Ket's Deck Clinic #4
By Nathanael Tripp

Last time in the deck clinic we tackled a Light Side Pilot deck, this week we are going to focus on a Dark Side Pilot deck. The fun thing about this is that there is a totally different strategy involved. And this type of deck is much harder to play than it looks. It requires a lot of finesse and a good deal of luck. But when it plays out right you are sure to be in total control of the game. Here is the deck sent in by JediMasterJCB/DeltaForcels.

Download this deck and other deck articles for LackeyCCG here.

"Now, I've been playing and deck building since AotC and through the years of making decks, I've always thought simplicity was key to deck building and with this deck I doubt you would disagree. Though this deck is probably crazy in the way is completely forsakes the character arena I have seen it work and win against the formidable Light side decks that I have played it against. Check it out.

Character:
4x TIE Fighter Elite Pilot
2x TIE Fighter Pilot
4x AT-AT Driver
2x General Maximilian Veers (A)
4x Mas Amedda (A)

Ground:
4x Blizzard Force AT-ST
2x AT-AT
4x Endor Attack Squad
4x Forest AT-ST

Space:
4x Utapau Starfighter
1x Inferno (A)
4x TIE Interceptor
4x Droid Missiles
1x Guardian Mantis (A)

Battle:
4x Dismiss
4x Jedi Piloting

Mission:
2x Ground Assault

Location:
4x Cloud City Battleground

The basic tactics that I run in this deck is to focus on getting out a sizable Ground and Space presence for a relatively low cost. Then I augment it by letting pilots enhance speeds, powers, and abilities. This in turn saves my Battle slots for damage prevention and disrupting duties. As a small help to the ground arena I played 2 Ground Assaults to help boost my walkers. If you take a look, ground also employs the Endor Attack Squad in order to stop the light side's wonderful scouts. And with 4 Cloud City Battlegrounds it almost always gets to use it's hidden cost ability, especially with the help of the Blizzard Force AT-ST's. Oh, and as for Mas Amedda, he's perfect for giving the deck a little build point boost."

Let me say first off that Dark Side pilot decks have always been a tricky deck to play. They lack the sheer power of most other Dark Side decks and they aren't as "swarm" oriented as Creatures. Where they make up for this though is in the ability to overwhelm your opponent with Battle cards. And this deck seems to be hitting on some of the key points that a pilot deck needs to focus on. However there are a few aspects that this deck could do better on. Let's take a look at the deck by arenas and see if we can't centralize the strategy a little more.

Character:
You had a great start in setup for character except I would rather not play Mas Amedda in a pilot deck. Most of your units are rather fragile and cannot afford to take any more damage than necessary. However going with TIE Fighter Pursuit Pilot's gives you an even better source of build gain. You have to use them wisely though and plan carefully since their ability doesn't trigger until after they are destroyed. One copy of Darth Vader (R) should be more than enough to lockdown the Character Arena in a tight spot and it also adds to the surprise factor that you can employ. Also Admiral Firmus Piett is awesome in a deck that swarms space. He allows you even more flexibility by giving all your Space units Intercept. This comes in very hand with the TIE Fighter because it lets you sacrifice them to gain one build on your next turn. Other then those two changes the character arena looks really solid and well thought out. And as a side note sacrificing one arena to win in the other two is a very good strategy. It is used in most all decks, mainly because trying to win in all three arenas at one time can become rather costly.

Character: (16)
4x TIE Fighter Elite Pilot
4x TIE Bomber Pilot
3x TIE Fighter Pursuit Pilot
2x General Maximilian Veers (A)
2x Admiral Firmus Piett (A)
1x Darth Vader (R)

Ground:
Ground is pretty solid and I would only make two changes, first in taking out the Endor Attack Squad. While it is a good card, it just lacks something seeing as how you have to have a Ground Location in play to have its Hidden Cost effect. I would switch it instead for two copies of 501st Clone Legion (A) and two copies of Jawa Sandcrawler. The 501st is such a great card in all aspects and its Hidden Cost makes it the perfect unit for your deck. The other change is to switch out the AT-AT for Blizzard Force AT-AT. I don't like how your opponent can retreat his/her units when attacked by the AT-AT. It just lets them get away with too much; even if its damage is unpreventable it just isn't as solid in my opinion.

