Flood the Senate

Premise: A versatile deck that allows you to flood your board and your hand while you tailor your experience to the deck you're facing.

Mulligan:

Against Aggro - When facing obvious aggro decks like Sabine, I always try to start with as much restore and healing in my hand as possible. The main thing I try and have is as many 501st Liberators in my hand as possible as healing 3 damage is huge. Colonel Yularen is another early game drop that can really stack up the healing quick. Mas Amedda is quite nice as well since against aggro they will more than likely be going straight to your base, often leaving him unchallenged and drawing cards. Also, I feel like Battlefield Marine is always clutch in trading early game. If you can get a combination of these cards, it will help set you up for success.

Against Control - This is a match up where I know I will have to race the opponent and win before they can drop their big units down. They are often set up to deal with single units, not a flood which is what you will be going for. Thus, the dream start to mulligan for is Echo -> Manufactured Soldiers to turn on coordinate and let Echo start swinging for 4 damage. Drop Shaak Ti on turn 4 and Clone Commander Cody on 5 makes for an insane amount of damage early that is hard for control match ups to keep up with. If I can get any of the above cards in my starting hand, I'm happy.

Strategy:

Against Aggro - While this deck can be fast, it can't out race the likes of Sabine or Kylo. Thus, the early game is predicated on making smart trades and restoring as much health as possible. Getting a Colonel Yularen out early helps a ton to snowball heals. 501st Liberator also puts in a ton of work, healing you up to 9 damage (if you play all 3) which can really help stall the game for you. Cards like Shaak Ti and Clone Commander Cody are often far too slow against aggro, but it is often where cards like Bright Hope shine. The main MVP of this match up is In Defense of Kamino. If they're ignoring your units and you slap this card down with 3 to 4 Republic units out (which is easy to do with this deck), the amount of healing can easily win you the game. Plus, thanks to the nifty "when defeated" ability each Republic unit gains, you can feel free to trade in a bunch of your units to clear their board and you're still left with a nice board full of clones.

If you can survive until 6 resources with all your healing, you're often left with more units and far more cards in hand than your opponent. If last until 7 resources, it's essentially over. U-Wing Reinforcement is there to refill your board along with comboing healing and damage together. For 7 resources you could play Colonel Yularen -> Coruscant Guard -> 501st Liberator to potentially heal 6, clear out a unit with 3 health or less and have a board presence. Or if you're good on health, pulling something like Battlefield Marine -> Echo -> Admiral Ackbar can leave you with a huge board presence, coordinate activated, and Ackbar dealing a bunch of damage to a unit.

Against Control - Control matchups is where I stomp on the gas pedal. Most control decks I face locally are focused on removal of single units and they often can't deal with a flood, especially early. The dream, as stated early, is Echo -> Manufactured Soldiers -> Shaak Ti -> Clone Commander Cody. Of course, your opponent will try to disrupt it, but a lot of times they're trying to ramp at the beginning of the game and have no idea what they're walking into. The turn 4 leader flip can be especially devastating to opponents because it instantly turns on Padme's coordinate, even on an empty board. Most times though, your board is NOT empty. A lot of times after that flip, I have 5-6 units on board and it quickly becomes overwhelming for your opponent. If you are able to drop a Clone Commander Cody with Shaak Ti on board, your token units are getting +2/+1 and all your others are getting +1/+1.

Once past the mid-game, I make sure to have a clock in my head. I'm racing their late game. If I'm against a green Palpatine deck, I'm often in the clear as they typically don't have answers for 7+ units on board. The multitude of units are often able to eat up an Overwhelming Barrage. The main card I'm afraid of is Superlaser Blast as that can be devastating. However, if your cards do get wiped, that's what U-Wing Reinforcement is for. When playing that card, if I have units on board, I like to pull things cards like Republic Tactical Officer to sneak in every extra bit of damage I can. Admiral Ackbar or Coruscant Guard can help clear out a pesky sentinel unit so the rest of your units can squeeze in extra damage. It's all about putting that clock in your head and going as fast as you can before your opponent is able to stabilize, which can be difficult to do against this deck since you typically have so many units on the board.

Miscellaneous Strategy

The reason I enjoy this deck so much is people never face Padmé so they don't know what to expect. I've had people ask if she is actually necessary? Could I just slap another green leader in there instead? To that, I say she is imperative. With this deck, you often end up with hands of 6+ cards without trying. This isn't overkill. What it allows is you to have the "kitchen sink" so to speak. A lot of these cards do very different things depending on the board state, so with you having a plethora of cards, you can deal with just about any situation that pops up. Plus, you never run out of steam like other aggro decks since your focus is typically playing multiple cards per turn. Padmé's leader ability, especially on her unit side, is extremely easy to activate and since she only has 2 power, she's often ignored.

I'm not saying this is a tournament worthy deck, but I did take it to my weekly play (which is rather casual) and went 4-0 with it. Not saying it's that much, but I did beat our store champion's Sabine ECL deck with 1 health remaining, so it has some legs. The biggest benefit to this deck is the surprise factor. Everyone knows how to play against meta decks, most people haven't seen this deck so they'll struggle, at least the first game. This may be a deck that loses some steam in games 2 and 3 as people learn what to play around.

Either way, I think this is a relatively viable deck if you're looking to try something new.

Also, I did not come up with this deck completely on my own. It was inspired by DidierG's decks on swudb.com and I modified it to fit my playstyle and local meta. Props to them for coming up with such a cool deck.