Jacob’s BHBM aka Blame Canada

Title: Jacob’s BHBM aka Blame Canada
Author: Jacob "Armaedes" Taylor
Date: May 9, 2002 Rating: 4.5

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Cards:

‘Locations (6)

Blockade Flagship Bridge

Carida

Cloud City East Platform (Docking Bay)

Death Star II Docking Bay

Death Star II Throne Room

Endor Landing Platform (Docking Bay)

Characters (15)

4-LOM With Concussion Rifle

Aurra Sing

Darth Maul With Lightsaber x5

Darth Sidious

Darth Vader, Dark Lord Of The Sith x2

Darth Vader With Lightsaber x2

Emperor Palpatine x2

IG-88 With Riot Gun

Starships (2)

Zuckuss In Mist Hunter x2

Effects (19)

After Her x2

Blast Door Controls

Colo Claw Fish

Drop x2

Emperor’s Power

Enter The Bureaucrat x2

Fear Is My Ally

Imperial Arrest Order & Secret Plans

Insignificant Rebellion

Lateral Damage

Mobilization Points

No Escape

The Phantom Menace

Visage Of The Emperor

We’re The Bait

Your Destiny

Interrupts (15)

Hunting Party

I Have You Now

Imperial Artillery

Maul Strikes

Prepared Defenses

Rise My Friend x2

Sniper & Dark Strike

This Is Some Rescue x2

We Must Accelerate Our Plans x3

You Are Beaten x2

Weapons (2)

Aurra Sing’s Blaster Rifle x2

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

Resistance

There Is No Try

You’ve Never Won A Race? ‘

Strategy: ‘

This is a deck that Dominic Gaudreault and I have been working on for a while (Dom is from Canada, hence the title). I saw him say on the Community Buzz that the dark deck that would rule for all time was BHBM with high destiny and five EPP Maul. So I built one off that information alone, and when I sent him the decklist it turns out we were both thinking the same thing for how to play the deck. Ever since Darth Maul with Lightsaber came out, it has become really easy for the dark side to win battles. I mean think about it; Maul with Stick really is a one-man army. Maul with You Are Beaten, I Have You Now, Dark Strike, Maul Strikes . . . he can just about clear a site by himself. With Emperor’s Power making sure you are getting at least two destiny in each battle, it becomes really easy to stack cards on Insignificant Rebellion. Thanks to Darth Sidious, a vast majority of the Star Wars CCG population has decided to go with Luke with Lightsaber instead of Jedi Knight Luke. This means that all you need to do is win two battles, stack a seven, and the game is over.

The Start Obviously you start the BHBM objective with the Throne Room, Your Destiny, Insignificant Rebellion and Fear Is My Ally. Your starting effects will always be Colo Claw Fish, Imperial Arrest Order & Secret Plans, and Mobilization Points. If your opponent plays Don’t Do That Again (and they will) it’s no big deal; Mobilization Points is started so that you can get Carida, so that you have a place to put Lateral Damage. You will never, ever satisfy Don’t Do That Again (unless your opponent is incredibly crappy), but you will still generate plenty; ten icons for yourself, which is enough to drop down Maul with Saber and initiate (even with Goo on the table). This is all you will ever need to deploy in one turn. Zucukuss and 4-LOM go down for the same amount. My second game ever with this deck I went against someone you was doing force-denial. They started the Don’t Do That Again effect, so I didn’t get Carida, and they revoed my Blockade Flagship Bridge. I won that game by 30. Generation is not a problem. Colo Claw Fish is huge in this deck, but if your opponent find some way to get rid of it, it’s not that big of a deal; your average destiny is still insanely high, and Drop makes tracking easy. Claw Fish just adds speed to the deck (you can ”track” from turn one) and isn’t necessary to winning. About half of your deck is four or better, including seven destiny-sevens. What can you not do with that?

Early Game
In the early game, all you need to do is deploy Palpatine and Emperor’s Power (and your locations of course) and then wait for your opponent. If you get Drop on the table, you can draw a handful of cards and then put back the high-destinies or cards you don’t need. As soon as your opponent deploys something (they’ll have to eventually, right?) you drop a character and beat them up and stack a card on Insignificant Rebellion. Every character in the deck can draw destiny by themselves (except for 4-LOM, who can’t battle by himself anyway) so no matter who you have in your hand you can win a battle with them. Emperor’s Power ensures at least two battle destiny in each battle, and there are quite a few exclusion cards like IG-88, You Are Beaten and Sniper & Dark Strike.

