The Bothell Limited PQ (Again)
Why is a California Burrito different outside of California? Also, Chirrut.
Hey y’all, fellow SYC member Huamin here, coming at you with something completely similar to the previous post. As you could probably tell from Daniel’s article, I was one of the contingent of SYC folks that went up to Washington to play in Bothell’s Limited PQ. Even though we didn’t come back as winners, the event was still a lot of fun, and just being with a large crowd of friends on the road was a unique experience. Definitely would consider doing again, and shoutouts to Chris for putting in a lot of legwork to organize the whole thing! His food recommendations, in particular, are always on point.
Anyway, let’s get right into deckbuilding and games, as I don’t have much to add to Daniel’s comments surrounding the event itself.
Deck/Pool
As always, a Sealed event starts with the deckbuilding. (Well, it starts with opening packs and verifying pools, but after that the first real thing is deckbuilding.) I wasn’t too happy with what I had pulled, which was kind of surprising, given that there was a lot of power in it. If we just look at standout cards, I had the following:
Blue, in particular, was crazy stacked no matter if I went Heroic or Villainy, and I had 3 of the best Neutral Green cards in Limited. However, looking at the supporting cast is where my pool starts to fall apart.
The Leaders I pulled were Cal Kestis, Kanan Jarrus, Kit Fisto, Rey, Grand Inquistor, and Third Sister. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. This is mostly to give context for the next parts.
Let’s first examine my T1 plays. Here is a picture of all of my T1 plays (aside from Loth-Cat, which I forgot was a T1 play, and it really isn’t, but I did put KML here).
If you’re wondering why I didn’t instalock Blue Villainy with such a crazy Blue midgame, this is the reason. The only color combination with an appreciable amount of T1 plays is Green Villainy with any color, but Leader selection meant only Yellow or Red were possible. Since my Red pool was kind of awful, that would probably lead to GI Green, with very few ways to get the Force (my only Force units would be Shin Hati and a Fallen Jedi. Yes, that’s right, 2 Force units in the deck) and no upgrade support to suit up my Leader to actually leverage GI’s flip. It felt extremely untenable. (It didn’t help that the rest of my Neutral Yellow was kind just unplayable, as Yellow oftentimes is this set. Yellow just has way too many unplayable low cost events.)
Instead, I took the second best option, Green Heroism, and built Kanan Green. (It’s kind of wild that the difference is 4 “good” T1 plays to 2 good T1 plays, but thems the breaks.)
If the deck draws its good early cards (Gungi into Grogu into Chirrut is probably unbeatable for most decks), it’s pretty strong. However, if it doesn’t, I’m stuck with T1 1 drop Anakin5 into T2 Battlefield Marine into I’ve lost control of board horribly and have no Force for Chirrut. After looking at my pool again, I saw that Kanan Red may have alleviated those problems a little with a… somewhat larger selection of 3 drops…
Unfortunately, it was… a little lopsided, to say the least, consisting of almost nothing but 3 drops. In addition, the “suit up your Leader and go to town” gameplan is kind of rough with a 6r Leader, which means it would be hard to get value on the Knight’s Sabers. At least I can shield Bendu?
For better or for worse, it seemed to me that Kanan Green was the best deck I could build.
Games
Round 1: Vs. Snoke Red Force (0-2)
Sometimes, you don’t have any early game, and then you don’t have an answer to a Fallen Jedi. Both games I opened with a Shielded Porg, and a T2 Fallen Jedi got experience every turn, bringing it out of range of Terentatek or Protect the Pod. The first game he also got a Heavy Blaster Cannon to rip my Shielded Terentatek to shreds before hitting base for something like 23 damage with just the Jedi that game over four turns. He was also running Chirrut off aspect, so that’s how you know he’s a real Limited player.
Round 2: Vs. Obi Red (2-1)
And somehow, of the 50ish people that were 0-1, I got paired with fellow SYC member Ryan. (The real kicker is that in Round 3, he gets paired with fellow SYC member Carter, meaning he travelled over 1000 miles to play 2/3 San Diegans before dropping.) The first game we both start Jedi Consular, but my Grogu can’t contest his on Ground, and he ends up curving out into a crazy board, culminating in Kelleran on 5r. The second and third game I am able to take over board handily with T3 Terentatek plus Shield off a Consular, and then repeatedly Shielding it with Kanan ability.
