Canadian Nationals 2014 - Winner Report

The decks:

Light Side:

Affiliation: Jedi
Objectives: (10)
2x A Hero's Journey (Core 1-1)
1x The Secret of Yavin 4 (Core 5-1)
1x Last Minute Rescue (Core 6-1)
2x Heroes and Legends (Heroes and Legends 97-1)
2x The Flight of the Crow (Knowledge and Defense 107-1)
2x May the Force Be With You (Join Us or Die 112-1)

The weeks prior to this event I had basically the default Jedi/Gamor force lock deck ready to bring. The force lock deck is what my group and lots of players felt was the strongest deck, but then 10 days before the event the new FAQ came out, limiting 1 copy of "Along the Gamor run" per deck. This turned me off of the using that set, it's still a very powerful set, but I decided I would go back and look at my mono-Jedi that I played at this years regionals. I ended up running almost the exact deck except I decided to remove one copy of "The Secret of Yavin 4". I originally filled the spot with the set "Watchers in the Wasteland". This added some very powerful synergy with "May the Force Be With You", since with that objective it is very easy to win the force by 3 or more to get the Shistavanen Wolfmen out for free. The night before the event though I made a last minute decision to take that set out though and replace it with "Last Minute Rescue", the whole set, other than that 2 cost shielding unit...., is really good, especially the card Return of the jedi. The rest of the deck is pretty basic for mono-jedi. I decided to run two copies of "The Flight of the Crow" because I think every card in that set are just amazing, other than the ruussan colonists.., but having two copies of everything else in the set was definitely worth having 4 ruusan colonists. I also really wanted 2 copies of My Ally is the Force because my local meta right now is a lot of Tie Swarm decks, and I knew that i could count on this card to wipe their board if their Tie Swarm got out of control.

Dark Side:

Affiliation: Sith
Objectives: (10)
2x Fall of the Jedi (Core 19-1)
2x The Emperor's Web (Core 23-1)
2x The Findsman's Intuition (Lure of the Dark Side 106-1)
2x The Plan of the Prophetess (Knowledge and Defense 110-1)
2x The Slave Trade (Knowledge and Defense 111-1)

My local play group and I did a lot of dark side testing, even after the FAQ there didn't seem to be a need to test lightside, the answer was still mono-Jedi or Smuggler/jedi. For the darkside however we did a lot of testing. Most of my group decided on a Tie Swarm deck, that could win insanely fast, and if the lightside had a slow start they would just over whelm the board with Tie fighters and it often destroyed 4 objectives by the darksides third turn! I however did not love the deck because I much prefer the control style of play.

The deck I was originally planning to run was exactly the same as above except instead of running two "The Findsman's Intuition" I ran two copies of "The Executor Arrives" with the Scum and Villainy affiliation. That deck was very strong, I actually won a small local tournament with it but I started to find the Executor set wasn't really doing that much in the deck other than help me get Darth Vader or Palpatine on the board. I decided to run "The Findsman's Intuition" because I think every card in the set is just fantastic, other than payout what had no use in this deck. The objective helped me hold the force, and worked really well with "The Plan of the Prophetess", Zuckuss is fantastic, my plan with him was to attack each turn with him, to get damage on a objective, lock something down, and most importantly look at their top 3 cards and capture the best one. He proved to be huge throughout the tournament, capturing Lukes, Yodas, Moldy Crows, Twist of Fates, etc.. This I found really helped me control my opponent. 4-Lom was nice to get out for free, added for some nice extra blast damage. Containment field also came in handy a few times, it essentially makes one of their force cards useless what is awesome since the force struggle is so important in this current meta. Last but not least, my favourite, springing the ambush! With some many people running "May the Force Be With You" A lot of the big threats on the board are committed to the force making it so if I could just get the force to my side I could capture their biggest threat on only ONE RESOURCE!!

The decks downside is there are no Twist of Fates, and that can be a problem. My opponent in the third round figured that out and you could tell in edge battles he was not afraid of just dumping cards in since there was no threat of twist. I have no idea what set to remove to get at least 1 twist of fate in, I found every set way too useful to only have 1 copy of.

The Tournament:
With the lower numbers we had (16 people) only 3 rounds of swiss were played then a cut to top 2. This was a little short, I think 4 rounds of swiss with a cut to top 4 would have been better, but then again it was nice to not be there for like 10 hours. There were 16 sets of Force commit tokens, so everyone got one what I thought was super awesome.

The Games:
Round 1: Chuck
Chuck is a really good local player who was part of our groups play testing so going into this match I new basically what he was running

Game 1: Lightside
Chuck was playing the Tie Swarm deck and he had an incredibly good start. Mine was not great, I only had Kyle in my opening hand and didn;t flop MTFBWY so I couldn't defend, second turn I got Luke what really. helped He was able to destroy 4 objectives, even after I wiped his board once with my Ally is the Force on my third turn, and was able to get the dial to 11, and luckily had no way to kill the NudjI had played the turn earlier, then on my last turn I drew the Crow and was able to destroy the last 2 objectives I needed to win. This game was so close, I was sweating the whole time.

