Pittsburgh, PA SW: CCG Anyone?

Sunday might work for me, and Tuesday definitely will. I'll check on if I have small group this Sunday (we canceled it last week) or if we are just going to get back on schedule and have it next Sunday evening.

The Obi Wan solution sounds good to me- I basivally wanted him to help protect Yavin from any Imperial incursions.

On the strategy front, I'd love to see what the LS Death Star does- I don't have it =( That objective seems worthy, but do remember reading somewhere that the DS Objective is used primarily w/o flipping- and they dont' blow up anything with it, which stinks.

On the plus side, I finally got my booster boxes I won on eBay. I got one of Tatooine and one of DS2. I got almost a complete set of Tatooine and I pulled Jedi Luke, Billy Dee, and Wedgers from the DS box. Hurray!

 

Greetings, blokes.

Shewski... that's unfortunate you don't have the LS Death Star System. I have it. And just wait till it goes "Boom!"

Heh heh. Hee hee. Bwa ha ha haha aha aha ha!!!

*composes self*

At any rate, just let me know whenever you find out which day is better.

Also, Stina/Oreckel, which day would be better for you?

Congrats on your luck with the Tatooine box, too, Shewski. Nothing else quite like tearing off the plastic from the box and then ripping through 30 fresh packs. Ahhhhhh.... memories.

Opens Premiere pack and finds Vader,
Yours Truly

 

It mainly depends on where it is. I'm at a kind of school until 4:30 Tuesday, and that's up in the north hills - I can't drive all the way downtown from there. If it's near me somewhere then we'll see. I'm totally free, sunday, though.

 

Well, I found out a little more about my schedule. I don't have small group on Sunday, but I don't know when I will be back home. In the afternoon on Sunday, I'll be in Bridgeville watching the girlfriends sister in a play then getting some grub.

If you want to do Sunday, I should make it- the later the better however.

Let me know (412-242-0459) if you want to do it tomorrow.

I'll check the thread tonight if I can.

EDIT:

It's tonight and I'm sure you all are having a fun weekend. I will be back at a relatively good hour tomorrow night, so I will give you a call, Ben, when I do to see if anything was decided. If not we can figure out a good time- I think Tuesday is ok still, but I'm not sure- I am going out to dinner and I don't know how long that will last.

 

Greetings, blokes.

Shewski... tomorrow (Sunday) I get off work at 5:30, so I'll probably get back to the homestead round 6:00. If you've called, I'll give you a call back. If I haven't heard from you, I'll call you no later than 7:00. Hope we can play tomorrow.

Till then,
Yours Truly

 

Well, the long-awaited meeting finally happened. Albeit I was running around like a chicken with its head off for most of this week, I was able to get one deck assembled as Ben walked in my front door. He was gracious in letting me try to pull together another one while we shot the breeze.

The battle of Yavin was reenacted, with the Rebels being played by me and EVIL by Ben. Luke, Wedge and Han blew the thing before going home- But Ben gets his chance to be the heroes next time.

I made a Jawa deck and won, in a very limited game. Ben was using his scouts on Endor, and put down a potent force at the System with some bounty hunteres in their ships. I finally amassed enough of a fleet to take the system and let the Jawa fun bunch drain merrily away on Tatooine. Ben did expose a weakness of the deck by simply drawing up all his Force every turn- I couldn't deploy the little stinkers!

Finally, Ben wanted a rematch between his Trooper Deck and my Hoth Hidey hole deck. In a very long and drawn out game, I got a win, but Ben really took care of business by sending out an Imperial Decree. My main characters were able to hang around longer than they should due to a Bacta tank..

Phew! We played till 1 AM and I'm a bit sleepy now, but it was worth it! I'll post some critiques later!

CRITIQUES

DS Deck:

I can't be too sure of how it would work, but the objective would be nice to get gunners and sites. You may not even have to flip it since you can still target Yavin. I was impressed with your space fleet, but I was a little suprised that you didn't try to take the fight to Yavin. The Tallon Rolling Vader was nice- if you had a few more of them you could have picked off a lot of my fleet. I think that the shooting bonus cards from SE would have been helpful too. The biggest thing that I see is that you need Force to attack ships in the Trench. Hopefully you can blow the crap out of planets with a few changes.

Endor-
Well, I didn't see its full power and I don't know how a deck that that is supposed to work yet, so I think I will abstain from too much critiquing. The space armada was good- I think you forgot to cancel my immunity to attrition with Dengar once. Tempest 1 and Igar were awesome! An Admiral's Order from ds2 lets you pull a combat vehicle once per turn- that could be useful.

