Jacob’s BHBM aka Together We Will Rule The Galaxy

Title: Jacob’s BHBM aka Together We Will Rule The Galaxy
Author: Jacob "Armaedes" Taylor
Date: Nov 27, 2001 Rating: 4.5

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Cards:

‘Locations (6)

Blockade Flagship Bridge

Carida

Death Star 2 Docking Bay

Death Star 2 Throne Room

Endor Landing Platform (Docking Bay)

Naboo Theed Palace Docking Bay

Characters (19)

4-LOM With Concussion Rifle

Aurra Sing

Boba Fett, Bounty Hunter x2

Darth Maul

Darth Maul, Young Apprentice

Dr. Evazan & Ponda Baba

Emperor Palpatine x2

Janus Greejatus x2

Lord Vader x3

Mara Jade, The Emperor’s Hand x2

Mighty Jabba

P-59

Stormtrooper Garrison

Starships (4)

Bossk In Hound’s Tooth

Maul’s Sith Infiltrator

Zuckuss In Mist Hunter x2

Effects (12)

Blast Door Controls

Crush The Rebellion

Fear Is My Ally

First Strike

Imperial Arrest Order & Secret Plans

Insignificant Rebellion

Lateral Damage x2

No Escape

The Phantom Menace

Mobilization Points

Your Destiny

Interrupts (14)

Evader & Monnok x2

Force Lightning

Ghhhk

I Have You Now

Imperial Barrier

Masterful Move

Masterful Move & Endor Occupation

Maul Strikes x2

Prepared Defenses

Sniper & Dark Strike

We Must Accelerate Our Plans x2

You Are Beaten

Weapons (3)

Vader’s Lightsaber

Mara Jade’s Lightsaber

Maul’s Double-Bladed Lightsaber

Objective (1)

Bring Him Before Me / Take Your Father’s Place

Defensive Shields (10)

A Useless Gesture

Allegations Of Corruption

Battle Order

Come Here You Big Coward

Do They Have A Code Clearance?

Fanfare

Oppressive Enforcement

There Is No Try

You Cannot Hide Forever

You’ve Never Won A Race? ‘

Strategy: ‘

DECK UPDATE The deck’s been up 10 minutes and already I noticed a problem with it there’s only 59 cards It actually took me a while to figure out that I’m not missing one; I just typed 14 instead of 15 above the interrupts. So for those of you scoring at home, the deck actually is 60 cards, I’m just hiding one.

END DECK UPDATE

First of all, MAD props go out to Zane Thorp for the original deck design. I was sitting around wondering what dark deck I was going to play for an upcoming tournament, and after having tried most other objectives, I was frustrated by their performance. Zane was playing BHBM and so I said ”I can’t decide what kind of deck to build, just make me a copy of your deck and I’ll play that.” Zane’s deck had been dominating me in a couple of games, so it seemed like a solid choice. His deck played a bunch of Sense and Alter, though, and since WYS is so big in our area I took that out, and then I changed the characters a little bit. Zane decided the SAC was a bad idea too, and so when we went to the tournament our decks were only about ten cards different. Six games later, the deck was 6-0 with a differential of +101. Since then it has won lots and lots of games.

The Start You will obviously start the objective and the Death Star 2 Throne Room. The three effects are up to you, but I recommend Imperial Arrest Order & Secret Plans, Mobilization Points, and Crush The Rebellion. I chose old-school Mobilization Points over the combo because if someone plays Don’t Do That Again, they could then play inserts on you because it’s not always easy to reactivate Mob. Points with the space force in the deck. That’s okay, the only thing you want Mob. Points for is the two generation from Carida, and with it a place to put Lateral Damage. If they start old-school Don’t Do That Again, which some people do, it’s all right. Just verify your deck every turn and draw it up, it’s no biggie. If they aren’t playing Don’t Do That Again at all, or can’t keep you from satisfying it, be prepared to have mega-activation and more force than you know what to do with.

Early Game As with most BHBM decks, you have to play off what you’re opponent does. One of the best advantages of BHBM is the first-turn Palpatine. Use this to your advantage Put him at the Rebel Landing Site, or the Cantina, or some key location where your opponent has to go. Then pull out Force Lightning and I Have You Now and watch your opponent struggle to dislodge you. Follow Palpatine with some backup, maybe Janus for a drain of three or Vader to stop a beat from Luke. The point is, don’t worry about protecting Palpatine. There are two of him in the deck so that you can use the first one offensively, and the second one if you need to turn Luke (which the deck can do without much trouble).