I cannot stress enough the importance of putting Vader out early Once your opponent sees all your sevens, and understands what kind of deck you are playing, they won’t give you Luke a lot of the time. With that said, I find it unlikely that this deck will turn Luke in more than one tournament. It’s not too tough for your opponent to stop you from turning Luke, but the deal is, most players aren’t going to see that coming if they’ve never seen the deck before. So expect this deck to turn Luke for you once, but not twice. However, don’t let this fool you into thinking that this deck is a one-time deal; I said you will probably only be able to turn Luke once. With all of the ways to exclude characters and add destiny (and high destiny at that) it’s still not too hard to deplete your opponent’s life force the ”old-fashioned way;” by pounding on them until they don’t have any cards left.

Mid Game At this point Vader should have captured Luke, if that’s the route you’re going to go, and you should have relatively few cards with ability on the table (probably just Palpatine, Vader and maybe Zuckuss in space). Continue your hit and runs with Maul and backup while Vader makes his way to the Throne Room. Rise My Friend is great if you need to get to the Throne Room in a hurry, but I have also included the appropriate docking bays if you’re going against a deck that might not give you one (i.e. QMC and RST). I have often found it useful to back Vader up with someone, in case your opponent decided they want to kill Vader. Often one other character will do this, especially if Colo Claw Fish is still on the table. You should use Drop to put back a 1, 1, 7, so that when you finally get to the Throne Room you have your destinies set up to turn Luke. Remember, most people are playing Luke with Lightsaber, so as soon as you win those two battles high-tail it for the Throne Room; you don’t want to be taking damage from drains and your objective for too long If your opponent is playing Jedi Knight, it’s not a big thing; there are so many convenient ways to win battles in this deck that stacking one more card is usually not a problem.

Late Game
If you are going to turn Luke, do it. With a good draw, you can usually turn Luke while your opponent still has about half his deck left. This pisses him off, so be prepared to duck and run when you do. If you aren’t going to be able to turn Luke (either because your opponent knows what you’re doing or because you’re going against one of those ”Take no damage from Your Destiny” decks like Hyperdrive and We Have A Plan), then use After Her to up your differential and continue drawing those sevens for destiny (courtesy of either the Claw Fish or tracking) until your opponent runs out of Houjixes.

Card Choices We’re The Bait, Visage Of The Emperor, The Phantom Menace, Imperial Artillery, Hunting Party Destiny-7s that will not only be useful against Lightsaber Combat, but that will also make your characters battle-winning fools. Even against light senate Senator Palpatine shouldn’t hurt that much, because Emperor’s Power makes sure you are drawing at least two destiny in each battle.

Aurra Sing’s Blaster Rifle In addition to being a seven, this card also allows a little peon like Aurra to win battles against Jedi. Just stack a seven on the Claw Fish, shoot Qui-Gon to make him a power of zero, and then you get your power of four plus two destiny versus their one destiny. Stack a card on Insignificant Rebellion and don’t forget to say thank you.

This Is Some Rescue I don’t think anyone in my area plays Out Of Commission, but it never hurts to be prepared. With only fifteen characters, nine of which are only two personas, OOC could really hurt you, so use your grabber for it and hope that your two TISR pull you through. Like I said, nobody plays that card here, but if it’s big in your area maybe another TISR or two couldn’t hurt. It’s destiny-six anyway.

Enter The Bureaucrat Actually this card is only in the deck because it was in the original version Dom sent me and I decided not to remove it for something else. I know everyone thinks this card is crap, but against Hidden Base, which doesn’t usually play any Controls, it can help with the Kessel and Naboo drains (a lot of HB players use the Naboo pilot that adds one to drains). If you think it sucks take it out for some more random seven-destinies.

No Escape No Escape is absolutely huge in here. Sure, it stops Honor from cutting off the Your Destiny damage so they don’t have to give you Luke, but more importantly it lets you retrieve the top card of your lost pile This is so freakin’ huge Get back Maul and then beatdown with him. Get back 4-LOM and put him on your second Zuckuss. Even get back the You Are Beaten you played at the end of your opponent’s last turn so that you can play it on someone else this turn. Just a huge card.

Drop x2 SAC is back. If they Alter Drop before I realize they’re playing SAC and can pull Oppressive Enforcement, then it could get hard to stack your destinies like you need them.

Why only two ships? I anticpate having to win only one battle in space at most. Zuckuss + 4-LOM wins you one battle, Zuckuss + Lateral Damage wins another. You can get them quick because Drop allows you to draw a huge hand without much fear of Grimtaash. Most of the focus of light decks these days have switched to ground-based decks thanks to the extreme power of EPP hit and run. Against Hidden Base that plays Luke with Lightsaber, it will be a tough match. Against Hidden base that plays Jedi Knight Luke, you will almost certainly lose. I think everyone agrees that every deck these days has a weakness or two. This deck is weak to Hidden Base, which is fine with me because Hidden Base is slowly dying off thanks to decks like Dark Side Combat and the resurgence of Scum.

