Crossfire In The Court

Title: Crossfire In The Court
Author: Andrew "Gadget" Ledwith
Date: Mar 15, 2000 Rating: 4.0

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Cards:

‘Locations (8) Jabba’s Palace Audience Chamber Jabba’s Palace Dungeon Spaceport Docking Bay Tatooine Cantina Tatooine Docking Bay 94 Tatooine Great Pit Of Carkoon Tatooine Jabba’s Palace Tatooine Mos Eisley

Characters (19) 4-LOM With Concussion Rifle x2 Bane Malar Bossk with Mortar Gun x2 Brangus Glee Chall Bekan Cloud City Engineer Dengar with Blaster Carbine x2 Djas Puhr Dr. Evazan IG-88 With Riot Gun x2 Jabba x2 Jodo Kast Mara Jade, The Emperor’s Hand x2

Starships (4) Boba Fett in Slave I x2 Zuckuss in Mist Hunter x2

Interrupts (14) Elis Helrot x2 Hutt Smooch x2 Imperial Barrier x2 Jabba’s Through With You x2 Oo-ta Goo-ta, Solo? x2 Sniper Twi’lek Advisor x3

Effects (11) All Wrapped Up Crossfire Presence Of The Force x2 Reactor Terminal Resistance Scum And Villainy Search And Destroy Secret Plans Security Precautions There’ll Be Hell To Pay

Weapons (2) Boba Fett’s Blaster Rifle Mara Jade’s Lightsaber

Devices (1) Interrogation Array

Objective (1) Court Of The Vile Gangster / I Shall Enjoy Watching You Die ‘

Strategy: ‘

Ok, so you are all probably wondering what the tech in this deck is. Let me start by saying I hate the term tech. I think it is hackneyed term, but in this situation I will use it just so I can relate to those of you who like the term. Well, here’s a list of the cards that I think qualify as tech

Crossfire - Heh. One of my favorite cards after EJP. Your power is +5 in battle when you fire two weapons (except sabers). So what? Well this is actually pretty big. To put in persective, this gives a higher power bonus then Dark Deal (think of a deck that used both…). There are 8 characters in this deck with permanent weapons, and 1 blaster rifle. Just fire any two of these and you have a +5 in power. All it says is fire; you don’t even have to be successful. Here’s some real tech. Scenario you’re battling your opponent’s lone character. Think you can’t use Crossfire? Sure you can Just fire weapons that do different things. You can either hit him, capture him, or give him a concussion (4-LOM). Side note you can suspend S-Foils when Fett In Slave 1 is present I was toying with the idea of including a vehicle with maneuver >3, but I think Dengar and Fett’s Rifle can take care of speeder well enough. Note to one of my reviews No, Dengar cannot become an 8 in power by firing his weapon twice. Crossfire specifies that you must fire 2 weapons in battle, because then any character with a weapon that fires repeatedly would be power +5. Decipher does have a few brains working for them…

Jabba’s Through With You - Same principle. Adds a destiny after your bounty hunter fires a weapon. It can also be used to search for Fett’s Rifle if you really need it that badly.

Interrogation Array - Ok, this is not a capture deck. But if you capture someone like Boussh or TK-422 with Hutt Smooch, or someone else with Bossk or Iggy, there really isn’t much you can do with them. At least with this card they are further hurting the opponent. Throw them in the prison (one of your starters) and let the array do it’s work. The opponent will lose 1 force per turn for each character of ability>2 inside. Another idea that I have chosen not to use in this deck is the ability to pull out Torture for #s protection. I personally like Resistance better anyway, and since I start with 2 BGs (and can pull out DBs with the Objective) it’s easy to fulfill.

