The Champ Returns

A guide on how to avoid playing top cut…

Daniel: Well, isn’t this amazing timing! I decide to rebrand and our buddy Andrew decides to write an article on a store showdown. To be fair, I did poke the bear that he abandoned the blog entries, and he told me he’d write an article out of spite. I thought he was kidding until I see a google doc link pop up in my inbox. Without further ado, please enjoy Andrew’s boastful style below!

Dearest reader….I abandoned you, but I was always going to come back to you with the same unearned bravado and arrogance from before. Here we go:

Last week I participated in a relatively small local store showdown with my typical control nonsense.

Why Bossk Blue? I liked the matchup into Boba Command and the general sea of randomness as being able to heal for a billion and draw infinite cards smoothes out a lot of RNG. Now, if I was actually hitting a real field with top players of equivalent skill, there’s just no reason to be playing anything other than Boba Command (30hp or ECL) imo. It’s the best deck with some runner ups in the double cunning camp and the ole reliable Sabine ECL build.

Taking a look at our field, we’re in a bit of trouble before the first shuffle happens. I see at least (4) Qi’ra Commands out there and we only have (14) total entries. I don’t love this matchup despite being undefeated against it with Bossk Blue. The games are just long, grindy and post sideboard you have to fight off what feels like a dozen Relentless’ and Avengers.

Whelp, mom didn’t raise no sissy, so I gotta go kick some teeth in with what I got…

Round 1 - Hera Command (ECL)

Okay…well…anxiety levels have now dropped from “Holy shit, are they actually making a new Rey trilogy?!” levels to a more moderate state. My opponent is a good guy who brings his family to locals (wife & kids play) and I really like our chats every time we sit down across from one another (he’s a NASA engineer). G1 he didn’t draw any U-Wings which really hampered what he was driving towards and I just Avenger locked him. G2 he drew all of his U-Wings late and I had played Pillage into Superlaser Blast with Avenger lock coming shortly afterwards. Nothing much really here to go in on as the builds are just on two very different power levels. 

Result: Win 2-0

Round 2 - Bo-Katan Vigilance (30HP)

Is it my birthday or something? Somehow I’m lane dodging like a beast avoiding all the Boba’s and QI’ra’s out there. Oh, well. If LeBron can brag about making 10 finals when the East was Charmin soft, then I can ride this gravy train to the end without any remorse. 

Wish there was more to say, but again, just not that interesting in terms of play-by-plays here. He makes a big Voltron and I play a spell to kill it. Rinse and repeat until dragon’s and Star Destroyers show up to crash the party like the lights turning on as you’re rounding third base. 

Result: Win 2-0

Round 3 - Qi’ra Command (30hp) 

My opponent and I have locked horns many times locally over the past few months. He’s usually on some form of Boba trying to beat me to death with Slave 1 like the oh-so-talented pilot he is, but today we’re on my home court of control v control. 

Game 1 we both start with Dr Pershing and I have Pillage in hand. I know it’s going to be pretty dead if I can’t kill the doc before he gets 2-3 draws. I fortunately top deck PotDS and proceed to prioritize that kill. We exchanged pleasantries over the next couple of rounds with him ramping and me drawing cards. He ultimately decided to trade leaders with the deploy reaction and instant attack into my leader as my Bossky got an attack in. He ends up plus 2 resources on me which is pretty scary since if he drops Relentless, I can’t claim and kill with Avenger. Annnnnd that is exactly what happens. I double spell to kill it but this guy mainboards Palp’s Return like a scrub and I have to fight down another one. In the end, I just end up taking too many shots from his big units (2 Relentless hits and a Maul hit) so that when he draws his 2nd mainboard Relentless, I can’t stabilize.

