Battle Log #49 - The Minneapolis RQ
Pro-tip: Drop out of the main ASAP (until FFG fixes their ticket payout!)
Welcome back to the blog! I wanted to get this out sooner rather than later but I figured there’s no sense in rushing. I have some things to say about the Minneapolis Regional Qualifier and figured I’d take some time to let my thoughts simmer. By the way, the last time I wrote the Denver tournament report, I formatted it somewhat in a live-blog style with timestamps. I thought that format was ok, but really it detracted from the experience by me putting stuff down into my phone at random times. I decided to live in the moment and take minimal notes during the weekend. Thus, most of my game notes below are from my recollection and may be a bit shoddy. Let’s get into it!
The Main Event - Day 1
Premier - Best of Three - 4 Wins / 3 Losses / 1 Draw (10 - 8 - 1 overall)
I had been locked into Yoda Endlesss Legions a couple weeks prior to the tournament. I’d been having some decent success with it locally and figured the deck was in a good enough position to take to a large event. We did reel in a bit on the combo piececs, dropping to just 1 Cad Bane, 1 Relentless, 1 Krayt Dragon, and 1 Annihilator for the singletone Endless Legions. Overall I think the list was ok, but it felt like it relied too much on drawing the ramp pieces to get anywhere against certain other late-game decks.
*Note: I will link to my opponents’ decklists on the Leader/Base names below, for reference.
Round 1 Loss vs Sabine ECL (0 - 2)
I hated seeing Sabine ECL in the very first round of the event, and it likely put me slightly on tilt that I was blessed by this opportunity this early. Actually gameplay wise I could have won these games but I made some pretty bad misplays. In the first game, I had a Redemption heal my base for 8 and I could have had lethal if I just take the line of piloting Redemption with Chewbacca. Instead I played Chewy on the ground and it and another unit got eaten by an ambushed Wrecker. Game 2 I had a line to play YMOH + Luke on the 5 resource turn but after resourcing to 5 I shuffle up my hand and look at it… only to find I had for some reason resourced the YMOH… From there it was all bad. My opponent was pretty chill though and we had a nice brief conversation. Namely over his really baller Sabine Showcase Shadowbox! Probably the coolest thing I saw that weekend.
Round 2 Win vs Krennic ECL (2 - 1)
I took the first and third game. The first game I just outvalued him and I think ramped and he didn’t? Game 2 I couldn’t remove some big threat for too long. Game 3 was pretty grindy, I didn’t quite get to Endless Legions but I was able to get the win shortly before time was called. My opponent must have been in his young 20s, pretty good player but definitely made some misplays.
Round 3 Loss vs Vader4 Yellow (0 - 2)
Pretty unfortunate pairing for me, since this is probably the single hardest matchup for Yoda (at least without significant tech). I never really stood a chance, but I put up a half decent fight for at least the second game.
Round 4 Draw vs Vader1 DV (1 - 1 - 1)
Absolute grind of a game. I lost the first one after I couldn’t keep up with bombs, I think he may have double ramped on me with SLT and Resupply. Game 2 got so late that I was eventually able to play Endless Legions. We had like 6 minutes left on the clock and we decided to not even bother playing the third game and just drew. The way my deck was built, I had zero chance of winning, let alone completing the game, in six minutes. Plus, my opponent was playing somewhat slowly.
With my score at 1-2-1, I had zero shot of making Day 2 (i.e., minimum needed is 7-2-0 or 6-0-3 both giving a combined total of 21 points). However, I was at a bit of a crossroads. I came to play my Yoda deck, and I felt like my losses were to unfavorable matchups. Surely I wouldn’t face these the rest of the way? I held on to a glimmer of hope that I would be able to crack Top 64 at least, and maybe take the showcase. So, rather than dropping and playing the sealed side event for prize wall tickets, I chose to continue playing in the tournament until I got my 3rd loss (or second draw).
Round 5 Win vs Yoda DV (2 - 0)
Andrew had actually beaten this Yoda player earlier in the day, I forget which round. I do remember when I walked up to their table he told me “he’s not playing endless legions, he stops resourcing at 8 resources”. I made a passing comment to the Yoda player saying “ah man I think you need it”. We then get paired in Round 5 funny enough. The first game goes very long, as expected, and it ends when I play Endless Legion and put out a bunch of units. Mind you, I didn’t have big ones like Krayt or Annihilator down there, but it’s enough that he actually concedes and says “I’ll save you the time.” Absolute legend! I actually joked about that earlier in the week during some test games saying “man, sometimes I wish my opponents would just concede when I play it” and here it actually happened. Game 2 went pretty long again, but I was able to pump out enough damage to win right before time was about to be called. He had a play where he used Choose Sides tot take my Krayt Dragon but I had Luke - You Still With Me? - down on ground and I happily traded it (i.e., 7 damage on krayt from choose sides + 3 from Luke).
Round 6 Win vs Quinlan TT (2 - 0)
Between Rounds 4 and 5, Andrew had actually paid for me to play in a Sealed Carbonite side event when I’d drop. However, it was going to start soon and we had Abe play in that instead so I was like 1-2 minutes late to my table while I talked to someone about transferring my entry. My opponent commented “Man I thought I was gonna get an easy win” in a playful manner. We had some decent table banter and I was able to win without too much struggle. Raddus is such a great card for this matchup (Game 1), and 5 cost Luke into 6 Cost Home One (Game 2) is very difficult for non-blue decks to deal with.