Round 3: Vs. Obi Blue (2-0)
I don’t actually remember these games very much. I think in the first my 5r Terentatek comes down to eat something, and then she doesn’t clear it, allowing me to Shield it up and keep up Kanan buff on the flip and take over board. I think I also have a T2 Ezra here that buffs a Porg twice, which was funny, if nothing else. In the second, I opt into a racing situation instead of sinking 10 damage into her Obi leader or an Internet Warrior to kill it, thinking that my own Internet heal will be enough to live, but she has Bolstered Endurance for the +1 Attack for exact lethal. Unfortunately, she doesn’t see it and plays Plo instead, allowing me to claim with all my resources still up for the win. This gives me enough time to watch the final parts of another team kill this round (Aram vs. Jim).
Round 3: Vs. Talzin Red (2-1)
I concede the first game after opening Peli Motto into Hive Defense Wing versus Guardian of the Whills with Battle Fury and Constructed Lighsaber, who hits base for 19 before Talzin even flips. The second game I’m able to contest Ground more heavily, and clear his board with around 23 damage on base with a combination of Protect the Pod, Terentatek, and I think Niman Strike, and Battle Fury means that he’s out of gas to close out the game. The third game he gets a Strikeship with Battle Fury on the 4r turn, but 6 damage to base per turn isn’t actually that threatening when it starts from T4, instead of T2. Chirrut locks down Ground, Protect the Pod snipes his Blockade Runner, and I’m able to race him down.
Round 5: Vs. Obi Blue (2-0)
We play 4 Gungis over the two games in T1, but his always seems to outlive mine. (Funny how that happens; Obi ability is extremely strong.) However, I’m able to stick an Ezra the first game which just gets out of hand, who gets Shielded twice and then puts around 4 Experience on Kanan, courtesy of Niman Strike double dipping. In the second, I’m able to keep my T4 Terentatek alive and shield it up multiple times to clear out a bunch of units, and Kanan flipping as a 5/8 Shielded is hard to contest. I think it was hiding behind Chirrut.
Round 6: Vs. Talzin Green (1-2)
I gain the tempo advantage in the first game by blasting his Chirrut with Protect the Pod off Luke and walling him off with my own Chirrut before he finds his Inquisitor’s Lightsaber for Talzin. Kanan and Terentatek clear the Talzin, Grappling Guardian eats his Purgil, and my Shielded Vulptex and Internet are impossible to interact with before I can push lethal. Unfortunately, in the second two games, he just plays better quality units than me. Karis, Knight of Ren, Chirrut, and Talzin’s early flip eat my board of Gungi/Vulptex, Tauntaun/Grogu, and Luke with no unique units. His Nameless Terror also comes down on my Grogu to make it a free kill with Talzin, and from there Kanan flipping as a 3/6 just isn’t enough to stabilize board, especially when Ezra is eaten by his Terentatek after the flip turn. He ends up with a horde of units pushing damage to base which I cannot stop without Chirrut, who is nowhere to be found.
And with that, at 4-2, I was solidly locked out of Top 8. Prizing for 9-16 was a single Carbonite pack, which didn’t seem worth playing out to get when it was just Jim and I in contention for it, having both lost our second time in Round 6. Instead we both dropped, bounced to go grab dinner (my first time at a Laotian place) and dessert (my first time at a Dairy Queen), and headed back to our Airbnb (which was rented through Vrbo, actually).
Afterwards, to wrap up the trip, I opened a Pokemon pack and pulled a $30 card, saw an extremely sleepy Ryan and Daniel play a Winston Draft, Carter play his Draft League deck against Chris and forget to flip Cal on 4r, walk away from said game in disgust, and then finally go to bed in the empty bed that no one told me about the day before.
Chirrut in Limited
It wouldn’t be an article by Huamin without a random aside, so here it is. Daniel also told me he’d let me go off on Chirrut, and I can hardly disappoint him. So let’s talk about Chirrut.
