The Menace Never Fades

"But wait," you say, "Menace Fades shuts this deck down." Menace Fades is the bane of any heavy drain deck. Anyone playing a deck with lots of drain bonuses, like Rumors or Deal, must be able to address Menace Fades.

Black Sun Fleet is one of the deck’s three main ways to deal with Menace Fades. About half the fleet is independent starships, although Iggy doesn’t provide presence. You can move during your control phase to block their control of a system. Be warned, though, that its a regular move, so don’t do it unless you are prepared to back them up.

Homing Beacon is generally better. For those unfamiliar with this seldom played card, here is the text

Deploy on opponent’s starship (even if ’concealed’) if your bounty hunteror Imperial Leader is on table. Your starships may move for free (and may move as a ’react’) to this location. During your move phase, may cancel Landing Claw on this starship.

 I have played against one LS space deck in the past couple Months. Most LS decks rely on a few very powerful ships loaded with destiny adders to push things through. WYS relies on Outrider+Superfalcon primarily. You play this beautiful card on the ship thats giving you trouble, and park a scrub ship in front of it to block Menace Fades. If they initiate battle, you can react with your entire fleet for free, and you should have enough space power on the table to pound the drek out of them in such a battle. Having an Imperial Leader on table shouldn’t be a problem.

Order to Engage is annoying, but usually its worth it to block one of their drains and get enhanced drains in. If it really bugs you, cut one of the cycling AOs for Point Man.

The third way to avoid Menace Fades is to simply beat them up. This isn’t really reliable, because you also want to spread and drain. Use it only if you can’t get the other cards.

EPP Vader is here for suicide runs. Emporer can hold down DB if they don’t want to come near you so you can satisfy Battle Plan and get another +2. Blizzard 2 can be decent on the ground with a pilot in it. Igar can be pulled by Piett if you drew Merrejk, and Tempest 1 comes out with Battle Deployment. There are 7 AOs here for cycling, although Attack Position is generally more useful in the deploying stuff part of the game and Black Sun Fleet gets around MF. 

Although most decks you simply set up, kill their drains, kill their space stuff, and outdrain them, some specific matchups should be mentioned

Homing Beacon is your friend here, as these decks are more likely than any other to use Landing Claw. Kill Yoxgit with a suicide vader or Igar or anything. Don’t try to hold the AC, you’ll lose. Don’t see profit much anymore.Decree is the best start.

The key is to deny them Menace Fades for a few turns while you still have force to pay for Battle Plan. SSPFT is probably a safer start. Battling them on the ground is suicidal, usually, and don’t deploy Arica unless she has somehwere to run too. You’re better off containing their space presence rather than killing it; if its on the baord, they can’t retrieve it and deploy it again.

A suicide Vader can be useful if they assume you have almost no ground, especially with Circle (since no one exxpects Circle in EOps).

Haven’t seen this much either. Test 1 hurts, but you can go to Dagobah and kill the apprentice to make it go away; Endor is 8, after all. SSPFtT is better start than Decree. 

A tough, tough battle. Expect some huge space battles. Cycling high destiny AOs, Homing Beacon Reactibility, keeping BH ships in play with Return to Base, and judicious use of Admirals and Imperial Command are all keys to victory here. If its a swarm variant, Fighters Coming In or Battle Deployment will help some.

Because so much of TIGIH is scouts, these decks are very smiliar. Basicly, just stall them from canceling Rumors on Endor while you drain them in space. Kill the Talas to call Close Air Support. Against TIGIH, you can’t play Rumors first turn, so wait for them to move Luke over, and deploy Ephant Mon from the reserve (make sure they can’t barrier) and then run to the Bunker. 

I will revise this deck to an SYCFA deck when Tatooine comes out and Jar Jar screws things up...any ideas or suggestions for that are welcome. '