Lightside Deck
The Clone Machine
by Tommy Engvik
Total Cards: 60
Deck Stats:
Rares: 18, Uncommons: 14, Commons: 28
Average Build: 3.57
Average Speed: 40.22
Average Power: 3.96
Average Health: 4.02
Characters: (16)
4x Clone Officer
4x Clone Captain
4x Clone Trooper 6/298
1x Lama Su (A)
1x Padme Amidala (E)
2x Taun We (A)
Ground: (15)
4x Clone Trooper Legion
4x Clone Platoon
2x Clone Facility
3x AT-TE Troop Transport
2x Luxury Airspeeder
Space: (15)
1x Naboo Royal Starship
4x Jedi Starfighter Scout
4x Jedi Starfighter 3R3
2x Obi-Wan's Starfighter (A)
2x Acclamator-Class Assault Ship
2x Senatorial Cruser
Battle: (9)
3x Yoda's Intervention
3x Anakin's Inspiration
2x Pilot's Dodge
1x Hero's Dodge
Mission: (5)
3x Slumming on Coruscant
2x Return to Spaceport
Strategy:
1. Overview
2. Strategy
3. Conclusion
Note: The base of this deck is the deck "Men in White", also
made by me. Even though the two decks revolve around the same theme (Clones),
they're very different in strategy and card choices.
1. Overview
The Clone Trooper 6/298 and his Clone Captain are on a
mission to save the galaxy. Teaming up with the Officer, they load up their guns
and get ready to kill some Sith, Droids, Geonosians and everything else their
enemies throw at them.
This deck takes some standard units (Clone Warriors, Clone
Platoons), and turns them into combat monsters using their leaders and creators
(Clone Officer and Taun We). Since the clones don't have any space units yet,
the space arena consists of fast and cheap starfighters. There are also some who
have joined the Clones in their struggle on the ground and character arena
(Padm? E, Luxury Airspeeder, AT-Te Troop Transport). By combining all these
units together with some Battle and Mission cards, the deck is efficiently and
quickly able to swarm and kill your opponent.
The most popular Dark Side deck type nowadays is without a
doubt, Maul/Maul's Strategy/Unfriendly Fire. The deck that won GenCon was the
deck that started it all. The UF decks wins by draining force from the opponent
and making sure that he has no force to evade with when the UF is played. The
general Dark Side strategy has gone from taking down the enemy units one by one
to weakening them all, so that one single UF can wipe out all units in an arena.
How does this deck counter this strategy?
First of all, it uses Slumming on Coruscant. Most people play
with 4x Unfriendly Fire, just to make sure they get one fast. Slumming on
Coruscant is an excellent card to use when countering the UF strategy. For just
one build point, you look through your opponent's hand and discard one battle or
mission card you find there. There is a chance that the opponent already has
played Maul's Strategy, but by using Slumming on Coruscant you take away the
key. Slumming can also be used to remove a Maul's Strategy that would've been
used next turn, or just the regular Strength of Hate, Dark Speed or Tyranus's
Gift.
Secondly, it uses a "Healing Circle" to remove damage from
the ground arena and indirectly from the character arena. The key cards are
Clone Captain, Clone Trooper Legion and Return to Spaceport. The Clone Captain
only has a health of two, but that doesn't matter when you look at his gametext;
Put any number of damage counters on one of your other clones in any arena -
Prevent that much damage to this unit. By putting the damage counters on the
Clone Trooper Legion, the Clone Captain lives to see another day. Remember that
the battle in the character arena is after the ground, so there is no time for
them to attack the damaged Clone Trooper Legion. When your next build phase
comes around, you spend one single build point to remove four damage counters
from the Legion, damage that could've killed the Captain.
You will see that there are only 3 damage prevention cards.
How could this be? I attack first in most arenas (sometimes excluding character,
but there the Clone Captains can transfer hits to their Clone Trooper Legions),
and by the time my opponent attacks there isn't much left to attack with. Also,
one unit is not that important, since I usually have new ones waiting to be
built. I have 4 of every important card in the deck. Try to play with the deck a
couple of times, and you will see that there is enough damage prevention to go
around.
2. Strategy
Character: The core units in this arena are the Clone
Officers, Clone Captains and Clone Warriors, The rest of the character units are
back-up units (Taun We, Lama Su, Padm? E) designed to help your core units or to
help your units somewhere else (Taun We - Clones in the ground arena). It's as
easy as playing cheap characters and then boosting them.
Ground: By combining speed with extraordinary offensive
capabilities, the ground units should easily destroy even the heaviest defense.
The Clone Trooper Legions are the beasts of the deck, power 7 and health 7. Also
featured is the Clone Platoon, a unit that often is power 5 or 6 for the cost of
4. Luxury Airspeeders runs the show from behind, and makes sure that all the
units attack first.
Space: Since there aren't any clone ships, we have to win the
space arena with starfighters and some medium-sized ships. The Jedi Starfighter
3R3 and the Jedi Starfighter Scout combined with Obi-Wan's Starfighter can
quickly weaken the opponent's forces before the heavy-hitting Naboo Royal
Starship and Senatorial Cruiser steps in. The Cruiser also returns starfighters
from your discard pile to your hand - a nice addition.
Battle: The battle cards have versatility; they can be used
in every arena. The cards provide speed (Anakin's Inspiration) and damage
prevention (Yoda's Intervention, Pilot's Dodge, Hero's Dodge). With one to three
Clone Officers out, you don't have to worry about getting enough power :).
Mission: Both mission cards have been explained above.
Slumming on Coruscant to remove not only Unfriendly Fire, but also other nasty
battle or mission cards you may find (of course, only card per Slumming). Return
to Spaceport to remove damage counters from your high-health ground units, and
indirectly healing your Clone Captains.
3. Conclusion
This deck's winning streaks is 14 - 3. I've played it against
several Dark Side decks (most, of course, UF decks), and I've had great success
with it. The losses were caused by either a really lousy draw or some bad
tactical choices.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope this deck
can inspire you in your own strategy and deck building :).