Ninja Gaiden v1 0

Title: Ninja Gaiden v1 0
Author: Chris "Jet Jaguar" Wynes
Date: Jun 27, 2000 Rating: 4.0

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Cards:

‘=starting

Locations(9) Y4Throne Room Y4War Room Swamp Farm EndorEwok Village EndorHidden Forest Trail HothEcho Command Center War Room DegobahYoda’s Hut Rendevous Point

Characters(14) EPP Obi-Wan x2 EPP Luke x2 EPP Han x2 Boushh x2 Chewbacca of Kashykk Orrimaarko Jeroen Webb Tawss Khaa ASP-707 x2

Starships(2) GLinG1 Tantive IV

Creatures(2) Nudj x2

Weapons(3) Anakin’s Lightsaber Ewok Catapult x2

Effects(7) Traffic Control Draw Their Fire Frozen Assets Wise Advice What’re You Tryin’ To Push on Us? x2 Disarmed

Interrupts(23) Sense x4 Alter x4 Sorry About the Mess x2 Under Attack x2 On the Edge x3 Nabrun Leids x2 The Signal x2 Weapon Levitation Gift of the Mentor Tunnel Vision Careful Planning’

Strategy: ‘

Other than the cards for the subthemes, I don’t see any cards that stick out as needing a clarification of why they have been included. Most of the cards in this deck have been seen in other such decks, such as the DTF/FrozenAssets combo. Of course, like most winning mains decks it includes a mix of strategies and cards unique to the player…building your deck is part of knowing how to play (and win) with it. That being said, I’ll focus on what I think works together well in this deck, since that (and not posting easily copyable decks) is most likely to help people with deckbuilding. That is why we’re all on this datashare, right?

First I’ll explain the two subthemes

ASP/EwokCatapult– Two each of ASPs, Catapults, and Endor Sites. Use the droid to load a ‘7’ during your control phase. I primarily use this with On the Edge, but it works well with the character elimination cards for subtheme #2, or even just to ensure a good destiny when you don’t have the time to track, or when an opponent’s insert has restricted your tracking ability. With just 2 of each card necessary for the combo, this is definitely a mid-game strategy. Yet, if you lose a critical component early (to Visage, for instance) the independent parts are still useful. Catapults are good as trackable ‘7’s with Traffic Control. The Endor sites can function as 2 battlegrounds towards fulfilling CHYBC (that’s why I didn’t use Chirpa’s Hut.) On the Edge I have actually used to kill off a lone Luke who was about to get a Court-beatdown, and it is still a great retreival card with any high, tracked destiny.
Boushh, Ninja Assassin– If the opponent has no way to eliminate the Undercover Leia, she can wreak havoc. She is difficult to Trample, with a defense value of 4, especially considering that a deck that uses Trample (such as Rops) often has low overall destiny. Equip her with Anakin’s Saber, and she can utilize Sorry About the Mess and Under Attack. Since this is during your control phase, you can load a ‘7’ with the ASP droid to ensure success if necessary. AT-STs are easily killed by Under Attack with the +3 to draw from the lightsaber. A draw of 4 or 5 will take out an AT-AT, even the dreaded Igar/Tempest1. Despite the high deploy required, ninja Boushh on Ralltir can cause trouble for a Rops deck. Use the elimination interrupts to reduce the opponent’s fighting force, then Nabrun over to the location (using DTF/Frozen Assets, which also prevents an Oota-Goota, Solo.) When the Nabrun is successful, and with the decent amount of SAC it probably will be, break her cover and deliver the un-Houjixable beatdown.

Other than that, the deck is played by responding to the opponent. Drawing no characters in the opening hand isn’t a tragedy, since setting up the Effects you’ll want, and getting the interrupts you need, will need to be established first. Many of us have played a “reactive” deck before, it wins because it simultaneously disrupts the opponent’s plan and delivers large force loss. “Proactive” decks suffer from the need to engage in a race with the opponent.

Since it plays basically the same against alot of decks, focusing on disruption and battle damage, this can be adapted against most strategies. Rather than go through each one, I will note a couple strategies that might give it trouble, and how I would react to them.

Hunt Down Space You aren’t designed to win a drain race with this, and the opponent’s drains can give you trouble. Set up the ASP/Catapult trick for retreival to keep you in it. Invading the Executor is not too difficult, and using the Endor sites to fulfill CHYBC will make sure the opponent pays for it. If I expected to see alot of this at a big tourney, I might add in I Hope She’s Alright (the LS Search and Destroy) to compel them to come down to the ground where I can fight. They’ll want to get HD on the ‘7’ side, and if they wanna do that (with the new ruling on Responsibility of Command) they’ll have to eventually try to drive Luke off a battleground. When they come down, hold them off for a turn so you have a chance to use the character elimination stuff. Weapon Levitation will pick off Mara’s Saber, as well as cancel the You Are Beaten which may allow them to get a small beatdown in for themselves.

ISB Drop-n-Drain With IAO in play, those agents at interior sites don’t look so tasty for your mains. You don’t want anybody draining when you’re playing a deck like this, but it could be tough to root those agents off of their sites. You might, in theory, get off a beatdown by deploying from your hand to the interior site and using DTF/Frozen Assets, but drop-n-drain is likely to include Main Course in the deck for that possibility. Luckily, there are only so many good interior draining sites, so the outlook may not be so grim. Force retrieval can even things out alot, even if Secret Plans is out and you have to use alot of force for it (you’ll probably want to use all that force for something when you have a small hand and are trying to track destinies.) You can afford to clean up a few of their sites, since you don’t have sites of your own that you really need those mains at. I see this as a tough game. I think Battle Plan would be a possible addition, though it could hinder you as much as the opponent in other matchups.

Basically, most decks like this can win or lose depending on play skill. I think this deck has lots of tools in it to win. Some of those I adapted from things I saw other players use in tournaments, things that fit well with the rest of the deck. I just thought I’d post this to let the datashare know how I’ve melded a few themes together to win some local tournaments.

Thanks for looking, thoughts and advice are welcome as always’