The Emperor s Hand
Title: The Emperor s Hand
Author: Alex "Greedo" Tennet
Date: Aug 15, 2000
Rating: 4.5
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Cards:
‘STARTING (8) Bring Him Before Me DII Throne Room Your Destiny Insignificant Rebellion
- Prepared Defences - Mobilisation Points Imperial Arrest Order You Cannot Hide Forever
LOCATIONS (7) Rendili DII Docking Bay Executor Docking Bay Endor Docking Bay Spaceport Docking Bay Cloud City Downtown Plaza Cloud City Port Town District
CHARACTERS (20) Emperor Palpatine M’iiyoom Onith x5 Lord Vader x3 DV,DLOTS Mara Jade, The Emperor’s Hand x2 Sim Aloo Janus Greejatus Djas Puhr Brangus Glee Jabba The Hutt Admiral Ozzel Captain Sarkli Lieutenant Endicott Officer Evax
STARSHIPS (4) Bossk In Hound’s Tooth Zuckuss In Mist Hunter Dreadnaught x2
WEAPONS (2) Vader’s Lightsaber Mara Jade’s Lightsaber
EFFECTS (2) Search & Destroy Security Precautions
INTERRUPTS (17) Sense x6 Alter x5 Monnok x3 Masterful Move Imperial Barrier I’d Just As Soon Kiss A Wookiee’
Strategy: ‘
***One card over, my apologies. Remove Evax or a sense/alter to get the deck down to 60 cards. If your meta is space heavy, lose the S/A - otherwise I’d get rid of Evax. Thank you.
I played this deck at the European Championship weekend in Brussells. The Emperor’s hot knife had an almost unbeaten run through butter the whole time. It stormed through TIGIH (32 force), Speeder Ops, Mains, Ewoks, Staging Areas, Eloms, Endor scouts and plenty more. One timed loss to Bastian; we had 16 force each when time was called and he had the last turn, allowing him to get his diff to 19. Then a full loss when I drew up against him the next day after a game where nothing went my way (11 force loss).
[From now on I’m going to assume you know (a) the cards, (b) how to play them and (c) that the Emperor can be deployed from reserve, the opponent can do the same with Luke, that IAO grabs docking bays for MP abuse, that this kills Profit horribly and that M’iiyoom Onith is, has always been, and will always be a killer card.]
So how does it work?
Well, for starters it isn’t ROps. This was one of the reasons I chose it. Everyone is ready for ROps, which is a somewhat dangerous choice in a large tournament anyway because it doesn’t win by much. So we are up a few points already.
Second, it abuses Mobilisation Points. I don’t need to explain the merits of this card. What a blinder Pull Rendili before activating first turn. Sac YCHF for SecPrecs at the same time. You can play around numbers so I wouldn’t worry about them. If you draw SecPrecs in starting hand then keep YCHF there to grab Search & Destroy when the time is right.
M’iiyoom Onith is silly with Mobilisation Points. You get enough force second turn to use her, though usually you’ll hang till turn 3. But once she’s out and you’re getting the force, you can just control the game. They can put the bosh on you with Leia, Tawss, Kal Fal, Jess, Laudica, Leesub, Leslomy, Toryn and…oh yes, Karie Neth and the female fish. Wow, BEATDOWN )
The theme is to be in control. Sense and Alter anything dangerous. Don’t just waste them though. 6/5 might seem big but in a game you will only have finite amounts in your hand at any time. Don’t get bluffed and pulled into a losing SAC war. That’s important.
How you play with Luke depends on the deck you face. MWYHL gives this deck the toughest matchup. Removing characters from their hand is killer though. If they don’t have the right cards from the beginning you should win every time. Scrap Honour of the Jedi. It never gave me problems and shouldn’t give you any. There’s a good bunch of low destiny in here and you should nail it on the second attempt at worst against MWYHL, often the first. From then on, track destinies. If you can’t track, practice.
Barrier is a precaution. IJASKAW is a game winner. This helped me in my 32 force win against the same deck used by Bastian in our timed game. He drops Leia and Han (kiss a wookiee) against Mara. Uh-oh. Suicide battle with Leia, she dies, he loses to Insignificant Rebellion. Next turn, reinforce Mara with Vader. He has to drop Han (barrier) and then Orrimaarko. I M’iyoom his other characters away, battle and he can only lose Han (another card for IR). He battles with Orry so as not to lose even more force and loses another card to IR. From then on I had complete control. Play IJASKAW.
Sim Aloo is amazing, use the guy and don’t forget his text. Janus is a mad man for destiny tracking. Sarkli is my new favourite numpty. You should have won the game if you get him starting hand against TIGIH. Otherwise he’s a spy (hello Oola and Crix), he’s a pilot, he’s boosted with IAO, he can sit choking at those lovely twix locations while draining and he adds around 20 to the diff you should be getting against Ops decks already. Shame that the one time I did get him against Speeder Ops, I went and forgot his text and only won by 15. Never again. Take note.
Lastly, Monnok. Three of them deal with just about everything you’ll face. MM ensures you always have one when you need it. This card makes sure you can always M’iiyoom every turn by limiting their hand size. It cuts swarm in half and combined with the SAC, kills EBO and some forms of HB. We all know its values I’m sure. Monnok is an integral part of this deck.
If you have any questions or comments, send them along. I’ll be happy to respond. Finally, if you want to go a step further and just love manipulation, reconstruct this deck with A Dangerous Time. Though it’s intensive, it’s also the last step to complete control. I chose not to play with ADT last weekend due to lack of playtesting time, but that’s going to change. Just an idea for you all. As always, enjoy the deck. ‘