Luca/Tzizvvt’s Mains The Bloodening
Title: Luca/Tzizvvt’s Mains The Bloodening
Author: Luca "Luca/Tzizvvt" Costanzo
Date: Jan 22, 2001
Rating: 4.5
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Cards:
‘Starting (7)
Hidden Base/Whatever Rendezvous Point Tatooine (Hidden Base Indicator) Heading For The Medical Frigate Insurrection Staging Areas Do Or Do Not and Wise Advice
Locations (6)
Dagobah Dagobah Yoda’s Hut Home One Docking Bay Kashyyyk Tatooine Docking Bay Cloud City Docking Bay
Characters (15)
(2) Ben Kenobi (2) Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight Han With Heavy Blaster Pistol Captain Han Solo Leia With Blaster Rifle Lando With Vibro-Ax Chewbacca, Protector Wedge Antilles, Red Squadron Leader Corran Horn Tycho Celchu Mirax Terrik Major Haash’n Orimaarko
Ships (2)
Home One Millennium Falcon
Weapons (2)
Obi-Wan’s Lightsaber Luke’s Lightsaber
Effects (9)
Honor Of The Jedi Menace Fades Battle Plan Bacta Tank Grabber Undercover Ounee Ta Order To Engage YISYW
Interrupts (19)
(4) Tunnel Vision (2) Run Luke, Run (2) Off The Edge (2) On The Edge Fallen Portal Put That Down The Bith Shuffle and Desperate Reach Throw Me Another Charge Sorry About The Mess and Blaster Proficiency Weapon Levitation Gift Of The Mentor Rebel Barrier The Signal ‘
Strategy: ‘
** UPDATE **
Regarding the four tunnel visions. I am still not sure what the mix of normal tunnel vision/combo card is, but I think that it’s something like one combo card and three normal ones if there isn’t much SAC in your meta and two to three combo cards and the rest normal if your meta does have SAC. One in four might not sound like much, but don’t forget that the whole tracking/mirax/retrieval concept applies to it, so you should be able to repeatedly cancel a drain with just the one copy (should the opponent have two places that you don’t want to fight them at, seeing as a spy will stop the first).
What do you guys think?
** END UPDATE **
Intro
First of all, I have to give props to Kyle Craft (I think), who came up with the idea of Hidden Mains. Also, I think that I have to mention Brian Hunter for his version of Hidden Mains and, finally, to all of the people who posted any version of this deck. Oh, and one more thing, if you are unsure about this deck, please make sure to read the whole strategy section and feel free to D-mail me about it.
Quick Explanation
Locations
All pulled from reserve, upping the average destiny of the deck. Pretty self-explanitory, except for the systems. Kashyyyk is in there because the dark side game text makes it a little bit easier to fight there and have a system that you can hold for Battle Plan and Menace Fades. Against space based decks you may be lucky enough to convert their Kashyyyk. Some people seem to think that using Dagobah to pull the Hut gives away too much force. It is more important for you to have force than to keep force from your opponent. Dagobah gives you that force without having to draw for twixes or risk having scrubs at docking bays beaten down. Any dark deck worth its salt will be able to provide itself with enough force.
Characters
Again, fairly self-explanitory. Jedi Luke is necessary because it is almost impossible to beat Huntdown without him. The fact that he happens to be a tank doesn’t go amiss either. One Captain Han and one EPP Han gives a lot of flexibility. And, yes, it is easy enough to get super-falcon established with only one of each component. I tried playing Kal, but half of the time when you fight, one of the players draws more than one destiny, so she was largely useless, seeing as it’s not a smart idea to leave her alone at a docking bay. Seeing as I felt that I needed spies, I chose the rogue squadron spies to allow me to play Grand Moff Wedge. Mirax Terrik is just broken, Haash’n is necessary. I played HB mains without Haash’n. In 3 games, my Home One was Lateral Damaged 3 times. Chewbacca, Protector is really, really good. To round off the mix, I decided to play an Orimaarko as he can be targeted by both edge cards. My aim in playing these characters was to have as much versatility as possible. I want to still be able to win if my opponent kills both my Jedi or whatever (hence only one EPP Leia, I didn’t want to be holding useless cards vs. Hunt Down). Boussh and Tawss Khaa almost made it, but I found Undercover better than Boushh and Tawss Khaa not quite up to scratch. Basically, I’m only playing the best of the best.
