The 2025 Galactic Championship (Again)
How to qualify for Worlds 2026 without realizing it. Also, why I hate mill.
Hey y’all, fellow SYC member Huamin here, with another take on the Galactic Championship. My general sentiments about the event itself feel mostly like a repeat of what’s been echoed everywhere on the internet (had a lot of fun, enjoy the community a lot, event was horribly planned, many questionable decisions were made, overall experience was significantly impacted by these questionable decisions, etc.). It felt kind of like Denver all over again, just weirdly in the opposite direction. But the good stuff stayed the same, which was playing SWU and hanging out with SWU folks, so let’s get into it.
Just a warning, this article is extremely long, as I played many, many games of SWU that weekend, and I also felt compelled to break it up with a small dissertation on Vigilance Restock endgames.
Galactic Championship Day 1
I’m a pretty well known Bossk Blue player locally throughout sets 3 and 4 (I hope I’m not conceited talking like this), but I felt like Bossk Blue was in a pretty horrible state in the current meta. It was already struggling in the later stages of the JtL meta, it got exactly 0 new cards, and one of its decent matchups, Hero Blue Red, got much, much worse with the advent of the new Force cards, most prominently Ki-Adi-Mundi. Yoda was already annoying to deal with because he 2 for 1’ed you, and now they have 3 copies of this card that 3 for 1’s you, and you don’t have the option to No Glory him to steal the card draw? (This is a thing that I do probably more often than is correct, but also probably a thing that people do on average less often than is correct.) That wasn’t something that I wanted to deal with.
Instead, I switched over to a deck that I’ve wanted to play for a while, ever since Denver way back in April: Thrawn4 Yellow. However, after practicing the deck for a while (against Aram’s Boba4 Yellow in particular, a deck I felt would be extremely popular), I didn’t feel like I had a favorable matchup into that, and gave up the deck. But after Nightsister Warrior was spoiled way back at the start of LotF Spoilers, I got more excited than ever to try it out. (Yeah, it probably tells you a lot that I was more excited for Nightsister Warrior than Legacy Run…)
The deck does basically what any Hard Control deck does: trade units and play 1 for 1 removal until it drops its big bombs. The neatest thing about the deck is The Legacy Run, which can be an extreme menace to decks that don’t have a clean answer to it. Either Sneak Attacking it out on 4r or playing it on 5r can oftentimes lead into a complete board wipe, and if you combo it off with Chimaera, sometimes you hit your opponent’s board for 24 damage divided as you choose in one turn. There’s not much that survives that.
Even if you don’t have a way clean way to proc Legacy Run, you can kill it yourself with things like Vigilance, No Glory, Takedown, or Rival’s Fall, though getting value with Chimaera or Merciless Contest is almost always better. However, sometimes that first action heal 5 and defeat Legacy Run from Vigilance is a life saver.
The Legacy Run is also almost always a 2 action setup for board wipe, which can help a lot in the late game. Oftentimes on an empty board, your opponent will lead with something small, baiting your removal, as passing means they can just claim and hit you with it. Playing The Legacy Run (or any of the other 2 cost dorks that Thrawn4 likes to run, unlike a more hard removal centric deck like Iden DV) can cause your opponent to be forced to either overextend or claim and float resources, both of which are bad options. (Notably though, unlike Bossk or Iden, Thrawn4 can’t just exhaust himself to “soft pass”, but it’s usually not a huge liability.)
One last thing about it is that the deck actually runs 30 units and only 20 events (compared to something like this Iden DV with 17 units, 37 events, and 6 upgrades that are actually just removal). When people start whining about how all hard control does is be non-interactive and play events, you can bring this statistic up. It also means that sometimes it has an easier time closing out games with things like just sticking a Chimaera or Cad Bane, and beating them over the head with it for 2 or 3 turns.
Anyway, enough about the deck and cool things about it. On to the matches. I only took HP notes for the Day 1, and didn’t even take those for the Open, so my memory might be a little fuzzy.