Troopers-
Wow you kicked my @$$ with destiny draws. You should throw in some suprise assaults and really punish me in space. I think that Imp Propoganda hurts too much to use it. Elis Helrot may be useful so that your troopers can converge and destroy easily. Plus if you are sure you will win, why not throw in a You Overestimate your chances to triple battle damage? Strategic reserves, of course- we'll trade for that soon!

All in all, three very cool decks!

 

Greetings, blokes.

As our preparation for our "impromptu session" last night was more or less a completely last-minute affair, we couldn't give ample warning to either Stina and Oreckel to give them a heads-up, but hopefully planning for next time will be a bit less harried, and one or both of you might be able to join us. (If we knew your phone numbers, it'd be easier to keep you informed of our plans.)

At any rate, once again, I got pasted in all our games, though it wasn't for lack of trying, that's for sure.

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HIDEY-HOLE HOTH REMATCH
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My stormtroopers quite literally murdered Obi-Wan Kenobi about four times in the course of this game, but that pesky Bacta Tank kept him coming back. And any time I did any damage, Luke and Leia paused a moment to Reflect upon their lives, and retrieved a whole bunch of force. Thankfully, I overturned Figrin D'an something on the order of four times, giving myself a few extra force. (All Blaster Rifles for some reason.)

[Editor's Note: The destiny draws for my Trooper Deck is simply nuts! It was like I couldn't pull anything less than 5 the whole game! Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!)

The problem is that Shewski was doing a rather unfortunately decent job of hiding from me, once again preventing my troopers from issuing a proper beatdown. However, since he couldn't get his amazing force drain bonuses, and I couldn't get any damage to stick because of his crazy retrieval situation, the game took FOR-EVER.

But, the fact that he was damaging me more consistently than I him, the troopers eventually dropped down dead.

--------------------------------
YAVIN VS. DEATH STAR
--------------------------------
This game was SO close, that it eerily paralleled the tension at the end of A New Hope.

A difference of ONE TURN spelled victory/defeat.

(Vader's inadvertent suicide didn't help matters, though. )

If Shewski hadn't made the Death Star go BOOM, I would've nuked Yavin on my next turn.

Great game.

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JAWAS AND BIKERS
--------------------------
This game wasn't terribly interesting as Shewski amassed a gathering of aliens on Tatooine, I amassed a gathering of AT-STs on Endor, and we only really had one battle at the Endor System.

For some reason, I couldn't get any Endor sites out, preventing me from flipping my objective. Pesky Fate!

------------------
CRITIQUES
------------------

[My] BIKERS:
When I was previewing the Biker Scout deck before I played it, it became immediately clear it needed considerably more work. (You may have noticed that as I felt compelled to borrow your cards to plug holes. ) I'll rethink it and fix it up so that I can thrash you on the next go-around.

[Shewski's] ALIENS:
Unfortunately, I can't really give a decent critique since we didn't really interact for the whole game. It seems like it was doing what it was supposed to. One downfall seems that you're pretty much sequestered to Tatooine. But, then, that's the nature of the Jawa.

[My] DEATH STAR:
For some inane reason, it didn't occur to me that all the Death Star sites had "Death Star" in the title and fell under the provisions for searching that the objective gives. (*smacks forehead* Duh!) I think if I throw that bad-boy in there, it'd be all good. I could get things moving one heck of a lot faster. I could probably sub out a few non-unique fighters for some more interrupts. (I'm thinking stuff that jacks up my maneuver.) That could be useful.

[Shewski's] YAVIN IV:
Looks good to me. The fact our game was SO CLOSE seems to be evidence that we both did our job well. Swapping sides should be all kinds of fun, and I'm looking forward to a rematch.

[My] TROOPERS:
I had an epiphany a little while ago about this deck. I've determined that clumping guys on the table and chasing the enemy won't win the game. (It's too easy to just keep running away.)

In order to win, my troopers need to spring up out of nowhere and lay unexpe

 

Yes, very fun gaming the other night indeed!

Saturday won't work for me, I has a little Christmas get together over at a friend's apartment in the evening. Friday may work. I'll check my schedule and get back to you.

As far as trades, PM your email address and I can send you my trades/needs file. I'm pretty much happy to do 1 for 1 on anything, mains excepted.

Back to work!

 

Greetings, blokes.

