Kennedy AKA Dan (00:36)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Space Arena Ground Arena or SAGA podcast. I’m Kennedy Hawk, one of the hosts. We’ve got the whole crew with us here today. So how’s it going, Mr. Banana?

Mrben (00:36)
Great, healthy.

BananaCrapshoot (00:48)
I’m I’m feeling a little peeled, you know, but I’m good, doing well, family’s healthy, so no complaints on my end. How are you guys?

Kennedy AKA Dan (00:56)
That’s

always good. We got Mr. Ben too. How’s it going over there?

Mrben (01:04)
No kids that I have to ferry to or from work this week. Like, excited to chat.

Kennedy AKA Dan (01:07)
Nice.

We managed to not get sick over the holidays, so was very exciting with children to not get sick. It doesn’t happen often, so thank the Star Wars lords.

Mrben (01:15)
you

BananaCrapshoot (01:22)
My whole family, wife and kids, they were out. It was like a good week they were out. And it was like, I was the only one that didn’t get it. like, yeah, it hit us. Just, I dodged it somehow. My spidey sense went off and I dodged out of the way, Missed it on my end.

Kennedy AKA Dan (01:32)
Nice.

Mrben (01:40)
I am back on Thrawn, my set one leader that I adored so much.

Kennedy AKA Dan (01:40)
Nice. Well, now that we’re back from holiday break, it’s time to get right back into things with Star Wars Unlimited. And we have some pretty awesome topics going on today. But first, I thought we could go around the horn and see what everybody’s been playing recently in Star Wars Unlimited land. So we’ll start with Mr. Ben.

Mrben (02:08)
had been kind of drifting away from I drifted away from a little bit because I had gotten so into the like unit lists deckless kind of thing, but My my old friend slash nemesis from the versus community Ralph Edwards reared his head with a thrown list that had a spicy inclusion that I really liked of endless legions and

Rather than putting in units that you’re going to play, I just put them into my resource row and draw the game out and then edless legions for a win. And that has been a lot of fun for me, but not so much fun for my opponents as of late. Back to playing the lose friends make enemies dash.

Kennedy AKA Dan (02:56)
Nice. And it’s been successful then.

Mrben (03:00)
Yeah, I mean, you know how control is like if if you don’t have the right removal at the right time, you just get run over by aggro and mid range. But overall, yes, I’m. Pretty established as a control player in most of the games that I play, I feel comfortable. I really like the style of like you’re coming at me with all these units and all this damage, and I’m kind of just hanging back and dealing with stuff.

as I can until eventually you’re out of gas and then the tides turn and I get to just take over. I enjoy that in every card game. I mean, that’s how I box to like that’s I love it. love watching people get tired and then then turning the screws on them. So that’s been that’s been my school experience is doing awful things with hard control decks. How about you, banana?

BananaCrapshoot (03:52)
Not so much of the control player over here. I’m more of a big boss monster type player. So I don’t know since we talked last I played in a Winnebox event with Molly CL was like a fun Let’s go have fun and end up doing pretty well finished third in that event saga took one two three there saga East Django Tarkin town Quinlan Tarkin town and Molly CL took one two three. So been messing with maul

Mrben (04:03)
you

BananaCrapshoot (04:21)
3-0 at locals this week with CADTork in town. So I’m between like CADMall and

HOND for PQ season. So been playing those here recently. But yeah, just playing lots of games on Karabass when I get a chance and getting to locals and hopefully get some more webcam games in here soon. But that’s been, it’s been what I’ve been up to. What about, and also non-SU related.

the Witcher unmatched sets I got, I’ve been playing those with my kid, those are pretty fire so, yeah. What about you Dan, what have you been playing?

Mrben (04:55)
You

Kennedy AKA Dan (05:02)
I’ve pivoted hard pretty hard. I’ve been playing mostly mid-range in this game or control up until now, but there’s in our meta There’s a couple really really good control players that are just top dog and there’s a lot of mid-range just throwing themselves into them so I decided we needed a few more aggro players, so I started playing pretty hard aggro just go face decks and They work well when I play against the control players and not so well when I go into the sea of mid-range players in our meta

Mrben (05:22)
you

Kennedy AKA Dan (05:31)
So it keeps the control players honest, which is good, but it’s an uphill battle against the pretty heavy mid-range local meta that I have. So I don’t know if I’ll run that for PQs, but at least for locals to get people practice. I’ve been running a lot of Cassian. I’ve been running a little bit of Sabine. And then a lot of Newt just like swarmed the board with units. I think some of the decks we played in our webcam game, Banana.

Mrben (05:52)
You

BananaCrapshoot (05:55)
Yeah.

I’ve been messing with a little bit like a SAJ aggression list, kind of similar to like Django where you’re running like triple dark raid and sneak attack because you can get extra value out of those because she can buff the units you cheat in on their attack to get extra damage out of them. So that’s been fun.

Mrben (06:19)
you

BananaCrapshoot (06:20)
But yeah, some agro is always good.