Game 2: Darkside
Chuck was playing a mono-Jedi list as well. I had a great start with Plan of the Prophetess and Slave Trade in my opening flop. He got Yoda first turn but after locking him down on my turn I was able to capture him with springing the ambush, after that he was not able to take the force again and my slave trade and Zuckuss managed to get super lucky and pretty much capture all of his mains. He was only drawing thins like ruusan colonists and guardians of the peace and the ewoks for Ties of Blood. This made it easy for me to control the board and blow up some objectives for a faster win.

Record: 2-0 (6 points)

Match 2: Joss
Joss is someone I have never played but he is from the area. He is a super nice dude and I had really fun time playing against him

Game 1: DarkSide
Joss was playing a Jedi/Smuggler build, With Yoda, Luke, Han, Chewie and the new Leia. This game was a really close one for a long time, both having strong starts. but I amassed a large amount a resources and started drawing all my removal (force lighting, deadly sights, springing the ambush) and just starting clearing his board and then played Palpaitne and was just able locked him down till the dial hit 12

Game 2: LightSide
Joss was playing the darkside deck that won gencon for his darkside (Vader, Palp, Sariss, Slave Trade, Tat Crash). Sadly he only seemed to draw resources and jawa's and nothing else of much use so I ended up winning very fast.

Record 4-0 (12 points)

Match 3: Matt
Matt is someone who started playing not that long ago (back in the summer maybe?) he has become very skilled at this game. Since no one else was at 12 points he got paired up to play me.

Game 1: Lightside
Matt was playing the same darkside deck as Joss. This game was so close going back and forth the whole time, it came down to one edge battle in the end and I ended up losing it making it so I was not able to destroy a 3rd objective then it went to his turn and he clicked the dial up to 12.

Game 2: Darkside
I was super nervous for this game, basically who ever won it was in the top 2. Matt was also playing a mono-jedi deck, but he was running only 1 Moldy Crow and one Red 5. This game was also super close but I was able to get Zuckuss going and started controlling what he drew what really helped me. After a really long game with the force going back and forth I eventually held the Jedi off long enough to get the dial to 12

Record 5-1 (15 points)

The Finals
One other play got 15 points, who was Scott. An extremely talented player who is always at the top of our local events and won the regional in our area. So of course I was playing him. This made me really nervous, he is so constantly good and very knowledgeable about the game.
Because it was a cut to top 2 the double elimination was really just a best of three since we were both going in with 0 loses in the cut. Scott had the Super Bye from winning nationals so he had the higher Strength of Schedule so he chose to play lightside first.

Because we filmed it and will be uploading the video with some commentary this week I've decided to not talk about each game. I will say though that it went to game 3 and there were really exiting games!
Sorry to be a tease, but I promise we will get the video of the finals up as soon as possible

What was the meta like???
All the top 8 Lightside decks were either mono-jedi or Smuggler/Jedi. There were quite a few people running the 1 copy of Along the Gamor run. The darkside top 8 was a lot of scum/stih, similar to the gencon winning deck. Two tie fighter swarm decks made the top 8, one of them being the deck that took second (spoilers ) and There was a really interesting scum/sith deck, being played by Adriaan that had 2 copies of Boba Fett's pod! He ended up with 12 points what put him in 6th place with his SoS but everyone in 3rd-7th place has 12 points so you can kind of say they all tied for 3rd

Conclusion:
I think I made some good meta calls with my decks, I though mono-jedi with the crow was fast enough to win without the need of playing the "Force Lock" style. And Zuckuss and his set really pulled their weight, I personally think people going to worlds should at least give his set another look.

Props:
-The store that hosted did fantastic job, the owner Roy was amazing.
-Devon Balas! He got our local group team shirts made up, what were amazing
-My girlfriend for coming over to watch the finals, made me happy to see her when I won
-Everyone that drove/flew so far to get here, it was amazing to see all you people. I felt bad that I live literally 5 miutes away from the store and some guys had a 6+ hour drive home.
-The user "TheEmprieBringingSexyBack" on the forums came all they way from Alabama what was awesome and I had a awesome time hanging out with you after the event
-And thanks Toqtamish on the forums, I talked to him a lot on facebook leading up to the events about decks and it helped a lot, he is the one that suggested I try Zuckuss, so thanks so much!

Slops:
- I started getting a cold and by the end of the night my throat got so bad I couldn't even talk, and still can't talk.
-There was free pizza but I was too sick to eat pizza