really good on anything else. He opted not to reroll the Baton (SR8) that was a blank, which should have set off a red flag for me, but it didn’t. Since I whiffed in my ability to not pick the right color card, he was able to kill my Kylo with a Light Saber Throw (SR72) for the win. In hindsight, I should have used Doubt (SR80, TP20) on his Vibroknife, but really at that point I was saving that for actual black damage!
Round 2 – The Master
My opponent Alex is running his Palpatine (SR11) tonight and we both know going into this one, Palp is going to have an uphill battle. I don’t think he was able to get Holocron (AW16) in his opening hand or get it at all, and I’ve been there and it totally sucks. I called Blue every time with Kylo and that was six free damage on top of hitting him. It really was a blur.
Round 3 – Cuts from a Thousand Tiny Shields
Rob, my buddy, my pal, we hate playing each other as then one of us is going to go home sad! He’s running a Qui-gon (AW37)/Kanan (EW33). We both play sloppily at first and forget to save resources for removal because we are… noobs! I was able to get every Kylo color choice right and took out Qui-gon after a few rounds; it helps that Rob can’t roll damage to save his life! Eventually he just reaches his hand out and says, “good game.”
Round 4 – The Master returns!
Dom is running Palpatine as well, I was hoping he wouldn’t pull Holocron… I was wrong. He’s able to get that out and then he’s able to get upgrades left and right and I can’t remove as many dice as I was hoping. He’s also able to get a Rise Again (SR76) off and once again it gets down to the wire and I missed the color choice to seal my loss.
Thoughts going forward
After talking with Mike to see our differences, and because he’s been piloting the deck longer than I have, we compare notes and I find out we’re only off by about six cards. So I feel confident I’m on the right path to getting this deck to a stable “meta” choice.
Here’s the new version, http://swdestinydb.com/decklist/view/15776/ongoingkylogrevious-1.0. I am quite happy with the results of this one. I removed the Lightsabers (AW59) at three-cost as I never felt they were needed and resources in this deck are so tight already, I never wanted to play the sabers or overwrite them. After much debate on Tactical Mastery (AW74, TP15) vs Leadership (AW141), I see where Leadership can be more potent, where Tactical Mastery is better if your opponent doesn’t go for Grievous first, but really this isn’t a “fast as fast can be” deck type and sometimes you just won’t get to claim first.
My biggest improvement is Force Illusion (SR135), this is one card I’ve never been a fan of, but I see it in a ton of decks and still never really liked it. I hate having my cards go away in front of my eyes, but Mike mentioned something about it being a “kind of removal” card and that made me think more about it in that light and now I’m sold on it. I also wasn’t as happy with Overconfidence (SR130) as I already have enough SPOT blue/red as it is, and getting one less for Feel Your Anger (AW82) seems to be a better choice IMO. I could cut down a Deflect (145) by one and put in an Intimidate (AW84, TP18), that’s an option I feel I like I might do later, but Deflect saved my bacon many times over the course of the games.
I’m going to give this a shot and see where it will take this deck. Special shout out to Mike for all the help last night, and I feel I’m really close to my own little version of this deck without totally copying Mike’s (PSSST, I’m going to totally copy Mike’s!!!)
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