Category Archives: star wars

star wars

ePadme/Jyn Mono Mill 2.0

Deck tech, Destiny, star wars

In my previous post I went through my first version of this mono mill deck. Since then I’ve made some changes.

 

Battlefield: Command Center (Lothal)

Events

  • Friends in Low Places (0 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 2
  • Rebel (1 cost, Hero/Yellow) x 2
  • Evade (1 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 2
  • Block (2 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 2
  • Take Cover (0 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 2
  • Daring Escape (2 cost, Hero/Gray) x 1
  • Bolt Hole (0 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 2
  • Cheat (1 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 2
  • Long Con (0 cost, Hero/Yellow) x 2
  • Unpredictable (0 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 2
  • Dodge (2 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 2
  • Diversion (1 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 2

Support

  • R2-D2 (2 cost, Hero/Gray) x 2

Upgrades

  • Ammo Belt (1 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 2
  • Ascension Gun (2 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 2
  • Second Chance (3 cost,Hero/Yellow) x 1

My thinking behind the deck

The changes have mainly been to strengthen what the deck is meant to do best, mill. So in comes Command Center for War-Torn Streets. For some reason my battlefield never gets chosen by Dale. But that’s what the Ascension Gun is for, I don’t care I can still use it.

Second Chance is there to keep Padme on the board. Throw in Ammo Belt and some recursion and Padme is very hard to get rid of.

R2-D2 was added to boost Jyns discard from hand sides of her dice. 

Evade, Bolt Hole and Friends in Low Places were taken up to two copies each to improve their likely hood of being drawn.

How’d it do?

I did try this as eJyn/Padme but it didn’t work as well for me as the ePadme/Jyn. Mind you it could be because the first game yesterday against Dales Hero deck (I should have made a note of his line up) drew all the right cards for him early on and was doing lots of damage. Back to ePadme/Jyn and not so great card draw for Dale I took the next three games.

The bane of my life ePalpatine. This deck is doing a lot better against it. It won two games against it, and the ones it lost were pretty close games. I was using Con Artist (borrowed from Dale) instead of Rebel. Which made a big difference I think.

In our final game I proxied in a second Second Chance. Yeah I need a second one of these. Along with my Dodge (Block wasn’t needed against this version of Dales deck), Evade and Unpredictable I was able to avoid and hang in there against this damage heavy deck.

I found I wasn’t using R2-D2 at all against ePalpatine, he came out in two early games.   So R2-D2 is at risk.

In one game I rolled the following. Which equated to six cards discarded from the top of Dales deck. That’s massive.

Where next?

If my opponent gets a good draw on a damage heavy deck I have problems. Who wouldn’t?

Ideally I’d like more recursion. So I can pull back cards to keep me in the game longer.

It needs that second copy of Second Chance.  Con Artist worked well so Rebel is my most likely candidate for going in its place. 

Over on Instagram the following helpful suggestions were made:


Sadly because Scout is a red hero card I can’t use it in this yellow mono hero deck! Although Cunning does look very interesting.

I think the mono mill deck is nearly there. A couple of tweaks and until the next set is released it’s not going to change. So in all likely hood the next post about this deck will be the final one!

Boats and Spaceships

Fenland Gamers, Game day, star wars

Yesterday saw some impromptu gaming between Jonathan, myself, Chris and Edmund.

But how did we get to that point? Well I needed a big favour from Jonathan! I’d sold my Android Netrunner collection, and needed to print out the delivery label so myHermes could pick it up today. Sadly my printer/scanner is just a scanner these days. So I threw myself on the mercy of Jonathan. Who suggested we also play a game too. The invite went out on the Fenland Gamers Facebook page. And there we were, playing Keyflower on a Sunday afternoon.

Boy did Edmund grok this game. He destroyed us. While Edmund was grokking the game, Jonathan was getting wound up, because the game was not clicking for him. Sometimes that happens with a game, and you need another play at least before it clicks. It’s that second game that the person usually ends up whooping my butt at the game. The important point is that I beat Jonathan by two massive points this time.