Round 1: Win Vs. No One
Easiest game of my life. Just sat down for 10 minutes and got the win. Definitely didn’t help my nerves though, especially when I wasn’t supposed to move until the promos came. And since I was in the back, we were some of the last people to get them.
Round 2: Win Vs. Boba4 Yellow (2-0)
My opponent’s Round 1 also didn’t show, so these were our first matches of the day. I was kind of worried, as Boba4 can just keep pushing damage (either Yellow or DV), but I was able to close out game 1 by just continually clearing board, and he couldn’t find the Devastator for the last 5 points of damage for exact lethal. In the second game, I think I was much healthier from less When Played/When Defeated damage (there were several Hunting Aggressors that game, I think, and a Targeting Computer on a Pryde), so even when he found the Devastator at the end I was way out of range.
Round 3: Win Vs. Talzin Red Force (2-0)
I played Daniel (no, not that one lol) at the Fire and Dice PQ, and I was glad to see he was in much better shape here. (He was extremely sleep deprived and tired then, which definitely lost him a game he should have won vs. me, which probably would have been the set with how grindy our games were.) Unfortunately, Talzin Red struggles tremendously vs. any sort of hard control, I think, even moreso than his prior Asajj4 TT. Even with multiple Force Lightnings for all my Legacy Runs, I was able to stall him out, and from there there isn’t enough damage left in the deck to close it out, even with Devastator and Ruthless Raider. After sideboard, he put in Krayt Dragons and Pillages, but those were nowhere to be found game 2, which went much the same as game 1 (except I think I actually proc’ed a Legacy Run that game, instead of all of them dying to Force Lightning). Daniel did end up making day 2 though, so congrats to him!
Round 4: Loss Vs. Sabine Yellow (0-2)
Hyperaggro was definitely not the kind of thing I wanted to see here. His deck was a more Pilot centric Space racing deck though, which definitely was not what I was expecting. I think game 1 he opened with double 1 drop, which meant I had lots of trouble trying to clear board early, and then died to the critical mass of spaceships by turn 4 or so. And in game 2, sometimes the deck decides that you are going to lose. I missed my turn 1 and turn 2 plays, and then I believe my Sneak Attack for Legacy Run got Jammed, which meant there was absolutely 0 hope of trying to stabilize board.
Round 5: Win Vs. Sabine ECL (2-0)
To be honest, I don’t remember these games at all. I’ve played way too much Sabine ECL with hard control, against people of varying skill levels, so they kind of all blur together. I think there was one part where I was like, “If I flip Thrawn here, the worst that can happen is ECL Wrecker, and I’m okay with this”, and I flipped Thrawn into ECL Wrecker, then Vigilanced the Wrecker. There was probably a Legacy Run that cleared board before that, as I remember board was clear.
Round 6: Win Vs. Vader Yellow (2-1)
Game 1 I had the perfect opening of Onyx Squadron Brute into Elite P-38 which meant on his Vader flip turn, the board was completely empty. No guesses as to where that game went. Game 2 I was unable to find any interaction, which means Vader kind of steamrollers you. I think I was forced into racing with like 2 Nightsisters and a Childsen. In Game 3, I think there was a mistake I made, where I allowed him to be able to claim into putting Vader on a Lurking TIE Phantom, which would have been completely unanswerable (barring a Sneak Attack Chimaera, which I didn’t have), but he chose to attack with something instead, allowing me to claim and have my Legacy Run eat it and wipe the board afterwards. And from there, there was no hope for him.
Round 7: Loss Vs. Leia Red (1-2)
We got deck checked in this round, which was extra awkward because my opponent spoke almost 0 English, so we kind of just staired at each other for 10 minutes. Anyway, game 1 went exactly as I expected, with me being able to answer every threat she played with 1 for 1 removal, and then playing 3 Legacy Runs to continually wipe her board. In game 2 and 3, I was unable to curve out and missed my turn 3 plays, which were very awkward. I believe game 2, I also drew into Merciless and Power turn 4, and then her first action is play Chewbacca. I then claim, which goes really badly for me, for obvious reasons. I believe I was at 22, and she plays a For a Cause that hits another For a Cause, and then there’s no reason to keep going anymore. Not sure how I died in game 3, but I think it was from smuggled Cassian, who has been the bane of my existence for a long time.