Ships
Once again, only the best. Two is plenty. Don’t forget that you don’t actually need to be able to deploy and beatdown on everything, you only need to be able to hold a system or follow your opponent’s stuff around with Order To Engage.
Weapons
Duh
Effects
The default starting effects just set up generation and provide some sort of S/A protection. You probably won’t be dumping scrubs at the Home One Docking Bay early for generation because a) there aren’t all that many cheap scrubs in this deck and b) people play Mara Jade. Staging Areas will, however, be a lot of help later on, once you have some Jedi out. I know that the whole Insight/Honor thing doesn’t kill Hunt Down, but it should buy you a few turns, which is all you really need. Menace Fades and Battle Plan are awesome. In combination, they can wreck most decks, MKOS and Endor Ops especially. Bacta Tank is just too cool. Grabber is mandatory, and there should really be one more in here somewhere, but I ended up taking one out for Ounee Ta. Speaking of which, I think that Ounee Ta is definitely worth playing. Aside from turning Ralltiir Ops into a bye, it can help against various Scum decks and you can usually get something cool like an edge card or a Tunnel Vision back with it. Order To Engage can be somewhat ridiculous and finally, Undercover is for some versatility. Sometimes, it’s just not realistic to go and fight everything.
Interrupts
Tunnel Vision. It’s all about Tunnel Vision. I’m not sure wether or not the combo card is better. Usually, you can get Menace Fades up and running, so you only end up losing one to a drain anyway, but I’m open to suggestion. Maybe the solution is to play some of each. Only time will tell. Edges provide versatile retrieval and allow you to leave a 6 on top of your reserve in your opponent’s turn, then move it to the bottom if you don’t use it. The fact that they only retrieve you about 5 each time means that they are easy to work around Secret Plans. Run Luke, Run is the only card that guarantees that you won’t lose a duel to Hunt Down. Don’t presume that a Courage and a Glancing Blow will do it. 9 times out of 10, it won’t save you. How many times have you read a tournament report and seen someone beat Vader in a duel? Run Luke, Run’s secondary function is also kinda neat against anything with, well, adjacent sites. Fallen Portal, Put That Down, Barrier and Weapon Lev are all in there to keep your characters alive. Weapon Lev also gets you sticks. Put That Down Is incredibly versatile. Don’t take it out. It’s pretty much the only card that will stop 4-LOM’s gun. Bith Shuffle and Desperate Reach stops both Barrier and tracking, all for a destiny 5 used interrupt Sorry About The Mess/Proficiency makes it easy to win fights. Gift is basically to get sticks. Throw Me Another Charge is because sometimes you need fast retrieval and you don’t have time to go searching for whatever to rig destiny. The Signal rounds out the mix. Don’t try to convince me to play 3 Throw Me Another Charge and 3 Fall Of The Legend. I prefer this more versatile mix.
Whoa That was a lot of writing Anyhow, if I’ve still got your attention, onto the matchups
Hunt Down
I’ve actually metagamed fairly specifically against Hunt Down. Change out either Wise Advice or Staging Areas for Insight, unless your opponent starts with No Escape. You can just throw out the first Ben- you won’t want him until very late in the game. Get Jedi Luke out with stick ASAP and make sure to have some cards to protect him (Barrier, Weapon Lev, Fallen Portal, Put That Down). Put an undercover spy to Vader’s site. Your aim is to cause your opponent as much damage as possible with their own Visage. When they deploy No Escape, you will have to decide wether or not to put a spy there. If you are ahead on damage, it’s probably a better idea not to, but if you are behind, you need to cancel it. If your opponent deploys Ephant Mon to the Holotheatre shrug it off and set up a drain at the Med Chamber. Home One can hold Kashyyyk for an extra bit of a drain. Run Luke, Run any duels and just try and get your looping retrieval going. I am yet to lose to Hunt Down with this deck.
BHBM
This deck is not popular in my area, hence no hate for it. Give them Jedi Luke, then you can play a defensive game, similar to playing against Hunt Down and use their objective to keep you ahead in the game. Ben with Stick should never be Circled, owing to the number of cards in here that will stop 4-LOM. If Palpy comes out to play, put some spies to the Throne Room and drain. Retrieve and win, I’m not sure what advice to give besides that. If BHBM is really popular in your area, you may want to throw in a Never Thinking With His Stomach Luke to keep Vader out of the game. You shouldn’t lose duels.
