Boba Fett's Armory
By Nathanael Tripp

These last two sets have been a blast, and two of the most game changing sets to ever be released in my opinion. With that said, I've made a new deck from the new set.

First off, let’s focus on the new "goods" from Scum and Villainy. My o’my how good they are. We have an equipment master, a gang of pirates who love their build, some sneaky Jawas, a determined Bounty Hunter, his wretched Hive, and some explosives. Sounds like the making of a new Monty Python movie. In actuality, it is the premise for a devastating new Light Side deck. Let’s do a quick run down of the deck and see what this new set has to offer.

Character:
I will be the first person to point out that mengo loves Boba Fett (H); and he tells everyone about how great he is ALL the time, and he has good reason to; Boba is a beast. With this new set, he gets a boost with his Armor and Jetpack being made into some very sweet Equipment cards. These are sure to put Boba Fett on the top of everyone’s beat-down Character list. A few other versions of Boba are included for stacking, but they lack nothing in the power department and can easily hold their own. But he is not alone in the Equipment love department.

Next up is Dash Rendar, and he is back and better than ever. This version can truly become a beast with just a few Equipment on him, gaining, not only the Equipment bonus, but an additional +1 health and +1 power for each Equipment attached to him. Theoretically, there are eleven Equipment cards that you can attach to Dash making him a 16/16 (without applying power bonuses) with Lucky, Stun, Critical Hit, Parry, the ability to look at your opponents hand and the ability to throw thermal detonators all over the Character arena. Only two things could make this better: first (1), the ability to search out Equipment whenever you need them, and secondly (2), a way to make equip costs cheaper. We have both of those abilities coming in Scum and Villainy.

Vizam is the ultimate weapons master, and he truly shines when "showing" others how to wield such deadly weapons as a Force Pike or Blaster Rifle; reducing the cost of equipping these deadly weapons. R2-D2 (K) is a veritable swiss army knife letting you grab whatever Equipment you need for any occasion. With a character setup this solid and versatile, it will be very hard for most Dark Side decks to crack our dynamic duo; and I’m not talking about Han and Chewy.

Character: (14)
3x Vizam (A)
3x Dash Rendar (B)
3x Boba Fett (H)
1x Boba Fett (C)
1x Boba Fett (G)
1x Boba Fett (I)
2x R2-D2 (K)

Ground:
We start off with the typical inclusion of the Jawa Sandcrawler; how many decks have there been in the last 4 years that haven’t run at least one copy of the ultimate of utility cards. Now we come to three new units from Scum and Villainy, and first up is the Pirate Swoop. This may be the first utility card to rival the Jawa Sandcrawler for its spot as the ultimate utility. Cheap, fast and a HUGE ability are all packed onto this little guy. How huge of an ability, you ask? How does tapping this unit to gain one build point sound? Sounds good to me and the best part is that there is no drawback whatsoever. Your opponent doesn’t gain anything, you don’t have to pay force, discard a card – nothing. Just tap the Pirate Swoop and gain a build point. It’s that simple. The Jawa Hunters are just as amazing; with Stealth they can remain untapped and provide a nice defensive unit. Or you have the option to tap the Jawa Hunters to draw a card.

Last, but not least, we have the Bounty Hunter Team. This unit has one of the most unique Bounty abilities that I have seen. When it triggers, you can put one build point on EACH partially built card in your build zone. Swarms just found a new build generator, you just have to make sure this unit gets a kill in; otherwise it’s a little over-costed. There is a definite trend in many of the new ground units towards combat utility. Basically, units that can serve effectively as utility units or as combat units. This is a swing in the right direction in my opinion.

Ground: (12)
3x Bounty Hunter Team
3x Jawa Hunters
3x Pirate Swoop
3x Jawa Sandcrawler

Space:
Obi-Wan’s Starfighter (B) and the Modified YV-330 (A) are both standard units for Light Side Space and fit the bill again for this deck. However, with each set it seems that Light Side just keeps getting better and better units at their disposal in the Space Arena. Scum and Villainy is no exception. There is a new version of Luke’s X-Wing that is on par with the B and C versions. It is sure to see play in most, if not all Light Side decks. But the real star for the Space arena is Slave I (G). This beauty comes packed with Stealth and a great bounty ability that lets you draw 2 cards. Watch out swarm decks, easy kills will see the owner of this unit drawing massive amounts of cards.

The new Kessel Runner is a great little unit that gains you one build point at the start of your build step if it is in the Space arena. The only problem is the low health of the Runner that is where the Jedi Interceptor’s come into play. As one of the few affordable Intercept units for Light Side, this unit fills a key role that LS had been lacking for some time. An additional point of interest, the Kessel Runner is a Transport. This will be key later on when we get to the Mission selection.