Round 8: Loss Vs. Quinlan TT (1-2)
I’m able to stabilize game 1 with a turn 4 Legacy Run, leading to him playing Open Fire on it before suiting up his leader with Qui-Gon’s Lightsaber. That eats a Power the next turn, and from there he never sticks a unit for more than a turn, before Avenger comes down on 9 and closes it out. Game 2 ends up being a topdeck grindfest (very common against Quinlan), until he is able to smuggle out the 3rd Cassian (to be fair, I think we had like 10-15 cards left in each of our decks) for exact lethal, after slowly pushing damage the entire game. I make a misplay in Game 3 that I think costs me the game, where I Sneak Attack a Legacy Run on 6 and flip Thrawn, but toss a Rival’s Fall instead of my Power on a Force Throw, allowing him to kill Thrawn and stop the double trigger. I’m able to somewhat claw it back with Cad Bane to stave off more damage, but he’s held hostage by his rescued units and stopping me from Blasting, and I think another smuggled Cassian a couple of turns later is able to push lethal.
And with that, my dreams of Day 2 died. I remember going to bed that night and thinking to myself about how many times I’ve come so close, but never qualified for either top cut or the next day of playing. I registered for the Galactic Open and told myself, “This is it. There’s no more saying that it’s fine if I lose (which I distinctly remembered telling Patrick during Day 1). I’m going to play, and I’m going to win.”
Galactic Open Day 1
As I was trying to fall asleep, I had a sudden realization: I still hate Rival’s Fall, even in the current meta. I swapped the Rival’s Falls in main for Takedowns in the side and called my deck complete. Otherwise, my deck was completely unchanged.
Round 1: Win vs. Yoda Red Force (2-1)
Before the match started, I was chatting with the people around me, and they all seemed to be in it mostly for the fun aspect. People were playing fun decks and not all that concerned about winning, so I felt a little out of sorts with my mindset going into it. I think that lulled me into a strange place, because I didn’t recognize how big a problem C-3PO was going to be. In the first 4 turns, I think C-3PO proc’ed Rey 3 times, completely destroying my Nightsister Warriors (I found all 3 in 4 turns and just kept playing them into Rey procs for some reason). He had a massive hand and a pretty strong board presence to close out the game with a Krayt.
I focused a little more, and the next 2 games I was able to strangle the board like the matchup is supposed to go. He proc’ed Rey 0 times in game 2 and once in game 3, to little effect, and a timely Power ended the C-3PO problem in game 3 before it started. I also got attacked by a Bendu in game 3 into Childsen, which was cool, but did nothing to 2 Powers to clear both Bendu and Krayt. (I asked him if this was the first time he ever attacked with Bendu before, because I had never seen Bendu attack, to which he replied yes. Jokes on him though, this past Thursday at AEG my Bendu was able to hit base for 20 and close out a game vs. Ryan.)
Round 2, 3, 5, 7: Win vs. Kylo ECL, Kylo ECL, Qi’ra DV, Palp1 Colossus (2-0 x4, or 8-0)
Grouping Rounds 2, 3, 5, and 7 all together because they were different flavors of BGV Midrange/Control. Some had Vigilance (no Vigilance and 2 Restock certainly is a choice…), some had Restock, none of them had Bounty Hunter Crew or Bazine Netal. I milled everyone on this list out twice. Not very interesting games when their only path to victory was getting extremely lucky with Vigilance mills (or in the Palp1’s case, a crazy ramp into Relentless lockout), and none of them did. I did get to finally play Annihilator though, twice even! I think it killed a Relentless one game and was Sneak Attacked for lethal another (the biggest flex when I know I’m going to mill you out).
Round 4: Win vs. Han2 Blue Force (2-0)
It took 12 rounds to find my first Han2 (not even Han2 Blue, any Han2), which was wild. My opponent admitted he really couldn’t find any success against Thrawn4 Yellow in his testing, and I think it showed in our games. He was able to get the Force exactly once in two games (might have been twice, but I think it was once) and used it on a Mace to clear something inconsequential. I was able to remove every unit he played on curve and close it out with Avengers and Cad Banes.