Like Nations: the Dice Game Keyflower is over way way to quickly. 

But still a pleasant surprise for the Sunday afternoon.

Today Dale and I spent it productively testing Star Wars: Destiny decks (lunchtime only). 

By the end of our gaming Dale edged it winning 6-5. 

Our first four games were a new hero deck that Dale came up with. It demolished my ePadme/Jyn deck. It was crazy in the damage it was doing. But the remaining three games the cards weren’t so favourable to Dale and I won.

Dale then lent me Con Artist to swap in to see how that would work in my deck. Our remaining games were Dales ePalpatine against my ePadme/Jyn. They were pretty tight games. In our final game I proxied in a second Second Chance. Con Artist worked pretty well. And I most certainly need that second Second Chance.

I’ll have to do a post of my deck in its 2.0 state. If the dice come off (like the photo above – I rolled that today) thats 6 cards off the top of the opponents deck. That’s insane!

Verses: Star Realms vs Star Wars Destiny

Head to Head, Matchup, star realms, star wars, VS

If you have been following the posts of mine about ranking and my top games posts you will have seen that these two games have been in my Top 10 games since I started using my “match up engine”. Plus because of the nature of my process they were always going to go head to head.

So Star Realms or Star Wars: Destiny? Which did I choose?

I don’t think it’s any secret that I love Star Realms. Thanks to an awesome app I have up to 20 games on the go at a time. I’ve played thousands of games. Since records began I’ve actually managed to get the physical game to the table a whole 25 times. I really do like the deck building mechanic. The shared trade row. Plus the expansions. Oh my, the expansions. You can mix and match or if like me just play with everything thrown all in. With Gambits and Events you can get some crazy turn one purchases. Plus missions now change how a game can be won. This game just gets better and better. Oh and comboing cards so you draw your whole hand, and do one massive amount of damage. Or when you claw back from a single authority to get the win. You definitely get some great gaming moments in this game.

Star Wars: Destiny, OMG! I knew if I played it I’d get hooked. It ticks a lot of boxes for me, deck construction, dice, Star Wars. Ok the collectible side of the game is a big draw back. Ā But no worse than Magic the Gathering, Dice Masters or others of that ilk. There has been that initial difficulty in getting product. But hopefully that has been resolved by FFG, and so far it’s looking that way. I enjoy the deck construction side. I like building decks and playing them to see if they work. Yes there is a random element with the dice rolls. But there are ways to reroll and even chose a face of the die. So I don’t see that as a drawback. Sometimes the dice rolling adds an element of suspense that I like. Especially when the other player rolls badly letting you off the hook for an action or two while they mitigate that bad roll.

In the end I kinda copped out, sat on the fence and declared this one a draw. I really enjoy playing both of these games. And would find it really hard to make a choice between which to play if they were both in front of me.

And looking at the comments to the post on Facebook and Instagram, the slight edge goes to Star Realms. But it was close, one vote in it. And a draw if I take out the Hero Realms vote! The public can’t decide either then.

The Mill is Real

star wars

Lunchtimes are Star Wars Destiny for Dale and me. Last week after I got my butt kicked by Dale and his abuse of extra actions. I hit the drawing board and set myself a small project to build a yellow mill deck.

Today saw the grand revealing of the first iteration of my Jyn/Padme mill deck. There are still one or two cards in the postal system that will make this even worse (hopefully). I’ll write new posts as and when to cover those additions.