Where is Blizzard 4? Blizzard 4 is a great card for this type of deck, because it’s big, cheap, it draws destiny by itself and it’s a high destiny. The deal is, I didn’t want to add any more ability to this deck, and Blizzard 4 isn’t really better than what I have now. The only character in my decklist that’s suspect is Aurra Sing, but with her gun on her and a seven stacked on Claw Fish, she can stack a card versus Qui-Gon while Blizzard 4 might not be able to. If you like Blizzard 4 a lot, I suggest dropping Aurra for it, but ultimately I think you will decide that the character selection I have here is the best to get the job done.

Isn’t that kind of a lot of effects? Yes it is, thanks for noticing. I’ll admit that nineteen effects is a little on the crazy side, but keep in mine that some of those are in the deck just because they are destiny-seven, so they go back into your deck with Drop A lot of the other ones might never be deployed during the game, so it’s not like they hurt your differential, and most of them are high destiny so they don’t hurt my chances of hacking someone up with Maul.

Brief Matchups Echo Base Operations Is anybody playing this anymore? In space you will probably not win more than one battle, but when they come out to the Fourth Marker to satisfy Battle Order (and they always do) beat down on that guy. That’s two cards on Insignificant Rebellion. Since they’re probably playing Luke with Saber or even Commander Luke, that’s game over. If they have Jedi Knight, you’ll have to win one more somehow. If they aren’t playing Ice Storms, it’s not problem. If they are playing Ice Storms, life could get bad for you. Luckily this is not a popular decktype.

Hidden Base Flip Like I said, if they have Luke with saber, it’s hard. If they have Jedi Knight, it’s close to impossible. It all boils down to how cautious they are. If you see a lot of this, add in Search And Destroy, or maybe even another ship or two. I have played against HB Flip maybe twice in all my life, so it’s not a matchup I’m worried about seeing around here.

Mains of any kind A lot of this can be a waiting game. Don’t deploy Palpy until they put something on the table, so that Corran doesn’t ruin your day. I’m actually thinking of adding in a Force Lightning just because Corran is so huge. In any event, they’ll put something out eventually, and when they do you should have quite a nice hand consisting of Maul, a destiny adder (I Have You Now, Maul Strikes), and an exclusion card (You Are Beaten is the best). It’s really not hard to stack cards against this deck, and it’s even easier to take out three or four of their characters in each battle. This is a very fun matchup.

Quiet Mining Colony Path is lame, so grab it. Being able to avoid your battles hurts, but eventually they’ll run out of Paths and then you start to stack cards. Zuckuss can usually make an appearance when they try for early control of the Bespin system. The battle evasion they play makes this a tough matchup, but eventually they’ll run out of places to go and you can get the edge.

Watch Your Step Choke Vader is HUGE in this matchup. I wish I could find room for his saber. They get multiple destinies, but so do you, and no matter how you slice it, Maul is bigger and badder than Talon Karrde ever will be. It’s best to concede space until you get Zuckuss + 4-LOM + Lateral Damage, and see if you can get Bureaucrat on Kessel (a lot of WYS aren’t even playing Control & Tunnel Vision anymore now that they can’t play it twice). When and if you get those three cards together, that will be quite a beating (three battle destiny) and should help a little bit. Sidious won’t be putting any Jedi out of play this game, so stick him in the Cantina to drain (after he beats on whoever is in there, of course) if you feel like it. I suspect that this will be a quick game since you are about as fast as most WYS decks and can draw multiple destiny almost as easily.

Rebel Strike Team Easy matchup. RST is just too slow. I know a lot of you out there are fans of it, and I’ll admit that Lingrell’s deck is pretty tight, but even at Freedomcon it lost to dark mains. And more traditional RST (the kind that play more than two scouts) lose to dark mains. It just doesn’t matter how fast and cheap your scouts go down to the Rebel Landing Site, a main or two will clear out a handful of your guys. They might actually be likely to play Jedi Knight, but it’s so easy to win three battles against them that it doesn’t matter.

Lightsaber Combat Of course this is a tough match, but you have high enough destiny to keep from getting combatted off the table. Eventually they will run out of evasion, or you will accidentally win one of their combats (if they stack anything but sevens), and you will be able to beat them up for some overflow. I only tested against this deck once and I lost by about five, but that was before I had put in cards like After Her (huge when they Dodge away) and Blast Door Controls. Another trick I like is to put After Her on a site, let them drain you for three, and then play Enter The Bureaucrat on the site to limit the drain to one (most of those decks don’t play Control). It’s rough going, but this is one of those matchups where you will be more likely to kill them off than turn Luke. I think with some smart playing, this matchup is very winnable.

If you have any doubts about this deck feel free to d-mail me. It takes some practice to play it well, but once you get down the finer points of this deck it rolls over a lot of other light side decks. ‘