Round 6: Win vs. Gar ECL (2-0)
My opponent didn’t quite understand how nesting triggers worked with On Attack abilities, and it definitely cost him a lot Game 1. He ECL’ed a Vader into Thrawn on the 6r turn, and I assumed he was killing my Thrawn on attack. Instead he tries to kill my Legacy Run. I call a judge to help him walk through the entire sequence so he doesn’t have to hear the bad news from me (that your entire board is going to die and my Thrawn is going to live). The game does not improve for him from there.
Game 2 goes much better for him, with the same Legal Authority capturing my Legacy Run 3 times (I totally blanked and forgot to kill Gar before killing the Lom Pyke with the Legal Authority), but I’m able to draw enough removal to keep wiping board and stabilize at 20ish HP, and even Entrenching my Avenger and Chimera only delays the inevitable defeat.
Round 8: Win vs. Han2 Blue Force (2-0)
I’ll be honest, I don’t remember these games at all. I just remember my hands were super sweaty, and when my opponent shook hands with me at the end he wiped his hands off on his pants right after. Sorry Matt, I should have gone for the fist bump instead of the handshake even if you offered one. I don’t remember them being particularly close though, I think both games ended with an Avenger on 9r, one being unanswered and the second being followed up with an unanswerable Avenger on 10r, but I could be misremembering.
Round 9: Loss vs. Kazuda TT (1-2)
Hyperaggro continued to be the bane of my existence. Of the 3 people who were 8-0, I unfortunately got the pair down (the others being a Han2 Green and Eli on Cad TT, both of who I would have rather faced than Aaron). I think I’m able to find multiple spaceships in Game 1, forcing Aaron to trade into them, and a Legacy Run comes down on 5r to wipe his board, then Cad Bane on 7r to finish the game with Thrawn deployed. In game 2, my deck decides I should once again lose, and I miss multiple early plays and roll over and die. I think I play 3 cards total in that entire game.
And finally Game 3 was very close. His early aggression gets me extremely high on damage, with Legacy Run on 5r being Waylayed, but I’m able to play it on 6r and exploit it (along with a poor Desperate Commando) for a Geonosis Patrol Fighter to wipe his board. This leaves me with only a Vigilance in hand, which he snipes with Jam Communications. On topdeck mode with 6r, I stop resourcing for a turn. He is able to sneak in a Falcon hit and bounce it back to put me to 27, then Daring Raid a P-38 to clear the way for that same Falcon after taxing out my removal with back to back Han Solos. I do think I maybe could have won if I skipped resourcing twice instead of just once, but I’m not sure. Definitely a well deserved win by Aaron, though, who was another top 8 in the Open.
Ending the day on a loss sucked, but I felt accomplished with a 8-1 run through Day 1. It also helped that the Kaz TT set was very fun to play, and definitely a breath of fresh air after almost half of my wins that day being due to mill out.
“Quick” Aside: The Vigilance Restock Endgame
I’ve been pretty vocal in person about my extreme dislike of the Vigilance Restock endgame (henceforth referred to as the Mill Meta), but I thought I’d take a little bit to talk about it here, for those that aren’t aware of how it goes. This also serves to explain why I lumped all those BGV rounds together. If you know, feel free to skip this part (scroll down to the Avenger picture). If you don’t, also feel free to skip this part, as it only pertains to those sadomasochists that run both in a deck. But if you are curious (either of my take, or because you don’t really understand what it’s all about), please feel free to keep reading.
The biggest sign that your game is going to devolve into the Mill Meta is when you either surmise or realize that the amount of each player’s removal is equal to or greater than the number of threats in their deck. What this means is that no unit will survive for an appreciable amount of time to deal meaningful damage to base. At this point, the game will end in one of two ways: fatigue damage or continually recycling bombs with Restock.
