echo7:
Last weekend saw the first in-person Destiny event in a long time. The tournament was taken down by local player (well, local to us) Chris Strong piloting eLor/eBail/Anakin. He kindly agreed to do a write-up for us, so without further ado, here he is:

Chris:
Let me introduce myself, my name is Chris and I have a problem, I’m a mill player, I like to meet up with friends to play Star Wars Destiny and I like to take their cards and shield up. Phew, now that is out of the way…

As a family we’ve been playing Star Wars Destiny since just before the release of Empire at War and have been in love with the game ever since, we’ve travelled far and wide to play, the furthest destination to date being to Krakow for the Euros 2019. Where it’s fair to say that the games didn’t go the way we planned but the time with our fellow Destiny players made the whole thing worthwhile.

I have lost count of the tournaments we’ve been to but it seems that when I’ve played Mill decks I’ve done far better than when I’ve played support or aggro decks and I think that’s because I’ve always leaned towards asymmetrical gameplay dynamics. The desperate push for delivering damage to the opponent when they are trying to do the same to you is challenging and fun but for me when two players are working towards a different goal it makes the game far more interesting.

A couple of weeks before the Cardiff event I didn’t have a clue what deck to play, thankfully Oli (Echo3ofClubs) suggested “Mill man, you like milling” So really if we’re going to blame anyone we should blame him. [Echo3ofclubs: After loosing to Chris in the semi-final I am 100% full of regret for this recommendation.]

Oli shared with me an eBail/eLor/Anakin decklist and with a few changes I modified it to suit me. The decklist is below – 

Note: the decklist which this was based on was TurkeyClubSamich’s Polish TTS Champion deck.

The line-up of Anakin, Lor and Bail is outstanding for mill, a solid mixture of shields, focus, discard and resource sides is amazing. Each character’s ability lends itself to some incredibly annoying (for the opponent) moments within each game. Anakin’s interaction with his Podracer, Lor pulling back mitigation or cards to attack the deck and Bail giving me the ability to play titles for one less resource. On more than one occasion at the start of the games my opponent would say “I don’t know who I should go for”.

The upgrades for this deck are incredibly light, two Lore Hunters and two Rebellion Leaders. One Lore Hunter early in the game is enough to start digging into the opponent’s deck and causing an annoyance but in a pinch can obviously be used on your own deck to find much needed mitigation. And then the Rebellion Leaders; I think during our opening of Legacies boosters we found 5 or 6 Rebellion Leaders (never did find a Yoda, I’m not bitter) we never really used them due to the 4 cost and unique red character restriction, but with the addition of Bail Organa and You Are In Command Now the card became more playable.

I think during one game I was able to get two Rebellion Leaders down, one on Bail and the other cheated on to Lor using You Are In Command Now and the level of control the Power Actions on each card gave me was fantastic. Every side of the Rebellion Leader dice is welcome apart from the 2 indirect but rarely did I find myself lacking for a focus so I could get whatever I wanted. If there were cards to take, then focus to the 2 discard, if it was early in the round then I’d take the shields if required or the 2 resources were fantastic to set me up for some of the events that would attack the deck.

There are four different supports in the deck, 2 Podracers, because I want those first round, a Senate Chamber for more focus and on the field mitigation, a Scrap Heap because I wanted my discards from deck to provide me with some return and a Bespin Wing Guard to have something on the table to attack the hand each round.

Refusal in this deck is one of my favourite cards, this was the first time I’d ever used it in a deck and it was a life saver on more than one occasion, especially in the final of the Cardiff Prime.

The event suite contained nine removal cards, eight cards that would attack the deck or hand, a Field Medic and two copies of You Are In Command Now.

The removal contains two Easy Pickings and I left the spot yellow removal there. I had a feeling that Anakin would be the first target for most people and cards such as Entangle and Electroshock could become dead cards very quickly. The rest of the removal is fairly simple and cheap, the highest costed removal card being Beguile.

Of the eight cards that could assist with the goal of milling Clever Distraction and Strength Through Weakness were my favourites. No Answer is of course very strong but everyone knows to be aware of No Answer and most opponents would play around it. One of the strongest plays I managed was pulling off a Strength Through Weakness play, gaining one resource from Scrap Heap and then playing Clever Distraction to take six cards in total from the deck in two actions. 