Ground: (14)
4x Blizzard Force AT-ST
4x Forest AT-ST
2x Blizzard Force AT-AT
2x 501st Clone Legion (A)
2x Jawa Sandcrawler

Space:
Space was almost spot on as far as what I myself would run. I would change out the Inferno and the Guardian Mantis for two Endor Imperial Fleets however. The addition of a Hidden Cost unit in space is very beneficial and could possibly win games on its own. The other change I would do is to get rid of the Droid Missiles. They are a great unit, but they cannot be piloted. I would rather use TIE Bombers to give you added support in ground. Also TIE Fighters are great for their build gain advantage. Put a TIE Pursuit Pilot on one of these little buggers and intercept with it and you will be getting a nice big bonus of four extra build points next turn. I want to say that I really like the Utapau Starfighter, this little guy is great with Stun 2. He can easily de-power most Light Side Space units, and with 50 speed he attacks before most of them as well.

Space: (14)
3x TIE Interceptor
3x TIE Bomber EX-1-2
3x TIE Fighter
3x Utapau Starfighter
2x Endor Imperial Fleet

Battle:
It always seems like most of my decks rely heavily on Battle cards to help them win. I'll use underpowered or low health units and offset them with Battle cards. But if this works then why fix it. The same principle works with this deck. You are using "sub-par" units and counterbalancing them with superb Battle cards. Jedi Piloting works great for this deck and is very cheap on the force. Countermeasures is one of those cards that never really say play even though it was a great card. While it doesn't prevent damage it deals equal damage to both the defending and attacking unit. Wait until your opponent pumps up their Luke's X-Wing, Millennium Falcon, or Anakin's Podracer then drop a Countermeasures on them and watch them start hoping for all ones. Vendetta works similarly in that it takes your opponents damage and makes it work for you, by making all your damage unpreventable. Lastly we have good ole' Dismiss, what did we ever do without this card lol.

Battle: (12)
4x Jedi Piloting
4x Countermeasures
2x Dismiss
2x Vendetta

Location:
Cloud City Battleground is a great card for this deck with the addition of a few more Battle cards. It should lighten the Force cost on the deck considerably. The last two card slots in this deck are for Executor Bridge. It surprised me somewhat that this card wasn't added in the original build seeing as how it basically says "All your pilots are free". No worries though it is easily added into the deck, and it fits very nicely.

Location: (4)
2x Executor Bridge
2x Cloud City Battleground

You should be able to go through quite a large portion of the deck in setup with how low the build curve is for this deck. You will want to hold all the pilots you get until after you get out an Executor Bridge. Also don't worry too much about your force. Few of your units need it, and those that do need very little. The biggest issue with this deck is that it's hard to win Space against the gauntlet that Light Side can throw at you. It can be done, and hopefully this deck has enough to do it.

Deck Builders Challenge #2
First off I would like to announce the winners of the first Deck Builders Challenge, congratulations to:

Commandant Xerxes

And here are the current standings [(only 7 votes!?!? C'mon, let's get some participation) - editor]:
1st - Commandant Xerxes
2nd - Mengo
3rd -

Now for this weeks Challenge I have something really fun in mind. Let's throw out the deck building rules and go all out. Here are the rules for this week:

1. Your deck must be at least 100 cards.
2. You can have as many or as few cards in an arena as you want. This means you can have 0 space cards and 30 characters if you wanted.
3. Banned/Restricted List in effect.
4. You may play with 6 copies of any one card.
5. You must have at least ten cards with over 8 build.

Well there you go, its BIG deck time!! Please submit all decks to me either by sending me a PM at rebelbasers.com or by e-mailing it to me at Ketricel@msn.com.

Until next time May the Force be with You.

Thoughts or comments? Visit the message board thread for this article here.

About the Author
Nathanael has been a player since May 2002 and is currently the Playtesting Chairperson and a member of the IDC Board. He has written a number of articles for Wizards of the Coast and has been very active with the SWTCG Hope of the Jedi tournament. Nathanael Tripp has been a member of both the Wizards and Rebelbasers forums since January of 2002, posting under the name Ketricel.