BHBM No Bull

Title: BHBM No Bull
Author: R. "Voice of Law" Smith
Date: Mar 1, 2001 Rating: 4.5

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Cards:

‘Start (8)

Bring Him Before Me/Take Your Father’s Place

Throne Room

Insignificant Rebellion

Your Destiny

Prepared Defenses

IAO

Mob Points

Crush the Rebellion

Locales (4)

Carida

DS2 Dockbay

Cloud City Dockbay

Endor Dockbay

Guys (23)

Palpatine x2

Lord Vader x2

DLOTS x2

Mara Jade x2

Snoova x2

Janus x2

Sim Aloo

Thrawn

Kir Kanos

Mighty Jabba

Xizor

Guri

EPP Fett

ECC IG-88

ECC 4LOM

EJP Dengar

Dr. E and Bob

Weapons (3)

Vader’s Stick

Mara’s Stick

Snoova’s Stick

Ships (4)

Executor

Chimaera

Bossk

Zuckuss

Vehicle

Blizzard 2

Interrupts (13)

Barrier x3

I Have You Now x2

Evader/Monnok x2

Sniper/Strike

You Are Beaten

Ommni/Worse

Force Lightning

Twilek

Operational As Planned

Effects (4)

Hell2Pay

Lateral Damage

Secret Plans

No Escape ‘

Strategy: ‘

Update

Aww poor Matty Sokol, you must still be sore from the last time we met and the beating I gave you then. It’s ok Matty. ”Who the @#$% is Matt Sokol?” Hahahahaaaa.

End update

General strategy DONT deploy Vader. This isn’t Hunt Down. Hold the big guy until you have stacked a few cards and/or he is really needed. DONT forget to make your opponent stack cards. That is essential, and if you forget that even once you will lose.

Get your other power characters out and set up a couple drains. Use the Emperor aggressively. Set up character combos such as Mighty Jabba/Xizor/Guri (two BD and only Guri is targettable with weapons) or Mighty Jabba/4LOM/IG/Fett, or Mara/Dr. E, or just Palpatine with his advisor pals. If your opponent sets up elsewhere, go beat on him and stack some cards. If he comes to you, all the better - you have Barriers. Beat on him and stack some cards. You generally want to hold the Barriers for Luke - if your opponent deploys Luke by himself to a site where you have guys, you Barrier him, then drop a beating on him next turn. True he can come back from lost, but you will have stacked a card. If the opponent puts Luke down with some support (say Han and Chewie) then you might decide to drop Vader there, pick off Luke, choke Chewie, ravage Han; you know the routine. By holding Vader YOU decide when Luke gets captured; this does the following for you

Lets you pick when to start losing to the 7 side of your objective;
Makes your opponent think twice before putting Luke ANYWHERE.
Makes your opponent wonder what the heck is going on. After all, when you look at light decks on this site, more often than not the strategy will say something like ”Against BHBM, give him Luke to start the damage early.” What if he CANT give you Luke? It disrupts his strategy. With the recent influx of high-powered characters and combos for the dark side you are able to ease up on the usual reliance on Vader as the ”army of one” for the ground. Vader is now more of a team player than a solo artist.

Remember, the character count in this deck is high, so it’s ok if Luke keeps coming back from lost and taking out a character of yours, as long as you end up with higher power and stack a card.

Once you have stacked 3 or 4 cards it is usually safe to put Vader down. Then your opponent will have a difficult decision to make lose 3 force a turn, or give you Luke and possibly set up a game-ending duel.

Here are some deck matchups; I have not played this deck in tournament play so these are not ”do this and you will win” strategies. They are ”do this for the best chance of winning” strategies.