Kennedy AKA Dan (06:25)
It’s good we’ve all been getting some in. Another thing I’ve been trying, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, there’s a website, it’s like swoochallenges.com or something, and somebody made these solo decks you can play against, or like AI decks that there’s four different leaders you can play against, and you can play against the one player or two player, like co-op against a leader. And it’s not exactly the same game as like a competitive game of Swoo.

Mrben (06:32)
you

Kennedy AKA Dan (06:48)
But over the holidays, my son and I had a ton of fun playing those. So we would just smash our head into this AI controlled Vader or Sabine. And it was just a big ton of fun.

BananaCrapshoot (06:59)
Nope, didn’t

Kennedy AKA Dan (07:00)
So check those out. They’re pretty

cool. I’ll drop the link in the show notes or in the comments on the YouTube video. Well, I think our first topic for today was going to be pretty recent. Just this week, FFG reviewed in their article and their live stream, I think, the packs of Prestige, which are the carbonite packs for the upcoming Jump to Lightspeed set. So did we want to go over those a little bit?

Mrben (07:10)
you

you

BananaCrapshoot (07:25)
Sure.

Kennedy AKA Dan (07:27)
I’ll see if I can share my screen here that has the article up. Screen, share, entire screen, this screen.

Here we go. All right, so we’ve got these new Carbonite packs coming out for Jump to Light Speed. It basically, this article goes over the content of what’s in a pack. It’s gonna start with a hyperspace or showcase leader, probably a pretty low pull rate for the showcase leader still, is my guess. You’ll get seven foil cards of various different rarities. You’ll get a prestige card, which we’ll talk about here in a second.

BananaCrapshoot (07:40)
Okay.

Kennedy AKA Dan (08:08)
and then five regular hyperspace cards and two hyperspace foils. These packs retail at $24.99 a piece, so kind of like collector’s packs for Magic the Gathering, but are full of all sorts of alt arts and goodies. What did you guys think about the packs of Prestige?

Mrben (08:14)
you

BananaCrapshoot (08:30)
Eh, it’s, I mean, for collectors, for people that are into the hardcore or the collector side, it’s cool, but for those of us that I’m guessing Mr. Ben has a similar view as I have as like a cards or game pieces type player that this doesn’t really interest me too much. But for the people that are into it, like it’s it’s cool, I guess, But I’ll stick to normal cards.

Mrben (08:41)
you

Kennedy AKA Dan (08:59)
What do you think, Mr. Ben? A no. That’s what I saw.

Mrben (09:02)
Two thumbs down

two thumbs down I just there is no contents you can tell me are gonna be in a $25 pack where I’m gonna open it and like feel good about it and have fun with it like

Maybe this is a bit of a boomer take. But the idea of spending that much money on a single pack of cards, like I just this to this product is not for me. I mean, I know Magic Gathering collector boosters sell. So clearly there’s a market out there for this kind of product. But it ain’t me. I have no interest in this kind of stuff.

Kennedy AKA Dan (09:43)
I would be a lot more interested if there weren’t foils. I’m gonna say something maybe controversial, but I hate the foils in Star Wars Unlimited. They curl, they don’t look very nice, they look, in my opinion, worse than just a standard card. But hyperspace cards? Like, I thought I wasn’t, I used to be a cards as game pieces kind of person. But when this game came out, I quickly realized I was a hyperspace my main deck entirely kind of person.

BananaCrapshoot (09:47)
Yeah, I agree.

Mrben (09:50)
You

Kennedy AKA Dan (10:10)
and that’s okay for you to be that kind of person. That’s the kind of person I am. I’m here for you and I understand you. But I am not excited about the seven foil cards that literally just go into a trade pile for me. Like half the pack goes into a trade pile instantly. Hyperspace foils look wonderful, but they still have the same curling problems. And like I never put them in my deck because they become super marked even when doubly sleeved. So like for me, I’m like, okay, cool. Well, I get six playable cards and…

a of cards that I guess I sell or trade, that doesn’t feel great. That being said, I did preorder some, so you know, maybe I should check my stance here. I preordered one box just to see how it is for the game, and we’ll likely use them as prize support in local events. When we do our community-driven events where the store is not running anything but a bunch of us get together, we’ll put a carbonite pack on the line for the winner of our little

Mrben (10:45)
You

Kennedy AKA Dan (11:06)
playtest session which I think is pretty fun. For people that are interested in blinging just some of the more information they gave us there’s going to be one printing of this so there’s not going to be reprint of the carbonite booster packs when they sell out they sell out and they are gone which means that sealed packs might retain value or might not but it’s a way to make it so it’s really difficult to complete a full set of or a full deck of like one type of card.

The prestige cards that they talked about have three different variants. So you’re going to get one prestige card per pack. It has this alt art full art, really cool looking variant like the Millennium Falcon here and it’s going to come. Yeah.

BananaCrapshoot (11:46)
It’s

like a showcase for a normal card.

Mrben (11:48)
you

Kennedy AKA Dan (11:50)
It’s like a showcase for a normal card. It’s sweet. And then it’s going to have a foil version. Jury’s out on

whether or not I’m going to like that foil version. Chances are not. And then it’s going to have a serialized version. And I don’t know if they said that the serialized one would be foil or not. I’m hoping that it’s not. But the serialized one would be like, there’s only 250 of this card. Those are the cards that go for like crazy amounts of money in the Magic the Gathering collector packs.