The reason this deck is solid is because of the character selection. You can put almost any two characters in this deck together to get a pair of battle destiny. Palpatine + Stormtrooper Garrison, Mighty Jabba + 4-Lom, Boba Fett + anyone else in the deck except Maul. You can also get some hefty drain bonuses thanks to the sabers, Janus and Stormtrooper Garrison, and with Maul’s infiltrator in the deck, stopping Menace Fades is as easy as losing two force. If you’re going to lose force from a drain there anyway, you might as well lose it on your terms, and suspend their effect while you’re at it

You should establish yourself pretty quickly even without Mobilization Points (you generate eleven by yourself, and that’s enough to run any dark deck that isn’t Big Blue) and take over your opponent’s sites. There is little drain protection in the deck because if they are draining you somewhere, you should just go beat on them. The deck has a lot of characters. This is good for controlling the board - if you can have a couple of guys at each site, your opponent will quickly run out of options. This is, however, bad for your average destiny, which is why I play two Masterful Moves and two Janus. You have to track in this deck in order to make it truly work. If you can’t track, blind destiny will sometimes get the job done for you, but more likely you’ll miss with your weapons about half the time.

Mid Game You should be draining for a pretty sizable sum at your opponents locations by now, so they’re going to have to act fast. In most games I play, my opponent will draw a big hand in order to have more options at their disposal, both on what to play and what to lose to my next monster drain. This is when Monnok hits them. The most I have Monnoked for in this deck is fifteen cards. That’s because after the first one took away a chunk of their hand, they drew a bigger hand again, not expecting a second Monnok. Fifteen cards out of their life force using only two interrupts is not a bad ratio.

Late Game If you need to, go to space. There’s not much space in this deck because you don’t want to stay there long. Zuckuss, Bossk and Lat. Damage can give you a beating you need late-game, but unless you know your opponent doesn’t have much of a space force I wouldn’t recommend sticking them up there just to hang around. They are for a one-turn beat, or maybe a late game satisfying of Battle Order. It was a meta choice to use this amount of space, if you think you need more, you can drop a couple of characters for it, although I think Maul’s Infiltrator will also help out against stuff like the Kessel drain.

Card Choices Special Edition First Strike With Janus on the table, you can get extra use out of your Sniper and Force Lightning. Just battle, retrieve them back, and track them up with Janus. Any kind of retrieval the dark side has sounds good to me. Also an invaluable card when your opponent forgets to save force.

The Phantom Menace A lot of the time, this card is just used for tracking and it never hits the table. However, every now and then you’ll be going against a mains deck and Maul really needs the staying power. Don’t put this card out every game, a seven for a battle destiny can be invaluable and lots of times you will want Maul off the table so you can re-deploy him somewhere else. Just use your best judgment.

Aurra Sing Four force for an ability-four character that works great with Fett. Priceless. I originally ran two Aurras and one of her gun, but it wasn’t worth the card slots. One Aurra Sing definitely IS worth the card slot.

Naboo Theed Palace Docking Bay I determined that this was the best defense against the new Lightsaber Combat objective. Put one of your seven jedi there to flip them back over, and while they are moving their guy over to duel you, set up a Masterful Move and The Phantom Menace, or something similar, for the duel. With those destinies stacked (and you may want to stack one more in case they play Strike Blocked) you can be sure they won’t beat you by more than five. And once the duel is over, you bring down a few of your characters, draw your multiple destiny, and wipe their jedi off the face of the planet.

Why two different Maul personas? To be completely honest with you, Darth Maul with Lightsaber would work best in this type of deck. However, I don’t seem to have one. I usually end up using Coruscant Maul, but Tatooine Maul is still good for stuff like WYS and RST, and also for probing when you put him on Zuckuss in Mist Hunter. Evil.

Why only three Vaders? You don’t want him on the table all the time. Some decks play Luke just for BHBM, so you don’t want to put down Vader to take a point of damage every turn just to deny your opponent a card they don’t need anyway. Vader should be used strategically to take Luke away from decks that actually need him. Therefore, you don’t need him in your opening draw as you generally won’t even want to use him until mid- to late-game. Just make sure you put back your duplicate Vaders you draw up with Janus, and start tracking them so you don’t accidentally draw one for destiny.

