This past weekend The South Wales Gaming Centre and Firestorm Games hosted a rescheduled Prime Championship. The original date set for the Prime Championship was back in March, but due to the current worldwide pandemic this original date was postponed. At the beginning of August the event page was updated to reflect a re-scheduled date of the 4th of September.

This is where things got even trickier: 10 days prior to the event FFG released an article stating that all Prime Championships across all gaming platforms were being suspended until 2021. The South Wales Gaming Centre decided to proceed with the tournament using the Destiny Prime prize support, albeit the tournament would not count as an official Prime event.

There were also a few cards added to the restricted list for this tournament by the organisers – Han Solo – Cool & Confident, Arc Trooper Fives & Anakin Skywalker – Reckless One. Could this be a sign of a future Holocron?

Prior to attending the event an email was issued to all confirmed attendees outlining Covid-19 precautions and protocols.

Upon arrival – face mask on, I was greeted by a member of staff who took my temperature and proceeded in laying out the ground rules of the Covid-19 protocols in place throughout the store. Anit-bac hand gel was available at many points throughout the store and there was a very low maximum capacity limit.

The gaming centre itself is actually perfect for conducting socially distanced Destiny. The tables in which we completed the rounds of Swiss were actually war game tables, meaning that they were about 2.5m wide. During the games I found this made it quite hard to keep on top of board state as there is a greater distance between you and your opponent. That really was the only ‘down’ to the tournament, at the end of the day I was just really happy to roll some dice with friends.

At no time during the event did I feel any social distancing protocols were breached and at no point did I feel uncomfortable with the amount of people within the store. The store is absolutely huge and quite frankly a real UK gem of a game store.

14 keen Destiny players made it down to the tournament to compete in 5 rounds of Swiss with a cut to top 4. Here’s the deck breakdowns after 5 rounds of Swiss:

rank	Deck	Score	SoS
1.	Palpatine – Unlimited Power / Wullf Yolaren / Lightsaber Mastery	4-1	0.64000
2.	BDLuke/Obi-Wan Kenobi3 / United We Stand	4-1	0.52000
3.	Darth Vader – Terror to behold / Jawa / Lightsaber Mastery	4-1	0.40000
4.	Lor San Tekka/Bail Organa/Anakin Skywalker – Podracing Prodigy	3-2	0.56000
5.	Palpatine – Unlimited Power / Zuckus	3-2	0.56000
6.	Yoda – Wizened Mastery / Qui-Gon Jinn / United	3-2	0.44000
7.	Reylo	3-2	0.51200
8.	R2-D2 / Satine / C-3PO / Rescue Han Solo	2-3	0.48800

Before we get onto the results of the Top Cut, below are the Top 4 decklists for your viewing pleasure;

Palpatine does Palpatine things so no need to say more on him. I chose to run Yularen because he adds an additional level of control. Yularen’s PA allows you to look at an opponent hand and if there is a matching card in that player’s discard pile you may discard that card from hand. I’d open each round with his PA, if I catch a card to discard, great, if not I knew exactly what my opponent is playing with and know what I have to play around. His Power Action also works really well to know which card to call for a Seperatist Embargo or the Mastermind special.

BDLuke and Obi-Wan with United we Stand is probably the most competitive Luke build currently out there. With Mark (Lockett)’s build we have a pretty standard and expected event suite but what’s interesting is the upgrades. The reason for the singular Niman is Mark doesn’t have a second copy: he said he’d run a second if he had one. (I’d have lent him one for the day if I had a spare, but both of my Niman’s were in my partner Steph’s Yoda/Qui-Gon Deck!) The flavour comes in the form of the Counterstroke which does a lot of work especially if it’s sat on that focus side. A strong durable deck that can survive an aggro barrage.

I’ll start by clarifying that Draw Closer and a Fluid Riposte are the moves under the plot. Vader hasn’t seen much Love since the ATG Meta. The current meta seems to be relatively slow and Vader is a reasonable pick for fast aggro. Vader wants to come in and smack you in the face and then smack you in the face again in the Fighting Pit. The Fighting Pit combo is brutal on a hot rolling Vader. The inclusion for the Jawa is to allow access to LM and to help with ramp.

This Line-up has seen quite a lot of play since Running Onion’s performance at Worlds 2019 and is the go-to hero mill line-up. Chris has added in flavour to match his preferred play style with the includes such as Strength Through Weakness and the Bespin Wing Guard to speed up the slow burn. This deck doesn’t mill as fast as Yoda Leia but it has all the mitigation to just slowly and surely get the job done.

Semi-Final Results

Palpatine / Wullf Yularen / LSM	1-2	Hero Mill
Luke / Obi-Wan	2-0	Darth Vader / Jawa Junk Dealer / LSM

Final Result

Luke / Obi-Wan

0-2

Hero Mill

We have a write-up and deck analysis coming soon to echobase on the Winning deck – Lor San Tekka / Bail Organa / Anakin Skywalker. Congratulations to Chris on your performance, and thank you to everyone who could make it.

It feels like an age since the last in-person tournament, not just in the UK, but anywhere in the World. It was great to see old friends from across the country who could make it all the way out to Wales to roll some dice together. And who knows when the next event might be? The UK government have just announced that social gatherings of 6 or more people will be illegal from Monday. It looks like this event may have just squeezed into the eye of the Covid storm.

Until we see each other again, we look forward to continuing the always entertaining chats online and seeing many of you virtually over a game on TTS. Stay safe.

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