I do like Magic Collector packs, but I like getting like 1 % and then building around the special cards I get in it, which is not a recipe for winning, but a recipe for fun for me. And that’s probably how I’ll approach this from Star Wars is I’ll still invest in regular cards and singles to get my playset, and then I’ll buy like a couple of prestige boosters and like build around my prestige cards for a FUNZY deck.

Mrben (12:24)
You

Kennedy AKA Dan (12:43)
Alright, any other comments on Prestige Boosters? Did you pre-order any banana? He didn’t. Okay. I’m alone. But I’m excited to see what they’re like. I…

BananaCrapshoot (12:48)
Did not. Nope.

Mrben (12:53)
Do you

guys

Really think they aren’t going to reprint these like if this is a success like these so well, do you really think they’re never going to print them again? I don’t buy it at all. I mean, this is. This is all red meat for like the investor type of player.

Kennedy AKA Dan (13:02)
I don’t think they’ll print more Jump to Lightspeed Carbonite packs. I think they will print them for the next set and increase the amount if they sell out. Which they will sell out, by the way.

BananaCrapshoot (13:07)
Right.

Right, because otherwise the… Yeah, otherwise

the serialized cards mean nothing if they’re just gonna reprint them. You can if you’re gonna serialize cards.

Mrben (13:25)
which is if you think about the trading card game, like the three legged stool, like I’m least the investor. I’m mostly a player and collector. But yeah, this is.

Kennedy AKA Dan (13:41)
See, I like them just to bling my deck out. It’s not to invest. I’ll probably never sell my prestige cards. I just think they look cool. And I, when I played One Piece and when I played other games, I always told myself I wasn’t gonna bling out my decks. And then whatever deck became

my competitive deck for every meta season, I would like get all the alt-arts for it, because I was so excited about it. But that’s extreme extra players like me, apparently.

Mrben (14:05)
I mean, I think being a magic player in the 90s and living in Florida and seeing like just how bad cards can foil like foil cards can like pringle up and just completely almost turn into a tube. Now, I haven’t seen any swoo.

Kennedy AKA Dan (14:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mrben (14:22)
foils that have curled that bad, but I don’t live in a mega humid environment anymore. Like I’m in the Midwest now rather and presumably foiling technology has come along in the 20 years since since I lived down there. But I just, you know, like like you were saying, Dan, I when I get a foil version of a card, I trade it to my buddy for the non foil one. Just like here, man, you can have the extra resale value. I just want a card that’s going to lay flat and I don’t have to worry about.

Kennedy AKA Dan (14:36)
True.

Mrben (14:50)
whether my deck is stored vertical or horizontal, like I’m not into. Yeah. Anyway, I’m just repeating myself now.

Kennedy AKA Dan (14:55)
I’m

definitely a regular hyperspace collector, so where I’m seeing this to be cool is once I get my playset of cards that I’m looking for just whatever I can get when the set first comes out so I can build all the decks I want, I start buying a couple packs at different local stores to support them, searching for hyperspace cards. I know it would be way better if I just went and bought the 5 cent card for singles online, and I do that to complete decks sometimes. But…

It really stinks when you open a standard pack of Star Wars Unlimited and you’re looking for hyperspace cards and the only thing you get is like a hyperspace base or no hyperspace card. So hyperspace cards are like two in three packs. So if you think about it that way, if you’re hunting for hyperspace cards, you could spend, you could get six packs for about 30 bucks at a store and you might only get four hyperspace cards. Here you get five for 25 bucks and you get all the foil and hyper foil trade fodder.

So if you’re a hyperspace nerd like me, it might be worth it. And I’ll let you know when I open my box and feel bad about myself.

Mrben (16:00)
Man, I hope you get excellent EV on that box.

Kennedy AKA Dan (16:01)
We’ll do it on stream so you can all see my disappointment live or my excitement. We’ll see. I don’t know.

Alright, that’s enough about prestige packs. Next we’re going to talk about the other P word, planetary qualifiers. Who wants to lead

BananaCrapshoot (16:10)
Find out.

Kennedy AKA Dan (16:17)
us talking about the PQs?

BananaCrapshoot (16:21)
I can do that I guess. Go ahead. No, you go. You got it. Go for it.

Mrben (16:22)
I spoke. yeah, go ahead, man. All right. Well, I just wanted to very briefly address the kind of elephant in the room that popped off in the community with the PQs. I don’t want to like ignore bad behavior, but I don’t want to harp on it either. Like, don’t yell at people. Don’t throw stuff at people like be better than that community.

BananaCrapshoot (16:45)
Yeah.

Kennedy AKA Dan (16:46)
Agreed. As a person that used to cosplay as Gambit as a child, not cool. Just not cool. I’ll find the pictures. They’re embarrassing.

Mrben (16:54)
Yeah, that’s…

I mean, not a unique take. A lot of people have said it, but I just wanted to… There, it’s been addressed. We can move on to talking about more fun things now.

