Today we’ve got a deck review of Aphra Krennic Outcast, which was taken to the runner up spot in last week’s Entourage Gaming Thursday Night Event, written by the deck’s pilot himself, Rebel Traitor.

This deck packs a punch and has a surprising amount of synergy despite it’s pick’n’mix appearance:

RebelTraitor:
Aphra has long been one of my favorite characters in this game. One of the main reasons is that she has a lot of ways to build decks around her. One of the big ones I’ve been playing around with is Aphra/Outcast/Krennic/Rule Of Two. Before we get into the meat of the article, let’s get a couple things out of the way. Aphra can’t draw a card off of the Rule of Two trigger because your deck technically isn’t in play. The Rule Of Two is just there to automatically have a damage on Outcast to get the ability discount going. Also, I wasn’t the first person to come up with the pairing of Aphra and Outcast. That credit goes to Manten of Arrow Brook Gaming. However, I am the first person to actually play the deck in a tournament, so Ha.

The engine of the deck is pretty simple. Use Outcast to get discount, Shiens and Soresus to stay alive, use Aphra to get cheap droids and draw a bunch of cards, use Krennic to get money and have Megablasters and Death Field as win conditions. The Death Field might be a bit too cute, but it’s really fun so I have it in there. Fickles are just great value so that’s why they’re in there.

The 4 Aphra droids (BT-1/0-0-0) and the 4 defensive abilities (Shien Mastery/Soresu Training) are definitely essential. So are the Megablasters; that card is just such high value. If you want to substitute in other cards there’s a bunch that work, like Assassin Droid, Boba’s Wrist Laser, Energy Bow, and Conscript Squad on the lower end and Vader’s Fist and Force Wave on the high end. Really, any kind of offensive package has something going for it.

The event suite is where space gets real tight. Respite, Logistics, and No Good To Me Dead are all there for ramp. Logistics isn’t in most Aphra decks, but I like it here because of Krennic. The removal is the 4 “Aphra removal” as I call it: 2 Crash Landings and 2 Dangerous Maneuvers, as well as the blue removal cards, Forsaken and Hidden Motive.

The last 3 events are 2 Desperate Measures and 1 Face The Enemy. I’m honestly not sure on those last 3 cards. Not a lot of decks in the meta are even running supports to give value to be DM, and I don’t think Face The Enemy is even that good in Aphra. Don’t get me wrong, it’s busted in Trandos, but sometimes the sequencing just feels weird in Aphra. I think I do want to keep at least 1 DM because it’s really strong into the supports that exist. You could try more removal like an Automated Defense or just any kind of event that you like [echo7: I’d like The Best Defense… in there since Krennic is likely to be the last target unless your first drop is a Megablaster]

Match-up wise there isn’t much I can tell you. Nobody on TTS plays meta decks and I have no reason to full on playtest anything right now. I can tell you that most of the games you play will be very close, and you can go from really far ahead to one health remaining before you can even say “activate BT, I take one you take 2”. I like to describe playing Aphra as a game of Jenga. You’ll be spreading around damage just as you take pieces away from different places of the Jenga tower. Early it seems pretty easy to keep your guys alive, but at about Round 3 it becomes a struggle to make sure you don’t lose a key piece. All 3 characters in this deck are very important and losing any of them hurts [echo7: I do feel though that a strength of this deck is losing a character probably hurts less than it does in lots of other decks, such as Chopper Droids, unless it’s an Outcast with a Death Field]

Alright, that’s all I have on the deck, but I have some shoutouts to give. First to my two LGSs, The Portland Game Store and Gongaii Games. The PGS scene has basically been dead for a while now, but technically it’s still alive. Also to Entourage Gaming for running weekly tournaments, one of which I played this deck at. That’s all I have for now, thanks to echo7 for having me on, and remember to stay home or at least buy a Baby Yoda mask! Yes, those are real now.

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