Mr Vader Meet Mr Calrissian

Title: Mr Vader Meet Mr Calrissian
Author: Steve "Crazy Hermit" Kuperman
Date: May 19, 2000 Rating: 4.0

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Cards:

‘Objective Hunt Down And Destroy The Jedi/Their Fire Has Gone Out Of The Universe

Locations(7) Executor Holotheatre Executor Meditation Chamber Cloud City Casino x4 Cloud City Downtown Plaza

Characters(15) Darth Vader, Dark Lord Of The Sith x2 Darth Vader With Lightsaber x2 Darth Vader x2 Mara Jade, The Emperor’s Hand x2 Grand Moff Tarkin Lando Calrissian x4 Lobot Baraquin D’an

Weapons(3) Vader’s Saber x2 Mara Jade’s Lightsaber

Starships(3) Boba Fett In Slave I Bossk In Bus Zuckuss In Mist Hunter

Interrupts(22) Vader’s Obsession x2 The Circle Is Now Complete x2 Evader x2 Twi’lek Advisor x3 Focused Attack x2 Cloud City Sabacc x7 A Real Hero Torture x3

Effects(9) Presence Of The Force Crush The Rebellion Visage Of The Emperor x3 Reactor Terminal The Dark Path Battle Order Security Precautions ‘

Strategy: ‘

Major deck mistake Substitue You Are Beaten for Epic Duel. Oops.

I imagine by now you’ve seen the slew of Hunt Down And Destroy The Jedi/Sabacc decks turning back up. It reminded me of the first time I saw this potentially abusive decktype, many months ago. At least in the Illinois area, the deck was first originated by Chris Frey, one of the better players around here. His version used I believe 11 Sabaccs, making grabbers an absolute necessity and it was almost an assured win for Chris by 40 if you weren’t. This is a power deck to the extreme, and so I guess I’d better get into the actual strategy.

Obvious question to start off with is Why not fewer Landos and start with AMN to get the Prison. Easy answer I wouldn’t waste my starting interrupt on that when I can just as easily draw Lando. You can’t risk a permanent conversion of Lando (which is why you kill the LS as fast as possible at any cost if conversion occurs), and this becomes only more likely with 2 Landos. Plus, he’s a wild card in Sabacc, it’s a gimme if you draw him in your opening two.

The different effects in here are all outstanding and all provide huge bonuses.

The Dark Path The greatest card of all time to combine with Sabacc. You’re getting ready to duel, use Dark Path to set up a draw, duel. After that, play Sabacc and you get the two back. So amazingly abusive, so, so easy.

Battle Order In here because it’ll hand a game against Ops to you on a silver platter. They can’t drain all that fast, and Sabacc retreival/damage combined with Visage will send them reeling.

Did I mention how great Visage is with Sabacc?

Presence Of The Force is to provide an emergency battleground. Can also enhance drain, it only makes sense in a deck with a small quantity of locations.

Hidden Base Space—A gimme. You take all of their ships, make ‘em lose with Visage, go probe and make them lose more force to Precautions.

Throne Room—A problem if they’re playing any number of Revos. That’s why you ALWAYS start Crush, it’s too big of a risk, unless of course you know the other guy’s deck by heart.

Numbers 3 Tortures works, plus you’ll be retreiving. Kill the grabbers in sabacc if you see them, make them choose between grabbing sabacc or Torture. Either way, you should probably hold on.

Lobot’s around because he can be fetched with A Real Hero and prevents Lando from being converted. A Real Hero adds a couple draws where your Lando is, regardless of the circumstances. That’s pretty versatile.

Problems for the deck (I don’t like to admit them, but it’s the only way to improve)

Heavy Revo with an early grab of Evader. Up the count to 3 if Revo is popular, in place of Battle Order probably.

Conversion of Lando, who then goes up into a starship. Go kill him, fast.

LS Retreival Deck Can take heavy punishment and keep going, might add Secret Plans just for it.

Can’t think of too many other things. I’d like to think this deck is pretty damned solid, except for a lack of activation. Once again, thanks for reviewing, and a huge thanks goes out to Chris Frey for giving me the original inspiration to create a variant on his deck. Also, I should most certainly thank Pat Garcia, for reminding me of this crazy contraption. His deck rocks. ‘