MKOS
This matchup looks like a joke. The premise of MKOS is that they set up big drains and force you to come to them, then they barrier so that they can initiate the battles. A combination of Battle Plan and Menace Fades will ruin their game plan, considering that they activate pretty much jack all. In this game, switch you hidden base from Tatooine to Kashyyyk so that you can deploy Tatooine and put Home One there so that you can use shuttling to negate the Desert Heart. Put some guys to Jabba’s Palace and some guys to the Cloud City Docking bay. Find Fallen Portal. This card is sooo good vs. MKOS. Basically, you force them to come and fight on your terms and you only fight when you can win. If they deploy the Audience Chamber right next to JP, you may be able to have fun with Run Luke, Run
SCUM
This covers both SYCFA Scum and COTVG. You can treat them mostly like MKOS, but you need to be more cautious with COTVG. The starship from reserve text is really dangerous, but Kashyyyk should keep you ahead. If you keep a Barrier in hand, you should be able to initiate the battles in space and win that way. SYCFA Scum is interesting. The difference between this and the other two decks is that it has good force generation. Luckily, you have a Tatooine Docking Bay which means that you can deploy there and avoid having your guys bounced. Menace Fades is more important than Battle Plan as they will be generating plenty of force. Keep a constant eye on your opponent’s hand size and activation so that you can avoid being beatdown.
Ralltiir Ops
Start with Ounee Ta, Insurrection and Staging areas. These three effects in combination will enable you to massively out-activate your opponent. If you have a spy in your starting hand, you should lay a small smackdown on their scrub at a docking bay in order to slow them down. Probably the only game where you will want to hold back on deploying Dagobah and the Hut, as you will be able to implement a ’mini-choke’ with spies cutting down activation at their docking bays. The key is to get to their sites before they do. Of course, they could always hold back on deploying Ralltiir sites and go for the one-turn flip, but then they will activate next to nothing and you will probably have enough time to get Home One or Falcon to Ralltiir. Should be an easy matchup, if you use your noggin.
Endor Ops
The give away 3 force and give themselves 4. Menace Fades. Supa Falcon and Home One. Retrieval. Next
Ties
Probably the hardest matchup, by far. Kill anything that they deploy to the ground in order to implement Battle Plan. Hold back for a little bit before deploying Home One and Falcon and for crying out loud find Major Haash’n. When they have deployed a fair amount, you can stick Falcon and Home One in space. Obviously, it’s not a great idea to deploy in space when your opponent has a 15 card hand an 10 force active already. If you can take over Wakeelmui with both the Falcon and Home One, your opponent will have to pay 3 per drain as well as +2 per tie. Even with SYCFA, that’s still a lot. Hold back for a bit on the retrieval as well, so that you can get it constantly cycling. Mirax Terrik will ensure that you can edge each turn. Should be winnable.
Black Sun
What’re they gonna do? Start with Presence for auto-flip? Fine. Start with Battle Plan. Deploy Tank-Luke to flip them back. With the amount of ’protection’ cards, you should be able to keep him alive. Their objective isn’t too impressive on the 0 side. Bear in mind what characters they will be able to use. If they play Scum, treat it like a Scum deck. If they don’t play Scum, laugh and win. In case you haven’t realised, I’m not too impressed with this objective ) Oh yeah, try and kill Jodo Cast and Fett first because Hidden Weapons can be really cool.
On Metagaming
Obviously I have constructed this deck to deal with the Melbourne metagame (or lack thereof). Melbourne is one crazy area. Hunt Down is fairly popular and beyond that it’s just a fairly even mix of a whole bunch of decks, with Ralltiir Ops being slightly more popular and scum, ties and BHBM being slightly less popular. For these reasons, I went for a really versatile deck. If you want to play this, you should adapt it to your area. If ties are popular, add in an I Hope She’s Allright. If BHBM is popular, try the Reflections II Luke. Whatever, just adapt it so that YOU can win with it.
So that’s about it. This deck, in various different forms, has currently lost one game out of around 15 (by the way, that game was what made me play Haash’n ).