Well, I think I've finally done it. Last night I stayed up until 6am tweaking my Troopers deck, and I think this may be the first incarnation of a truly killer deck design:

Troopers 2.0!

I noticed in the two previous games that the stormtroopers simply have to be in battle. It's the only way for the deck to win. I also noticed that plunking down a bunchload of them on a site, and then moving them around won't work, since the opponent will almost always just run away.

So, basically, in order to pull a win out, they need to be in a fight, and once they are in that fight, they need to drop the Hammer of Might... hard.

Because after that fight, the cat will be out of the bag, and the enemy will be more cautious. Their back needs to be snapped in that initial skirmish.

I've done a few dry runs, and depending on the power total of the enemy picking the fight, the Hammer of Might *could* be completely damning.

Once again, the hardest part will be to convince the enemy to get into a fight. I put one or two more things in there to hopefully instigate them, but nothing's foolproof. And, as always, there's at least one card that could totally neuter the effects of the Hammer of Might, but I just gotta hope and pray they don't have one in hand when the Hammer goes flying. (The Hammer could also be replicated, but the odds of the opponent falling for it again would be pretty low.)

I don't think the deck'll be perfect until version 2.2 or 2.3, but I'm pretty sure I'm on the right strategic track now. I can't wait to see how it performs in its new body.

I'm going to test it a bit more, just to be sure, but I'm pretty happy with how it currently performs in my laboratory experiments. I'll also fiddle around with my other decks to hopefully make them stronger. I gotta sit down and make a new half-way decent Rebel deck. Something to accompany Troopers 2.0 if we ever get back into the tournament scene.

I suppose just let me know when would be most convenient for you to play again, Shewski, and then you can then feel the wrath of the Hammer of Might.

Likes being cryptic,
Yours Truly

 

Oh, great, now he's got pithy names for his decks

 

Greetings, blokes.

That's one of the many symptoms of staying up waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay past one's bedtime.



Watches as random stormtrooper plugs Obi-Wan,
Yours Truly

 

I think I will rename my Hoth Hidey Hole Deck the Night of The Living Dead (since all my characters, like any good zombie, won't stay dead)

My Sabacc deck will be called The Gambler starring Billy Dee Williams, Jawa deck can be Midgets in Dirty Rags, and my upcoming Hoth deck AT-AT A-Go-Go!

Hurray for pithyness!

 

Friday night after work will work for me. Do you want me grab a pizza or anything like that for dinner?

 

Greetings, blokes.

Shewski, that sounds super-sweet.

My place or yours?

Likes pizza,
Yours Truly

 

I can do your place, since it is more or less on the way home- unless you REALLY want to drive over again I'll just bring my cards to work with me. Do you know of any good pizza places near you? If we can find one, I'll look for one of those buy a pizza get some pop free deals.

 

Greetings, blokes.

Shewski, whenever we order pizza, it's generally from Pizza Outlet. (They're the only ones who stick ads on the door. ) I've got some coupons at the homestead, so if you just swung over, we could figure out what we wanted, then just get it delivered.

I honestly have no idea if there are any pizza joints between where you work and where I live. (I do know there's lots of trees and hills, though. )

So unless you're dying of hunger and want to call ahead somewhere and then pick it up on your way here, we can just order it up and get it delivered while we play.

Lookin' forward to swinging the Hammer of Might at you.

Deploying those crazy troopers,
Yours Truly

 

Ok, sounds good.

I'll just swing by after work and we'll go from there.

See you then!

 

Oh, I didn't know if you are ready, but I have my entire CCG collection in my back seat in case you want to do some trading.

Looking forward to tonight!

 

Greetings, blokes.

Shewski, although I haven't put together my doubles or anything, I'd be all about doing some trading. At the very least we could do our "Strategic Reserves/Something Else" trade. And then you could maybe take a gander at my collection to see if anything tickles your fancy. I still have your needs/wants list, and I'm pretty sure I've got doubles of some stuff on there. I haven't taken the time to go through and verify that, but that can be worried about later.

Also, I stayed up real late last night (again) putting together a brand-spankin' new deck! A Rebel deck, no less! A rather strange, weird, bizarre experimental deck, too. I have no idea if it can work, or will work, or can even win, but it's got a whole bunch of cards/concepts in it that I've always wanted to play but never have. (Nor have I ever even *seen* them played.)

And if you thought the destiny draws on my Trooper deck were high.... heh heh.... ha ha.... bwa ha ha hah aha haha ah a!

