This past weekend, Destiny players from across the galaxy gathered for a rumble on Rix Road, earning gorgeous Crosshair, Cassian, Yaddle spot gloss cards as they competed across 3 heats in the Ferrix Open.
As is often the case in the Galactic Open, players showed up with a wide range of decks, with some familiar to the Resurgence meta and others much more “experimental.” In this case, for every Luke/Yaddle, Palpatine, and Asajj/Bossk, one could spot unlikely heroes like Skreek, Dr. Pershing, and Ben Solo. Themes certainly emerged, however…
Fresh off an 8-0 run at the Mid-Rim Separatists Renewed Prime last month, Cluster Missiles made their presence known in Heat 1, with Jim the TANK bringing Aphra/Pershing/Sentinel and Rando Mando bringing his proven combo of Maul, Partagaz and a Cultist. Aphra would return for Heats 2 and 3 with a bucketload of Annihilator Droids and some sneaky teammates in Leia and Droopy to cheat them out early and often.
The partisans were up to their old tricks, with Cham/Luthen, 2 different versions of Cham/Nemik/Whills, and even a Nemik/Padme/Grogu pairing to create *lots* of Diplomatic Immunity! Clone Troopers were in the house as well, with Hunter/Wrecker, Hunter/Cody, and Rex/Cody showing off what mono red hero is all about.
The most versatile award certainly goes to Asajj Ventress – Relentless Hunter, who teemed up with Bossk (twice), Reva, and Embo over the course of the weekend. And although Palpatine showed up twice with Nute and Skreek to pull off the Ultimate Heist and once with Maul (RDM), the biggest surprise of the weekend was likely the absence of Palpatine’s other big blue partners: Vader and Talzin.
For a recap of the action, we’re catching up with Gameslayer (who won heats 1 and 2 with impressive repeat 6-0 performances!) and KingGrouber, who went 5-1 to win heat 3.
Let’s talk about your decks. Leading up to the event, what drove your decisions around what to play?
KingGrouber: I expected to see a lot of Cluster Missile decks because Rando had just won a tournament with them. Thankfully, I only bumped into them once on the weekend and ran over Rando with a bazillion early damage before he could set up the combo. I think it’s bonkers that the only repeat deck I played against was eNute/Skreek/Palp/Ultimate Heist!
I was originally thinking that I’d play Aayla/Ben in the first heat and my trademark Yaddle/Luke in the 3rd heat. Then, 5 days before tournament started, I was looking through our binder to find more weapons for Aayla and spotted Cody. I’d never played with him before and hadn’t realized how big his dice are, so set off to make it happen. After considering Cara Dune, I went the full theme route with Rex and really liked the synergy.
Gameslayer: As both a player and content creator my habit is to always push myself into being different. For Echobase weeklies I always bring a new deck, and tournaments are the places to show off what I think are my best. I also wanted to show off Redemption-specific decks that will rotate out when the next set drops, but show them early enough that my viewers could play them and have fun themselves for another few months.
I never once considered other people’s decks in my choices, these Galactic Open-style tournaments aren’t the highly competitive scenes where that is necessary. Tournaments without top-cuts can be very luck-based and I definitely got lucky in some of those 6-0 runs.
The way I build decks is I think of something interesting, then just keep adding cards that I might want in the deck into it. Then when I’ve gone through every single card that exists and is legal to play, which can be very quick once you’ve done this many, many times and know most of the cards just by reading the name, I start thinking about what cards to cut. I will often have 70-80 cards in my deck before I start this process, and cutting the last 10 can be very agonizing. At that point I have to look to my rules: “What cards make the deck interesting?” “And does the deck have a maximum of 12 dice and minimum of 8 removal pieces?” Typically when a deck fails it’s because I was greedy and went down to 8 removal to make space for other cards!