Battlefield: War-Torn Streets (Jedha)

Events

  • Friends in Low Places (0 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 1
  • Close Quarters Assault (0 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 1
  • Rebel (1 cost, Hero/Yellow) x 2
  • Evade (1 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 1
  • Block (2 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 2
  • Take Cover (0 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 2
  • Daring Escape (2 cost, Hero/Gray) x 1
  • Bolt Hole (0 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 1
  • Cheat (1 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 2
  • Long ConĀ (0 cost, Hero/Yellow) x 2
  • Let the Wookie Win (1 cost, Hero/Yellow) x 1
  • Parry (1 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 1
  • Unpredictable (0 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 1
  • Dodge (2 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 2
  • Diversion (1 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 2 – had to borrow one of these from Dale
  • Scavenge (0 cost, Hero/Yellow) x 1

Support

  • BB-8 (1 cost, Hero/Gray) x 1
  • Outmaneuver (1 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 1
  • Improvisation (0 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 1

Upgrades

  • Ammo Belt (1 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 2
  • Rey’s Staff (2 cost, Hero/Gray) x 1
  • Vibroknife (2 cost,Neutral/Gray) x 1

My thinking behind this deck

Naturally the aim of this deck is to mill cards. Get victory by forcing my opponent (ie Dale in this case) to burn through his deck until he no longer has any cards to draw, and has no cards in hand, to get me the win.

Padme (removing cards from the deck) and Jyn (removing cards from hand) synergize really well for a milling deck.

I wanted cards in my deck that allowed me to avoid some of the melee and ranged damage I could be facing, with the aim to keep my characters alive as long as possible (Dodge,Parry,Block and Evade). Then with cards like Take Cover,Bolt Hole I am adding shields. Cards like Daring Escape, and Unpredictable are included to help me try and get lucky and reroll an opponents die to something more to my liking.

Cheat, Scavenge and Rebel are in there to allow me to replay cards from my discard pile. Which becomes very important for recycling particular cards once they arrive.

Naturally Padme needs resources to fuel her milling. So for that I have Long Con, Outmaneuver.

To help with the milling I have Friends in Low Places, and Close Quaters Assault (used with Rey’s Staff and Vibroknife). Although those three cards will be replaced when the new cards arrive.

BB-8 and Improvisation are there to help me with my rerolls. Whilst Diversion and Let The Wookie Win are included to try and disrupt the other players resource economy and dice.

Ammo belt will become more important when the new cards arrive.

So that’s the current state of my mill deck. There are some improvements coming. But as I said I think in previous posts I have a very small card pool. Which means I have to try and research which cards would fit in this deck, and then hunt copies down.

How’d it do?

Dale and I played two games today. The first was close. I had loads of cards left in my deck, and it came down to a dice roll. If Jyn had come up with a discard I would have won. But she didn’t, her dice came up a ranged attack. Which Dale was able to use against me (before I had a chance to reroll her dice) to kill Jyn to get the win. The milling had been working ridiculously well. Padme held in for a long time, drawing a lot of the damage that Dale was able to deal. By the time she was finally killed, it was too late, the damage had been done.

Our second game went much more to plan. It did surprise me that I had milled Dale so much. It hadn’t really registered that I had done that much. I had three cards left in my deck by the time I finished Dale off.

A few of Dale’s cards in his deck were redundant with my deck. mainly because they were there to remove damage from ranged and melee attacks. Attacks I wasn’t doing. They effectively became cards to use to do rerolls.

Dale didn’t enjoy playing against this deck (although I felt that way a little last week against that extra action abuse I faced). And once I have it working properly with the cards I have in the postal system, it will most likely be retired. I’ll move on to Rey at that point and try and come up with a good Rey deck.

It’s not fun playing all the time against the same nasty deck. Now cards are, at the moment easier to get hold of, and the Awakenings reprint soon to hit stores, our card pool is getting bigger. We don’t have everything. Dale and I are if able to lend cards to make decks work. So we will see. I think Dale will be going Palpatine with two dice for his next deck. It was Palpatine and a Royal Guard today. There is some payback coming soon I’m sure.

The Destiny Challenge

star wars

So Dale kicked my butt today in our game of Star Wars Destiny.

I was playing a Jyn/Rey deck. While Dale was playing Rey/Maz. He had Force Speed to. Which on its special side with Maz was giving him four extra actions! That was obscene. Dale also had Force Heal which he used to heal Rey a couple of times.

Dale definitely has the upper hand at the moment. The increased card pool available to him from the booster box he bought has paid off.

