When looking over the results from the Second European TTS tournament last weekend, I could see what (I thought) most of the decks were trying to do by looking at the character lineup.

There was one notable exception: the eJabba3/eWatto/JawaJD deck, piloted by Philip Stinchcomb aka Chimaera, which he took to a 4-2 finish. Was this mill? If so, it was a highly atypical character lineup.

We reached out to him, and it turned out the deck was even more curiously aberrant than expected. He kindly agreed to do a write-up of this peculiar and surprisingly effective deck, and here it is.

Chimaera:
With every new set in Star Wars Destiny I always enjoy looking for crazy combinations that in turn may not be meta breaking but unique in play style and definitely turn a few heads. Crime Lord is such a card that brings back memories of its dominance in Thrawnkar (EAW Thrawn and Unkar Plutt) [echo7: perhaps the most bizarre deck to play, and the most boring deck to play against, ever].

It’s a unique card that hasn’t seen much play but as sets have gone on, resource accumulation increased and with the introduction of Reap I saw no reason why I couldn’t start testing Crime Lord again. What makes it even stronger is we are now in the land of big bad blues now, looking at Darth Vader, Darth Bane, Palpatine and even Maul who have all seen success in tournaments!

Next on the agenda was a line up, we need MONEY!! So the first stop was Watto, he makes money everywhere with his dice and Power Action and even becomes almost guaranteed when facing mono blue decks, looking at you ReyLo.

Next up we need another yellow character being Crime Lord is yellow only so enter the Crime Lord himself, Jabba CONV. He brings exactly what’s needed to the table, the ability to find Reap early and start the landslide of money and another +2 resource side to Reap. It’s only a bonus he adds a chunk of health and a 2 focus.

With 4 dice with heavy money potential I had 5 points left, so continuing my excursion on Tatooine, I stole away a Jawa!!! These guys are crazy good value, find any grey neutral and these guys in essence are an action cheat resource!

The key tactic with this deck is setting up the Crime Lord. Use round one to ramp into money then disrupt and slow your opponent as much as possible. Using Watto‘s 2 disrupt is invaluable here. Hereafter place the Crime Lord on whoever isn’t the target and force more decisions on your opponent.

Once setup is complete we need to control the opponent’s hand before rolling the Crime Lord in. Yellow villain lacks hand crunching out of hand abilities but brings great upgrades with dual purpose, Unscrupulous and Skilled Tracker both being able to disrupt and control your opponent before rolling in the Crime Lord. In addition to this we have Bespin Wing Guard and Wretched Hive (Watto and Jawa are scavengers so this is online most of the time) these only add to the hand control.

Now in some cases Crime Lord can’t win you the games whereby heavy 3 wide support decks may take just too long or 6-wide Jawas near impossible. So we need an alternative win condition: mill! Use all the tools we have to miss and disrupt! Dangerous Measures are key in slowing Jawas and supports (Jawas hate seeing Bespin Wing Guards blow up) so let Jabba find them and control them.

Overall I believe the deck performed very well in a tournament scene where it won 3 of its 6 games by Crime Lord and 1 by mill in Swiss [echo7: I find it pretty incredible that this deck can be so consistent with its Crime Lording].

Where its weakness lies is in action cheating dice we just can’t control and that lies heavily with droids. This deck struggles very hard into them and as they remain our gatekeepers of the meta it may struggle in every occurrence with them. But where it does succeed is everywhere else, it can out-mill many mill decks and Crime Lord any 2-man line up by round 2.

Since the tournament I have made a few changes to the line up and here lies the flex spot: the Jawa. The deck is crying for hand control and less reliance on upgrade/support control which can all be outpaced; enter Viceroy Gunray. The core line up is now Gunray, Jabba and elite Watto, where we now get the 6 power house cards: Face The Enemy, Probe and Counterintelligence [echo7: not forgetting the fact that any mitigation returned to the opponent’s deck with Face The Enemy or Counterintelligence get milled by Nute‘s ability].

Now the Crime Lord has very little that can stop it and Nute continues to bring a disruptive effect both native and his die boasts a 2 disrupt, both key elements.

Its a blast of a deck and makes a surprise every time the Crime Lord is played so give it a go and bring out those dusty Crime Lord dice.

Take it easy and stay safe in these uncertain times.
Chimaera

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