ARH Invitational Winter 2022 First Place Deck 1.0

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• 1.0

I took this deck all the way in the ARH Invitational in Winter 2022 (Jan/Feb), beating Bo-Rex-TMNT, Gideon-Garindan, and Hondo-PV in the finals. Here are some edited older notes first that set context along with a few new notes...

I started toying with this Jyn-Han variant a few weeks after the UH release, and took it to Heat 1 of the Jan 2022 Galactic Open. I went 5-1 in that tournament only losing to Trandos in round 6 because Mawloc played an Inhibitor Chip on Jyn on turn 1. That was quite the wake-up call to me that this deck could do almost exactly its gameplan and yet get smacked by a single card, which led me to start including Dangerous Escape as a 2-of (in some cases, such as the STL Regional, I dropped it to 1-of).

The basic thesis of the deck is to cycle cards and reach your best stuff fast, most importantly Black Market Connection. To that end, I've included pretty much all conceivable ways to draw/tutor cards available to Hero Red-Yellow: BB-8, Contraband Seizure, Covert Mission, and Promotion. Of course, Han's own cycling ability is essentially an extra Contraband Seizure every turn. People were rather surprised by Promotion in particular, but I remain convinced that prior to Lavish Cape it was a great card in the deck. People have been fine playing the 1-cost blaster with 2 blank sides and 1 payside, and Promotion is essentially 2 blanks and no payside (counting the +1 melee as a blank), and Promotion has that essential resource side. So even if you have to roll it out, it's not the end of the world. But really, it's point is to get that draw-one, then overwrite. And if your draw-one gets you a BMC, you're going to overwrite it with General anyway. So it's like storing a resource, it draws a card, and in an extreme situation it can net you some value. See? No problem. (Still, you replace Promotion for Lavish Cape at this point. I haven't tried playing with both.)

The mulligan is pretty important for this deck, but the principle is simple as you stick to the plan. It's all about BMC and, assuming no yellow villain, you keep BB-8. If you have 1x BMC, you always keep a Covert Mission, but otherwise you toss it. Contraband Seizure you will likely keep, and Promotion you'll only keep if you already have a BMC. You maybe keep a 2 cost upgrade if you don't have BB8. Always mulligan everything else. Don't be afraid to discard something to Han's cycle ability if you don't think you're going to play it that turn. Just do it. Trust the process.

You can apply similar logic to other decks as well, as LiquidSnake did for Bo-Rex-TMNT. I await the day when we figure out how to do it with Emperor.