I got to thinking, can I do better and cheaper targeting specific cards for my deck? So the challenge is I have a budget/target of what Dale paid for his booster box. Can I build a better deck for less?

I have an idea of the cards I want for my deck. I need to improve the mill side of it, plus combat the damage it takes.

Some of those cards are already on the way. But three of them I need to hunt around for. 

I need to research some more cards that will strengthen the deck. 

May the 4th Be With You 2017

star wars

May the 4th Be With You – Happy Star Wars Day.

As we remember our princess and droid that left us for a galaxy far far away, we also celebrate our love for all things Star Wars.

I have plans for the day which includes Star Wars themed gaming. But all that will be discussed in the next post.

Are you planning on playing any Star Wars games today?

Star Wars The Last Jedi Teaser Released

star wars

The above says it all really. Where have the years gone?

Currently in the US (Orlando I believe) they are into the second day of a Star Wars orgy Star Wars Celebration. They have so many big names there taking part, original cast, new cast, behind the scenes people, memorabilia the lot. And it’s all live streamed ^__^

Just now (as I write this) they have released the official teaser for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Spoiler alert! It’s frickin AMAZING!


We were also spoilt with the poster also, OMG how cool is this?


Finally they did a touching tribute to Carrie Fisher.

IA: Stormtroopers

expansions, first look, imperial assault, star wars

Continuing what I think is a bias by FGG towards the Empire in its expansions for Imperial Assault comes the Stormtroopers Villians Pack.

In this expansion you get three Stormtrooper models. (Yes I know I still have to finish painting my existing Stormtroopers)

I do like the included skirmish upgrade card. I'd actually like two or more copies of that card to power a troopers only team. Having not played the campaign side I can't comment on the three included agenda cards.

As with all expansions you get two skirmish mission cards.

There are two deployment cards for the new troopers.

The Stormtroopers come with four command cards, and this is rather cool a reward card called 501st Training. Why is this cool? Well you know all those Stormtroopers you see at cons etc? They are all part of a fan driven organisation called the 501st Garrison. These guys have even paraded for Lucas! So this card is a lovely little tribute to these die hard fans.

Finally there are the skirmish map and campaign mission. And as usual I don't show the campaign side of the sheet so I don't ruin any surprises.

The skirmish map in this Villian pack is one of the tournament legal skirmish maps.

Finally this Villians pack has the id tokens.

 

Kick that hornets nest

expansions, imperial assault, netrunner, news, star wars

 

With the arrival of the latest additions to the Star Wars Imperial Assault universe, I thought I'd better finally do the posts for the previous additions. So over the next few days I'll be doing posts looking at those expansions plus the new arrivals.

In the meantime before those posts start taking over this blog, I'd briefly point out that FFG over the holiday period decided they would “tweak” one or two of their games. The two I currently care about are naturally Imperial Assault and Android:Netrunner. X-Wing as a collectable game for me is on hold.

Imperial Assault got off lightly I think with the “tweaks”. The Royal Guard, Rebel Saboteurs, and Imperial Officers have had some of their card text changed. Below I have extracted the changes from the FAQ.

Naturally for the new season of store championships FFG have updated the legal skirmish maps. The legal maps are, the Kuat Space Station, Mos Eisley Cantina and the Training Ground map.

Here is the link to the new FAQ, here is the link to the FFG explanation for changes , new tournament rules

Let's look at the Netrunner changes, or as I like to describe it “kicking the hornets nest”. These changes have been the more controversial from my observations of the two Facebook communities for both games I follow.

So what has caused the hornets in the Netrunner community to swarm? Let's take a look at the FAQ for the two changes:

Here is the kick that stirred folks up.

Link to the new FAQ , link to new Tournament Rules , FFG explain why

My Thoughts on the subject…

FFG spent a lot of time analysing the recent world championships they held, I think they also monitor the meta in other ways too. So they have a very accurate image of the current state of the game. More so than us players.

