Fluffy Pink Profit

Title: Fluffy Pink Profit
Author: Luca "Luca/Tzizvvt" Costanzo
Date: Feb 4, 2001 Rating: 4.5

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Cards:

‘You Can Either Profit By This … / Die

Jabba’s Palace

Audience Chamber

Han With Gun

Insurrection

Staging Areas

Strike Planning

HFTMF

Lar’s Moisture Farm

Spaceport Docking Bay

Hoth Echo Docking Bay

Home One Docking Bay

(3) Ben Kenobi

(3) Master Luke

(3) Ishi Tib

(2) Leia with Blaster

(2) Owen Lars and Beru Lars

Tessek

Lando with Axe

Mirax Terrik

Chewbacca, Protector

General Crix Madine

General Solo

Beezer

Delevar

Blount

Cracken

Obi’s Stick

Luke’s Stick

Wrist Comlink

Obi-Wan’s Journal

Order To Engage

Bacta Tank

Wise Advice

Ounee Ta

(3) Harvest

(2) Run Luke, Run

(2) Gift Of The Mentor

(2) Out Of Comission And Transmission Terminated

The Bith Shuffle and Desperate Reach

Fallen Portal

Clash Of Sabres

Sorry About The Mess + Blaster Proficiency

Weapon Levitation

Glancing Blow

Courage of a Skywalker

Someone Who Loves You

’

Strategy: ‘

This is the Profit deck that I played last tournament that I was asked to post. Profit is notorious for both being one of the strongest objectives when flipped and one of the worst objectives in the game when not flipped. I decided to build this deck as a variant from the damned broken Hidden Mains deck that I had been playing. I don’t like playing the same deck more than a few tournaments in a row, and I hadn’t played Profit in a tournament before. Despite this, I didn’t want to play Profit.

There were two things that I didn’t like about Profit. First was inconsistency (and lack of force generation). I think that you’ll all agree that Profit is probably the worst objective to be inconsistent with. The second thing that I didn’t like was the fact that losing key cards can easily lose you the game. Oh yeah, there was also that issue with if you don’t protect Han, you lose. Not that that was really a major concern P

I solved the inconsistency thingy by adding in Strike Planning/Insurrection/Staging Areas. First turn, Crix goes to the Home One Docking Bay and both searches out your cool and techy scrubs and generates you extra force. Despite this, Profit simply wasn’t activating enough to really be a great deck. I thought to myself ”The main reason that I need activation is to draw cards, so if I could draw cards in some other way, activation wouldn’t be that much of an issue.” Granted, Ishi-Tibs aren’t exactly card drawing, but they do allow you to get new cards into hand as well as rig/improve the average destiny in your deck. Oh yes, you can gain actual card advantage instead of fake card advantage by putting back the scrub that you searched for with Crix to draw a card. In this way, you can transform Crix’s ability from search for a scrub to draw a card. Two GOTM allow for easy fetching of sticks as well as beatdown and maintaining a high average destiny.

I got myself a key card retrieving/looping retrieval cycle by including Harvests. True, I had to cut down on luxuries like Clash of Sabres and other battle-oriented cards, but the fact that Harvest is a destiny 5 as well as being a handy-dandy destiny adder made up for this. If you read my tournament report (Melbourne, 28/01/01 on my page) you will see how broken the Harvests were.

One real last thing to do- figure out how to protect my dudes. This was the main reason for the whole Strike Planning/Crix unit. Observe

Strike Planning fetches Crix.

Crix fetches Beezer.

Beezer fetches Obi-Wan’s Journal and Wrist comlink.

The three Ben Kenobis, the two GOTM and Ben’s stick ensure that you will get Ben + Stick protecting Han early on. Weapon Levitation and some other basic stuff rounded it out.

Basic play

First turn, search for Crix and General Solo (better to have him in hand, where you know where he is). Deploy Crix to the Home One Docking Bay. Search for a scrub, probably Beezer or Delevar. Perhaps deploy an Ishi-Tib with Crix, but more likely draw up. Second to third turn you should get Ben to the AC and hopefully freebie Luke. If you can get a stick on Ben, you should deploy Beezer and grab Obi-Wan’s Journal to inhibit your opponent’s weapons and/or Delevar to stop forfeit from being reduced. If there are guys in the AC well, kill them. There are five destiny adders as well as the sticks and stuff, so it shouldn’t be too hard. You should also deploy an Ishi-Tib to Crix’s docking bay or, if you don’t fear spies, to the Hoth Docking bay. Later on, grab the Wrist Comlink and put it on someone so that you can spread out with a certain degree of safety. Set up Harvest.

Things that I know that people will say

”Profit is crap.”

Yes. It is.