BananaCrapshoot (17:07)
PQs. All right, this weekend we saw the first big weekend of PQs for this season. There was one,

two, three, four, five, six, Like 14 of them. We had 14 of them. We have a bit of a meta breakdown. Gotta find where I put that though. I lost it.

Mrben (17:28)
you

BananaCrapshoot (17:33)
somebody had to post a long email in our Discord. So for winners.

Sabine won four times Han Yellow won a few times These are the ones that were collected from Mog TCG This was from the Facebook group Quinlin won one which I think is I think Quinlin won more than one so But you get a pretty good idea of like a meta breakdown. You got Sabine Han won Quinlin Palpatine Yellow Kira Boss Green Which is kind of like replaced like the Vader

go big ramp fast and wipe you out. There was a mono item, which was the Vegas winner. There was a cad blue that won a Quinlan ECL that won in Chicago. So we kind of have a, an idea of what decks are topping and popping off in these events. Is there anything that stands out to you guys from these PQs? Something that surprised you something you didn’t expect.

so that that doesn’t surprise you. What are your big takeaways from the first weekend of PQs?

Kennedy AKA Dan (18:45)
A lot of Sabine winners, that should be said for sure, the most winning of the leaders that we saw in this first week of PQs. That doesn’t mean that the meta is unbalanced in my opinion. think that metas always start with a strong aggro push, and yes Sabine is from set 1, but with the ban of Boa right around the release of a new set, the meta has kind of reset, and an aggro leader is still in the lead at the start of the meta.

But that doesn’t mean that in the coming weeks players won’t anticipate a lot of aggro, pivot to mid-range, shut the aggro down, and eventually pivot to control. So I think it’s pretty cool that we see aggro control and mid-range decks all represented this early on. And I think the numbers are still too small to just say that Sabine is now the number one deck that will always be the best deck ever. It’ll be the deck to prepare for going into next week and the week after.

Mrben (19:24)
you

you

Kennedy AKA Dan (19:43)
But I think that there’s still a good chance that we have a pretty cool trifecta or even meta between the three archetypes, which I think is cool.

BananaCrapshoot (19:52)
Yeah, we also had a CG con Atlanta this weekend. Sabine there was a Sabine mirror in the Friday night event in the Saturday event. There was a Han one. Mono mirror and then I’m not sure exactly what happened Sunday, but. Sabine and Han also topping it at those events as well.

Mrben (20:15)
You

BananaCrapshoot (20:15)
But if you look through, if you

go to swoo.competitivhub.com, you can get a breakdown of the top eight from all these events and you get a, it’s a pretty healthy meta. see, all kinds of decks represented in the top eight, which is always good, for a healthy, healthy meta. But you do definitely see the, Han one mono Han one and Sabine ECL pop up quite a bit. You also see Quinlan pop up quite a bit.

Mrben (20:45)
All

BananaCrapshoot (20:46)
jangos and boss like those are the ones that really really stick out when you’re going through is showing up the most at least to my eye so

Kennedy AKA Dan (20:57)
It seems like

people really prepared for Django because the most disappointing thing looking just at like a infographic, right, is we’ve only got one new leader in the set of winners, which is good because that means that the old leaders didn’t just become obsolete immediately when a new set came out. But it also makes me sad to not see some of the new leaders that, you know, we have all these cards based around not, you know, taking the reigning spot in a couple of these events. So hopefully we see some more set three leaders pop up.

BananaCrapshoot (21:14)
Great.

Mrben (21:15)
You

Kennedy AKA Dan (21:27)
in the upcoming weeks.

Mrben (21:29)
you

Kennedy AKA Dan (21:31)
even if they’re Django.

BananaCrapshoot (21:33)
Well was, mean Anakin hit top 8, Yoda hit a couple top 8’s.

Kennedy AKA Dan (21:39)
Yeah, I saw a lot

of Django and some massage too. So, they’re in there.

BananaCrapshoot (21:42)
Yeah.

They’re in there. Yeah.

Mrben (21:47)
So I think it’s probably worth observing that there’s some like particular things that Sabine does quite well, which is not like a groundbreaking thing to notice. But early in the meta, Agro was going to do well. And I think Sabine has this ability to just do Agro better than anybody else. And a lot of that comes down to

that get around having to actually do combat honestly her built-in ability to just deal base damage and feeding into that while there are other good aggro heroes there aren’t other aggro leaders that people have put in as many reps as they have with Sabine so it’s time to put in our big boy pants this is the beginning of the planetary qualifier what’s the advice everybody every TCG podcast always gives

You don’t necessarily have to play the meta, but you want to play the deck, you know the best. So people are going to do that. They make the decision. Hey, the big bad on mid range Boba Fett is gone now. Let’s that means aggro should be positioned pretty well in the meta. Who’s the aggro leader? I’m most familiar with. It makes a lot of sense to me that we would see Sabine show up, but really looking at the numbers, we’re still only talking about 20 % of the total meta, which that is.

High, it’s significantly higher than the next most played hero of HOD 1, which I think a lot of what I’m laying out here applies to him as well. Familiarity. A lot of people when they go and play cash events, they play meaningful events with high stakes, they’re gonna go to the thing they’re the most familiar with. So I’m not surprised to see a ton of Set 1 leaders show up here. I kind of just…

echo what you guys are saying that overall the meta feels like it’s in a pretty balanced place, it’s in a pretty good place. And while there is a lot of focus on the Sabine, I don’t think it’s a problematic amount of the meta or even the win percentage at this point.

