Brazilian Nationals 2022 Winner - Cad & Embo

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
None yet.

clauberalex 21

Kinda late, but since I had to travel to participate in this tournament and decided to extend it as a vacation, here it goes, hahaha. But being late also means we have a new holocron, and since Headstrong is now on the restricted list with Tusken Camp, I swapped it with Complicated Profession to publish it (although it’s kind of a viable option going forward) but consider it to be Headstrong for the purpose of this report.

I used an early iteration of this deck on the Brazilian TTS League's top cut and, although I didn't manage to win my game against Arcanjo’s Vader/Droideka, I knew it had potential. So, I tweaked a little bit (I wasn’t using Camp or DOA before) and trained with it quite a lot online on the week before this last Brazilian Grand Championship.

Why this deck? Well, I wasn’t playing that much these last few months due to my doctorate approaching its ending, so I wanted a deck that was simple and straight forward: get upgrades on the table, roll in, do damage, profit. Also, Bane and Embo combined have a lot of health: 25 in just two characters. And since there aren’t any other bounty hunters around, people don’t usually choose Jabba's Palace as the battlefield, so most of the time we’re starting with 27 health. We’ve also got Embo’s passive ability to soak up some damage (and that’s mostly what that 2-disrupt is there for).

For the list, I wanted a good number of upgrades. Vibrosword is an auto-include. LL-30 on Cad is awesome, even if its dice are light, we want dice on the table. IB-94 and the Petar are kinda good two-cost weapons that are available right, but the Sniper is there mostly for the redeploy, so we can overwrite something before one of our characters die and not lose too many resources. The downgrades are there mostly for Embo’s ability, but Data Heist proved to be quite valuable if we manage to hit something good.

Den of Thieves is just bonkers; having it sit on play with two damage and waiting to redirect a huge damage source is just nuts. Tusken Camp is good, but mostly because it enables Fight Dirt for a chunk of surprise damage to finish the game (or a big character). Headstrong is also a very good solid yellow card, but other removals on the list are quite situational: Await The Dawn for pesky dice (like that 2-focus on KAM/Obi) and Trick, since we have cards of every cost (and a lot of 2’s, which was usually what I used it on and revealing an upgrade doesn’t give that much information to the opponent). Truce didn’t help me that much. When I rolled the paid side on Cad I didn’t have it in my hand, when I had in my hand I usually had a good amount of resources. But it did help me on the games I’ve played on my field, since the opponent tries to spend all their resources before you can claim and force them to lose one, so you can Truce and claim to get two resources, make them lose the resource you just gave them and maybe even remove a damage from Den.

Can’t remember most of my swiss games, but you mainly want to focus on an easier target, put a bounty on it, activate Embo and see what your opponent does. If there’s a damage die there, PA it. If not, decide if you wanna commit your resources to play a weapon on Cad (especially if you have LL-30 on your hand) or to mitigate big damage with Headstrong or Den of Thieves early on against big characters (like Vader or Qui-Gon, both of which I faced). Cad’s ability is nice, but it’s a plus when you get it, not your main goal. The game I lost on the swiss rounds was against Qi’Ra/Maul, piloted by Dantona (the 2021 Brazilian Champion), whom I also faced in the finals. He controlled my hand beautifully, did a lot of damage with Maul’s PA, played First Light, etc. When I killed Maul, Data Heist got me a Den of Thieves, which avoided my early demise and got me an extra round, but an Everybody Profits as his first action next round ended up being my ruin even after activating and rolling in a lot of damage. As usually, he played flawless.

Top 4 I faced Ki-Adi-Mundi/Obi-Wan/LI against my good friend Jeff and, on the first game, as he loaded Ki and took some damage on Obi, I went ballistic on the guardian, killing Obi in R2 or early R3, while controlling his weapons dice showing resource after he played Jar’Kai and some other light weapons. On the second game he loaded Obi and went easy on the guardian damage, but I still tried to kill Obi, but those shield were just too much for me. On game three, I took the shields (since I knew we were going to time), he loaded Obi again and I went straight for Ki, when he started shielding him and taking damage on Obi, I switched to Obi to make some more damage go through. After some rerolls, he thought he was going to get a tie on damage, but I had an Embo’s die with 2-disrupt on the pool and he forgot about his passive, which got me the win.

In the finals, I faced Qi’Ra/Maul again and we aggroed each other like crazy, hahaha. I think we caused 11 and 9 damage on the first round. With that, I managed to kill Qi’Ra in the start of round two (we didn’t know Den could stop unblockable damage at the time, but it wouldn’t avoid her death, since I would just resolve the 3-ranged first to either blow it or have her killed anyway) and finish Maul off next round with Fight Dirty and dice to spare. On the next game, I rolled the famous 2-disrupt with Embo and, since I was always using it to get shields, my opponent zoned out and didn’t spend his resources, which prompted me to disrupt him and ruin his gameplan. Later, I was able to navigate around his ability to play Infamy (which would have wrecked me), played Act of Cruelty to kill Maul off and, with a fully loaded Cad rolling 6-dice against Qi’Ra with just a simple support, it was a matter of time.

First swiss game can be watched here: https://youtu.be/5OGZXLuYW1E

And finals can be watched here: https://youtu.be/5OGZXLuYW1E

Before I end this, I just wanna thank everyone somehow involved in this. ARH for allowing our beloved game to continuing to be, the Brazilian community for being awesome and engaged, Arcanjo for being an excellent partner, Dantona for such superb games (to this day I can remember our swiss and top 4 matches on our 2019 Nationals, hahaha), everyone in the Brazilian OP (ElBaiano, Guintage and MarcosGuiJr) and all 16 players who registered for this awesome event.

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