”You only have one Lars’ Farm. How do you expect to set up Harvest? If you lose it you’re screwed.”

Harvest isn’t stopped by not having the Lars’ Farm, it merely retrieves two instead of four. If you lose the Lars’ Farm off the top, either retrieve it when you flip or retrieve it with Harvest. Once you have retrieved it, track it and pick it up again with an Ishi-Tib or Mirax Terrik.

”Your opponent will beatdown on Crix with Mara Jade.”

If your opponent starts with aliens, the most lethal combination is Mara Jade and Dr. E. If Mara is in the AC, she can’t beatdown on Crix. Sure, some people play Sarkli, but beyond that there aren’t many other dark side spies. If your opponent doesn’t start with Mara, be sure to put an Ishi-Tib with Crix so that you can kill Mara. After Crix dies, Harvest him back and draw him with an Ishi-Tib.

”If Han dies you’re screwed.”

My opponent will likely lose more than I will when killing the first Han. Ben with stick and book, Delevar and Han is a pretty hard bunch to kill. If they do somehow manage to kill the lot of them, deploy the second Han. Oh yeah, you can always Harvest back Han, track him and draw him with an Ishi-Tib or Mirax. I haven’t mentioned that already, have I?

”You don’t have enough mains.”

I have enough that I will get free Luke and Obi-Wan early. The rest I will find with those Ishi-Tib cards. They’re really quite good.

”What the hell is Tessek for?”

Oh yeah, that was almost a joke, but it seemed to work out ok. You can use Tessek to establish a small drain at your non-battleground docking bays while you set up. Later on in the game, it’s just more damage. Just golden against Hunt Down or BHBM where you really need to stay just that little bit ahead in the damage race.

Last, but not least …

”What if your Harvest gets grappled or your opponent plays SSP4them?”

How much stuff do you think that you realistically need to Harvest back in one game, anyway? The answer is not much. You basically Harvest back only what you need to win. Let’s take a look at the worst case scenario presume that you use Harvest as a destiny adder when clearing the chamber and it gets grappled first time round. You now have two Harvests left, which is still 4-8 cards OF YOUR CHOICE that you can retrieve. This should be more than adequate to win you the game. In most games, I think that you will get at least two Harvests off before it gets grappled, which is fine.

Matchups

Hunt Down

This is one of the two hardest matchups, but by far the more popular in my area, hence the number of hate cards. There are two OOC+TT, two Run Luke, Run, a Courage of a Skywalker and a Glancing Blow, not to mention the two spies that you can grab from reserve at the beginning of the game. This is one of the few Profit decks that I’ve seen that has a shot against Hunt Down. Cancel Visage ASAP, even if you have to deploy Blount alone to do it. By doing this, not only do you buy yourself some breathing space, but you force your opponent to commit some of the characters that would otherwise be harassing you on Tatooine to the Executor. Find your duelling protection quickly with the Ishi-Tibs. You will usually be able to deploy Ben early as it actually takes a few turns to set up a duel and one duel defence card will usually be enough to get you out of a turn two or three duel. Later on, you will need both. Obi-Wan’s Notepad is especially good vs. Hunt Down as it stops Disarmed which many Hunt Down players use to stop Glancing Blow. Weapon Levitation and Fallen Portal can also help in their own small ways to stop your guys being duelled. When you can protect your guys against Hunt Down, you should easily be able to out-damage them. A hard game, to be sure, but winnable with all of the hate cards. Harvest can allow you to constantly keep Vader clashed (presuming they don’t have CTR) or just constantly Mess Vader.

Scum

SYCFA scum has got to be the other hardest matchup, but other variants of scum are equally as bad. Fortunately for me, scum is not at all popular in the Melbourne tournament scene. Most scum decks will both pile up at the Audience Chamber and start with Power of the Hutt and No Bargain That’s really, really bad, but you still have a chance to recover. You need to set up some decent generation and don’t try to just waltz straight over to the chamber. NSP and Barrier are gay, NSP especially so. You should, instead, try to deploy to your docking bay and march in. You will, of course, be battled all the way in, but if you can get Obi-Wan and Luke with their sticks and Obi-Wan’s book together as well as Delevar, you should be able to make it. Chewbacca, Protector is just awesome if you can get him through. If Scum is really popular in your area, add a few senses. I don’t play any because there’s a fair bit of Hunt Down in Melbourne and Sense isn’t all that good against Hunt Down.

Ralltiir Ops

Start Ounee Ta instead of Staging Areas. Watch out for Arnet stopping reacts. You may want to save Beezer for a beatdown on Ralltiir. Other than that, it’s all common sense.