Kennedy AKA Dan (23:55)
One thing I did notice looking at the lists is that I feel like early on in the game, the only non-30 hit point base that was ran realistically was ECL.

And looking through these lists, there’s a ton of people playing Tarkentown, because people have really figured out you can get value when you stop Sabine or whoever’s turn one play using that Tarkentown ability. Whether it’s with an ISB agent or it’s with a McClunky or something, shutting down their turn one and turn two using Tarkentown usually buys you that five hit points. So do you all think that any of the other bases have a chance to become, I feel like,

Mrben (24:11)
You

Kennedy AKA Dan (24:30)
from set two to set three, some people were running Tarkin Town in set two and I was playing with it and a bunch of people were dabbling in it. And after the Django Tarkin Town thing started, now Tarkin Town is, in my opinion, almost the default red base, similar to how ECL isn’t always the default. There’s always the choice of the 30 hit point base, but it pops up a lot more frequently. But we’re not seeing security base, we’re not seeing the, whatever the cunning one is that minuses attack on the thing you’re attacking.

BananaCrapshoot (25:00)
Yeah.

Kennedy AKA Dan (25:01)
Jetta, do you think any of those other

special basses will find a spot in the meta?

BananaCrapshoot (25:06)
I think maybe I think likes so set to the only leader really that messed with it was cad being With Tarkin town because of the ping so now we have more leaders that ping With Quinlan and Django that are both also yellow that can run Tarkin town so we got more leaders that ping that can take advantage of

Kennedy AKA Dan (25:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mrben (25:22)
I’m going to take them off the slide and see how much time I have.

BananaCrapshoot (25:29)
more reach with with that so I think that’s why you’re seeing Tarkin town worse because you have more of those leaders, but

Jetta, don’t think it doesn’t do quite enough because you’re not removing the unit most most times with Tarkin Town you’re removing that unit Jetta doesn’t remove the unit so they’re not really you kind of make them stumble but they’re not they’re not falling on that one

Kennedy AKA Dan (25:48)
Mm-hmm.

You need a thing to attack with still, which to get the trade, right?

BananaCrapshoot (25:58)
Yeah.

Yeah. So I don’t think the Shadow Collective base is going to see any play from the new set. I think the yellow arena that gives a leader plus one attack, I think that could find a deck. think the one that gives a leader plus one health could find a deck. You look at a leader like Sabine, that can get force choke or take down as soon as they’re deployed and get removed.

If she was running a blue base, she’d have six health. she would be out of range of those plays on the deploy, which could be strong. So I think there could be a deck in the one that, the, the one that has you make droids when you deploy, I think you’d find a deck with pout maybe. and you get basically four units when you deploy, which seems strong. or it’s like a wreck swarm deck maybe. And, so I think there could find a home for some of these rare bases, but

Kennedy AKA Dan (26:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mrben (26:37)
you

BananaCrapshoot (26:56)
I don’t think Shadow Collective, Jetta City, or Security Complex are it.

Kennedy AKA Dan (27:03)
I think the next one to pop up is Security Complex. I think, I thought it was okay in set one, and a shield that turns out is really strong. Now when Jump to Light Speed comes out and apparently everyone’s gonna run Upgrade Removal, maybe it won’t be as strong, but right now I found it as a really strong option to counter Tarkin Town. no, they’ve pinged my unit, now I’ve put a shield on them and our Tarkin Town is wasted, or my unit gets multiple trades before they Tarkin Town it. I think Security Complex has a chance.

But it’s it’s behind the other two still for now

Mrben (27:36)
You don’t really like any of them. I don’t even like ECL that much.

BananaCrapshoot (27:36)
What do think, Ben?

Kennedy AKA Dan (27:41)
I mean, I like my 30 hit points. I agree.

Mrben (27:43)
Yeah, and that that may say more about me as a player than than other things I like when games go long so pain health It has to be a big payoff. I’m not saying ECL is bad. There’s certainly decks where it looks good Jetta City, I think it the yellow rare base that one is just bad. I don’t I don’t think that is playable at all I’m not very high on security complex

BananaCrapshoot (28:04)
you

Mrben (28:12)
The I think Josh’s observation that the one that spawns the two droids when you deploy Could have some fringe play, but that’s 24 health. That’s even worse I I just none of these bases have really done it for me. I Understand like I’ve played enough Hearthstone. I’ve heard the mantras, you know health is a resource be willing to use it Yeah, I use it by absorbing damage from all of my opponents units. I Yeah, I none of the rare bases have really

enticed me in the decks that I play. But again, that might say more about the me being kind of a slower, more control player. I really want that 30 health to make sure I can stay alive until turn eight when I super laser blast all your stuff.

