abUse the Force - Regionals Reflections

As Regionals season winds down, let’s take a look back on a few of the most commonly played Sith and Jedi decks, and reflect on the most popular decks that splash Sith or Jedi.

To clarify at the outset, when I refer to a Jedi deck, I am typically describing a deck running 8 or 10 Jedi objectives. Same for Sith, Navy, etc.

(The following decklists were provided in FFG's Star Wars Game experience Results and Highlights Article.)



One extremely popular Jedi deck this Regionals season was the version that I championed early on, both here at CardGameDB and also on the Team Covenant site. It seems that this Regionals season, Big Ben was indeed worth more dead than alive. His ability to keep key Jedi characters as well as Guardians of Peace in the game was the key to victory for many players. As I had mentioned previously, running 2x of A Message From Beyond does leave the Jedi deck a bit unit-light. But, the units that do hit the board are significantly more likely to stick around. Combine this with the excellent support offered by The Secret of Yavin 4, and key Jedi characters are likely to stay on the board far longer than the Dark Side would like. Mick Cipra (deck lists pictured above) played this deck and made his way to 2nd place at the FFG Regionals event, and Sarah Paulsen piloted the deck into the Top 8 at that same event, the largest SW:LCG event to date.

With respect to Sith builds, a primarily Sith build with a bit of Navy splashed was a strong choice at recent regional competitions (see above list), and for reasons that seem quite obvious in hindsight. Mono-Sith builds that seemed strong pre-Regionals were weak in one important respect; if the Light Side could outlast a Vader and/or an Emperor Palpatine, the deck was essentially out of tricks, and would die a slow death as the LS bashed through shoddy defenses toward inevitable victory. Splashing Navy, as many discovered, gives the deck some more significant threats, such as Devastator. However, as you can also see from the above list, my previous advice, namely that the Sith player should either Go Hoth or Go Home, was sound. Indeed, 2x of The Killing Cold along with 1x of Shadows on the Ice can provide a quite solid defense.

Interestingly, we have seen many Sith decks splashing Navy to add some more significant threats to the deck, and we have also seen Navy decks splashing our beloved Sith, specifically Capital Ships decks splashing Sith to run Heart of the Empire. David Bergstrom (deck lists pictured below) piloted such a deck into the Top 4 at the FFG May The 4^th Be With You event.



With respect to decks Splashing Jedi, the most dominant deck featured primarily RA objectives, splashing Jedi for A Journey To Dagobah. Journey to Dagobah, although not a staple in traditionally character-heavy mono-Jedi builds, can be a significant threat when included in a RA build. Although Double Strike is largely useless in such a build, the other four cards are solid additions to a deck that needs to be aggressive. Journey to Dagobah also carries a significant threat to your opponent in that, once it is destroyed, you can search for an objective of your choice and put it into play immediately. I most often see this ability used to retrieve Preparation for Battle, The Defense of Yavin 4, Fleeing the Empire, or simply another Journey to Dagobah.

It seems as though the dust has settled after regionals, leaving us with a few deck types that have dominated the competition. There is definitely excitement in the air about the next force packs and the deluxe expansion. Will there be a new Jedi objective that ousts Questionable Contacts from most lists? Will the Executor objective set push Heart of the Empire out of Capital Ship builds, or simply join it there? Will another RA objective definitively bump Journey to Dagobah out of RA builds? Will another Sith objective bring us back to mono-Sith, ending the Devastating Sith deck type?

Only time will tell. Thank you for reading! Please post some of your experiences and stories from Regionals events in the comments!