Introducing eSeventhSister/eBoba – A Top 8 Miami Regional Report

Written by Mitchell Branly – Deck Creator & Zack Neward -Deck Pilot

The Deck:
CHARACTERS (30 points, 5 Dice):
eBoba Fett –  Deadly Mercenary
eSeventh Sister – Agile Inquisitor

BATTLEFIELD:
Ewok Village

UPGRADES (11 cards, 9 dice):
Ancient Lightsaber x2
Force Illusion x2
Heirloom Lightsaber
ID9 Seeker Droid x2
Maul’s Lightsaber x2
Vibroknife x2

EVENT (19 cards):
Bait and Switch x2
Doubt x2
Electroshock x2
Feel Your Anger
Friends in Low Places x2
Frighten
He Doesn’t Like You x2  
Lightsaber Pull x2
Mislead
Truce
Vandalize
Well-Connected x2

Zack: So in the week leading up to the Miami regional I still had no clue what to play. I was tinkering with eSabine/Yoda when two local players (Jeff Tyree and Josh Hoffstetter) made some surprising wins with a eSeventhSister/eBoba deck created by another local player, Mitchell Branly. I thought the deck was cool. It abused Maul’s Saber early and it could spike with Boba’s special. I thought with a little luck I could make some noise and surprise people all while making a cool statement about Tampa players and their ingenuity. I think it worked for the most part and I had a lot of fun and met some great people.

Mitchell: I couldn’t go due to work issues that weekend but this was the deck I was going to bring. I had a lot of success in the two weeks prior to the regional, winning a local regional prep tournament without losing a single character on ten games. Josh and Jeff were interested and I offered up my list and any advice I could give the week prior to Miami.

The deck is basically attempting to overwhelm your opponent very early by presenting them with more dice than they can mitigate on the first turn. Maul’s Saber is very effective for this as it provides two dice assuming you can trigger the power action. With Seventh Sister ‘s ID9 die this gives us a potential 7 dice turn one. An ideal starting hand has either Maul’s Saber or Lightsaber Pull, and a resource generating card.

For characters Seventh Sister and Boba Fett match for a 5 die start at an even 30 points. Boba’s dice are very consistent damage with 50% damage sides and the special at times being 3 or 4. It is not difficult to get hard melee sides showing to use Maul’s modified sides with so many melee upgrades, the focus side from ID9’s and Bait and Switch to turn resources into base damage (Maul’s Saber also has a resource side, and Bait and Switch to the +4 with any black melee side already showing hurts badly). From my experience it is not uncommon to kill an opponent’s character on the first turn. Some people fear consistency with the deck but I think with all four people playing it to a top 16 finish that it is a fairly consistent aggro option in the current meta. All four picked the deck up just a few days prior to the regional as well, and likely didn’t have as many reps with their deck as much of their competition. Also something to note I don’t believe any of the four players had the exact same deck, and Zack had a card or two different from my original deck, but we listed Zack’s version as he placed top 8.

Ewok Village is the battlefield choice to strip shields for Maul’s Saber and as a battlefield that your opponent is unlikely to want to choose. You will almost always want to take the opponent’s battlefield to deny them the shields and give Seventh Sister two more health. Although the deck is “aggro” you are not attempting to ambush in damage and outclaim the opponent. Most turns move very slowly mitigating incoming damage and then springing damage after the opponent has almost nothing left to do. The deck rarely claims against most decks.

Miami Regional:

Round One: eSabine/Yoda
I thought the meta would be vehicles and mill and here I was against ultra-aggro. At least I knew the deck from earlier regional practice. It was kind of close but Nate got the Never Tell Me the Odds/Running Interference combo out and I was looking dead to rights.

I have 4 damage on Seventh Sister and 0 on Boba. He flips dice to hard 3, hard 3, mod 2, mod 2.  I keep my face straight like nothing happened. He pauses and says “wait” looks at the damage on the Seventh Sister starts to move his dice, and I just played it cool. Then he puts it back to that original combination. I remember thinking in my mind wow he screwed that up but didn’t make any facial expressions. Eventually he resolves 5 on each and I put 5 damage on Boba first then put 5 on Seventh. He then says “did that kill Seventh?” and I just shook my head. I killed Sabine that round then dropped Force Illusion and Ancient on the Seventh. Did I feel bad? Yes. Was this Regionals? Yes. Valuable lesson learned. For the rest of the day I checked damage verbally before every single kill.

He eliminated me from top 8 later, so it evened out. Was there more to this game? Yes, but everything hinged on that moment. Sometimes the best play is just shutting up and letting people make a mistake.