Cloud City Engineer - Starting to see more use, but I figured I’d explain him anyway. He’s almost useless if the opponent isn’t using a Profit deck, but he’s worth it. When you play Profit, one of your starting characters is Chall Bekan. He allows you to pull out a non-unique alien during your deploy phase. So on you first turn you may take out the Engineer. He will deploy for free as a result of Chall’s text, Jabba’s text (your other starting alien), and S&V’s text. You can then use 3 force to convert the AC. You can then choose to use the AC text to pull out another alien (usually Mara Jade), or wait to use this on another turn. Either way, the opponent will activate one less force next turn. If the opponent is NOT using Profit, don’t throw him away just yet. If Jabba is at the AC, he’ll be a forfeit of 5 Forfeit fodder at it’s finest.

Okay, now to start the starting combos and such.

Vs. Profit - Always start with Scum and Villany, with Jabba and Chall in the AC. Just battle the snot out of them, retrieving 2 each time. Keep the AC the whole game if you can. If it looks like you’ll lose the AC, try to get out Secret Plans to kill the retrieval (you shouldn’t ever lose control early, so he’d have to save a ton of force to deploy to the AC, battle, and then have 5-10 left over). Capture mains with the appropriate weapons or All Wrapped Up to prevent battle after battle from the same cast of characters. One last note don’t worry about a start of Scramble. You’ll have Jabba and the CC Engineer to draw a destiny for you. If they still want to battle you, lose Chall first so that Scramble becomes lost. They’ll have all but wasted their starting effect if they do this.

Vs. Hidden Base - Start either S&V, Crossfire, or Security Precautions. S&V is a possibility because you can do a little retrieval on the side, plus drop your aliens a little cheaper from the beginning. I would probably not start this unless I knew that the deck didn’t flip and also did not have suicide EPPs. I would be very tempted to start Crossfire if I thought I’d see suicide EPPs. This way I can keep my characters in groups where I have 2 weapons so my power would be +5. If you want to play it safe, you can always start Security Precautions. Once they flip, use your ships as probing machines (don’t forget you can get them out with Court). Do NOT deploy ships before a flip unless it is absolutely necessary.

Vs. Hidden Base w/ Kessel Running RFCs - I haven’t played this type of deck, but I am a little afraid of it. I would be very tempted to start Secret Plans. I’d appreciate comments on this. To the person who commented that Oota Goota Solo cancels Kessel Run - I did know that, but thank you anyway. However I am mostly concerned about what to start vs. this deck, not how to play it.

Vs. Throne Room w/ or w/o Revo - Whatever you do, do NOT start S&V. I had a bad experience involving this. My opponent gets to go first, getting 7 force on his opening turn. He deployed Bron Burs (3 force) to the AC, and used the LS AC text (4 force) to cancel S&V Argh There’s only one in the deck, so a move like that from the opponent can be devestating, even if you could kill that character the next turn. I would probably start Crossfire to get the +5 in power. Most of the Throne Room decks are mains deck, so you’ll need all the help you can get. To start things off, Revo can really only take away 1 icon (dungeon) so don’t worry about that. The only location that I wouldn’t deploy when playing Revo is Mos Eisely. The others are either 1-1s or immune to it.

Vs. MWYHL - Start either S&V or Crossfire. This deck really doesn’t feel the effects of Testing. There are no force drain modifiers. The ability 6 requirement isn’t hard to come by. And if they go any farther they will probably not have enough guns left to fight you, since they will have devoted so much to testing. You should be able to spread and drain at will. Just be alert for a crazy 7s deck. The Surprise Assaults can be nasty

Vs Ops - This one I’d probably start S&V more times than Crossfire, but either is acceptable. This game with be a challenge, but you’ll win. Just fish for Dengar, Jodo, and Fett’s Rifle and shoot down the speeders. A friend of mine did this with a Court deck and actually flipped the Objective back You should pull Jabba out with the AC text and leave him there (with 1 other character just to draw destiny, either Chall or the CC Engineer if you can arrange it). This will make S&V immune to pretty much everything, since most Ops decks don’t go off their planets. You will then be free to battle and retrieve at will.