Round 7 Win vs Han1 Green (2 - 0)
This is a pretty scary matchup, and I had to rely on my big units to do the heavy lifting after my Yoda flip. I was careful not to put myself in range of Han unit ambush, which meant Yoda had to mostly ignore the ground arena and just go to base instead. I think normally this matchup goes a different way but my opponent made some interesting trades rather than go to base. The second game was very close, in fact I was at lethal had I not called Surprise Strike with a Regional Governor at the end. What kept me in it for a long time was Home One in the space arena with a sentinel, and Yoda and SOR Luke hitting base for 10 and restoring 7 at least twice.
Round 8 Loss vs Vader1 DV (1 - 2)
This was unfortunately a pair down, and I say unfortunate because this matchup is kind of swingy. In the first game he ramped very fast and kept dropping bomb after bomb that I couldn’t handle. Game 2 I drew all of my removal and kind of won by a landslide. It was kind of funny when my opponent kept complaining about me drawing removal for his Devastators, I could say the same thing about him drawing them so often! Game 3 he had a really strong start with ramp and I couldn’t really do much about it. He put down a Vader unit and went wide on my 6 resource turn and I had to hope he’d flip Vader so I could Rival’s Fall it. I had nearly stabilized the ground arena post Yoda flip but he top-decked a Devastator for exact lethal, his only out.
Andrew conveniently also got his third loss after Round 8 and we both dropped from the main event to make it to a dinner reservation on time. I had fun, and felt like I could have very well won the 9th round had I played it (unless it was some Vader4 Yellow). We went to a steak dinner and had some much needed food after a long day of playing.
The Side Event - Day 2
I had originally planned on playing in the 10AM sealed event but Andrew and Abe convinced me to play in the 9AM Promo Event over dinner the night before. Not having played in the sealed side event the night before, I didn’t need too much convincing. I wanted to get a second set of promos to sell since I wanted to keep one set for myself, and figured this would at least guarantee me the promos and not have to rely on the tickets from the sealed event.
I think all three of us made some changes to our decks with what we had available and with things we could find a the two vendors. Having the vendor’s there was really nice, I hope more vendors are at the future events.
From an egotistical point of view I should have played in the sealed side event, because I felt confident enough in my limited play and deckbuilding to go at least 2-1 there. The Yoda deck needed substantial changes to play into the wide meta we’re in, and I didn’t have enough cards to make it happen. I won’t bother with too many game details, I’ll just post the results.
Round 1 Loss vs Sabine ECL (0 - 2)
Round 2 Loss vs Boba4 TT (0 - 2)
Round 3 Win vs Han1 Green (1 - 0)
Round 4 Loss vs Rey TT (1 - 2)
At the very least my Round 3 and 4 opponents offered to split the prize tickets, which were 400 to the winner of the match. So, I walked away with 400 prize tickets from this event.
FFG - Some Feedback Regarding Prizing
sigh… why does FFG keep failing at prizing?
I promise this won’t be doom and gloom, but I personally don’t think that FFG is doing enough in terms of prizing, in particular with regards to the main event. If I recall correctly, Denver awarded 100 prize tickets for participating in the main event. They upped it to 300 tickets for this event. A marginal improvement, I suppose.
One question I have no answer to is: Why does FFG not encourage players to actually play in the main event? It would be very easy to offer some amount of tickets per round win or even 100 tickets for playing in each round. From my perspective, FFG not awarding players for actually, you know, playing SWU is driven from the fact that they want people to spend money on the side events. I get it, and I understand that they have bills to pay. However, players dropping from the main event only hurts the players that continue playing and advancing. How sucky would it be if you bubbled out because that person you beat in round 2 dropped after they received their third loss. I would really like for FFG to encourage players to actually play and compete in the main event. The way it’s set up now, you’re incentivized to drop as soon as you hit X-3/X-2-1 to go sign up for side events.
The side events themselves are prized out much more reasonably. The Competitive Premier Promo event at 9AM prized out 400 prize tickets for the winner of each round, with many players splitting the tickets evenly (or even doing 300/100 for the winner/loser, respectively). The sealed side event would also prize out tickets per round win. In my opinion, FFG seems to be making too heavy a distinction between the competitive main event players vs the supposedly more “casual” side event players. Here’s an insight FFG, you can have a mix of both in either type of event!
Also, what’s up with these missing initiative tokens? Do they even exist at this point? I’m owed 2 metal initiative tokens, and apparently one of the OP coordinators said they would be at Minneapolis? They also don’t have the Luke and Vader showcases. “Pick them up at the Galactic Championship in Las Vegas” and “Season 0, we’re still learning” are not valid excuses in my opinion. Stop advertising prizes you can’t fulfill…
They also didn’t have enough of the Piett soft crates, so they had other options that people could choose. This was cool, but the fact that it was just a mad dash to the prize table meant if your Round 1 game took forever you’d have to pick it up after Round 2 or 3, and only take whatever was left. I can’t really fault them too much for this, because I’m not sure how you would fairly distribute the different options at all. Still… if you advertised a specific one, why not make sure everyone gets that one?
One improvement was at least letting people buy another set of the entry promos on Day 2 when you’d sign up for side events. This was something we’d seen them do at the Regional Qualifier in Lille, but their options were better. Still it was a good thing to add and hopefully curb some of the egregious prices for the event exclusive promo cards. The prize wall itself was much larger than it was at the Denver SQ, so this was another definite improvement. I still think they can improve on their ticketing payout but… I guess we just hope they learn.
Review
Well, that’s all from my end. I’m happy that I at least did better than I did at the Denver SQ, I think the meta is overall in a healthier spot than where it was a couple months ago. I’ve got at least 2 PQs I’m planning for before Set 5, so you can except to hear back from me before the next set drops. I’ve enjoyed cutting back on the weekly content and saving some of this stuff for larger more meaningful events. Plus, it’s less droll that gets delivered to your inbox every Sunday 🙃.
Funny that you specifically call out the drops hurting active players when the 8th and 9th place players were separated by 0.4% SoS…