Kennedy AKA Dan (28:57)
The other thing that’s opening up now that I wanted to bring up is back when the first set was out, Monodex, they weren’t a thing, but they were more of like a meme thing, right? You only had three cards that had the double icon. So yeah, you could run Vigilance at four, but unless you were running Vigilance and Bendu and for some reason Protector or whatever that third one was, you’re kind of wasting your second aspect. But now we’re three sets in, we have a ton of more dual double icon.

cards and looking through the meta there are a lot more mono decks popping up. We’re seeing mono Han really on the rise. I’ve seen a lot of mono red and a mono blue out there. So what do you all think about mono colored decks? Are they to the point where it’s it’s really worth considering running only one color or does the choices of having two colors offer you more in your deck style?

BananaCrapshoot (29:53)
Let’s start with this one.

Mrben (29:56)
I played double blue. I had my first store showdown. So I definitely think they’re

I’ve said many times that cunning is the best and my favorite card in set one. So yes, I think doubling down on your base color Command is probably the the faction that I’m least interested in doing that with which if I remember correctly I think Dan you said was the faction you most like to double down on so I do like there’s some variety there, but in my opinion

The cunning faction is just head and shoulders above the rest with regard to the payoff cards like new adventure is ridiculous. Cunning is ridiculous. Bodhi I almost said bend to bend to is ridiculously unplayable in my opinion. Like you go double vigilance because you want to play vigilance for four. That’s why that’s what you did. I don’t like been do so. So yes, it is. That’s true.

BananaCrapshoot (30:36)
Mm.

Kennedy AKA Dan (30:45)
harsh.

BananaCrapshoot (30:50)
Yeah, Bendy lets you play vigilance for two though.

Mrben (30:56)
The short answer is yes, do think choosing a bass that matches the color of your leader is more and more viable. But I don’t think it was necessarily unviable back in set one, but it is much better now, for sure. Banana?

BananaCrapshoot (31:15)
Yeah, mean set one mono boba was a very real threat because of the power of Bodhi and Cantina bouncer and cunning like those three cards that mono had for cunning and set one were all very strong and they’re still strong and they’re still played in mono Han so

And Cunning is played for 6. Cunning and Vigilance, you know, they’re paid for 6 more than Aggression or Command by far. yeah, I think it’s super viable. There is a mono Green Palp, in Nebraska. I’m pretty sure that that topped. So, I think Green probably still has the worst payoff cards for going mono. I think Cunning definitely has the best, but yeah, there’s

Mrben (31:55)
You

BananaCrapshoot (32:06)
There’s viable options for all those colors, but I personally still prefer to go dual color just because I like having access to more cards and more tools to put in my deck to deal with things.

Kennedy AKA Dan (32:19)
I’m really high on Mono Dex right now, but I’ve mainly been focusing on Vigilance and Cunning. Command, while I like the Command card, the rest of the cards aren’t as exciting. But I do really like some Mono Red. I’ve been playing a little bit of Mono Red Bosque with Tarkentown, because you get that ping off Bosque and then can finish the unit off, and that has been extremely fun. So, play a bounty, ping it with Bosque, deploy Bosque, and then kill the thing with Tarkentown and claim the bounty double has been pretty cool.

Mrben (32:29)
you

Kennedy AKA Dan (32:47)
But by going mono, you limit how many bounties you have, so it kind of balances itself. But I’ve seen some other mono red decks that have been pretty neat, so I’ve been enjoying those.

BananaCrapshoot (32:57)
You can do that, you play the stolen lance beater so that like your opening play it has the bounty built in so you don’t even have to play another bounty. You play it, your opponent gets it, ping it with boss then Tarkentown it right away and then you kill drone unit to get it as a like a 4-3 whatever. That’s the play, that’s the spicy play.

Kennedy AKA Dan (33:05)
That’s true.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. See see where we’re going now you like this

Mrben (33:19)
I guess I should call myself out just a little bit here because I kind of I threw a little bit of shade at Double Down Green but I opened this up by talking about how I’m 18 for Endless Legions and it’s winning games so I can’t hate on double command that much. Oh yeah dude. Yeah.

BananaCrapshoot (33:37)
18 you’re getting to 18 resources

Kennedy AKA Dan (33:37)
You

BananaCrapshoot (33:41)
Let’s see.

Mrben (33:42)
And then when you play it, you flip all three Crate Dragons out of your row. So even if they have an answer, the Crate Dragon damage just kills them. Like when they try to play their answer, it’s awesome. So the things people say to me on Carabast, No, but I already want to play it.

Kennedy AKA Dan (33:54)
My games don’t go that long. I’m doing something wrong.

BananaCrapshoot (33:59)
Yeah, my game’s never doing that alone. That’s insane.

Kennedy AKA Dan (34:03)
Have you seen the Yoda meme deck with Endless Legions? Ben’s not a meme deck kinda guy.

BananaCrapshoot (34:08)
Like, you’re my only hope. Yeah. Yeah, you

use, you’re my only hope and yet.

Kennedy AKA Dan (34:13)
put on the top and play endless legions for free when you’re down to five health and then just flip a bunch of Devastators and off aspect cards and laugh it’s pretty funny but then the next game they just never puts you to twenty five they push you to twenty four then finish you off in one turn

BananaCrapshoot (34:15)
Yeah.

Mrben (34:30)
Yeah. That is pretty cheeky

stuff, though. I do like that approach.