Note, however, that even if a deck is BGV (especially nowadays), they may not find the right tools to answer your threats, even if they exist in the deck. Thus, even though you may resign yourself to the game devolving into the Mill Meta, you still have to go through the motions of playing out your threats in the slim chance that you’ll checkmate your opponent with units, or either pressure them into resourcing real cards or using Vigilance’s non-mill modes.
I like to think of the Mill Meta as a state in which only a few cards actually matter; the rest are completely inconsequential. It’s a little reductive, but mostly true, as nothing usually lives for an appreciable amount of time. Those cards fall into the following categories:
Mill
Recursion
The only notable cards that exist are Restock because it can hit itself (extremely problematic) and Bounty Hunter Crew because it fetches all those problematic cards from your discard pile.
Targeted Hand Removal
Since most decks that participate in this are Villainy, it’s basically just Bazine. Other stuff like Spark of Rebellion, Jam Communications, and Tip the Scale are cards, but are usually inferior to Bazine. (Smuggle is kind of good folks. I’ve done it for 6r in Bossk Blue many, many times.)
A normal deck that participates in the Mill Meta will have usually around 4-6 real cards in their deck.
3x Vigilance
1-3x Restock (Usually 1, but more is definitely acceptable now that Kylo5 is a thing)
0-3x Bounty Hunter Crew (0 if you’re a normal non-Yellow control deck, 1-2 if you’re hard control or BYV control, 3 if you’re an extreme sadomasochist)
0-3x Bazine Netal (0 if you’re a normal non-Yellow control deck, 1-2 if you’re hard control or BYV control, 3 if you’re an extreme sadomasochist)
Since there are only a few cards that are real cards, and Vigilance randomly hits cards in your deck (mathematically you’re neither more nor less liable to hit these important cards no matter when you play Vigilance, unless your opponent has some way to filter cards), the game is usually decided by whose Vigilance hits more real cards.1 This is a completely skill based way to decide games. (This is also why I dislike it so much. It doesn’t feel as if I am outplaying my opponent when my Vigilance hits 2 of their Vigilances, and their Vigilance hits nothing.)
As for why I was able to handily beat all those BGV decks, they were playing 0-4ish real cards in their deck, whereas I had 6 real cards mainboard, and an additional 1 more in the sideboard. It’s very hard to beat that discrepancy in cards unless you are extremely lucky.
Playing out the endgame is somewhat complicated, but the number one thing to keep in mind is that the win condition is playing Restock and actually being able to recycle cards. Everything else exists to either make this happen (BHQ taking back Restock, Bazine on their Vigilance) or stop your opponent from doing this (Bazine on their Restock, Vigilance on their Restocked cards). You are also only pressured to play Vigilance early if you suspect they have Bazine, otherwise you are free to hold onto it to make sure they never can Restock effectively (though throwing out early Vigilance is sometimes necessary if they have more real cards left than you). If you ever want practice, feel free to hit me up if you’re local. Nothing actually beats experiencing it for yourself, and one of the best ways to get better at it is playing it more (even though it feels gross to play).
Galactic Open Day 2
After a somewhat questionable night of sleep, I was up and at it for another day of SWU.
Round 10: Win vs. Han2 Green Force (2-0)
He dodged me once, but wasn’t able to dodge me twice. Both games I’m able to control board decently till the end and stick my second Avenger, with the first in both games dying to a Timely Hammerhead. (I think the first game I actually hit all three Legacy Runs, and there’s not really a way Han2 can stick a board through that.) One of the problems of Han2 Green has always been its inability to answer large threats, but that was certainly one way. And even though after the Avengers he has enough resources to flood the board again, in the first game with a Kelleran into Cloned Kelleran into Jedi in Hiding, and the second a Home One into Kelleran into Obi-Wan, I have enough removal in hand (Cad Bane to capture 2 in the first, and Power plus No Glory in the second) to completely wipe his board again and push for lethal in a few Avenger swings.
And with that win, I was into the top 8, provided I didn’t get paired down.