Space: (12)
4x Kessel Runner
2x Jedi Interceptor
1x Luke's X-wing (B)
1x Luke's X-wing (C)
1x Luke's X-wing (E)
1x Slave I (G)
1x Modified YV-330 (A)
1x Obi-Wan's Starfighter (B)

Battle:
Here we go again, Ket’s going to start spouting off about how awesome Discuss it in Committee is and how every deck should include eight-hundred copies of it… actually not this time; although, if you wanted, you could easily switch something out to include a few copies. This time, I am going with a much different idea. Untap abilities have usually been limited to a low-powered unit. Fett’s Determination, on the other hand, lets you untap any Bounty Hunter. So now you can use Hidden Cost to deploy Boba Fett, attack, play Fett’s Determination, attack again, and if all goes as planned, win the character arena in one turn. To assist in this are three copies of Trap Door!, which allows you to tap a unit and damage it. This is especially handy against Stealth units or high-speed units. Our last Battle card is the ever popular Dismiss and for obvious reasons.

Battle: (8)
3x Fett's Determination
3x Trap Door!
2x Dismiss

Mission:
Here is where the deck really shines. With the addition of two new Mission cards, the Bounty Hunter and Smuggler subtypes get a huge advantage. Wretched Hive lets you search your deck for any Bounty Hunter card and put it into your build zone with one build counter on it. Talk about major build and draw advantage. This means you will be able to cherry pick your deck for any copy of Boba Fett you need without having to worry about drawing him.

Smuggling Run, on the other hand, is a little more complicated. It requires that you have a Smuggler and a Transport, and keep those two units alive for an entire turn. The payoff, though, is huge, because you will gain a net total of three extra build points. Seeing as how the Kessel Runner, as mentioned above, is a Transport, this meets one of the requirements. Dash meets the Smuggler requirement and it should be fairly easy to keep Dash around, especially with the help of Equipments. So let the build gain begin!

Mission: (6)
3x Wretched Hive
3x Smuggling Run

Equipment:
Here is where the mayhem starts. If you manage to build all your Equipment on Dash with Vizam in the arena, you will end up with the following unit:

5 Build (Total 18 Build and discard 4 cards with Equipment costs)
60 Speed
20 Power
18 Health
Critical Hit 2
Parry 1
Stun 2
4 instances of ‘Detach a Thermal Detonator -> Roll a die and do that much damage to all Characters.’
When the build step starts, look at your opponent's hand or gain 1 Force.
Bounty: Draw a card

With something that big, it would take the Death Star to put a dent in him. You can also spread the Equipment around, thus making multiple beat sticks. And nothing is better than having Boba Fett decked out in all his Equipment. The last Equipment in the deck, and the only card that can only be equipped to Dash, is Secret Compartments. This little gem lets you give one of your Smugglers the Stealth ability and only requires a tap. So if the Dark Side player tries to out-speed Dash you have only to give him Stealth and all your opponent’s effort is for not. With the amount of flexibility that Equipment allows it should see play in larger amounts than ever before. And, with Vizam out, this comes at an extremely affordable price.

Equipment: (12)
4x Thermal Detonator
1x Blaster Pistol
1x Blaster Rifle
1x Droid Battlestaff
1x Force Pike
1x Boba Fett's Armor (A)
1x Boba Fett's Jetpack (A)
1x Electrobinoculars
1x Secret Compartments

Total Cards = 64

Final Points:
As you might notice, this deck breaks one of my normal hard rules seeing as how it is over 60 cards. However with the amount of draw that this deck has, the two extra cards shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Your mulligan should be conditional on trying to get either Dash or Boba. These two Characters are key. However, you don’t want to tip your hat too early, so wait to build them until the end of setup. The rest of the deck plays out pretty simply and should gain you major card and build advantages if it goes off like it should.

Alternative Deck Ideas:
While this deck is both fun and very strong, there are also many other spin-offs you can do of this deck. With a neutral theme, you could gain bonuses from Jabba the Hutt and Locations. Additionally you can use Dash to offset a Clone Deck that focus’ on Clone Blaster and Clone Grenade. We are entering a new age, an age of Equipment. As never before, this little used card type is coming into its own and creating quite a stir. So give Equipment a try, you may even find that there are other "hidden" strategies.

Download this deck and other deck articles for LackeyCCG here.

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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 also been a member of both the Wizards and Rebelbasers forums since January of 2002, posting under the name Ketricel.