George "The Hulk" Smashes Deckbuilding

“Does your deck just fall apart to one for one removal? What’s your plan against sentinels? If your opponent starts off double discard into Pillage do you have ways to fight back? These are questions you don’t need to grind a bunch of games to find out you can analyze the possible sequences of your list and ask yourself what your response would be.” -George

George “The Hulk” from the Bothan Network is a master deckbuilder, so naturally we wanted to get some insights into his thinking when it comes to making a deck for SWU.

You have a background playing Flesh and Blood. Which strategies or concepts of playing that game have helped with your gameplay for Star Wars Unlimited?

Flesh and Blood is an amazing competitive TCG, and while very different in their mechanics both games due to their incredible depth lend themselves to a great environment where you can always look back and see somewhere for improvement. Whether it’s the exact sequencing of plays, a deckbuilding opportunity, or better prediction, the skill ceiling of both games is extremely high making them both enjoyable whether you win or lose.

You’re known for building off-meta decks that are serious contenders, such as Blue Vader from set 1, and Hondo from set 2. What is your thought process behind building such decks?

My general theory going into a tournament is I want to be comfortable against what is perceived to be the best deck in format and have a good enough win rate against everything else. Avenger Vader was there to spike against Boba green, the perceived best deck at the time. Hondo was more of a generalist spread deck that had a solid Boba yellow matchup due to its removal suite and Snoke endgame.

When you’re evaluating cards to be put in your deck, what criteria are you looking for?

I typically build my decks off of ratios. I want this many cards that do this at this resource cost so I can set this up at a later resource cost. I start off asking myself if I could stack my deck what would my optimal play lines look like including what an optimal flip turn would look like. Then looking at the card pool to see what cards allow me to execute a similar strategy even if I can’t draw perfectly.

What would be your best advice to those who want to build decks that might not be considered “meta” but that the deckbuilder believes has a chance?

I think the fastest way to take a deck idea from a couple cool synergies and fleshing that out to a full 60 card list that can compete into the field is a simple checklist. For some examples: Does your deck just fall apart to one for one removal? What’s your plan against sentinels? If your opponent starts off double discard into Pillage do you have ways to fight back? These are questions you don’t need to grind a bunch of games to find out you can analyze the possible sequences of your list and ask yourself what your response would be.

Which set 4 leaders or cards are you most excited for?

The card I’m most excited for is the new Invisible Hand ship. Getting free units immediately on play and on attack is super strong. Also being able to see so much of your deck allows you to predict with high accuracy what future Invisible Hand attacks or Cobb Vanth triggers are going to reveal when you’ve started cycling through your deck multiple times. This is very reminiscent of pitch stacking for the Flesh and Blood players out there. Favorite leader so far has been Thrawn, but I’m very excited about all the possibilities of Admiral Trench.