Round 11: Intentional Draw
I was matched up with Nate, who I had seen in Denver way back in April (the person who slaughtered me in Sealed on Vader Red). We shook hands and then I had an hour to kill. I walked around for a bit, subbed in for a game with the CBG folks and played Vader Yellow into Han2 Blue (I won, which is definitive proof I can play things other than hard control), and tried to calm my nerves.
Top 8: Loss vs. Cad TT (1-2) (yes melee.gg is wrong because the event staff put it in wrong, we were not able to self-report)
After about 6 straight rounds of sitting next to Eli, we were finally paired with each other. I felt pretty decent going into this, as I think I’m somewhat favored in this matchup. (You can see how well that went.) I think game 1 goes my way after Legacy Run on 5r causes enough problems to stall his offense, and Avenger comes down to lock out the game. In game 2, I think his tempo was pretty cracked, and my Legacy Run gets Waylayed into being unplayable on 6r for fear that I’m just going to die with all the damage on board, and I can’t stall till SLB before it’s over. I think that’s the game where Cad with a Hotshot hits base for 12.
Game 3 ends up being extremely close. Damage piles up on my base, but I’m able to stick a Legacy Run threaten his board. Unrefusable Offer into Ma Klounkee, however, causes Legacy Run to blast the entire board and stop me from developing my Snoke that turn, and his Bazine rips it out of my hand the next turn. Vigilance brings me back to 14 and kills a ping’ed Aurra Sing, but he finds a Sneak Attack Devastator to bring me back to near death. With just an SLB and Nightsister Warrior in hand vs. a Bazine on field, I choose to develop the Nightsister to present exact lethal with my P-38, knowing that if he has the Hotshot, he has the Hotshot.
I ask him, and he responds, “I believe I do,” flipping through his resources, and my heart sinks. He checks them all, and then realizes he doesn’t actually have it. Instead, he’s forced to No Good my P-38 to not die. With 2 SLB’s and a Legacy Run, I play it to threaten lethal again, but he has the second Sneak Attack on a Boba Fett that turn to close it out.
I’ve run through that ending sequence a couple of times. Was I supposed to play Snoke and let Legacy Run run into my Patrol Fighter, leaving me with I think an almost dead Thrawn, instead of playing Merciless Contest? Claim and develop Snoke next turn before Bazine can come down? I don’t think anything after that was questionable; having never seen Sneak Attack or Devastator (a 1 of in the sideboard!) the entire set, tapping out for Vigilance felt like I had turned the corner and had the game in the bag. Cad TT usually has to have at least something on board to actually push damage (which is why I think control is favored into it), so it’s pretty fitting that the set ended with 16 damage out of hand from nowhere.
Though my memory for the first two games is a little fuzzy, I remember still being extremely satisfied with the set as a whole, which is fitting for a match with the highest stakes I’ve ever played. It was also a very well deserved win for Eli, who ended up taking the entire thing? (I heard he might have split with the other finalist, but I’m not exactly sure.) He’s an excellent player who knew how to apply pressure and navigate awkward situations extremely well, and his sideboard tech choices into the matchup were excellent.
Final Thoughts
And with that, my weekend of SWU was over. I was kind of burnt out, after having played my heart out for 3 straight days. I also never got to play Limited, which I have mixed feelings about. (Actually, mixed feelings probably describes my entire trip, even though I undeniably had a blast there.) I got some food, cashed out my tickets, and then we were on our way back home.
Anyway, that’s enough rambling from me and a way too long article. Thanks for sticking through it, and I’m off to steal other players’ qualifier points in SoCal PQs through the next couple of months. Not too sure what I’ll play, but I’ve been looking at either Kylo5 Red Force or Talzin Yellow Force. We’ll see if I get them to a state I’m happy with by the time PQs roll around.
Your opponent has a set number of cards in their deck. You will mill usually around 12 of them (playing 2 Vigilances and saving the last for their Restock). They will see every other card. It does not matter what 12 cards you pull from their deck; the chances of hitting a real card are always the same. Of course, the math all changes if you can look at your opponent’s hand and deck (and the main reason why Annihilator is good in the Mill Meta).