Three sabers? Are you crazy? I hate three floating destiny-1s as much as anyone else. But the way I figure it, Jade can pull her saber from the deck, so she’s basically working like an EPP. Then I have the two Maul Strikes to pull the other ones out, and usually I draw one up at some point. I considered dropping Jade completely and instead going with three Mauls, but Jade is just too valuable as a spy who both draws destiny AND has a forfeit = 0 weapon. To me, being able to invade a twix or the Home One Docking Bay is worth the extra 1-destinies.

Do you really need two Janus Greejatus? YES He makes it a lot easier to play with lower-destiny decks and just track for the high ones you occasionally need. With Janus on the table, I can hit anything I swing at and force lightning anything I want to and I also don’t have to worry about immunity because I’m usually able to crack it. And once you can set your destinies up like that, you can play with more characters, and therefore have more board control. In a nutshell, Janus just allows me to play more ability in my deck.

What do you do against force choke? Don’t Do That Again and Goo Nee Tay hurt. They hurt almost any deck, but since mine runs lower on generation, it may hurt me more. But you can still play around it just because of the lack of twix-based light decks out there - your opponent is more than likely to give you a few icons, and that is enough to offset Goo Nee Tay a little. All I need to be able to do is put out two characters a turn and that will work.

Brief Matchups Echo Base Operations I have gone against a LOT of these in my area, especially the X-wing version. This is the game where your Monnok owns, and in the example I gave above where I got fifteen cards in one game from Monnok, it was against an EBO. Since most people will be playing Echo Base Sensors to combat Garrison, they won’t be playing Ice Storms, so once you see EBS hit the table, invade Hoth. You have a lot more characters than they will unless they are doing the mains version. If so, just put Vader out there to capture Luke and the beatdown won’t happen. Group your guys together unless you pull the Ghhk early. Against EBO mains, it will be an even matchup, so as long as you pay attention to what’s going on you should do all right.

Hidden Base Due to the low number of ships you have, this matchup could be rough. Grab your Ghhk, put Maul on Zuckuss in Mist Hunter, and start probing. Luckily, once you start probing you’ll have Mobilization Points back, so you will generate enough to maybe have Bossk and some forfeit probing somewhere else. The only version of Hidden Base flip you have to worry about is the matching pilots version, and it’s hard for them to lay a beat on you. Just be careful you don’t open yourself up to an EPP beating and the game will be yours.

Mains of any kind See the EBO strategy. Use Vader to stop the beats. Your other support characters are more than enough to handle any mains deck. They will be getting multiple destiny, but so will you. And they won’t have Luke. You will.

Quiet Mining Colony Crush The Rebellion OWNS. Only two destiny per battle, so no beats. Grab Path and smack them around like a pro. Palpatine goes to Leia’s Hut first turn, followed by a few backup guys. Don’t even worry about the system, just take over their sites, because you are playing more characters than most QMC decks do. You can actually prevent them from flipping pretty easily, and if they can’t flip, their deck is a pile. A pretty easy matchup.

Watch Your Step This is a deck that actually does need Luke, especially the beatdown version. You probably won’t be able to contend with them in space, so just put Maul and the Infiltrator at Kessel and lose two every turn to block that drain. Palpatine goes to the Cantina first turn. Most WYS decks can’t kick out the Emperor first turn, especially not with force lightning frying their ability-2 smugglers, but be sure to back him up because those crappy ability-2 guys COULD feasibly kick you out of the cantina on the second turn. Against the Raider version, which isn’t common anymore, play Monnok often. Once they lose a couple of raiders, it will be hard for them to do anything to you. This matchup isn’t as hard as you might think.

Rebel Strike Team This is good-old fashioned Dark Side Mains. Rebel Strike Team absolutely CANNOT blow the bunker against mains. So don’t let them. Palpatine, Janus and Garrison drain for four at their Landing Site, Maul and Jade drain for five at the Back Door, and Vader and Fett go camp out in the bunker. A VERY easy matchup.

The New Lightsaber Combat Objective As I already mentioned, the Naboo docking bay is your haven. Put a Jedi there early, make them come to you, and then beat the holy hell out of them. Not even Qui-Gon can handle a beating like this deck can deliver. Just get him away from the ”Ability < 5 Characters go to your used pile” site and the battle is yours.

That should cover most of the more popular matchups. If you have any specific questions, feel free to dmail me. This deck has the tools to beat anything the opponent throws at you if you play smart. It has worked out well for me, and it should work out well for you, too. ‘