There are a couple of cards that I would consider meta-warping in Limited:
Overwhelming Barrage (Set 1)
That’s it. That’s the list. I don’t actually have that much Set 1 or Set 2 experience, so I could be wrong on those ones, but I have a wealth of experience to draw on for sets 3, 4, and 5. Now, there are sometimes extremely impactful Limited cards (things like Iden Versio, Cad Bane, and Luke Skywalker come to mind here) that often feel unbeatable unless you have the specific answer for them. However, all of these cards are Rares or Legendaries. Anakin3 is the Red Heroism common Leader, and both OB and Chirrut are Uncommons. It means that there will be a disgusting number of them in any large Limited event, especially Sealed.1
And as for why Chirrut is a problem in the format, it is because he can oftentimes completely wall off the Ground arena for your opponent. There are not very many good answers to Chirrut on the 4r or 5r turn, and they are usually either hard removal like Protect the Pod or Shatterpoint, or suiting up a unit to beat him down for 7+ damage, as no unit natively swings for 7 at that point. Most early units and Leaders are useless in the face of Chirrut, who takes 1-2 damage from them and easily gets the Force back the next action.
Chirrut almost always takes at least 9 damage to kill, sometimes more, which is simply an absurd number to hit by the 5r turn, and almost always lives to hit once for 3 to base, representing at least a 12 point swing in base health for 4r. It is a number that is almost impossible to overcome. And if your opponent can’t muster up something like 4+5 damage, that 9 damage to kill suddenly jumps up to 11, or 13 or even infinity when all they have are 2 attack dorks.
Even when played later, on the 5r or later turns, it is uncommon to see unupgraded units that hit for 7+ damage, meaning your opponent still needs to pump 9+ damage into him or kill him with premium removal options, of which there are startlingly few in the set. (No removal card hits for 5 or more damage besides Protect the Pod, which means you’re looking at literally that, Shatterpoint, and It’s Worse, or you’re paying the Chirrut tax on damage required.)
tl;dr: Chirrut blocks too much damage unless he is removed by hard removal, and represents way too large a swing in effective base health when answered inefficiently.
Recap
The games were definitely fun, the event was fun, and the whole trip was fun, but I don’t know if I’d do something like this again, unfortunately. It just feels kind of bad to travel a long time to sit down and be at the whims of RNG. Granted, that’s kind of what going to any TCG tournament is, Constructed or Limited, but I guess Sealed just has a different kind of feelsbad to it, in that the RNG is more blatantly in your face. I think it was after the first round where I felt that my deck definitely wasn’t a 110 player Sealed pool Top 8 deck, no matter how well I played it, unless I had godly draws the entire event. (Maybe also starting with T1 Porg twice in a row is also a little soulcrushing.)
Especially for a PQ level event, of which there are so many within “driving distance” of San Diego, it just doesn’t feel worth it. Hopefully the Limited SQ will be closer to the West Coast when SEC lands, and/or we see some more Limited PQs down here.
Anyway, that’s enough rambling from me. Good luck in Portland and Philadelphia for those who are going (even though this is dropping like after the first day of Portland, I’m there with you in spirit before you even read this), and I’ll probably write something up after Menifee in a couple of weeks as we get back to your regularly scheduled normal Constructed content, as Daniel is on his month long SWU sabbatical. Until next time, peace.
In any pack, you get around 3 Uncommons, give or take, and probably an average of like 0.8ish Rares, and 0.2ish Legendaries. I’m not sure of the exact number, but let’s go with that. There are 60 Uncommons, 50 (non-Leader) Rares, and 20 Legendaries.
Assuming a completely random distribution, in a normal Sealed pool, you have 18 Uncommons, or about a 26% chance to get any single Uncommon you’re looking for, with about a 3% chance to get 2. You have about 4.8 Rares, or about a 9% chance for any single Rare, and sub 1% for 2. And for Legendaries, you have about 1.2, for about a 6% chance for any single Legendary. With 110 people, like at Bothell, that would mean that there were around 30 Chirruts in the room during the Sealed Swiss portion, probably spread around 28ish people.
In a normal Draft, you open 24 packs, or 72 Uncommons. There is a 70% chance someone will see at least one Chirrut, and about a 34% chance that there will be more than one. For Rares, it’s about a 26% chance for any single Rare, and 5% chance for more than one, and for Legendaries, a 20% chance for any single one, and a 2% chance for two.
Bro I thought you liked Porg! \s
Great article!