Kennedy AKA Dan (34:36)
I like that the engine exists for those kind of things to happen. that’s pretty cool. I

BananaCrapshoot (34:41)
Yeah.

Kennedy AKA Dan (34:43)
think those are our main two topics for today. Any other closing thoughts from the saga team?

BananaCrapshoot (34:48)
What are your like you guys going to PQs? are your what are you? Bouncing around what are you gonna play at the PQ? What are your top three options?

Kennedy AKA Dan (35:02)
Mine are so far away, well by so far away I mean like three weeks away that I haven’t thought about it too much yet. But I’m going to one in Florida before I go to a conference for work. And then I go to that conference Monday through, it’s like the only one that’s listed as a Sunday. I don’t know why it’s listed as a Sunday, but I appreciate it because I can get out there early enough for it. And then I’ll be at a conference for five days and then I come back and our local one is on that Saturday. So I’ve got two back to back. I’ll probably run the same deck in both.

Mrben (35:25)
you

Kennedy AKA Dan (35:31)
Right now I’m leaning towards Sabine or Cassian just because that’s what I have the most reps in. And I’ve been having good luck with Cassian and Yellow. I saw there was at least one in the top 8. And I’m more of rogue deck guy right now. I like to have fun and if I don’t make it to the finals then I get to go home early and play with my kids. So I’m good either way.

but maybe we’ll crack out Vader, Vader blue again for fun. We’ll see.

Mrben (35:58)
I’m back on the Thrawn train.

Like, the two decks that I have built right now are an Aiden cunning with no units and a Thrawn blue that’s like hard control into endless legions. So that’s that’s the kind of stuff I’m doing. How about you, man?

BananaCrapshoot (36:17)
I think I said the beginning like Han 1 command has been my main deck since set 1. That hums pretty well.

Mall ECL and CAD. CAD, this is my favorite deck in Set 2 and it’s still pretty good. So, but its biggest issue was Boba Green and that went away.

We’ll see. We’ll see. I always have a hard time. I’m always between one or two decks and it’s always miserable. I’ve coin flipped, let my kids pick, whatever. Yeah.

Kennedy AKA Dan (36:54)
With all the

aggro, might be time to bring back Blue Baka. I’m just saying. It could be there.

BananaCrapshoot (36:57)
Yeah.

I mean he’s a pain and a lot of people don’t know how to play around him. So Yeah That’s an option

Kennedy AKA Dan (37:06)
pretty funny.

Mrben (37:11)
Standing for

security complex, I guess.

BananaCrapshoot (37:15)
I guess there was a, somebody using a showcase proxy at a PQ, did you guys see that? What are your thoughts on like proxy leaders or alternate leader?

Kennedy AKA Dan (37:22)
No.

I mean, a leader

costs five cents. I don’t care if someone just brings whatever leader. I understand the rules say you shouldn’t do that. So please don’t do that. But if you’re playing against me, I’m not going to complain. Bring your cool card.

Mrben (37:30)
I don’t care. I don’t care.

BananaCrapshoot (37:36)
Yeah, I don’t care either.

it’s not in your deck. I don’t see why it matters.

Maybe in destiny people.

Mrben (37:46)
Like honestly, if somebody wanted to do like an alter base or an alter leader, as long as I can still read the text, which for most bases is just the number 30.

BananaCrapshoot (37:53)
Mm-hmm.

Mrben (37:57)
Like I could I could care less like do something cool, man. Like that’s fine. Like I just I do not care at all. I am a little curious if the dude was actually running a proxy because the Reddit post I read where somebody was making that accusation, it was like piling onto that same dude that everybody else was piling onto for other bad behavior. So I wonder if that was true or if it was just somebody being like, I bet it was fake to you like.

BananaCrapshoot (37:57)
Yeah.

Hmm.

It was just something.

Mrben (38:24)
and the game of telephone on the internet like I don’t know. But if I sat

BananaCrapshoot (38:24)
Yeah. Right.

Mrben (38:28)
down in a competitive event and somebody played a proxy leader, I just I could not care less. Like I’m playing a control deck. I don’t have the time to call a judge for something that trivial. I got to get going. Yeah, yeah.

Kennedy AKA Dan (38:41)
Your leader’s only going to last one turn against Ben, so it doesn’t matter.

BananaCrapshoot (38:44)
Yeah.

I mean, like it doesn’t go in your deck and like in Destiny, right? Like there was proxy characters all over the place. And like, you know, people using like, because there was a bunch of like content creators that would commission alternate art characters and then put like their logo on it. And then they’d send them out as like Patreon rewards. So like that was like a thing. And then people would use them in events like all the time. So it’s like, you just couldn’t use them at worlds, you know?

Mrben (39:09)
I think that’s cool.

Kennedy AKA Dan (39:15)
And I mean, I think in the

destiny rules, it’s still said not to use like non-official cards, but people just like, the community just accepted it.

And it was the same thing in One Piece, you couldn’t use alt-art leaders or alt-arts like, you have this little resource stack of ten cards that are identical, like you can’t, the dawn, you can’t shuffle different things in, but eventually Bandai changed it to where they were like, just use whatever you want, have fun. Like, it’s ten cards that could have whatever they want on them, just don’t be offensive. And I’m a big fan of that rule. Yeah.

