Mango

Title: Mango
Author: Chris "Lt. Cabbage" Moore
Date: Aug 27, 2000 Rating: 4.5

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Cards:

‘Objective (1) You Can Either Profit By This/Or Be Destroyed

Locations (9) Tatooine Jabbas Palace Jabbas Palace Audience Chamber Rendevous Point Yodas Hut Home One War Room Home One Docking Bay Hoth Echo Docking Bay Spaceport Docking Bay Kessel

Characters (16) Master Luke x2 Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight Ben Kenobi x2 Obi-Wan Kenobi Han With Heavy Blaster Pistol x2 Boushh Leia With Blaster Rifle Chewbacca Wedge Antilles Lieutenant Blount Colonel Cracken Melas Harc Seff

Starships (5) Home One Independence Spiral Lando in Millenium Falcon Gold Leader in Gold 1

Weapons (4) Lukes Lightsaber Anakins Lightsaber Obi-Wans Lightsaber x2

Interrupts (20) Heading For The Medical Frigate Sense x3 Alter x3 Clash of Sabers Tunnel Vision x2 Sorry About The Mess The Force Is Strong With This One x2 Rebel Barrier x2 Someone Who Loves You x2 Narrow Escape x2 Gift of The Mentor

Effects (5) Wise Advice Insurrection Twilight Is Upon Me Mantellian Savrip Order To Engage ‘

Strategy: ‘

UPDATE This is just a quick response to one reviewer’s point. You don’t start with premiere Han frozen because 90% of the time you don’t have more than five cards to retrieve when he is rescued. And EPP Han helps scare off attackers when he is free o) END UPDATE

This is the deck that went undefeated in the European tournaments I played in, and in doing so got me second place in the Belgian Grand Slam (and the Dark Side uncut rares sheet o).

Starting stuff is the usual Profit set-up (with EPP Han frozen) with Wise Advice, Insurrection and Twilight is Upon Me deployed using Heading For The Medical Frigate. Twilight is Upon Me is there to fetch The Force Is Strong With This One. This is used to shift Mara out of the Audience Chamber, as she is the alien most players deploy at the start, if they bother (which they usually dont). Just deploy Luke, play TFISWTO and the two battle destiny will quite easily kill Mara. Also, Twilight provides protection against You Are Beaten - bargain

General strategy is to rescue Han as soon as possible and start inflicting the direct damage. Ideally you want to have Ben with Han, but Luke or Chewie with Han will usually scare off Dark Side hit squads. Obviously the Barriers and Narrow Escapes are to help keep Han alive. Once Han is free, start harassing the opponent. I say harassing as opposed to beating up because Han and another main are chillin in the Audience Chamber, but with the Barriers, Narrow Escapes and Savrip youre fairly safe from receiving beats.

The docking bays are obviously deployed using Insurrection. However, dont be too quick to deploy the Spaceport Bay. This can be used simply as an extra Tatooine battleground site, but it is very versatile. If a Ralltiir deck doesnt use its own docking bay then deploy it to Ralltiir to help flip the objective back.

Unusually for Profit, this deck has a fairly strong space contingent. This can really catch your opponent off guard. Ive actually beaten up space decks that have spread too thinly/early, not expecting much resistance from me. Kessel was a late addition to the deck and comes in handy when youre successfully tying up the Dark Side on the ground, yet need to inflict a bit more damage. The Sense/Alter package was included specifically to deal with Lateral Damage and to protect Savrip from Masterful Move, but obviously it helps out elsewhere. The package is fairly light, but Wise Advice enables you to lose a Sense/Alter war and still be fine.

Now for strategy against specific deck types

Ralltiir Operations Profit is great against Ralltiir. See above plan.

DS Space (in whatever form) See above plan. Spread out as much as possible on the ground and harass in space.

Bring Him Before Me Obviously dont use Luke to rescue Han. Wait until Vader is down, then either deploy Luke far away or give him to Vader (not sure which is best yet). If Vader comes down and sits in the Audience Chamber before Han is rescued, then its probably better to rely on Someone Who Loves You. The Tunnel Visions make this easy enough.

Court You have to play this one depending on what you get early on. It may be possible to take over the Audience Chamber quickly, in which case do so. On the other hand, if the DS heavily reinforces the Chamber, then use Someone Who Loves You.

Hunt Down This deck will probably die horribly to Hunt Down as it is (unless theyre stupid enough not to include duelling). Ive not got any duelling protection as Hunt Down has died for the moment. However, it will return. As soon as Hunt Down reappears, find room for a Courage and a Glancing Blow. The best strategy with this deck is to through caution to the wind and hope that you can Sense the duelling interrupts. Its a long shot, but it might just work

Thats the major decks I see (or fear). Now I though Id discuss why I havent included certain cards. Fallen Portal is often favoured in this type of deck. I prefer not to use it, however, as the battles are usually taking place at the opponents locations, so you cant guarantee its usefulness. Ive only added one spare Han because Ive found that its rare for the DS to actually attempt to come and kill him. The various defensive cards easily foil most assassination attempts. Try not to move Han out of the Chamber, so that he cant be Trampled. Finally, a note on the supporting character selection. Ive tried to use characters that are both useful and pilots. That is why there is no Tawss Khaa or Orimaarko.

I think that covers most points. I hope you like the deck.

Cheers, Chris

P.S. The decks called Mango because that was the flavour of Nick Rices Sunny Delight, which was next to me as I wrote up the decklist in Belgium. I couldnt think of a good name in the time I had, and it would be rude to change it now o) ‘