Against

EBO First turn Palpy goes to the DS2 docking bay. You may wish to forget about Carida and pull the Executor instead, as you will be going to space to fight. Second turn pull a battleground docking bay and move Palpy there with some support. Begin draining. Look for Thrawn. Get him on the Ex or Chimaera and he will own a system wherever he goes. Use your Lat Damage wisely and try to No Escape it when it is lost the first time (I have done this in a fun game). If they are playing a SuperFalcon variant put Guri in space. Fry Undercovers with Lightning or hit them with Sniper. Drain at the docking bays and win battles in space. When you get 3 or 4 cards stacked, bring Vader.

Hidden Mains They will try to duke it out with you; the best man will win. It may be necessary to capture Luke earlier in this game than usual. Set up some drains at your dockbays and wait for them to come to you. Then fight it out. Should be a fun game.

HB space similar to EBO except easier.

WYS Lewis-style First turn Palpy goes to Docking Bay 94. Do not be an idiot and put him in the Cantina. You will almost always draw one of the following in your hand Barrier, Sim, or Janus. If you draw one of the guys you put them down with Palpatine. If you draw a Barrier you save force for it. Remember that you can pull I Have You Now or Force Lightning.

His first turn he will activate 7 force (assuming you pulled Carida). Chances are very good that on his first turn he will draw a little to stock his hand. This is good. There is not much he can do with 7 force against Palpatine first turn with you holding a Barrier.

Your second turn you will pull your Monnok, activate 4, and play it lost. This should wipe his hand of Palace Raiders and delay him a bit. You have the drain of 1 (2 if Janus was in opening hand) and then you can put some guys in the Cantina. The Cantina will be your safe haven for most of the game. However, you NEVER want to move Palpatine in there because if you do he may get stuck there for the rest of the game. You want him at a docking bay at all times in case you need to go duel. Once again you will need to locate Thrawn and a Star Destroyer to fight at the system. Guri will definitely go to the system. Pulling Carida is not always the best option in this game because they can fly there with the Falcon but you can not. It all depends on how quickly they flip and how much force you need. But with Palpatine holding down DB 94 you should be ok. If Luke is causing you a lot of problems just capture him. An early capture is not too bad against WYS decks because of their limited character selection. Also, your second Monnok will no doubt come in handy - most players do not expect a second one.

WYS any other style

Harvest? Go kill Beru (capture with IG if possible). Kessel drain? Stop that with your ships. Kessel Runs? Twilek for Secret Plans, win battles where you can. Retrieval can’t help a total depletion of life force. Cantina Brawl? Hmm well that could be a problem …

Rebel Strike Team

Your options are many, you have the Endor DBay for easy access and avoidance of Kensaric/Hnemthes, Force Lightning to fry Crix, ships to take over the system and keep them on the zero side … should be another fun game.

Hoth War Room stuff

Go where they are and win battles. Put Mara at a twix site with her saber to drain for 3. Find your grabber (Twilek if necessary) and stop Harvest. Kill Beru. I have not played against this deck but these are some of the things I would do.

Profit

If you do not know how to beat Profit with BHBM then you need help.

Finally here are some weaknesses I have noticed in the list if you have ideas on how to improve these weaknesses without creating new ones, please do tell

Low destiny the average destiny in this deck is not very good; this is somewhat made up for with the presence of trackable interrupts (Lightning, Operational, Ommni/Worse) and 2 Jani (plural of Janus ;-) Also many of my character combos add battle destiny and there are two I Have You Nows for use with Palpy or Vader.

Low damage potential If my opponent does not give me anything to fight I am limited to drains at the docking bays.

No insert protection you can always switch YCHF in there, or just limit your character deployment to Palpatine and a couple destiny = 3 guys.

Low activation I have found in some games that, even with Mob Points, I do not get all the force I want each turn. I guess I am just used to playing SYCFA Scum =)

Bith Shuffle/Desperate Reach can cancel your Barriers. That’s not cool. You will never get beat down for overflow with the high-powered characters in this deck, but having your Barriers canceled is a pain.

There are certainly other weaknesses (this is a BHBM deck after all) but on the whole this deck is powerful, action-oriented, and fun to play.

Thank you for your constructive reviews.

RS ‘