stewsie111 14
Having tried a Kylo/Anakin a few weeks prior at another regional and finishing 3-3, I decided to go for more of an action cheating deck which had great mitigation.
Having played on TTS a lot and meeting a fair few Vaders/Partner as well as FAT vehicles, I decided to give Han/Qi'ra a try with No Allegiance, increasing the health pool from 22 to 24.
Theed Royal Palace is a no brainer for these two with that extra needed resource and action.
Upgrades are minimal as the character base range sides/specials are great with only Qi'ra being the tricksy one with that pay range side and resource modifier. Due to this, quite often, unless they were going for her, most upgrades will go on Han for consistency as well as Qi'ra being rolled out first to be used for mitigation, with yellow relying on dice in the field to resolve.
The Darksaber is a great upgrade and though only played a few times in the tournie, that extra 1 value and redeployment is excellent and had always considered putting 2 in.
The key starting hand card would have to be Infamous which I would say is what makes the deck tick. Being able to ambush Quick Draw with an ambush gun is mental, as well as doing it with In Pursuit. Most fun is also to do it to Double-Cross and Paid Off especially when resolving an opponents focus side to turn dice into range and resolve.
Truce was in the deck until I resented more and more of giving my opponent a resource! But I still wanted to get the resources but better reduce my opponents opportunity to ramp up, hence why "Fair" Trade went in. Quite often this surprised a lot of opponents when they suddenly went from 6 to 1 resources, particularly useful as the deck does need a lot of resources to run.
I wanted a deck to resolve my opponents dice and Double-Cross and Paid Off are both great for this. Okay, Paid off means I give them 2 resources but if I have fair trade later....! The other bonus with these 2 cards is that they resolve big dice, be it character or support, getting round vaders ability and triple laser turret.
A late addition was Rebel, with the deck quite often hitting a discard which meant I could reuse a card. Whilst I wouldn't want it in the opening hand, 2 would may be a bonus in this deck in future.
The deck is skewed more to hero event cards as well to get that extra resource off Hans ability, of which I didn't realise I could of shown both Villain and Hero cards as opposed to just one or the other. Doh! Lesson learnt!
Ideal opening hand would mainly consist of 1 0 cost mitigation, 1 gun, quick draw, fair trade and infamous.
Whilst I was really proud of my performance on the day, I'm not saying this is a tier 1 deck. There was a lot of Vader/Partner decks at the tournie and I met 5 of these out of my 8 games, defeating all of them. So, what I would say is that this is the best Vader killer on the market if you are interested in that.
I lost games due to a lack of familarity with other decks, particularly those that hurt resources and shield up as demonstrated by Matthias's Kit/Yoda, who I met in the top 4. I just couldn't take Kit down!! And due to the focus of the deck on resolving your opponents large dice sides, it will struggle a bit against mid range decks.
Things I would change, felt that the deck could be quicker and would maybe toy with putting in another in pursuit. Otherwise, I was pretty happy with it.
Thanks for reading.