Table of Contents
Hello and welcome back! Set 2 is starting to find its groove as events around the world are starting to pop up and players shuffle up their favorite new cards. In less than a week, we're going to have our first larger cash event(s) of the new season as SCG Con visits Baltimore for not one, but three $1k+ events with a $2k event on Saturday July 27th. Just a week after that, thousands of gamers will be in Indianapolis for Gen Con 2024 which features, again, not one but three 128-events. Then, finally, the week after that on August 10th, I've seen ads for several stores running their own $2k events.
Whew. That's a lot.
To make things easier, and help you figure out what deck you should possibly take to your respective events coming up, I'll talk about some of the big contenders - new and old - and discuss changes to the decks, for better or worse. Set 2 opens up a whole new world with deckbuilding and it's a lot to take in at once. Let's just jump into some things:
Boba Fett
The best deck at the end of set 1 is, no surprise, the front-runner going into set 2. Early results from the first weekend of events show that to be the case but I don't want to turn this into "overreaction Monday" because I don't think Boba is some unbeatable menace. That said, Boba of all varieties gained a lot of cards - Bazine Netal, Tie Phantom, Doctor Evazan, Relentless Pursuit, Mercenary Gunship, 4-Lom, Zuckuss, Boba Fett's Armor ... and those are just the options for Cunning. Boba almost suffers from too much of a good thing and the deck can get worse by just adding too many new cards and straying too far away from what made the deck a menace to begin with. It's going to be interesting to see where the dust settles on what the optimal build will be for Boba Cunning, Command, and Vigilance but you can be sure that you'll see it at the top tables for months to come.
I think Boba Cunning is logically the best place to start and I think you want to try to restrain yourself when you grab your stack of set 2 cards. Boba yellow is an aggro-tempo deck that just gains advantage by playing high power threats while disrupting your opponent at the same time. You aren't going to do that if you're playing Tie Phantom, Triple Dark Raid, max copies of Bazine, etc in your deck. I know that it's new and flashy but it strays far, far from what the deck is designed to do - be fast and efficient. On the other hand, cards like Doctor Evazan, Boba Fett's Armor, 4-Lom, and Zuckuss go hand in hand to further progress the set 1 strategy with the deck - high power units with immediate board impact and hard to deal with threats.
If I were to play Boba Cunning this weekend at the Baltimore SCG Con weekend, it would look something like this:
Sabine Wren
Naturally the next deck we want to dive into, as with last set, is of course the aggro deck of choice - Sabine Wren. I think toward the end of last set, a lot of players were (mistakingly) favoring Cunning Sabine but ultimately Command Sabine was the best aggro deck of the set 1 meta. Sporting some of the best matchups across the board, in particular in the Sabine mirrors, Command Sabine was always a good choice for any event. Moving into set 2 meta, it looks to be the same, except Command Sabine gains several new options in the form of Darksaber, Poe Dameron, and Wrecker to name a few. Timely Intervention is another solid option should decks want to lean into more Ambush, and Cassian Andor gives you some additional Smuggle options as well.
I think the biggest question Sabine has to answer is how much to stray from the Rebel synergies that led her to victories in set 1. Remember that Poe and Wrecker aren't Rebels so playing max copies of Rebel Assault and Medal Ceremony may not be the most efficient use of tight deck slots anymore. Also, Darksaber or no Darksaber vs. Timely or no Timely makes for some interesting choices as you want to keep your heroism count high for FACIBI. At this point in time, I really want to be on Darksaber in Sabine as the deck can take a lot of actions on the flip turn which lets you take advantage of being able to play it after an opponent claims or exhausts their resources which forces them to deal with it on the following turn. I believe there's space to be able to play Darksaber as well as Timely, albeit you'd likely only be able to play 1-2 TImely and you'd have to accept that your FACIBI will only deal 3 damage a good chunk of the time.