Game 2 starts in a lot of ways like G1 in that we both lead off with the doc to draw up. However, this time time my opponent draws all (3) of his Vigilance early and proceeds to attempt the mill out. Fortunately for me over the course of the midgame I drew what felt like a million cards and one of those draws was my restock. As we’re nearing the endgame, I play Bazine and look on in horror at his hand…Palp’s Return, Avenger and 2x Relentless’. Okay…not great, Bob…but I have a metric ton of removal in my hand along with an Avenger and a dragon. I take the Avenger as I want to bait him into playing the Palp’s Return early which he ultimately does to answer an Avenger on board. We trade nuke’s back and forth for a minute and then I proceed to deck out. This is when I restock bringing back 2 Avengers, the Restock and a dragon. I flash the Avenger and the restock post upkeep and my opponent concedes knowing he is behind on life, out of material and I’m going to cycle him to death with bomb after bomb. 

At some point towards the end of G2 we were told we had 13 minutes remaining in the round and we both know we can’t reasonably finish a game even if we had the full 13 minutes (probably closer to ~7 mins) sp we decide to roll for it. I won and proceeded to boast about how talented I am and how I “never didn’t have it” and further retorted that he should stick to Boba. 

Could I have lost the roll off? Maybe. But I didn’t and the victors get to decide how history is written. If you don’t believe me, it’s just because you’re not good enough to write the history yourself. 

Result: “Win” 2-1

Round 4 - Bossk Vigilance (30hp) 

It wouldn’t be a day of Swooo if there wasn’t a mirror match. My opponent is another familiar local who is typically on some Palp bs like a refined gentleman. The games were long due to the nature of the builds, but sadly just not that interesting. He was just too new to the build and was missing a fundamental understanding of how to pilot the build. For instance, he didn’t know you could play restock and put that same restock back into your deck and he missed multiple Bossk triggers for free damage when I had already claimed.

In the end, I dropped (3) Krayts on him in consecutive turns to take G1 and I milled him out in G2 with Bazine ripping his restock around the midgame. 

Result: Win 2-0

Cut to Top 4

As many know, I seldom want to play out a top cut if there’s nothing on the line. We had some store credit and some packs riding, but at this stage in life, that’s just not enough to get it up. I did some pre-work by finding the (3) X-1 players and chatting with them about splitting the top 4. The one guy who I knew would be more hesitant gave me a “probably” like he stood any kind of chance against me with his Boba Command bs, but I clapped back with a “the other two are in if you are” to really lay on the pressure. One instant fold later and I was pulling the chips towards my stack whilst on my way to chat with the TO. A roll off to decide how to distribute the promos and everyone left happy. 

Final Thoughts:

Set 2 was fairly disappointing for me. I think FFG has done a disservice with what can largely be considered an incredibly well designed game by not addressing the balancing issues created by Boba, Sabine and ECL. Now, admittedly, I can’t deny that some of the vigor behind this take is that having seen Set 3 now, we can be all but certain that no organic evolution of the meta will take place as there is nothing in Set 3 that looks to be on the same power level. Furthermore, I’d go on to say that Set 2 Boba and Sabine ECL could reasonably defeat a majority of Set 3 focused builds (i.e Yoda YMOH, Dooku Exploit, etc.). 

While I jest a lot with the false bravado, witty arrogance and so forth, I really do want this game to do well. I think it’s well designed structurally and the IP is something I very much enjoy. I think the community at large is very open to some type of mitigation of these cards to at the very least shake up the meta and allow for some evolution. Now the form that takes between erratas, a ban list, etc I’m sure has a wide range of opinions, but something needs to be done and soon.

One thing I would strongly encourage FFG to engage in moving forward is some form of a “watch list” acknowledging some of the issues within the meta. Make it so the community feels heard and talk through potential options in an open forum to further double down on that engagement. Simply look towards the recent MtG Commander bans as a means of measuring how not to produce a desired outcome by making decisions in isolation without consultation and without notice. These issues are fairly easy to manage with over communication and a public message of doing what’s best for the community, but simply doing nothing is no longer an option unless FFG is content, again, to let another well designed product launch to unprecedented success only to crumble to failure because of poor OP and community management.