Oughta be interestin'. See you tonight.

Deploys Disarmed on Vader,
Yours Truly

 

Excellent-


I look forward to seeing your new decks in action- I brought all 6 of my decks!

See you!

 

Greetings, blokes.

Shewski... while perusing my collection last night, I found an old-school card that could significantly help your Midgets in Dirty Rags Deck (if it's not already in there, that is.)

Premiere Edition:
Location - Tatooine: Jawa Camp
Your jawas deploy here for 1 force from you only, for free if Sandcrawler present.

That would solve the problem of your opponent wiping out his force pile to prevent deployment of jawas.

Since it's a common, I can't imagine you don't have it, and I'm kind of surprised I don't recall seeing it come out during the course of our last game. Of course, I wasn't really paying much attention to Tatooine sites during that game, and could have just overlooked it.

Just figured I'd mention it.

Shuffles his deck,
Yours Truly

 

I did consider the Camp, but I thought that I'd rather use the Jawa Canyon, which gives me some power and forfeit bonuses instead.

Best case scenario I can hurt the opponent by using some of their Force- but to counter your massive card drawing I threw in 2 copies of blue milk. I can choose any player to activate a Force- hopefully that will let me get those Jawas out- since they are necesary for my drains to get the bonus from Tessek.

 

Greetings, blokes.

Well, of course, it happened again. Shewski and I got together, and I ended up getting beat on like a red-headed stepchild.

Actually, our first game "Empire's Revenge" was exceedingly close, and I lost mainly because I made a poor tactical decision. I elected to start a battle rather than run another Attack Run on the Death Star, (which I actually would have blown up if I'd tried) and had Yavin IV explode underneath my feet on Shewski's next turn. So close... so close.

After that, the AT-AT-A-Go-Go absolutely trampled all over my Late Night Moisture Farming deck. It was a beat-down of epic proportions.

Later, the Troopers got lost in a snowstorm in our "Night of the Revenge of the Hoth Hidey Hole Battle Part II." Qui-Gon scrambled out of the way of the brunt of the Hammer of Might which consolidated Shewski's win.

Then a whole bunch of Midgets in Dirty Rags rose up against their Trooper oppressors and won an ugly battle of attrition.

Next, that pesky Gambler, Billy Dee Williams, started beating up on those cute, cuddly, huggable Ewoks with a large wooden stick. (Better game than expected, actually, as I hadn't looked at the Ewok deck for a long, long time, but a HUGE tactical error helped me lose the game at the end. I left a non-ewok commando alone at a site, and wasn't able to give him the backup that he so sorely needed.)

Lastly, a horde of Bounty Hunters almost had their revenge on Qui-Gon, when 4-LOM subdued him with his Concussion Rifle, which allowed IG-88 to take him captive. On their way to the Sarlaac pit, though, Obi-Wan Kenobi jumped out of the shadows to help his old master, and laid a beat-down on the poor bounty hunters. On the plus side, a rancor happily fed himself upon a scrawny little Jawa. Bwa ha ha ha!

After all those shenanigans, we did a couple of trades, and then parted ways. I think I can safely say a good time was had by all.

CRITIQUES
Once again, I think we both successfully designed killer "Yavin vs. Death Star" decks. Neither one appears to need any major revamps. Consider some Tallon Rolls for your DS deck, though, Shewski. Very, very useful card for axing X-wings.

AT-AT-A-Go-Go looks very awesome. It definitely ripped me a new one. Game didn't last long enough to reveal any flaws.

Your Jawas continue to make me nervous. One of these days, I might be able to take 'em down. It may be a little susceptible to space battle beatdowns (with Luke all alone all the time), but if I recall correctly, you also have the Outrider and other stuff in there to back him up.

Billy Dee seems pretty solid, too, but as that game was basically non-confrontational, I can't really give you good feedback on it (once again.)

WHEN NEXT WE MEET
Unfortunately, it looks like we won't be able to meet up until after the major holidays, but that'll give us both extra time to tweak our decks and go crazy on the next go-around.

It also gives us way more time to try to involve other people... *looks in both Stina and Oreckel's respective directions* If we can nail down a specific date pretty soon, maybe we can ALL get together and have some fun.

I'm going to focus on tweaking out the Bounty Hunters and Ewoks. I'm also considering giving the Troopers some space back-up but am afraid that would dilute the Hammer a bit. To be honest, I'm not sure what else I *could* do to it, that wouldn't dilute the Hammer. I gotta go card-text reading methinks, to see if anything useful jumps out at me.