Here's what my day 1 Sabine deck looks like going into Baltimore and Gencon:
Vigilance/Command Soft Control
Rather than designate a specific leader in this category I'll just group them all together into a single archetype. Iden, Krennic, and Qi'ra all play approximately the same way. They all have their strengths and weaknesses but Qi'ra has the leg up on the others in most cases due to her ability to solve a problem that Krennic and Iden had in set 1 - being able to handle larger opposing leaders such as Vader. While Rival's Fall exists to help the other leaders, Qi'ra allows you to not only get rid of leaders very efficiently but also just inherently be the best Overwhelming Barrage deck.
When Qi'ra was previewed, the community at large (myself included) thought that she was just a subpar version of what we already had, but after testing her with teammates I was quickly converted. I had thought that her leader ability to add shields was counterproductive to what soft control decks wanted to do. However, adding shields aggressively to grit units, or your late game bombs like Snoke or Vader, happens to line up really well with the meta because not a ton of decks are playing the removal package necessary to deal with a constant stream of shielded units. It's very difficult for sabine to deal with a turn 1 Hybolon Enforcer, with a shield it's even harder to deal with a Pyke Sentinel with a shield on turn 2. Late game, Qi'ra gets to find Client with Vader unit to help shut the door but those two are two more units that are difficult to remove once they're shielded (again, in Client's case). You can see where this is going and after seeing it played out in front of me I became a believer.
in Iden and Krennic's case, a lot of the same cards improve their standings. Snoke is an incredicle finisher and in some cases even better than Avenger, Fell and Dragon and some number of Rival's Fall helps sure up the removal package, The Client and Top Target can potentially help gain some much needed life, and even Doctor Pershing can help draw cards. We also potentially have some new ECL targets to play with, depending on what the meta evolves into.
All that said, I'd want to be on Qi'ra right now if I thought blue/green was the call for an event. She has solid matchups across the board, a pretty decent Sabine matchup, great Boba matchup, but weak into the "bigger" control decks that we'll look to sure up if those get popular. Here's around where we should be:
Ramp
The last pillar or archetype that I want to discuss this time is just good old ramp. In set 1 we had a handful of decks that could ramp effectively but set 2 really dials that up to the next level. Villain strategies still have the most options, and the best leaders, for ramp mostly due to Superlaser Tech being so good, but now all decks have access to Price On Your Head as an extra ramp card to play in conjunction with Resupply, SLT, and even Command in some decks. Spark of Hope is another new ramp card that could be good in the right deck but for now I think it's a little overhyped until someone finds the right shell for it. I've seen it in a lot of decks where it really shouldn't be so far.
Using all that information, we have to figure out what finisher to use. Set 2 gives us Krayt Dragon to pair with Aggression, we still have Relentless, Avenger, and Devastator from set 1, and Snoke also gives us another end game threat that is considerably better when ramped into. This leaves us with Vigilance/Command or Aggression/Command as the logical pairings. At this time, given that I think blue/green will be a popular pairing, I really like what Vader brings to the table. You get to ramp into one of the most powerful leaders and get to play one of the best new finishers in Krayt Dragon. You also get to play Palpatine's Return either main or side to make sure your threats stick around for good and also as a counter of sorts to Rey decks playing Pillage and Force Throw. The question is really do you want to play Timely Intervention and a 30 HP base, or do you want to play ECL? Or, possibly, go crazy and play ECL + Timely. I've really liked how well Kylo unit has performed so far so playing some sort of Ambush is pretty appealing.
Here's what my current Vader Command ramp deck looks like as of today:
That's all I'm going to cover today but that's certainly not all the viable decks for any big event. These are just the decks I consider to be the "pillars" of the meta going into set two. There are plenty of other leaders and decks that fall into these categories - for example, Sabine isn't the only viable aggro deck, Vader isn't the only viable ramp deck, etc.
Best of luck in your events over the next few weeks and if you're at Gencon be sure to say hi!
-Tatta
