Store Showdown Champion 18.05/ Top4 25.05

18.05 Store Showdown

Round 1 2-0 vs Grand Moff Tarkin Capital City

In my experience Tarkin Blue has a slower opening than Tarkin Red, and this gives you ample time to setup your shielded sentinels or develop your weaker units. Against Tarkin, an early ECL to KO their units and develop your board can snowball the game against them. This matchup ended up very one sided.

My opponent here achieved Top 4 at this event and Top 8 at the 25.05 event.

Round 2 2-0 vs Boba Fett Administrator's Tower

Boba Yellow can output a scary amount of damage through Surprise Strike, Sneak Attack and Cunning and you must be constantly conscious of these cards. Early restore is helpful to mitigate damage and you can waste their time making them bounce sentinels. They do not have Energy Conversion Lab like you do, so abuse this fact to take a favourable trade with Consortium StarViper or Kanan Jarrus, reduce your actions and claim initiative.

My opponent here narrowly missed Top 8 at this event and achieved Top 8 at the 25.05 event.

Round 3 1-2 vs Chirrut Îmwe Kestro City

This matchup caught me very off guard. I had not practiced it, and it showed. I won game one, but I did not know what to sideboard and my opponent outvalued me easily in game two with their sideboard. In game 3 I attempted to setup Alliance Dispatcher, only to be met by a Sabine Wren wielding a Jedi Lightsaber that wiped my board easily.

I did learn a lot here however! #[SORSH_01] kills Chirrut on deploy and will help you deal with their buffed units here. Taking your removal out of the Sideboard and dropping resupply in this matchup typically feels best. If they are playing Vigilance, you should too. This is a Luke favoured matchup once you learn it.

My opponent here achieved Top 8 at this event.

Round 4 0-2 vs Iden Versio Tarkintown

This is my horror matchup. I knew going into the event hard control terrifies Luke and that is what almost all the side deck is for. There wasn't much to this game other than all my units got removed and I didn't see my sideboard cards, so I lost. This player is at my locals, and I have since beaten them in matches twice by siding in the entire sideboard and actually seeing those cards. I recommend taking out Devotion, Luke's Lightsaber, Bright Hope, Redemption and Admiral Ackbar to make space. Ensure you are patient on not flooding the board with U-Wing Reinforcement or Home One until after they have dropped a Superlaser Blast. Try to always keep one U-Wing or Home One in hand to reflood in case they repeatedly wipe you.

My opponent here achieved Top 8 at this event.

Round 5 2-0 vs Sabine Wren Energy Conversion Lab

Here is where Luke shines brightest. Watch as they hit you to 4 HP, smirk at the For A Cause I Believe In in their hand and then wince as you heal out of range again, and again, and again.

The only way you really lose this matchup is by having an unshielded sentinel and letting them steadfast with a deployed leader into it. Use Energy Conversion Lab, shieled sentinels and Takedown on their leader to avoid this nightmare scenario. A buffed R2-D2 can be hard for them to answer. Try to play out Restore units and use those to trade favourably into them. Like using Energy Conversion Lab to play Consortium StarViper.

My opponent here achieved Top 4 at this event.

Top 8 2-1 vs Chirrut Îmwe Kestro City

For the rematch, I was ready. I took everything I learned in the initial game and brought it forwards here. Immensely proud of this quick adaptation netting me this result. You still lose to the classic Luke problem of a buffed unit, so you may want to consider Traitorous in the deck if you are seeing this strategy frequently.

Top 4 2-0 vs Sabine Wren Energy Conversion Lab

Another rematch! Just like the first Sabine match, this is a very one-sided matchup for Luke, and I felt confident I would be in the finals upon seeing I had it. My opponent is a good player and a great friend, but this matchup is about 80/20 Luke favoured I would say.

Finals 2-1 vs Grand Moff Tarkin Kestro City

I beefed the first match here I was so nervous. I allowed an 8/8 cellblock guard to exist on the board and it cost me the match. For games 2 and 3, I used Energy Conversion Lab on turn 1 or 2, as soon as I had a trade where my unit ate theirs and lived, to get tempo over the deck.

This Tarkin went wide and tried to play buffs that would hit a wide board, which a patient Luke can deal with by meticulously outing every unit they play. If you ever let them exist with multiple units, this becomes hugely problematic very quickly, as you struggle to out a single buffed unit, let alone several.

