State Deck- Raveling’s BHBM
Title: State Deck- Raveling’s BHBM
Author: Michael "Gilliatt" Raveling
Date: May 13, 2001
Rating: 4.5
--------------------------------
Cards:
‘Starting(8)
BHBM
Death Star 2Throne Room
Your Destiny
Insignificant Rebellion
Prepared Defences
Mob Points
Imp Arrest Order
Crush The Rebellion
Locations(7)
Death Star 2DB
Executer DB
Endor DB
Fondor
Sullust
Kessel
Endor
Characters(15)
Emperor Palpatine X 3
Darth Vader w Saber X 2
Janus Greejatus
Ig-88 with Riot Gun
Guri
Commander Merrejk
Admiral Piett
Admiral Ozzel
Admiral Chiraneau
Grand Admiral Thrawn
U-3Po
Arica
Ships(8)
Executer
Devestator
Dominator
Avenger
Chimeara
Bossk In Hounds Tooth
Zuckuss in Mist Hunter
Boba Fett in Slave 1
Interrupts(14)
Imperial Command X 5
Force Lightning X 2
I Have You Now X 2
Evader/Monnok
Twilek Advisor
You Are Beaten
Main Course
Omni Box/Its Worse
Effects(6)
Blast Door Controls
Something Special Planned For Them
Lateral Damage
Battle Order
You Cannot Hide Forever
Secret Plans
Admirals Orders(2)
Battle Deployment
We’re In Attack Position Now ‘
Strategy: ‘
Reviewers Comments addressed at end of Strategy section
Getting Started
Use prepared defenses to start with mob. points, IAO, and Crush the Rebellion.
Before you activate, use Mob Points to grab the Executor and use Crush the Rebellion to grab Evader/Monnok. Also pull Piett if you have an Imperial Command. Activate and then use IAO to pull the Executer DB. If you don’t have Merrejk, then you need Piett to pull him out for you. If you have either Piett or Merrejk in your opening hand then use the Imperial Command to get Ozzel. Get Piett to the Exec DB for mob points generation, then put Merrejk down with him if you have enough force. Use Merrejk to start yanking out your systems immediately, usually starting with Kessel. Use your Imperial Commands to get those poor destiny Admirals into your hand for you to use as pilots.
Versus WYS this whole setup would change though. Deploy Emperor to the Cantina. On your opponents turn pull I Have You Now. Now you can hold the Cantina effectively. Leave your Force Lightnings in your deck until you really need them. If they come down with Luke first turn you might be able to draw one for destiny so keep them in there. Versus most other decks the second turn is when you want to make sure you have an Emperor down at a battleground. Then you have to see how they play Luke. They might try to send him on suicide missions in which case you have to remember to stack a card on Insignificant Rebellion. You also need to make sure to play I Have You Now to win the battles. Early game there are still destiny zeros in the deck so be careful.
Mid game
Control your opponent’s hand with Evader/Monnok. If he is draw happy then make him keep his hand size low. If he has lots of doubles then wait until you are about to do some risky deploying then use it to check his hand. Deploy the Executor to Fondor with a pilot or two. Move all your guys from the Exec docking bay to the bridge to avoid any spy beat downs at the docking bays. If you think there will be more ground battles than space battles, then leave the forces at the Exec db and transit them over to Endor later for forfeit fodder. Move the Executor to Endor for the big drain, and to make it more difficult for the light side to deploy/move to you. Drop undercover spies to block ground drains. If you know you’re playing against a hardcore space deck, don’t spread out early. Keep your ships together, settle for modest drains, and wait until you can reinforce.
If they suicide Luke early you get 2 cards stacked on Insig Rebellion through the use of I Have You Now. All you need is one more to get a win through dueling. Once you have 3 cards stacked you have two options. The first is to try to win through dueling. You can put down Vader and grab Luke then move him to the DS2 docking bay with the Emperor. Next turn move over to the Throne Room and duel. The second is to just leave Vader and Emperor to drain while holding Luke captive. You should be out draining them in space and holding one of their most powerful mains to defend ground. You should have most destiny zeros removed from your deck by now. All the DBs are deployed and most of the systems should be out.
Late Game
Using Janus can set up some high destiny. Now you can use Force Lightning with tracked 6s and 5s to kill mains. Use the high destiny to track for Dueling or for battle destiny. Get those 1’s out of your deck and set up in space. Having Chiraneau will give you some strong draining potential in the air. You will normally be able to hold a battleground site, which is generally all you’ll need. With Luke eliminated through capturing the only real main you need to worry about is Obi. The Imperial Commands that you have used to go get admirals have probably started cycling back to you, so use them to limit your opponent’s battle destiny in space, or to add battle destiny yourself.