On a side note he loved to shuffle my deck for a long period of time. I can’t explain it but it felt like he was trying to psyche me out by doing that. Just cut the deck people, and if you shuffle do it quickly.
WIN 1-0

Round Two: eSeventhSister/eBoba
CRAP! I have to play Josh Hoffstetter  from Tampa with the same deck. Josh is a great player in the area. He can build a deck way better than me for sure. I know I tried to upgrade Boba rather than Seventh which is normal which threw him off I think. This let me get the close win with just one character left on the table for each of us. I basically snuck one in on him by playing the deck he showed me how to play in a different way.
WIN 2-0

Round Three: eObi-Wan2/eMaz
Who the heck takes eObi-Wan2/eMaz to a regional? That’s like taking eSeventhSister/eBoba! Not really, but I was expecting it to struggle at a regional. I drafted with this opponent, Sugi, and Andrew Larcher (from KoR) earlier that morning so I knew my opponent, Jeff. We are both mature enough that we sat down with a “hey good luck” attitude. Man I love that.  Anyways I was targeting Maz to make Obi play fair. I had 4 or 5 damage on and then he got off a Caution and a Force Illusion. I had 6 damage showing and I switched targets. I was very unsure about this decision. At this point though Maz had turned into a tank so I went for the more valuable character. A Maul’s Lightsaber Power Action and Boba special later I was able to down Obi. Maz got a Handcrafted Light bow so I was on a timer but I got her down a turn or two later without too much trouble. Flexibility and switching plans sometimes pays off I guess.
WIN 3-0

Round Four: eRey/eZeb
Another Tampa native, John George. I respect the hell out of this guy. Two maybe three Store Championships and a good person to boot. I knew this would be a toss up. I tried to run eRey/eZeb for a while but it always came up short for me. Thursday before the Regional while I was learning the deck I traded 2/2 with him. Basically we knew each others deck and we knew what we had to do. I had to kill Rey – Force Prodigy and make Zeb play fair and he had to kill Seventh Sister. It was close and it could have went either way but I made a couple decisions that prepared me mentally for the end game and I was able to execute. The climactic ending was John using Easy Pickings to get rid of 6 out of 10 damage when I needed 5. I used Bait and Switch to get the extra damage.
WIN 4-0

Round Five: eAayla/eRose/Ezra
My opponent was Andrew. My deck was supposed to beat his…. Which was the whole reason I brought it. It was a close game too. He got out the Modified HWK-290 with no damage but I was still feeling good and getting damage on. He took good risks and he got two fairly lucky Y-Wings off of Rally Aid in consecutive turns (I think).  He used these to beat me by a thin margin. I was rerolling for the kill and he rolled the kill first. Good game by Andrew playing smart risks. I love vehicles. It’s my normal deck so part of me wished I had played it.
LOSS 4-1

Round Six: ePoe2/eHondo
Finally a deck I was expecting. Jorge was a great player. That means he played all his cards correctly and was a stand-up guy. We had some conversation before and after and I felt like he was a guy the community could use more of.   

We slugged it out and Maul’s Lightsaber rerolled enough to get some damn good damage in. He played Planetary Uprising when it was Hondo against Seventh Sister and claimed. He made a joke about elongating the game for kicks but I knew it was this turn or die by claim so I rerolled 3 times using my cards in hand to get him that turn. Honestly he was a great person to play against and I feel like our “play personalities” were similar. My biggest regret was I lost the next round and he placed 9th. I felt like I failed him. Jorge wherever you are I owe you a beer. Just a great guy to talk with.
WIN 5-1

Round Seven: eSabine/eEzra
So I know Andrew Cox (The eventual winner) through the internets for various reasons. He was coming with a deck I knew I would lose against. This was our first day meeting in person and we had already known we liked each other and would get along. The first thing we talked about was how we would both likely get into the top 8 regardless and about how it was great meeting each other etc. This wasn’t positioning or trying to gain advantage, this was two people meeting in person for the first time respecting each other but knowing they had to fight. I lost he won. We both made it to the top 8. I am happy with that.

Oh yeah….. Never Tell Me the Odds and Running Interference. Did you really need me to type that….
LOSS 5-2

Top 8 Round One: eSabine/Yoda
I played the guy who goofed up against me, Nate. Fitting. It was two of three. First game wasn’t close. The second game if I would have disrupted instead of taking a resource it may have bought me time to kill Sabine before the Impersonate but to be honest it’s an uphill battle. He won and we had a better conversation than originally. He was hyper competitive and he brought the better deck. He earned it. Andrew Cox beat him next round.
Loss – Finished Top 8

Well that’s it. It was quick and it was sweet. I got some airtime on the Knights of Ren stream and so did some other Tampa members (Josh Hoffstetter and Landon Banks). We brought some different decks and took 25% of the top 16 which was cool. Joel Ramos from our group did it with Villain mill which was great.

Really proud of our group and I think next time we will make even more noise.