Creation of a Team
by Nathanael Tripp

Everyone since the beginning of time has wanted to be part of something bigger, something that defines them as a person and helps them achieve their goals. While a team in the SWTCG isn't life defining, it does help a group of people pull together and achieve their goals. This is where Team Imperial Outcasts got its start. I\/Iace\/\/indu contacted me and asked if I would like to help in the formation of a new online SWTCG team with the intent of winning the first ever Champions of the Force Tournament. I was excited about this idea from the first I heard of it and quickly we made a list of people we would like to add to the team. I had played more than my fair share of games against mengo and in the process built a good friendship with him, I also knew; from first hand experience, how dominant his play style and deck building skills were, so he was my first choice. Grand Moff Nicodemus Fett and I have always played together online, everytime we are online we are talking about cards, decks, or anything else of pertinence to the SWTCG so he was another obvious choice. And with that we had the start of a solid four man team. Later we added Marconis Maximus, Mister Magiko, PocketAces98, and Obi-Wan21 to the team for the many unique skills they could add to our efforts and goals. But once the team was formed what else had to be done?

Forming the team was the easy part, what came next was a grueling and time consuming process. Deck building and testing. There were so many ideas thrown around at the start that we as a team got a little side tracked making wicked fun decks, instead of wicked competative decks. It was mengo who got everyone focused when he introduced us to the uberness of the Luke's X-Wing Pilot Deck (or LXW Frenzy as it was later titled). Ideas started to flow and before long we had two versions of this deck that while similar played totally opposite. The LXW deck was very swarm oriented trying to hit fast and hard, winning the game within 2-3 turns or less. It could last for many turns, but really the deck wanted the quick win and was built to be able to acheive this on a very consistent basis. The other deck that came out of this was a Falcon version. While LXW was about swarm Falcon was a control based deck. The goal of the deck was to lockdown Space with the Falcon (D), once it was controlled you would switch to the (E) version and start launching attacks into character until your opponent was so spent on resources that he had nothing left. The key card to both decks however was Podracing Course. With this 3 build location we could effectively swarm ground with 2-4 cheap/fast Ground units and decimate anything our opponent would be able to play. Few decks are able to press in all three arenas, but these two deck could do it every game. After a few weeks of testing we realized two things 1) both decks worked wonders and 2) there was one HUGE problem... we couldn't beat them. We could get good match-ups against one or the other, such as D*2 being able to beat LXW, but it fell short against the Falcon Control deck. Everyone on the team was a little worried that if someone else cracked the LXW/Falcon pilot decks that this first tournament would turn into who could bid LS lower. So work began anew on trying to make a DS deck that could beat these two decks.*

We had spent so much time making a dominant LS deck that we almost forgot to work on DS. Mengo went back to an old staple of his the D*2 deck. He thought that with Orn and Falcon's Needs that he should be able to keep LXW/Falcon tapped down enough that he could slowly beat them with the D*2 either by taking Space or Ground. Podracing Course gave this deck a few headaches but in the ends we decided that if we played Pirate Swoops in ground that we may be able to take some pressure off the Ground arena. If you know me I usually am not content to play some standard off the shelf deck, I want to make something wackey and innovative. That was both a gift and a curse for this tournament. I created the Zam Star 2 deck and while it could beat Pilots on a much better percentage then just the standard D*2 build... it struggled to beat anything else. I knew this would bite me in the long run but I really wanted to just test the "attack from build zone mechanic" and I figured this would be the best time to try it. It ended up not hurting me as bad as I thought, but it was still a risky move. Marco and GMNF went in two different directions with their DS decks. Marco fell back to a old staple in Maul Force Drain. The deck could beat Diplomats (our backup LS deck) because of all the activated abilities it has, and it did good against LXW using Vader's TIE (C) and Brutal Assault to overwhelm the deck with just pure damage output. GMNF on the other hand went with a Imperial build that swarmed and beat hard. Both decks could win, but still had trouble with LXW/Falcon.

With that all we could do was sit back and wait for round 1 to begin. My first round opponent was JediMasterDJR, both games I was able to play LS and as expected it didn't seem like anyone had an answer to LXW as the games were over fast. After the game DJR and I were talking and come to find out he was running a Pilot deck, but whereas our decks focused on LXW or Falcon, DJR had both. This gave him more veratility and actually increased his matchup against D*2, but from the testing we did with this build it lowered the rate at which you were able to get a fully stacked/piloted unit and that is where we found the best win percentages to be, when we had our Space units fully loaded.

Round two saw me playing Mister Magiko and boy where those some fun games, I lost the first game playing DS. Magiko was playing his Diplomat deck and was able to keep my D*2 tapped down the entire game with Bail Organa (B) until eventually he was able to do enough damage to take it out. Also drawing all Ground besides the D*2 didn't help me very much. Games two and three saw me playing LXW and again the obvious dominance of that deck showed through. Magiko came close to beating it, but a few well timed plays by me, and a bad roll by Magiko sealed the deal.

Round three was sure to be a slug fest as I was playing Trevor (Darth Waiter). Trevor made one fatal mistake before we started playing though... he had his tournament decks posted in is signature. If there is one way to lose a game fast it is to give your opponent knowledge of what you are playing. The axiom "knowledge is power" is true. So his his deck lists in hand I was able to go build his decks and playtest against them. Little did I know that while I knew what was in his deck I had no idea how he played them. All three games came down to the wire with me playing DS game one and winning, then playing DS in game two and losing. Game three came down to me playing my LS deck against Trevor's deck which was the best counter anyone on our team had seen for LXW and a deck none of us had thought of. Basically Trevor had a hodge podge of all the Unpreventable or direct damage units available to DS, this was a problem for LXW because in order for it to be able to "turtle" up it needed to be attacked, direct damage meant that I had no way to prevent it and with the low health of my units I was in trouble if Trevor could get out enough direct damage. Fortunally for me I was able to get my Podracing Course/Asteroid Field engine up and running on turn one and this saved me. All three games were great and I see Trevor being a very dominant force in the SWTCG for a long time coming.

Round four paired me with another teammate, and really the best outcome for us was to take a draw putting us in first and second. When we played our games it came down to what we pretty much expected, LXW beat Maul and Falcon beat Zam Star 2. And with that we were finished with the first CotF Tournament, our team did very successful with me coming in 1st, Marco in 2nd, GMNF in 5th, Magiko in , and mengo in 17th because he had to drop because of time constraints. A very sucessful first tournament for the newly formed team if I may say so myself. Every opponent we played was amazing, and every game was fun from the start to the finish.

And with that I must say ado as it is back to playtesting for the CotF 2, hopefully we can have even more innovation from everyone involved and continue to move the game forward.

* - Marco, mengo, and I all played versions of these two decks. GMNF played a few quirky Rebel Accuracy deck. I never got the hang of that deck because I was too busy working on LXW/Falcon builds. But it worked wonders for him and you should take a look at it on the Team Imperial Outcasts website. And Magiko played a very control oriented Diplomat deck that countered D*2 and other "big beat" decks very well.

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