BananaCrapshoot (39:32)
Yeah, the dawn. Yeah.

Mrben (39:34)
you

BananaCrapshoot (39:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, it’s that’s more a token than any the don cards are more of like a token piece

anyway, like it’s not a like the cards that are in your deck. I get you want those to be official cards you pull out of packs, but like the stuff that doesn’t actually go in your deck. I don’t I don’t I don’t care. Yeah, let the kids have fun. Taking all their fun away.

Kennedy AKA Dan (39:55)
Mm-hmm.

Let them have fun, that’s what I say.

and the adults.

Mrben (40:05)
What

when I played Arjun Saga, similar to the leader, yeah, another dead TCG. Actually, I think you can maybe say, no, I got the versus sheet hanging up back there. But when I played that.

BananaCrapshoot (40:08)
What’s that?

you

Mrben (40:18)
They had like leaders and spirits leader and base same kind of idea and they came out with like their own alters where it was like the spirit creature but with like a Santa hat on and it came out around Christmas and it’s like literally somebody like Photoshop the Santa hat onto the art that you make it wasn’t even that like high level. That’s kind of how I feel about I could like if somebody called a judge and tried to get their opponent disqualified because they had.

BananaCrapshoot (40:33)
Is that on Kickstarter?

Mrben (40:47)
Like an alter base or an alter leader, like what’s wrong with you? No, no. You’re doing games wrong if that’s the way you’re trying to win. I still don’t care. FFG probably would. Yes.

BananaCrapshoot (40:53)
Unless you’re at worlds on an FFG stream. I don’t see a problem with it. Right. Like if you’re on an FFG hosted stream at an FFG event that they’re running themselves, then you probably want to use the real thing. But like some, some do. Yeah. FFG cares. mean, they have to see YA, right? They don’t want to piss off the

mouse. So they have to say these things, but I don’t think they really care either.

Kennedy AKA Dan (41:18)
The default at locals is just like if you’re going to proxy something have the real card in your binder or whatever. I have a very expensive showcase. I don’t really want to play with it at my local event because someone will spill a beer on it. So I’ll probably play with the cheaper one.

Mrben (41:24)
Yeah, I don’t even care that much.

BananaCrapshoot (41:31)
Wait, what? Say

Mrben (41:31)
They

BananaCrapshoot (41:32)
that again? You guys have beer at your locals?

Mrben (41:32)
serve beer at your locals.

Kennedy AKA Dan (41:34)
Our locals is at like a brewery pizza via you guys should come here. It’s pretty sweet

BananaCrapshoot (41:41)
You got any school districts looking for

facilities directors out there?

Kennedy AKA Dan (41:46)
I’ll find one. I’ll find one. Yeah,

it’s a board game, cafe, pizzeria, brewery. It’s pretty slick. I could live there and give them my paycheck.

Mrben (41:52)
That’s pretty cool.

BananaCrapshoot (41:55)
I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t fly in Pennsylvania.

There’s no way that would fly in Pennsylvania. They’d have to be like two separate businesses adjoined by like a curtain and like a vestibule of some sort. You know what I mean?

Kennedy AKA Dan (42:06)
this is the wild southwest.

We do what we want over here.

Mrben (42:10)
This doesn’t have anything to do with Star Wars, but like.

100 years ago in another life, me and my friend Brandon went to a PCQ in Orlando. This would have been like 2000, I think. And it was right when like Four Loco and those kind of like alcoholic energy drinks came out. And the ones he got were called Sparks. And nobody at the event realized that he was drinking alcohol. And over the course of like a nine hour day, he was like down in scrub row, just getting drunker.

And trunker and like throwing cards at people and nobody ever said anything that we played out the whole day. He did not do very well.

BananaCrapshoot (42:49)
I bet he had more fun than everybody else there though.

Mrben (42:52)
Probably, I mean, he big loud guy under sober circumstances and we’re like in Disney’s wide world of sports with like 2000 nerds and he was the loudest dude in the room for sure. Y.O.B. There you go.

Kennedy AKA Dan (43:04)
I should let people know our PQ is not at the Pizzeria Brewery. So if you’re coming to the New Mexico PQ, I will disappoint you. That’s not where you’re going to be. So yeah, yeah, parking lot.

BananaCrapshoot (43:18)
pretty

sure the West Virginia PQ is in a house like it’s in somebody’s house yeah yeah

Mrben (43:24)
It’s kind of cool, actually.

Kennedy AKA Dan (43:27)
Maybe.

BananaCrapshoot (43:29)
And it had to get rescheduled because of the nor’easter coming

up through. It was supposed to be this weekend and it got rescheduled. I heard.

Mrben (43:33)
you

Kennedy AKA Dan (43:35)
Alright, well that

wraps up Saga for this week. Until next week, or next episode, we’ll see you on the arenas.

BananaCrapshoot (43:47)
I don’t know where my mouse is. I don’t know what this button does. What’s this button do? Yeah, there is the button.

Kennedy AKA Dan (43:49)
There’s a button somewhere.