Also using the Lor power action to offer Strength Through Weakness and two Clever Distractions is a horrible choice to offer, especially if you’re sitting on resources at the time. 

And not forgetting the battlefield, Occupied City is the obvious choice for Mill, with a five dice roll off there is a high chance of winning the battlefield and although I’m generally slower than my opponents in most games if I can hold on to the battlefield for at least two rounds the damage to the deck is an awesome push towards my goal. 

On the day of the Cardiff Tournament I was feeling fairly comfortable with my deck, had tested it loads and got the reps in, tried to test against a number of different decks but the majority was against ReyLo, as both my son and my wife are fond of ReyLo, this proved useful as round 3 was against a tough ReyLo deck, albeit a very different build from our deck. 

Game 1 – against eObi-Wan / eR2-D2 – Loss
Game 2 – against Qui-gon / Yoda – Win
Games 3 – against ReyLo – Win
Game 4 – against eLuke / Obi-Wan – Loss
Game 5 – against Rescue Han, Satine, C-3PO and R2 – Win

Every game in Swiss was close, with the exception of round 4, where there were 9 cards left in my opponent’s deck when I was defeated and I just couldn’t find mitigation when I needed it. 

To my surprise I managed to squeak through to the top 4 on strength of schedule and then faced Oli in the Semifinal with Wullf/ePalp and Lightsaber Mastery, these games were horrible, I’ve never really played against Wullf and in the first game I was controlled by a combination of his power action, Mastermind and a bunch of red control cards which just made my game impossible. Nothing was working in my favour and although I milled the deck I couldn’t clear the hand. I was beaten in part by Palp’s ability to reroll his Force Storms back into his pool and by an awesome Fatal Blow play that dealt 10 damage to an unshielded Lor which shut down my spot blue removal.

The second and third games surprisingly went my way, I was able to get the Podracer down in the first round in both games and when I hit the hand or deck I was hitting the upgrades, which brought Flame Of The Past online to remove a Force Storm from play. The games went my way but they were by far the toughest games of the day, luck seemed to be on my side as Oli pitched to re-roll and his dice were hitting blanks, shields or resources not damage or focus. My focuses were allowing me to fix my dice to whatever I needed.

Then the final against Mark, who was my opponent in Round 4 playing Luke / Obi-Wan with United We Stand, I’ll be honest I was dreading this match up again but somehow I got ahead early on in the game and managed to take the win. Again it was a close run thing but having Anakin’s Podracer down early and Bespin Wing Guard just controlled the hand really efficiently and reduced the potential for re-rolls.

The second game was very different, I’m not proud of how this game started and later when I talked my wife through the opening plays of the first round she confirmed that indeed I was an arsehole (I’ve actually softened this from what she actually said). On my first draw I pulled Vandalise and four other cards that weren’t a Podracer, I nearly mulliganed them all but then thought back to the earlier games. Mark had previously defeated Obi-Wan early to transform him to Obi-Wan’s Spirit, maybe he’d do it again and I could smash Obi-Wan’s ghost off the table? So I kept the Vandalise and mulliganed four to try and find the Podracer. 

If I recall correctly Mark played an It Binds All as first action, I rolled in Bail, he played another It Binds All, I rolled in Lor, he defeated Obi-Wan, and I Vandalised him. I don’t think I have ever felt so bad. And then two actions later I felt worse as Mark played a Counterstroke and I stuck Refusal on Luke. When Luke rolled in he hit a focus on counterstroke and damage on the Luke dice. Pretty sure that confirms my a-hole status but it was enough to set Mark back in the opening moments of the game and let me build a board state. From then on I was able to mill and control dice without removing them by using Bewilder or the Senate Chamber Power Action and every time I hit the deck I was taking away upgrades, I don’t think I removed a single one of Mark’s dice during that final match therefore United We Stand couldn’t trigger, all the luck was with me and I took the win.

The tournament was fantastic, thank you to Iain for organising, it felt great to see the community back after such a long enforced separation, and I sincerely hope that we continue to meet up and take part in these events in person or online. Love you all, sorry I milled some of you.

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