Thrice Janky (by TANK, of course) 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

"The Jank is strong with this one..."

From the day I got the Galactic Struggle 2 player game from Trey at Kingwood Hobbies and ran with the Palpatine* deck against my wife running Lando, I have been wanting to break the TIE Fighter Squadron. Discard a card from my hand to roll this die back into my pool?! I'll take that all day, every day, please and thank you!

My first attempt at it was with Iden and OG Talzin with Armored Reinforcement so I could get +1 to each roll of the squadron and Talzin gave me a shot at a focus with odd costed cards, plus Wytch Magick for healing. Going for an OTK, it only worked maybe 50% of the time thanks to the 2 blanks and 1 disrupt sides of the dice coming up just too often thank to my bad rolling.

My second attempt was much more dialed in and formidable. This time the team was Garindan and Tseebo with Armored Reinforcement so I could detect 2 cards right away, draw a card each time a detected card left my opponent's hand, use Tseebo's 2 double focus sides to keep the TIE Squadron on target and keep Garindan hitting his specials. Those specials were a huge boon to the deck. I'm discarding pretty much all my cards anyway, might as well load the discard pile up with mega-big supports and roll those dice into my pool when I resolve Garindan's specials. Come on Blizzard 1!

When Resurgence came out there was 1 card that was an obvious addition to that deck, Cluster Missiles! I no longer cared about what the TIE die was rolling or the tricks needed to get around the blanks (Tipoca City, Supply Team, etc). I would just dump 5-7 cards from my hand each round, load up my discard pile with massive supports and upgrades, working to get the Missiles out ASAP for an almost guaranteed OTK. At least that would have been the case if I had realized I should have also added Black Stall Station (thanks LtNorm). Obviously Garindan becomes the target with his specials, so actually playing Den of Thieves, Armor Plating and Riot Shield instead of discarding them are key, as is getting Chain of Commands on him to keep his dice alive.

So I thought that was the pinnacle of this build. Elrathion even commented at the Silver Sun Renewed Prime 2023 that with some mitigation thrown in (knowing that discard die sides are the Achilles heel of this deck) this could be a tier 1 deck. But then RandoMando came out with his version and all of a sudden I was looking at this deck from a whole new angle. Rando focused on developing his board state over an OTK and it worked quite well. So I endeavored to give that a try and see how it went.

It went quite well. Now with this rainbow team I had access to all the Jank tricks, TIE Squadron/Cluster Missiles/Black Stall Station, Aphra/K-3P0/8D8/Supply Ship w/Path Engine/Cyber Center and of course Tydirium/No Second Chances. Hence the name, Thrice Janky. The extra Aphra droids are 3 x K-3P0 and 3 x 8D8 (for a total of 5 x 8D8). My record for increasing my hand size with the K-3P0 loop and Cyber Center was 13 (not to mention all the Aphra pings from that). That's 13 damage to each character, plus 13 indirect damage plus 13 extra damage to anyone with No Second Chances on them. Oh yes, this deck was finally dialed in once the board state was set, and the OTKs just flowed like Blue Milk at the Mos Eisley Cantina!

I got third place (4-2) in heat 1 of the 2023 Ferrix Prime tournament with this brew. The loss to GameSlayer (#1 at 6-0) was amazingly close and only pulled off by a last ditch effort roll-in at the 11th hour that was just everything that he needed for the final kill. He was certainly sweating up until that miracle was pulled off. The other loss to Stormtrooper81 (#2 and the other 4-2) was a little more frustrating. He removed my TIE Squadron fairly early but that's usually not a big deal with Supply Ships flying about. All I needed was 2 resources to make it happen and with how many times I could roll in K-3P0 the law of averages states that I should be able to hit a resource side at least once. Well, Murphy's Law told me otherwise and the Squadron never came back, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

DISCLAIMER: Play this deck with caution, it is guaranteed to make people hate you, but enjoy it while you can as Cluster Missiles is bound to get nerfed very soon.

*When playing any Palpatine deck, one must clearly state the title of each card you play in your best Palpatine voice. I did this without fail to what would prove to be utter annoyance from my wife. Even after winning the match with the impersonation of the emperor as extra salt in the wounds, I was still able to get some snuggle time in with her that night. I guess I still got it...