At this point in the game you should be tracking destinies. You can use recycling admirals orders to get those 6s recycled and you can use the Imp Coms and Force Lightnings to track.
Card Choices
IG-88 with Riot Gun Put him with the Emperor and then use Force Lightning used on the opponent. You can capture Leia with a zero, Obi with a 2, and anyone else that you want. That is power.
SSPFT Since the deck uses no grabbers, this card is the key to stopping a retrieval cycle. It also makes it costly for your opponent’s ships to run away from you using Hyper Escape or anything.
YCHF Lots of low destiny characters means inserts would do more damage to this deck than anything. It is also a nice destiny and can pull battle order.
Blast Door Controls Only one reason this card is in here; stops Rebel Barrier. You might use it sometime to stop Narrow Escape and it is destiny 5.
Evader/Monnok Keep your opponents hand size in check. Also can allow you to check your opponents hand when you need to make sure they don’t have a nasty Fallen Portal or something else that can kill you when you least expect it. Gets rid of doubles too.
Main Course Grabbers can remove your Imperial Commands but the only thing that can stop you from playing them when you need them is a Sense or a Frozen Assets/Draw Their Fire. I planned against a Frozen Assets counter to Imperial Command and Main Course is a nice destiny 5 too.
Omni Box/ Its Worse One of my favorite used interrupts. Can stop your opponent from doing tracking. Face it, everyone tries to track and you can stop it with this card.
Slave I A good all around ship. It has a scomp link if you need to hide Merrjeck there. It has immunity to attrition and draw by itself. It is also hard to shoot down with x-wing cannons and since it is a starfighter it helps for purposes of that AO.
Dominator This card is in the deck because Brian Hunter says that it will help me get a better review from Dominic. It also has ability 2 and is a cheap Star Destroyer.
Kessel Ships deploy -1 and your opponent needs 6 ability to draw destiny. Also good for just reducing the drain at Kessel against an annoying WYS deck that hopes to hurt you for three there in the early game.
Docking Bay Selection All of the docking bays make transitting to them expensive. The Endor DB is the most expensive battleground of them all. Make the light side player pay to move thier guys around.
Sullust/Endor Two/Two systems means Menace Fades and Jedi Test 1 cannot counter them Endor is about the best drain system of them all because of the plus one deploy and plus one to move to. Really expensive with SSPFT out. The parsecs make it easy to move the Executer around.
Battle Deployment Reduces power of x-wings when they swarm you and keeps your opponent from drawing more than one battle destiny on the ground. Destiny 6 aint too bad.
We’re In Attack Position Cheaper admirals and more immunity is worthy of inclusion. The force loss is relatively useless but you might get to use it with Merrjeck once in a while if he is at Endor. Having two AOs means I can track one by replacing it as well as having one to replace the light side one whenever I need to.
Vader w Sabers My preferred vader choice because I never plan on him living very long and chopping with his saber is nice when combined with Force Lightning and You Are Beaten can be used nicely.
Deck Matchups
Versus WYS Brian Hunter guarantees his ISB deck is an auto win versus WYS but I guarantee this BHBM is even better prepared versus WYS. It parks the Emperor in the Cantina and can remove Luke from the game whenever you draw Vader to do it. You have Force Lightning because all those smugglers are wimps. You have Ig-88 which is the wimp Smugglers worst nightmare. You have Kessel to convert theirs. You have Battle Deployment, Imperial Command, and Guri to limit their destiny. Two Admirals Orders to replace their Admirals Order. Evader/Monnok to kill their doubles and limit their hand. SSPFT to keep them from playing retrieval out of their lost pile. Lateral Damage to stop the Outrider. You have enough ships and systems to control space and drain enough to make it hurt. You can control any system you want with enough time and a proper set up.
Versus Hidden Mains Where does this decktype drain? On the ground, at opponents sites? Isn’t that the Emperor and Vader at the DB? Isn’t Luke going to be captured? Aren’t my mains going to be wimps? Isn’t Imperial Command going to remove the super falcons destiny adders? Shouldn’t you win?
Versus TIGIH You got the ultimate first turn against TIGIH. Put Emperor down at the DB. They activate 2. Now what? Get Vader is what. Escort Luke with Vader, and try to keep him out of harm’s way. Battle on the ground as little as possible, and let your space-drains do their thing. Use your spies to block their drains. These decks have little ability to fight in space and usually only include the Home 1 or the Calrissian Falcon. You get off to a good start and cripple your opponents activation. Not bad huh? The down side is you have to deploy Vader as early as possible. That sucks because you will start to lose one force right away.