Vs. anything else - I’d probably start either S&V or Crossfire vs. anything else. It’s really your choice.

Some notes on decisions I’ve made with this deck

Boba Fett persona selection - Why no character version? Here’s what I’ve come to. The EPP verions only has one thing going for it it’s destiny adders. I’ll sacrifice it. In my opinion, the actual weapon card is so much better (esp. on his brother Jodo). The CC version is for capturing with Bounty. Since I’m not doing any of that I’ll skip that. The SE one is even worse than the other two. So I’m looking at these cards and I come to the comclusion that he’s just as good as any other power 4 ability 3 character. I’d rather have him in space, where he’s a god. I can also pull the ship out with Court.

Starship selection - I know I only have 4 ships, and only 2 different ships. First I’ll explain why I didn’t use the other BH ships. I don’t want to use empty ships. Those aren’t card efficient. I tried to avoid using ships AND characters of the same persona. Plus, these are the only ones besides Bossk’s ship that can get a destiny by itself. Bossk’s EJP version is too good to pass up. Since there is no Zuckuss with a weapon, and since his text is a thing of beauty, he’s in. The reason I chose Fett is explained above. Now just listen to what I just them for. You should not even deploy these ships unless you are playing Hidden Base and your opponent has flipped. The only other situation I can see is if your opponent has really spread thin at a system and you can make him not draw a destiny with Zuckuss. But this is risky since you don’t have much power, so he may still win the battle if you get a poor destiny draw. You can try putting 4-LOM on Zuckuss’ ship to get an extra destiny, but this really isn’t a good use of his gametext. Just be aware that it’s an option.

Presense Of The Force vs. More Locations - a) PotF is not effected by Revo b) PotF has a higher destiny c) It can increase my drain potential on any location d) Djas Puhr becomes the mac daddy in the AC with PotF e) It can also be used as a sort of spy-like card

Spaceport Docking Bay - For early generation vs. choke and also to get to an Ops planet should I need to. Don’t forget it can be pulled with the Objective.

Search And Destroy - This card works wonders vs. many versions of Hidden Base. You can hit them up for a lot of force over the course of the game without ever draining. In addition to the 1 per turn from the Objective, you make them lose one on EACH players’ move phase. This can really speed up the game, and cannot be canceled like a drain can.

Boba Fett’s Blaster Rifle - It should be deployed on Jodo to take advantage of his weapon-enhancing gametext. The initial firing it free and at any time he can add 2 to the targeting. This is great when trying to hit someone like Leia or Luke (and yes, I have hit both with this combo). Don’t forget, Jabba’s Through With You can pull it out, which can be pretty good since it will cycle a destiny 5 back into your deck.

First Strike - Please don’t ask me to add this. When I first made the deck, I just plain ran out of room. I would have probably put it in if I could have. After playing without it, I have decided that I don’t need it. S&V is enough battling retrieval. I also don’t like the prospect of losing 1 when battled, and this deck usually gets battled a lot. I see Draw Their Fire so much anyways, so I’d be just as happy to use their card to retrieve for me.

One final note This deck does NOT use many multiples. Now read that again. This deck does NOT use many multiples. It uses plenty of doubles but the odds of you getting 2 of the same card in your hand when there are only 2 in the deck are not too good. You’d have to draw up most of your deck to get both in most cases. The only card there is more than 2 of is Twi’lek (3), and one becomes lost at the beginning. Please do not tell me my deck is weak to Grimtash (whatever that means). Just don’t draw a ton of cards at a time. Keep your hand under 12 cards and it will be rare for you to have doubles in your hand.

I have played this deck 4 times in tournament play. It has gone 3-1, only losing to a nasty crazy 7s deck w/ force choke. It has beaten MWYHL, ASP Ewok Catapults, and Bothuwai Ops (non-speeder). I mostly want to get feedback on whether this deck can be a consistent tournament winner (it has already helped me win 1 tournament). Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks ‘