Speeder Surprise
Title: Speeder Surprise
Author: Travis "Com Igar" Rumans
Date: Aug 22, 2001
Rating: 4.5
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Cards:
‘Starting (10)
There Is Good In Him/I Can Save Him
Endor DB
Chief Chirpa’s Hut
Rebel Scout Luke
Luke’s Saber
I Feel The Conflict
HFTMF
Insurrection/Aim High
Insight/Staging Areas
Draw Their Fire (usually)
Ships (3)
Home One
Red Leder in Red One
Gold Leader in Gold One
Locations (2)
Home One DB
Hoth DB
Characters (6)
TK-422
Boush
ASP-707x4
Effects (6)
Incom Corporation
Honor of the Jedi
A Tragedy Has Occured
Maneuvering Flapsx3
Vehicles (18)
Snowspeederx3
Rebel Snowspeederx5
Sandspeederx10
Interrupts (15)
Attack Pattern Deltax2
Shoxking/Grimtaash
Sensex2
It Can Waitx4
Rebel Barrierx4
The Signalx2 ‘
Strategy: ‘
Playing this deck is a ballsy metagame move. It works best as a surprise deck where your opponent doesn’t see it coming. Probably only good for one tournament, because after that word will get around and people won’t go outside.
Draw Their Fire is typically started, but you may want to use the Coruscant grabber instead (so DTF can come out as a surprise move).
You pull DBs, drop if you need activation (speeders are cheap so often you don’t), and move Luke to get the drain of 2 and +3 activation (2 from obj, 1 from Staging).
You essentially auto-win against any deck that deploys to an exterior site. RallOps and YMSYL both more or less have to do this to do much of anything; the Watto objective (if its seeing play in your area) needs Mos Espa. AOBS often put Xizor at an exterior BG. If you don’t believe me, say you have Staging Areas, an ASP Droid, and five Sandspeeders (or snowspeeders). You hit the flaps, drop the droid, drop the five speeders, and your power is 25+ destiny (which will probably suck, admittedly). With the cost for battle, this is 8 force (which is as much as you activate on turn two). That’s without Incom or Attack Pattern Delta; your power is about 30 with either, 35 with both. And, with 18 in the deck, five speeders is a pretty small number. And you can do this on turn TWO-and that’s not hard to set up. And, for the frag of it, the nastiest possible beat is all 18 speeders (10x3+3x3+5x2=49), attack Pattern Delta (+17 power), Incom (+18) comes to 74 power, and, with an ASP Droid, costs 16 force. Now, by comparison, Jedi Luke and Qui Gon (a typical mains beat crew) cost 16 and have power 12-14. Admittedly its unlikely you’ll get all the cards for that, but the beatdown potential of speeders at exterior sites should not be disputed.
It should be obvious that if you can get your opponent to deploy a guy to an exterior site, you win. The trick is getting that to happen because certain decks (space, Deal) won’t do that. Here’s where Luke comes in. He’s pinging them for two a turn, and giving you lots of activation. Unless they’ve been smacked by speeders before, many people will send someone to grab Luke to put a stop to this. That’s why I use Rebel Scout Luke; he makes better bait vs. decks that have no imperials and will just beat him up. Anyway, when they come for Luke, you barrier the scrub they drop, It Can Wait a reinforcement character, and then beat the holy cud out of them. Sense annoying interrupts. Your destiny is sufficently low that Boush can do it, should the need arise.
Not a whole lot to discuss about matchups, there’s just decks where you need to get them to go after Luke and decks where you can flat out beat them up.
The ASP droid is a stud. He makes the speeders drop cheap. Also, he lets you throw speeders back into your deck if you need to draw them again (to beatdown elsewhere), pump diff, or even stack a one for sense.
Monnock has the potential to ruin your day, but I didn’t see any Monnock in my meta so I felt confident giving this to my brother. If Monnock is popular, then don’t play this deck (Monnock probably sees play at least partly to deal with decks like this). You can get around Monnock to an extend by dropping some speeders at DBs for activation, and Barriering and ICWing silly things.
That one Senator hurts, but most people use him because of his politics bonus vs. other Senators and won’t prioritize getting him out because you aren’t playing the senate. Although many know he hurts X-Wing swarm, they may not realize that he hurts Speeder Swarm, too. If they do, well, suck it up and build a good hand and a big activation pile (you don’t really destiny in a pinch) and wait for them to spread. If they’re doing Naboo occupation you may very well get a chance to beat them up handily.
Many variants of Speed Deal I’ve seen start an exterior site. Usually they set up deal like turn two (pull system, pull deal), and their little troopers are no match for the speeders. They give you loads of activation and Kissing one speeder won’t help much. If they’re smart they’ll kiss the ASP Droid, but they might not expect it.
This deck is perhaps not the most solid all-around LS out there, but in the right meta conditions it can be truly devestating. Playing the deck takes much less skill then deciding WHEN to play it. If any deck that uses exterior sites is big in your meta, you can play this deck and watch people scramble to figure out how the frag speeders were dealt with when SE came out.
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