** RESPONSE TO REVIEWS **
Paellon said ”Needs more mains and space power”
I blame myself. Maybe I didn’t explain myself fully. This deck sort of takes a bit of tracking skill to play. More mains are not necessary because you can use edges to retrieve whatever mains you lose. You can then track the cards you retrieved them and draw them or use Mirax Terrik to get them back. That is why Mirax Terrik is so ridiculously overpowered. Furthermore, I am playing Bacta Tank, Put That Down, Rebel Barrier, Weapon Levitation and Fallen Portal specifically to keep the existing mains alive. You find your mains with Tunnel Visions and you can, of course, track them around if you draw them for destiny. Two of the Jedi is fine, because I cannot justify playing sticks for them with only one of each. Every other character is simply just not that useful. One Leia because Hunt Down can potentially make her a bad character. One EPP Han and one Captain Han because they serve entirely different purposes, but no more than two hans because Jabba’s Prize can wreck you. One Lando because against anything but Scum he is simply not that useful and he is easy to find against Scum. One of the other guys because I certainly do not want to be holding two of a scrub (with the possible exception of Mirax Terrik, who is amazing) in a deck where I’ve already explained that multiple mains aren’t good enough.
I can appreciate that it seems that two ships are not enough, but they are the two best ships in the game. There is no point over-extending yourself in space by playing other ships such as Tantive IV/Spiral or matching ships for Wedge or whatever. The most your opponent can realistically do in space is drain you for 2 per system. It may seem that they can do more, but really they can’t. Ominous Rumors gets negated by Menace Fades. Order To Engage makes them lose 3. This is more than a drain of 2. If they spread out, they can’t fight you and will either lose lots of force or lots of ships to Order To Engage. If they don’t spread out, then you avoid them and can out drain them. Home One with Haash’n and any sort of super Falcon can hold a system. That’s all you need to do. Edges win you the race then. If you don’t believe that this deck can hold its own in space, read my last tournament report.
I’m sorry that I didn’t explain this more fully before, but if you can’t grasp these concepts, then you should probably not be reviewing this deck.
To Big Jimmy There are four tunnel visions in this deck. Against Endor Ops, you will activate 20+ force a turn. Four tunnel visions + the two ships = 6. Not many light side decks play 6 ships. If you get ’unlucky’ and lose your ships off the top, you play edge and get them back. You are now lucky because you know where they are. Meanwhile, you have Jedi Luke and Ben Kenobi with sticks running around draining your opponent on the ground. Frequently, this will happen around the first or second turn. Because of the mains, you will not allow them to control too many Endor sites, just the bunker, which is a moot point because you set up Menace Fades. If they have lots of ships and Imperial Commands, it doesn’t matter because they still need to spread to be able to drain for much. Home One + Falcon at a system is at least power 17, added to the fact that you can throw the Red Squadron scrubs and Wedge on to cancel destiny. There is no way that they can spread and drain AND fight you on both the ground and in space with Imperial Command unless they play 5+ Admirals, 15+ ships (at least) and about another 15+ cards for ground. That’s 35 cards. Throw in some locations. It seems that this deck will now only draw ones and twos for battle destiny. I know that it looks suss, butt trust me, you win.
Ties are a different story, but you can apply the same principle. Ties don’t have ominous rumors, so you don’t have to react as quickly. Your retrieval will outlast theirs and, as mentioned above, there is no way that they can fight you on so many fronts. Remember that YOU choose when the fights in space occur, not them, so you just have to use your head and you come out fine.
The Rattler Mike, I know that we have reviewed each other’s decks harshly (if you call 4 stars overly harsh) and that has helped us both to improve. I have always tried to be constructive when reviewing your decks, and I would hope that you would repay the courtesy. A three star review without suggestions or even reasoning was just low and, on top of that, uncalled for.
ADrake Yeah, I did sort of crap on AOBS, didn’t I. To tell you the truth, I have actually heard of a really cool AOBS deck floating around, but it’s based on battling and that’s what this deck does. Put that down, Barrier and Fallen Portal all do their bit to wreck it. I saw a fairly evil IG/Sniper version, but that requires adjacent sites to work, so I think that, yes I did crap on it, but no, it doesn’t worry me anywhere near as much as Hunt Down or Scum.
** END REVIEW RESPONSES **
Thanks for reading this far,
Luca/Tzizvvt
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