Which means that they won't have reached the decisions they have on a whim. They will have thought about them, play tested them, and made a decision that would have the least impact on the game to fix the “problem” as they see it based on the data they have.

One of the things I don't like about Magic, Pokemon etc is the banned cards list. I think this is a sloppy, annoying fix. So I'm glad to see the solution that FFG have come up with. At least with the FFG solution I can still play with the cards, I just have to make a compromise or two to my deck to use them.

What I would like to see is a more elegant way of doing the errata for the cards. I'd love to see some stickers made available cheaply to purchase to update the cards with from FFG. I'd also like to think all new printings of these cards are with these changes. Or even better still I'd love to be able to buy corrected cards to replace the existing ones with.

FFG think/hope that these changes will add variety to the meta for the games. That it will encourage players to build a wider variety of decks/teams, which they will see reflected in tournaments.

I've been playing Netrunner for nearly a year now, but from what I can tell certain deck types come and go out of fashion as new data packs/expansions come out. At one point a Weyland deck may have the upper hand, while Criminal decks maybe stronger on the runner side. Then the next Deluxe expansion NBN becomes more popular.

If these changes even that out, I'm happy with what's been done.

 

Two Days of Christmas

lego minifigs, magic, star realms, star wars

Christmas Eve saw Nath and I at the cinema to see for the second time Star Wars The Force Awakens. Although we were only watching the 2D version of the movie, I had to get the 3D glasses the Vue Cinema are selling.

They look so blooming cool. Apparently Odeon cinemas are doing Star Wars branded Google Cardboard so will have to find time to visit one of them.
After the movie we ended up in Sainsburys for some very last minute veg buying, and somehow this piece of Lego ended up in the basket too.
I think it helped that it had been reduced by a fiver. But this is a great little model of Rey's speeder from the new movie. I also love the Rey minifig, especially with the head gear on.

After I had built my little Lego treat, I finally caved and bought Nath the full version of the Star Realms app and its expansions. He's been playing the app but just not online. So now father and son can play Star Realms while apart. Oh if you wish to challenge Nath on Star Realms his in game name is banjo.

Christmas Day, the miracle for me was how Nath cleared his plate! Our plates were piled high. I couldn't clear my plate, yet Nath wiped his clean.

Before Nath performed his man verses food Christmas challenge, we played a couple of games of Star Realms Colony Wars. I won our first game when we played with gambits also. While Nath took the second game, which was just a plain vanilla game. There are some awesome cards in Colony Wars, however in a later post I will look at the cards.

Nath and I also played our first Magic the Gathering card game. We used the two thirty card taster packs I was given. Nath had the Gideon Jura White Planeswalker deck, while I had Nissa Revane Green Planeswalker. I got hammered by Nath. I never even got a point of damage in. I nearly had a mighty fourteen points hit land. I had a Terra Stomper fielded, which had trample, and is an 8/8. I summoned Yeva's Forcemage that is a 2/2 creature, but gave a +2/+2 to a target creature when fielded until the end of turn. Which I naturally directed at my Terra Stomper. I then played Titanic Growth that pumped the Terra Stomper with an extra +4/+4 until the end of turn. I then attacked with my fielded 2/2 Prized Unicorn, and 14/14 Terra Stomper. Nath had to block the Prized Unicorn with his creatures because of the text on the Prized Unicorn “All creatures able to block Prized Unicorn do so.” Which meant I'd be smashing Nath for fourteen massive points to his face!

Nath plays the instant Divine Verdict that destroys target attacking or blocking creature. Bam!! That super beefed up Terra Stomper sent to the graveyard.

Two turns later I'm dead, I had nothing to stop Nath's attacks with. That instant by Nath won him the game. I had a chance upto that point.

Oh well we both enjoyed playing the game which is the main point. A fun first experience of the game. Swap colours next time I think.

Oh what games did I get Nath for his Christmas present? Dead Panic, the zombie themed version of Castle Panic, Marvel Legendary Villians and Star Realms Cosmic Gambits.