25.05 Store Showdown

Round 1 2-0 vs Grand Inquisitor Capital City

Inquisitor blue is an interesting budget deck that wants to buff weaker units, typically ones with Grit or Raid. As Inquisitor tends to play more aggressively, Luke matches up well into it, especially when you have a Energy Conversion Lab to KO their units before they can buff them or get value. One game in this set my opponent didn’t damage me and the other game, I fully healed before I won. Just play Luke's standard shielding sentinel game patiently and you will win here easily.

Round 2 2-1 vs Grand Moff Tarkin Kestro City

This was a vastly different style of Tarkin Red to the one I had played previously. This Tarkin wanted to buff a single unit with cards like Academy Training. After game 1, I realised this and stopped being precious with keeping my alive at all; I just played to ensure their units died. I found that they ran out of gas if I played this way as their hand would become clogged with events or upgrades. This is how I won games 2 and 3.

Round 3 2-1 vs Darth Vader Energy Conversion Lab

I was aware that my opponent here had won a previous Store Showdown and had theory crafted ideas about how I would play into this. I expected Vader Green to play a more like a Sabine, extremely aggressive. In game 1, I played to build my board to out the aggressive playstyle I expected. What I was instead greeted with was a Control playstyle.

For games 2 and 3, I subbed in all my anti-control and big unit cards from my sideboard. Vanquish and Home One were particularly useful here. I ensured my opponent was always in a position that if they deployed their leader it would die to mine, and as such, they never deployed. Using this strategy, I managed to grind the game out, especially thanks to Vigilance hitting two of their Darth Vader.

My opponent here achieved Top 8 at the 18.05 event and Champion at this event.

Round 4 2-0 vs Boba Fett Administrator's Tower

This was a rematch with my Round 2 opponent from the 18.05 Store Showdown. In that match, my opponent fought my board, which was a huge mistake into Luke as I can easily outvalue that and won. In this game, my opponent saved their removal to bounce my sentinels and focused on outputting raw damage to my base with their hard to out units, like Boba Fett and Fett's Firespray. I won both games whilst being one action off defeat. Redemption and U-Wing Reinforcement went huge here to block off their late game damage and take me out of lethal.

Boba Fett is an utterly terrifying deploy for you with his insane stats, so try to sentinel in front of him, or have damage to answer with. This is easier said than done. I genuinely believe the fact that Boba Fett exists might be reason enough to drop Energy Conversion Lab and play Echo Base instead, just to try and live long enough to get your late game Restore engine online.

My opponent here achieved Top 8 at this event.

Round 5 0-2 vs Boba Fett Energy Conversion Lab

As stated above, Boba is a terrifying matchup as he can easily remove your sentinels and his key units in Boba Fett and Fett's Firespray have terrifying stats. This is made even worse with ECL Boba as he can play Steadfast Battalion, so if your sentinel is unshielded, you are in for a world of pain.

My opponent aggressively ramped into me and always had removal for my shielded sentinels, so my only hope was coming back in the late game. Both games I was a turn off coming back into the game. In neither of these games did I get value off ECL and Echo Base would have ensured I got to take another turn with a Luke Skywalker on board. When I tested this matchup on Karabast, I never dropped a game whilst having a 30HP base, so I know Luke can have a good matchup here.

This Boba player was both a lovely guy and by far the best Boba I had encountered yet, so my matchup read could have been wrong. I will test this matchup to try and get a better understanding.

My opponent here achieved Finalist at this event.

Top 4 vs Boba Fett Energy Conversion Lab

I was unhappy to instantly receive this rematch, but I knew it was a winnable matchup. I simply just bricked 3 out of my 4 hands this game and the one I could play was just less than ideal. Game 1, my opponent dropped an ECL Steadfast Battalion onto a Echo Base Defender I was about to shield, I lost. Game 2, my first card I could play was Fleet Lieutenant and my opponent again dropped an ECL Steadfast on me. A disappointing end to the event but in card games, these things happen.

Future Changes

Main Deck: -2 Devotion +1 R2-D2 +1 Takedown

Sideboard: -1 Takedown +1 Home One

Why?

Luke ECL feels too fast for Devotion, so it would be my first cut as I never found the time to play it.

In the Glasgow Store Showdown on 25.05, I bricked my Top 4 match in 3 out of 4 hands. R2-D2 goes up to 3 to fix this and because he's so good vs all the other meta 1 drops i.e. Greedo, Death Star Stormtrooper.

The second Takedown came out the Sideboard so frequently that I may as well just main deck it.

Against Control, I always sided in Home One and found that every time I saw Redemption, I wished it were Home One. I am adding a 2nd Home One to Sideboard so I can just replace my Redemptions in future Control matchups.