Just for giggles, Shewski, I decided to check our respective World Ranks on Decipher's tournament site. The level of disparity in our rankings is kind of humorous.

Shewski: Ranked #5453 in the known world.
Yours Truly: Ranked #28361 in the known world.

Only about 23,000 slots in between us... heh heh.

Apparently the site doesn't seem to track results anymore, which is unfortunate, (as I can never improve my lowly position) but it was fun to see where we sat.

That's about all I got for this installment. Till next time!

 

Greetings, blokes.

Shewski, before I forget, here's the link to that amazingly handy CCG Reference List page, in case you haven't found it yet.

This thing rocks!

I just used it to help me plug a hole in Troopers 2.0! And it won't even dilute the Hammer! If anything, it'll strengthen it! I need to mull it over a bit, but I'll have some nifty additions to it for the next time we play. I'm all bristling with excitement now. Hee hee!

Does 60 damage using non-unique troopers,
Yours Truly

 

Yeah, Friday night was very fun- we played, we chatted, we killed a pizza and a 2 liter, and we traded. Good times!

I agree with the lack of critiques on our Battle of Yavin decks- both games have been extremely close, and you DEFINITELY deserved to win the rematch.

On to other critiques:

The Moisture Farming Deck:

This one is hard for me to figure out. You had the drains set up quickly, and I would have taken a large amount of damage if not for playing Imperial Decree. The one battle was a tactical error on your part, as you said, but I don't think you have any design problems. You are packing Sandwhirl to basically rock anyone who attacks you outside a vehicle, I believe. I mentioned adding You Will Take Me To Jabba to get out aliens. Uh-Oh! is that card which makes Bo Shuda uncancellable and is worth consideration. Ditto with that Underworld Contacts- which makes your Force drains unmodifiable. It was just a tough matchup- the vehicles are a pain, and powerful to boot. If you throw in a small space force, Tatooine and the Tatooine celebration, ala my Jawas, I think you could basically stockpile at one location, or go for a massive (and unmodifiable) drain race with a bunch of kitonaks who are backed up by houjix.

The Troopers:

The insanely high destiny draws are still helpful- I guess my only problem with this deck is that you are still dependent on making the Rebels engage you in battle. I think instead of using some effects like Search and Destroy and that Dagobah one you should be setting up your own drains- if it is painful enough, an overconfident Rebel may try to stop you and then you can drop the hammer. As you mentioned, some space support can't hurt. I'd consider setting up a Dark Deal, or someplace where you can still win EVEN if you can't get the decisive bone crushing battle you so desperately want. IM4-099 from SE is a handy droid- he can prevent reacting when with your trooper, which would stink especially if your opponent was running Tauntauns or Arconas. The only problem would be you may need more troopers so you can hold a location and yet still spring a trap. A minor bit of space support could help seal the Dark Deal and also help counteract the Battle Order tax.

The troopers, part 2, did have me worried. This was the first time where I had to interact with you on the battlefield. You had a nice little lock on the Hutt Trade Route for the longest time, and I think one of the things that saved me yet again was the Battle Order tax. I was able to last out your draining and regenerate a bit of it, but once I get my Jawa's powered up, its trouble. If all my pieces are in place, I can have power 5, forfeit 9 Jawas running wild. I think the same thing applies- you need to have an ability to win without battles. I only have 3 ships in the deck, the Falcon, Outrider, and Artoo in Red 5, so I am not a space force, but I want to hold Tatooine if I can so my I can keep celebrating.

The Ewoks:

I think it is a fun idea, I see it as very similar to the moisture farming deck, but the Ewok rescue allows you to be more flexible in defense of the planet. It definitely was a drain race and you were able to get it up pretty quickly but my objective let me get the dark deal going barely quicker. The only improvements I can think off would be a small space fleet (to couteract the tax) and some regenerative abilities. Granted, my sabacc is a flawed strategy, unless I can fool someone to not play the sabacc defensive shield, (or against someone who has no shields ) but for now it a decent regenerative sideboard- I may end up axing it altogether if it doesn't hold up in the tournament environment.

Court of the Vile Gangster:

Yet another fine strategy ruined by another of my sneaky episode 1 cards. I was basically able to choke you with those added deploy costs. But you seemed to have the cards necesary to pull things off, asides from the pesky Sarlacc, who you said that you played too early. I was very sad when you killed off brave little Kalit. Besides that, I t