TDIGWATT/Endor Ops

Against both of these decks it will be a drain race. Endor Ops is slightly off balance, seeing as I have no space in this deck. Realistically, there was no room. Home One might’ve made the cut, but Home One is useless without Haash’n. Someone, who I can’t quite remember, said ’If you’re going to play cheese, go ahead and play it as if counters to it aren’t there. If you try and account for all of the counters, you end up with some watered down piece of crap that can’t even win against decks without the counters.’ That pretty much sums up space in Profit. As for TDIGWATT, you should be able to send at least some stuff over to CC to schmackdown on some stuff.

BHBM

All I can say is that they’d better deploy Vader to the Audience Chamber damned quickly, or free Luke will come speeding out of the reserve to kick some butt. Ben with stick and book can’t be Circled, can’t be disarmed to be Circled and doesn’t stop Circle with anything that can be Sensed. Give them Luke and pile up at the chamber. Free Han and then win. Can be difficult, but if you keep your cool you’ll win. If you give your opponent Luke, they will have to spread out to do some damage to you or lose, slowly but surely, to their own objective. That’s when you whack them good.

Black Sun

Oh no.

I think that that’s about all there is to it. To sum it up, Profit is crap, but this is the best version that I’ve seen. It’s chock to the brim with dinky little tricks and tech (like infinite mess/clash, clash/ote and, my personal favourite, mirax/harvest). Don’t play it if you don’t understand it, but if you can play it well, then by all means change it to suit and go and win a tournament with it.

** Response to reviews **

If I can prevent you from ever freeing Han, ie. start Mara & Xizor first turn, that is devastating. I believe Court gives you an incredibly diffucult match.

C’boath

Yes, C’boath, you’re exactly right. Court is a really, really hard matchup, which is why I went to the length of putting in a detailed strategy section about it (instead of my black sun strategy section). In fact, this deck has only ever lost to court and that is where I came up with the whole ’march in’ concept as opposed to the ’suicidily (however that’s spelled) throw mains at the ac’ concept.

Mara + Xizor on their own, however, will never, ever stop me from freeing the chamber. Without her lightsaber, Mara is nothing and the obi-wan’s journal (from reserve) combined with the practically assured Obi-Wan/Luke and matching sticks will stop mara’s stick. What’s left is, at best, a speed bump. I tried playing double agent to kill mara with ease, seeing as I could search up the required spy, but I’d always killed her before it even became an issue. Xizor, on the other hand, is entirely different. I would almost welcome someone to start with Xizor. Xizor’s a great character, to be sure, but vs this deck he’s nothing but a scrub. Defense value three isn’t exactly great against lightsabers. Hell, you can bounce him with the Massa half the time. Ability 6? Ben by himself fulfils that, meanwhile Massa Luke only needs a scrub to accompany him. Immunity to attrition really doesn’t mean much on a guy who’s already going to be hit and forfeit = 0 before destiny is even drawn.

If the main point that you were trying to get across, C’boath, is that a stacked AC is bad for me, I think that you just need to realise that for the AC to be stacked, your opponent will have started with aliens. If your opponent started with aliens, you are the one in control of when the inevitable beatdown at the AC occurs. Be patient and you will win it.

No SAC-protection=No Good

el-diablo

Obviously my continued references to this deck being tailored specifically to my metagame (in the STRATEGY section) were completely lost on you. If you want to play this in a metagame with lots of SAC, metagame it to your area.

Melbourne has very, very little dark side SAC and, when it does pop up, it is nothing more than token SAC. Hence, a token Wise Advice (not combo for destiny) is enough. If your opponent has sense, use your ishi-tibs and Mirax to find it. Once your opponent cancels your stuff, pick it up again with an Ishi-Tib. Perhaps Do Or Do Not would’ve been a better choice, seeing as you can Harvest back your interrupts. As with the above answer, it takes patience to win a game against someone with heavy SAC, but it is not game.

I can’t remember who said it, but the quote was something like ”If you’re going to play cheese, play cheese. Play as if the counters aren’t there because if you change your deck to beat the counters you end up with some watered down piece of crap that can’t even beat people without the counters.” What I’m trying to say, perhaps ironically, is that you need balls to play Fluffy Pink Profit.

Good deck, good strategy section. Nothing really new but quite well done.

Garion

Thanks. Have you seriously seen a Profit deck with docking bay activation, obi-wan’s book tech, strike planning and harvest all in the same deck? Really? Where? Point me to the guy who copied me. I’ll gut him )

Hoostino

You’re the man. Yes Brilliant Quite possibly the best and by far the most constructive review of a deck I have ever seen. I smell an entirely new idea coming on … If you’re going to give me advice that good, feel free dish out 1/2 star reviews How could I overlook that? Thanks.

** End Responses **

Have a good one,

Luca/Tzizvvt ‘