Heat 1: Crouching Jawa, Hidden BK
Tell us about this “BK-in-Disguise” deck with Wullffwarro, Gungi, and Jawa Junk Dealer
Gameslayer: In this case I had this cool hero Black Krrsantan deck from long ago that I hadn‘t really managed to show on camera except briefly during the Dathomir invitational, and it’s unplayable once Wullffwarro rotates. I found it early on in Resurgence as I was looking to break the One Last Trick plot and it remains one of my strongest decks; it just had bad matchups into extremely aggressive decks like Son/Qi’ra, but they have since been nerfed, which does make me a bit worried about this one. It had gone 6-0 at a Nottingham regional and I wanted to dominate with it on camera also, so picked it for heat 1: my ‘tryhard’ heat. Honestly I will be happy to see this deck go as well, One Last Trick is in my opinion a very strong plot for decks that can get it off round 1, and Wullffwarro fetching Black Krrsantan is one of those things that has never been ruled against which perhaps should have.
What were the last cards to make the list in each deck? What was card 31 that you wish you could have included?
Gameslayer: I was struggling between Razor Crest and Outrider when building the deck, and I originally went with Outrider, since I am greedy. However after testing I ended up going for Razor Crest, because it felt bad to One Last Trick in an Outrider turn 1 and then just have the die get removed every turn, and if it landed on damage it was surprisingly mediocre. Partisan U-Wings provide an extra Partisan die, Alliance Pathfinders can be rolled in twice a turn typically, and Cloud Riders remove a die. Outrider seems to be on that same level with its card draw, but in reality without Black Market Connection in the deck I found it not providing a lot of tempo, and frankly I didn’t need the card draw. Razor Crest doesn’t provide tempo either, but it’s free with the One Last Trick. It allows me to play some of my removal turn 1 instead of saving the money for these big turn 4 plays, and BK often rolls resources later in the turn, so having something to drop when the opponent immediately kills a character is valuable. It also has a 2 focus side, fantastic for BK and all these expensive supports I am playing. I’d rather have a U-wing or a Cloud Rider, but Razor Crest still works in a way that Outrider just didn’t; it feels fine to resolve a 2 ranged on a 2 cost support but not a 3 ranged on a 4 cost, even with the card draw.
Could you tell us about a particularly tough or fun matchup from this heat?
Gameslayer: My match against Jim The TANK Dorsey’s Tie Fighter Squadron and Cluster Missiles deck went down to the wire. He managed to get Black Stall Station turn 1, and BK struggles against decks that do damage from things that aren’t character dice. This was very suddenly a 10 damage per turn clock, and my deck has 16 starting health spread over 4 characters. I had to intentionally not kill the Dr. Pershing who would have gone off next turn, so that I could set up a lucky BK reset (1 in 3 power action roll), and from there was able to push enough damage to kill his last character. I had to do 28 damage and get through a Den of Thieves by the end of round 3. At least every time he removed a die he also reduced his damage by 2.
KingGrouber: My brother blew me out with his silly Cornelius/Xi’an/Bib deck, but my most competitive match was against Gameslayer. I was able to pour a lot of damage into BK and got him to 2 health remaining, but the double-whammy of him resetting BK by finishing Rex on a 1in3 and me whiffing on my TMTNE was the ballgame. I also really enjoyed my game with Losre – a super nice guy who I’m glad has come back to Destin. I’d never seen that combination of characters (Nute/Palp/Skreek) before!
Heat 2: Relentless & Infamous
Gameslayer: After selecting BK for heat 1, I opened up the Redemption card list and thought about what card I would want to bring back for heat 2. There were plenty of options, such as: Jar’Kai, Watch Your Career, You Must Go To Dagobah, Extra Firepower, but I eventually settled on Relentless Advance. Relentless Advance is a card I hadn’t played with in a year outside of some ARH League matches, but I really enjoyed it back in the day when I ran FN-2199 and 3x Stormtrooper, and then again when the Death Watch Mandalorians came out and I could play yellow with Commander Pyre as a pure burn deck. I dusted this off and brought it back with new and updated cards from Display of Power and Resurgence such as Surprise Tactics, Hanger Bay, Blaster Rifle and Light Repeating Blaster. Heat 2 was my “nostalgia” heat and this deck performed way better than I was expecting.
What were the last cards to make the list in each deck? What was card 31 that you wish you could have included?
