Tournament Report: A Dallas Store Champ

We had our first local Dallas Store Champs a couple weeks ago at Common Ground Games and I had the privilege of judging the tournament. I wanted to talk a little bit about the breakdown of lists, feature our winner and talk more about why I hope for best of 3 becoming the format for all store champ cuts and hopefully the entire game in general.

List Breakdown:

I was pleasantly surprised with our list breakdown, I was expecting a lot more Poe/Maz at the tournament, but we saw a lot of different decks show up, with our most popular deck being Palpatine. While we see a lot of overall diversity, the top 8 players really ended up being decks with burst, which seems to be the prevailing counter to Poe/Maz. With that lets look at our top 4, our top 8, and the overall breakdown of lists.

Top 4:

Vader Apprentice/Kylo
Palp
Luke/Rey
Poe/Maz

5-8:

3x Poe/Maz
1x Palp

Overall Breakdown (36 players):
8x Palpatine
5x Poe/Maz
5x Vader(SOR)/Kylo
3x Rey/Luke
2x Snap/Baze
2x Aura/Jango
2x Qui/Maz
1x FN/Vader(SOR)
1x Vader/Raider (WHAT?!)
1x Jango/Death Trooper/Tie Pilot
1x Luke/Snap
1x Rey/Chewie
1x Unkar/Jabba
1x FN/Royal Guard/Bala
1x FOTrooper/FOTrooper/Guavian/Guavian
1x Rey/Padme/Trooper

As you can see, while we did not have a lot of Poe/Maz players at our tournament, most bubbled to near the top. This shows an interesting trend when compared to the other decks currently considered top tier. The other tier 1 decks were all over the field, really showing that for the most part Destiny is a game of skill over decklist, with one glaring exception. I think Poe/Maz is very beatable, but I'm starting to feel the deck pilots itself a little too well compared to the rest of the field, where decisions really matter.

Our Winner:

Ryan Koch has piloted this deck to 2 store champ wins at this point. I really like this deck as a meta call, the burst from Baby Vader and the special on Kylo can make this an incredibly potent deck against the other tier 1 decks currently. I like the Kylo inclusion here over FN-2199 as I feel it makes this deck a little more nuanced and brings an increased focus on control. Congratulations to Ryan!

EKylo/EVader Dark Apprentice

Emperor's Throne Room

Sith Holocron x2
Vibroknife x2
Mind Prove x2
Force Illusion x2
Force Speed x2
Makashi Training x1
Force Throw x1
Meditate x2
Deflect x2
No Mercy x2
Isolation x2
Feel Your Anger x2
Manipulate x2
Doubt x2
Overconfidence x2
Enrage x1
Anger x1

The Best of 3 Equation

So Store Champs are to run their top cuts as best of 1 instead of best of 3 set out for Regionals, Nationals, and Worlds. This lead to our cut being very draw and dice dependent. While luck always plays a factor in a card game, especially one with dice and cards, a win can be decided so much earlier in this game than others. Palpatine rolling double 3 ranged damage, while his opponent didn't have the removal he needed in his starting hand, determined one of our top 4 games within a handful of minutes. In fact our entire top 4 was done in less time than the standard 35 minute rounds because of dice and draw.

It is because of this I really hope to see best of three become the format for all top cuts at Store Championship and above. Best of three helps account for player skill versus luck by giving players one game to drop because of luck. As it stands now I know our top 4 players are all amazing, yet the cut did nothing to determine who is truly the best player.

In Closing

I had a fantastic day running this tournament and really hope to continue seeing a lot of diverse and fun decks in the meta, I really like seeing the creativity players are showing and combinations people are willing to try. I do think that right now the incentive to be creative is far lower though, because players have to build their decks to beat Poe/Maz, or else they'll hit a roadblock to the top cut.