Today I’m going to go over a match-up that I played in the TTS top 4 which was Manten playing Rieekan Yoda VS Hero Vehicles piloted by yours truly. For anyone in the know this match up is awful for Hero Vehicles, it’s as close to an auto loss as it gets in Star Wars Destiny. I’m going to go over how you can give yourself the best chance to win if you are the vehicles player who has the misfortune of being paired against this at FFG Worlds 2018.

Random aside: I have updated The Gauntlet to include Qui-Gon Yoda. This was an oversight on my part and I want to apologize for that. Anyone that reads these posts knows that I respect that deck I expect people to show up with it at Worlds. Secondly, I want to address something that no one talks about and that’s the issue with content creation at a time that is so close to a major tournament. I will never intentionally mislead people with information but there are things that are omitted. Those things generally end up being innovations that my team would come up with and sharing that would betray their trust. I will always do everything in my power to share relevant information for people attending worlds unless I say something like “this is purely for fun.”

Here are our lists for reference:

Why is this match-up so bad?

The best strategy for attacking the above list is to kill Yoda as soon as possible. This will limit late game discard because those two Yoda discards are clutch in getting rid of those last few cards. His dice also have the special sides that can mill your deck although in many match ups you will be close to decked by the time you kill Yoda. Getting rid of Yoda also removes Overconfidence and Mind Trick from the mix because you need to spot a blue character to use them. Vehicles struggles with the removing Yoda plan because many of our aggressive die sides are indirect. A wise RiYo player will place most of the indirect on Rieeken making killing Yoda first a tough task.

Vehicles greatest strength is that it can survive a long time because of its large health pool and excellent mitigation. It’s large health pool is irrelevant because your health in this match up is the amount of cards in your deck and hand. Spot mitigation isn’t great against RiYo because you essentially turn one of their dice into a 1 discard. Easy Pickings is easily the best one since it can occasionally net you two cards but Into the Garbage Chute is a stone cold coaster.

Keys to the match up:

I’ve only ever won this match up once and it was because my opponent had to leave but I was likely going to win that one if we played it out. In my top 4 match I missed on a 70 percent situation to win on the last turn so it is winnable. It’s also important to note that I think I misplayed in that game which would have given me an even better chance to win. I think if you know what you are doing you can win about 20 to 30 percent of the time. If you have no idea you might win 5 to 10 percent of the time. Here are the keys to winning:

Roll Well

You’re going to have to roll slightly above average to win, sorry. This starts on the roll off which you really want to win in order to take your battlefield. Giving them two shields is irrelevant since if they grab theirs they will be able to heal at least twice. You will generally get out-claimed but sometimes you can sneak in a claim if you lure your opponent to time their mitigation in way that makes it profitable for you to claim. Once they draw C-3PO they will be much slower which will let you take the claim more often. The benefit to taking your battlefield is obvious since it will let you play more offensive supports.

Lady luck needs to be on your side but prioritizing C-3PO as a play is very important. Even if its not directly offensive it will make rolling well less of an issue.

Draw Well

This is one of those lucky things but the thing you can control is your mulligan. You need to prioritize offensive supports and play them as fast as possible to avoid having them discarded. Rally Aid isn’t actually that great in your opening hand unless your hand is all vehicles, this is because you usually need to dump non vehicles in your hand before you can use Rally Aid consistently.

Play Well

Here is the thing you can control and you’ll need to practice the match-up before you will be even close to winning it. You might be thinking that it’s not worth your time to practice it but I think with enough practice you’ll eventually feel a little better about the match up, you still will want to avoid it but when you are there you will put yourself in the best position to succeed.

You want to play your supports early over everything else. This is because your character resource sides need to translate to damage early on. Don’t get too bummed if all you hit is money early on, if you mulled for max supports you are going to be in great shape. A good first turn will be C-3PO and two vehicles. That might seem far fetched but don’t keep things that aren’t vehicles in your opening hand unless you already have 2 vehicles and a C-3PO. Don’t keep Vandalize in your opener unless you have those things. Vandalize is one of the most important cards in the match-up and you need to blow up C-3PO above all else. The issue with keeping it early is that they might be able to make you discard it before they play C-3PO. It might be right to blow up either a Scout or Force Meditation if you are expecting a discard but you should hold it for C-3PO if possible.

When you play you want to represent that you have some dice mitigation/Vandalize. You do this by keeping a resource showing. This is a tough thing to balance with playing all of your offensive supports but by keeping resources you will force your opponent to play around those things which might make them make a mistake. This is especially relevant when they have chance Cube because using a Yoda die to focus a cube becomes less appealing.

You generally won’t be able to play around 1 cost mitigation but playing around Mind Trick isn’t that hard. Sometimes you have to play into it but if you can afford to resolve your dice slowly do so. You might be also to use some disrupts to keep them off 2 resources.

Translating Rose resources early into long lasting damage is the big key. The discard side is rather nice for protecting your dice in the early and mid game. The disrupt side can be relevant as well but it depends on the situation. On the first few turns you probably want to roll out with Rose since it will let you play your supports before your opponent can make you discard them.

Many times you want to roll out Aayla to put pressure on Yoda’s shields. Without a shield on him you might save a card from your deck. If you were fortunate enough to have stripped the shields from Yoda on the last turn hitting a damage side might prevent a Rieeken mill on that turn. Even if Yoda has a shield on him it might be a good idea to roll out Aayla first to force Rieeken to roll out. Forcing that action can make some of the cards in their hand worse or it will force them to put their upgrades on Yoda to get use of them on that turn. A lot of time that might make it so they don’t get an activation from one of their upgrades because they wanted to keep resources for mitigation. Causing tension like that can cause your opponent to play badly which will help you win.

It’s generally more important to try to use Aayla’s special as more of a focus and less of an interactive ability against your opponent. If you can do both by all means but if you can get an offensive value from it that’s more important. Generally speaking turning Red Support dice like Y-Wing and Fang Fighter to their most powerful sides is the best call.

Early on it’s more important to resolve Rose’s dice to play all of your supports. Your chance of hitting with Ezra for a resource is much lower than Rose and his damage is less than Aayla. You generally want to be doing one of those things first over activating Ezra. It might seem appealing to go for hitting his special but that’s a trap, learn from my experience and don’t go for that.

I hope this was helpful to any vehicle players out there. If you have any questions or comments please let me know and I’ll answer if able. Take care and as always…

Don’t Get Paired Against Mill!

@NJCuenca

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