Gameslayer: I went back and forth between Pre-Mor Enforcers and Power of the Tribe. Here I am with 32 cards, 12 removal and 8 dice cards. Now, the deck run a lot of damage from hand, so less dice is fine, but cutting Pre-Mor Enforcers would leave me at 6 which felt very low. However, cutting Power of the Tribe would leave me at 10 removal, of which 2 is Den of Thieves, which only protects the Yellow Characters, and not Pyre. Yes the DWMs have Guardian, but Power of the Tribe is a very strong removal piece and specials get around Guardian. Pre-Mor Enforcers also aren’t great if Pyre is defeated, because you need the leader to build it up. Eventually I decided to compromise, I ran 1 copy of each, and it was okay. Pre-Mor Enforcers is unique anyway and having the 7th die card let’s me consistently play a dice a turn, but there were times I was thinking ‘if this was a Power of the Tribe I’d be happier’. I think I’d probably just run the Tribe.
Could you tell us about a particularly tough or fun matchup from this heat?
Gameslayer: My toughest match was probably against Fablewick on Cham/Luthen. He turn 1 Truced into a Tusken Camp, and on round 2 found the Alliance Pathfinders, which he was able to resolve 3 times thanks to Luthen’s power action. I’m sitting there on 5 health going into round 3 with him on 14, after taking into account that I still need to spend an action to use Relentless Advance. His Tusken Camp and Luthen only reach 3 damage, I get off a 6 damage Infamy, and also have the time to play a 501st Assault Team and roll into shields off an E-Web Emplacement. After I take the shields, he plays another Tusken Camp, which doesn’t roll into the 5 damage he needs. I’m able to just barely get the kill before he rerolls his 3 Tusken Raiders, 2 Camp, 2 Cham, 1 Luthen dice that were all in the pool not showing damage or shields.
Heat 3: Wait… What’s Ben Solo Doing Here?
Gameslayer: Finally for the third heat, I was either going to bring something strong or something more experimental depending on how well I had done in the previous 2 heats. Since I was 12-0 and had nothing to prove, I wanted to bring something that was very different Destiny. With Djclero not able to make the event, I decided to bring one of his decks to the field, with almost all of the cards changed of course! 😛 (check out Gameslayer’s version of eNute/Palp/Skreek and the Ultimate Heist HERE)
KingGrouber: I originally created Aayla/Ben for Maz’s Vault (shhhh) when I drew Ben Solo. We built it with physical cards at home so I could try it out and I fell in love! I think part of why I like it is Aayla’s ability to deal damage even without her Jar’Kai‘d weapons: 3 damage sides on her own dice, the Clone Trooper from her PA, and I am No Jedi on her 3 reroll.
What were the last cards to make the list in each deck? What was card 31 that you wish you could have included?
I was on the fence for Chirrut’s Staff but it ended up being a great choice. It costs just 1 to get down early and once you’ve got Jar’Kai, it has 3 sides with 2 damage… or 4 if I have Cara Dune’s Blaster! I also experimented a bit with Shaak-Ti’s Lightsaber (those two blanks are damage with Cara’s Blaster) but stuck with Yoda’s Lightsaber instead since Shoto Saber usually means I have some shields for its special.
Could you tell us about a particularly tough or fun matchup from this heat?
There were some hilarious games in this heat! Rando’s “AnnihiLeiator” deck managed to get 3 of those monster droids out by end of round 2, so that didn’t go so well for Aayla and Ben.
Casero and I were paired in round 3, so we decided to turn off TTS and roll chunky dice here at “Kitchen Table Stadium.” I had a perfect opening draw and had a fully loaded Aayla at beginning of round 2. I rolled in for 9, said “sweet dreams” to Bossk and that was that.
My favorite may have been against Gameslayer in a match where neither of us could stop laughing. I was able to avoid his Ultimate Heist shenanigans by spending my money right away on upgrades, but he kept using Xanadu Blood to give Aayla’s weapons to Ben, who he then killed to flush them all down the drain. In round 4, Aayla was sitting there with only Jar’Kai and a bunch of health; it took some time to reload and finally finish off Skreek.