Versus EBO Use Battle Deployment to reduce the x-wings power. Don’t let your BH ships get shot with x-wing laser cannons. You have the ships to put up plenty of battle in space and whenever you get SSPFT it is going to be expensive to run from you. The might use Rebel Barriers to save them from any beatdown but use Blast Door Controls to stop that. Eliminate thier ships from the systems. They might try to put Luke at the North Ridge early. Go get em with Vader and then move into Hoth to avoid the Ice Storm.
Versus Jedi Testing Emperor goes to the Endor DB first turn. Your most important card in this matchup is that docking bay. You need to hold that one battleground site to let you get around Battle Plan, so that your big drains won’t cost you a bunch of force that you want to be using to reinforce your locations. Keep your forces concentrated, don’t try to get in early drains before test 1 is finished, or you might leave yourself vulnerable to early beatdown by the super Falcon. Just be patient, apply steady pressure, and by the time they are ready to flip, they will probably not have the force to pay for Secret Plans and retrieve ten. Remember to do Your Destiny if they are training Luke.
Versus Yavin 4 mains This match up is about the same as the match against Hidden Mains. They won’t have many places to drain but they will come to space to fight you. Imperial Command is your friend. You might want to put Guri up in space too.
Versus Profit Start Arica undercover as your only alien. You get a spy and you get a 1 destiny out of your deck. Put the Emperor at Jabba’s Palace when you feel safe. Once they free Han they then have to either sit at the Audience Chamber and drain for zero or move over to the Emperors site where you can use Force Lightning on that guy. You might want to think long and hard about how early you put the Emperor down at Jabba’s Palace because a free Luke from reserve along with Obi and an Gift of the Mentor could spell an early loss for you. So be safe and wait for a Vader to come into your hand. The direct damage from their objective is their only weapon against you. They will be weak in space because they cannot play the Super Falcon and have so little activation to start.
This deck went undefeated for me in the Minnesota states through four tough games.
I have to give lots of credit to Brian Hunter for inspiration. His ISB deck was the basis for this BHBM.
So why go away from his ISB deck to a BHBM platform? His ISB deck is slow to set up. He admits that it takes time to get things going and to set up all the systems and get things rolling. While that is ok my play style is the exact opposite. I like to apply the pressure right away and make my opponent react to what I am doing. I like the ability to know exactly what my opponent is going to do. Everyone plays against BHBM the exact same way, deploy Suicide Luke. With three Emperors and the interrupts in this deck you can let the Emperor be the target of these assaults and get away with some early game pressure.
In states, I was most worried about a match up with a Jedi Training deck where early game pressure is the most important part to winning because after test 5 is completed nothing stops MWYHL. So with this in mind BHBM makes an excellent vehicle for early game pressure.
Their was another match up I wanted to counter. WYS European (Falke/Winkelhaus)was a consideration. I was also scared of the Luke/Han battle. That is something that is a non-factor when Luke is captured by Vader automatically with BHBM and the Emperor can Force Lightning Han before any battles take place.
So thanks to Brian Hunter for the inspiration. This deck intentionally mimics his ISB deck in lots of important ways. It also deviates from his deck to fit into my local meta and to incorporate my own play style.
You can see how this deck performed in my States tournament report that I just posted. Check it out.
Any Questions?
Reviewers comments
-
Why play with so few vaders? The flipped side of BHBM makes you lose 1 force a turn. That sucks. Sometimes your opponent will put Luke at a site where you can just put an undercover spy down and block his drain. That is preferrable to capturing him. Sometimes the opponent will wait to deploy Luke from reserve until Vader is down. But once you put Vader down at a site, any opponent is just going to give you Luke and your going to flip your objective and start losing force. You don’t want that because you need all your cards. You need to be able to counter things that your opponent does and once you start losing cards to a steady drain you are going to regret it. So you have to work without Vader as much as possible. Don’t think that BHBM needs to have 5 Vaders because it doesn’t. Suicide Luke sucks but you need to work around it and play BHBM in such a way that you don’t get hit by the constant loss of 1 and suicide Luke.
-
Destiny sucks, right? The destiny in this deck does not suck. All your locations are downloadable. Merrejk pulls the systems and all DBs are pulled by IAO. The admirals are pulled by IC. IC recycles. Janus helps recycle the 6s and 5s. The only thing that is low are the starships. Force Lightning can be recycled too. You also get a nice Bith Shuffle to track. There are lots of high destinies in this deck and towards the midgame they should be almost all that is left in your reserve.
-
Where is 4-lom? He is my character of the year 2000 but it is now 2001. 4-lom is more of a offensive character in ground decks or when you include multiple Zuckuss in Mist Hunter. This deck is mostly defensive with an imperial space fleet. No room for 4-lom in that. Good question though.
-Michael Raveling ‘