The Champion of Champions: Jabba/Wat/Sent

Hello!

My name is NickTheBug, and today I’m going to do a little tournament report about my first place finish in the Entourage Gaming Tournament of Champions (an invitational event hosted by Entourage Gaming for the winners of the first 18 EG Thursday night tournaments) that occurred this past weekend.

The Deck Choice:

I won the Thursday night tournament the same week the Tournament of Champions was announced, so I’ve been planning on my 4-Lom deck for a long time. Amazingly, though, we were blessed with new cards in the form of Transformations several weeks ago, which led to a mad scramble as I tested every combination I could think of to find a new deck I liked. I played probably 50 games the day before the tournament with 16 different decks, and a good number of test games the day of, finally locking in my deck mere minutes before the tournament started.

Going into the tournament I expected to see a lot of the new Transformation cards. In particular, I expected to see Fives with Fateful Companions, some Anakin with Fateful Companions, and LOTS of Han/Padme/AR. Some notable things I didn’t expect to see were new Luke (in either form), New Vader, or really any 3 wides or support decks. Basically, I expected a very agro meta dominated by Padme/Han/AR.

In fact, in the week leading up to the TOC, I was planning to play PHAR myself. I genuinely think it’s the best deck in the meta right now, but I decided to swerve after my buddy Rebel Traitor took down last week’s Thursday tournament with it. People are realizing that it’s the Boogeyman, and I expected to face counters and LOTS of mirrors. If I wasn’t playing PHAR, I needed a deck that could beat it, and the only reliable thing I found was a turn one Desperate Measures and consistent hand disruption.

Of course, this led me right to Jabba/Wat/Sentinel. I needed villain yellow for DM, and Jabba was the obvious choice since he could search an extra four cards into your deck for it. Jabba is also great at searching for the single copy of Shock Tactics that I play in order to get an edge in Fives/FC and Trandos matchups. I needed hand disruption to get rid of the myriad of removal cards played by PHAR, Fives, and Ani decks which led me to playing Probe, Counterintelligence, Embargo, and Cultural Records with Wat for extra roll ins. The final strength of the deck is that if a character goes down you lose no damage output. This is incredibly useful against Ani/FC decks because, even if you lose a character on the first action of the second round, you can still close out a game with your supports after stripping your opponent’s hand. All signs pointed to JAWS (or JAWAS as some call it) as a good meta call against what I expected to see, so I locked it in at 11:59, and hoped for the best.

The Games:

Round 1: Moophisto - Aphra/Sent/BD/eBombs

Unfortunately for Moophisto, Jabba/Wat/Sent is a spectacularly bad matchup for his deck. Generally speaking, he wants to sit down with a health advantage and burn his opponents down with lots of indirect. In this early Transformations meta, the deck is pretty likely to have that health advantage, but it did not against my deck. Further, my hand disruption stripped him of removal options and events with which to flip his bombs. Finally, my deck runs both Duchess and Umbaran Hover Tanks (because they are Wat-table supports) to do massive AOE damage to his wide team. During game one I called 0-0-0 on a turn one Embargo, causing him to play a DM on Embargo rather than on my damage supports.

Game two I used Cultural Records to see that he had two Improvised Explosives in hand, and used my additional action to Embargo them. Embargo, along with my DMs off of Jabba, put the nail in the coffin for this one.

Win: 2-0

Round 2: Rebel Traitor - Padme/Han/AR

This was the deck that I had practiced the hardest against, and I knew pretty well how to beat it. I hard mulliganed for my DM round one but, unfortunately, didn’t find it. Jabba yielded it that same round (one of the main reasons I’m playing Jabba), but it could have been too late. Luckily for me, Traitor never pulled his ship with AR. Instead, he hard mulliganed for it in an attempt to hard cast it and use AR to pull it back from the discard. Unfortunately, he runs only one copy of the ship and didn’t find it round one either game. In game two I Embargoed Padme’s ship as my first action, which blanked a significant number of the cards in his deck. Game two was still fairly close, much closer than game one. He played a round one Hand Cannon and dealt quite a bit of damage, but without the ship, Jumps, or a strong Aerial Advantage, PHAR couldn’t quite keep up.

Win: 2-0

Round 3: Honestly Sarcastic - Ani(CM)/Fives/FC

This whole round was a blur, and I remember very little of it. I know I lost one of the first two games, but I can’t remember which it was. Game 3 was the interesting one, for the first time of the day I was within range of being knocked out, and I lost Wat incredibly early. Beyond that, I had a Megablasters in hand round one but couldn’t find the money to play it. I played it round 2 and began to sink damage into Ani. This is a strategy I’ve been criticized for, but HS was taking lots of money, I knew he had a First Aid in hand, and I knew I had a Shock Tactics coming. He was able to play his Admiral and get one reset on Ani, but I defeated Ani the same round. The next round I Shock Tactics-ed his 5s dice, but it was far from over. I was running low on health and I made the mistake of taking money instead of rerolling for damage in the second to last round. Luckily, I had both Automated Defense and Sinister Peace coming the next round along with Salt Flats. I was able to remove enough damage to live, and it came down to a 2/6 for him to not roll damage on a 5s die.

Phew, super close!

Win: 2-1

Round 4: Vika - eAni(TF)/eHan(TF)/FC

This was probably not a great matchup for me, in theory. Vika was able to kill Jabba as the first action of Round 2 with Ani both games, flipping him into 15 health Vader. Thankfully, I was able to get some big supports out, both a Megablasters and a Tie Fighter round one, both games. One of the strengths of this deck, I’ve found, is that even if I lose a character I’m able to pump out consistent enough damage for long enough to win games. Additionally, Vika runs a myriad of important events like Pickings, Jump, Flee, Entangle, Steadfast, etc. etc., which made my hand disruption very key in this matchup. Embargo even worked again when I called Flee game one. Even still, this game took a lot of luck to pull off. Game two in particular, I managed to roll the +2s on my Ties at exactly the right time in order to get Han down round 2. I focused a lot more on indirect game two because I was pretty far behind and I just needed to get characters down. Overall the games didn’t look super close on paper, but they easily could’ve swung the other way if my Probes hit differently or I missed my Tie Fighter rolls.

Win: 2-0

The Conclusion:

In conclusion, this was a super fun day, and my result was entirely unexpected. I think my deck was a very good meta call for the day, it beat the decks I expected to see, and the decks I expected to see were the ones that I faced. Unfortunately, though, I doubt it will be super good going forward. There’s a lot that beats Jabba, whether it’s a faster Ani/FC deck, a DM Bounty Hunter deck, or Big Luke/Big Vader. Going forward I expected to see a lot more of these, and I suspect Jabba will fall by the wayside. In the super early Transformations meta, though, I’m thankful that he had all the tricks to take it home.

Thanks to Entourage Gaming for hosting the event, to Artificery for streaming, and to all of my opponents for being so wonderful and kind. It really was a great day. :)

Thank you so much for reading!

-NickTheBug; Mandalorian HQ/Disney Junior