echo7:
Back in May we published a deck review of double Trandoshan Luce (Trando the Witcher), written by Wotjek “Hipo” Wisniewski. Since then, Trandoshans were briefly nerfed by the universal adoption of the Gandork Holocron, and then ignored/forgotten about after the release of the official Holocron and Transformations (despite the fact that they are still 11 points elite, though they are now on the restricted list).
So what’s Hipo been up to? Well, since winning the UK TTS Theme Tournament and writing us a review of Lor San/Leia, I noticed he had started playing double Imperial Death Trooper instead of Trandoshans, still paired with Luce, and picked up a series of runner up spots in events with it. I too had been playing around with double IDT (though paired with a Zombie and Armored Reinforcement for the AT-RT), and found the pairing very strong.
We reached out to Wotjek and he kindly agreed to do his third write-up for us. He sent this over just as Transformations dropped, so it’s taken me a while to actually get this up after the fallout from that. Despite the fact this deck precedes the release of Transformations, I believe the deck is still very relevant.
Here he is:
OK, so my days as Trando Whisperer are over [echo7: this was written before the official Holocron was released, in the days when we were treating Trandos as 12 points elite. Despite staying on 11 points, they still took a hit by being added to the restricted list], but I wasn’t ready to give up on the deck archetype just yet. Or on Luce for that matter, as I’ve grown to love this character…
Besides, my favourite witch still had good partners in IDTs that had a potential of making opponents’ lives very painful.
Of course, they’re not nearly as powerful as Trandos were, but they do have a few tricks of their own. Plus the whole deck isn’t as straightforward as Trandos were (although it might seem that way). The dice and PAs are considerably weaker, so my Troopas have to look for other advantages. This is where their resource side comes into play. They can make a first turn Fist a reality (and not that hard), as a lot of people won’t bother with mitigating your dice once they see you’re going for resources.
There’s more to this deck than early Fist. There are a few decent guns, a few events giving you additional damage. And Possessed. I love that card.
Plus, your Troopers can just deal damage instead of getting rich.
The key to this deck is choosing the right path for every match-up and the hand you draw, because it’s not always best to try to play Fist, while you can play a blaster or two and go for damage right from the start. For example, blasters work better against Aphra decks, while the key card against mills is Possessed. When facing Palpatine you have to pump as much damage as possible into him early, to put pressure on him.
Lack of Trandos also frees a lot of deck space [echo7: as you don’t need downgrades], so my removal package can be even bigger, which, along with the VPD ruling can result in putting a lid on the opponent’s dice, and that’s the way I like it.
As for my card choices, there’s not much to talk about (or that I haven’t talked about while doing a Trando write-up), but I can at least point to my battlefield: Bendu’s Lair is a last minute change before the Artificery League Top Cut. I was running Training Room, but I even if I were playing on it, it didn’t do much.
I don’t care about battlefield in this deck and in most cases, even if I win the initial roll, I’ll choose shields, to deny my opponent them, so I might as well go with Bendu which should be better at convincing my opponent to give me shields 😉 That, and most of the top decks right now seem slower than me, so even if I play on Bendu, it might come in handy and be worth playing.
It’s not easy to talk about the perfect hand as well. Like I said, it all depends on the match-up, but there are some universal picks. Respite for one, as extra resource can’t hurt [echo7: plus it replaces itself in your hand]. But only if I can get something to spend it on. In most games I would prefer Possessed, but a blaster can be good as well. That, plus two pieces of mitigation (Forsaken and Measure For Measure are my favorite) and I’m ready to go.
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