Anything You Can Claim, I Can Claim Better 2.0

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Remember with me, if you will, a time before massive action "cheats". A time where you took an action, then I took an action, and so-on, and so-forth. Where games were more like 20+ minutes, not <10.

This deck is my love letter to those of us who like a strategy that is more complex than "do much damage quick". While it uses a significant amount of ambush, the purpose of the ambush cards is not to flood action cheats into the pool, but to beef up Han and to disrupt your opponent--stopping their plans before they can lay them.

This game is the long-con. Letting your dice be nearly expendable early game, resolving for disrupts and resources and allowing steady attrition damage from Planetary Uprising to whittle down your opponent's defenses.

Strengths: Decks with big power dice (Vader, Palp, Luke, Poe, Obi, another Han, etc) and that rely on character dice for damage. With very few exceptions, they're almost never fast enough to resolve before you mitigate, and you can keep their dice under control, letting your passive damage do the work.

Weaknesses: Extreme action cheating decks when you lose the battlefield. I've had a particularly hard time with Nines (when piloted by a great player). In this matchup, lock out Unkar Plutt - Junk Dealer, and dump damage into FN-2199 - Loyal Trooper. Get Planetary Uprising out early and mulligan for as much mitigation as you can. He's not going to leave a lot of dice in the pool at once, so Defensive Position ends up getting thrown at a single die most of the time, but it's still a game changer.

You REALLY want your battlefield. I have had pretty decent success without it as long as I pull enough dice control, but it makes all the difference in the world against most decks.

Your opening hand should have: Hit and Run, Fast Hands, Loth-Cat and Mouse Planetary Uprising, Friends in Low Places or Infamous

Other stuff you like to see in your opening hand, but is slightly less ideal Unpredictable, Electroshock, DH-17 Blaster Pistol, Holdout Blaster

In a perfect world, you want both Holdout Blasters on Temmin "Snap" Wexley - Recon Specialist before he dies, allowing for a cheap DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol and Second Chance overwrite on Han Solo - Scoundrel around Round 3-4.

Most players are going to target Snap first, but if they see you're having problems pulling mitigation and if they're SMART...they'll target Han first, knowing that snap is a kitten late game.

If you see this happening, start using Ambush cards that you might not even need in order to beef up Han. (Like Hold On!)This can make him last several more turns, also mulligan hard at round's end for Second Chance and never throw away cards like Dug in and don't be afraid to resolve for resources, unless your opponent is taking their time and likes to run Salvage Stand.

If you have even one Planetary Uprising on the board and your opponent removes your Snap dice (or adds a resource to the pool they couldn't possibly need for anything else), CLAIM EARLY. Even if you leave both Han dice sitting in the pool, those two-four guaranteed damage, the locked-out die, and the guaranteed next turn initiative are worth losing potential damage.

Don't get greedy, don't try to finish early. Trust the system. You have too many cards that really need you to have the battleground in order to function properly.

So, after having played this extensively at local tournaments, I've come across a couple things.

1. The cards I have removed, I only removed because I don't need them WHEN THINGS ARE GOING WELL (The additional Dug in, Infamous, DH-17 Blaster Pistol ). So in 80% of my matches, they're unimportant, but they could be SAVIORS in the games where I didn't get the mulligans I was looking for and things are not coming up.

2. You can never have enough ambush cards in this deck. I spent two full rounds in my final game last night without seeing a single ambush card. Result: Han dead by turn 3, Snap trying to close. Even with 2x Planetary Uprising it just wasn't possible against a deck that can dish out damage (in this instance it was FN/Unkar/FOST)

3. As situationally unbelievable as Block can be and has been, it's just not effective enough to keep in here, especially not with the amount of removal I already have.

So, here are the changes I'm going to implement for the current version (07/18):

-1 Fast Hands -1 Block -1 Maz's Goggles -1 C-3PO

+1 Dug in +2 DH-17 Blaster Pistol +1 Infamous

While losing C-3PO stings, I think the additional 10 potential shields that an Infamous can bring to the table makes up for it. The DH-17 Blaster Pistol is just a beautiful little workhorse and in the last few games I've played (including the wins) I really needed a few more damage sides to make it decisive. It's an obvious play that used to be in the deck but I removed.

As always, I welcome any comments and feedback