LAW PQ Week One Recap
The first PQ weekend with the new post-rotation meta is in the books and there are some very interesting takeaways and a few surprises. Our porgs have spent the last 48 hours analyzing the results and have come up with absolutely nothing. So it’s going to be up to us to see what we can learn before the first weekend of PQs starts in the U.S. this coming weekend.
There was a lot of talk about Lando coming off of his excellent Cantina Clash performance, however, he was only able to secure himself 2 Top 8 spots for 6.3% of all finishers. That is definitely not the results everyone expected. The Lando deck that came in 4th in Fecamp, France did play some non-standard cards, and was heavily pre-boarded against a couple of matchups, like 3 x Hyperspace Disaster, which maybe led to its success more than others. It also played 13 non-hero cards which gives about a 25% miss rate on Lando’s ability, a surprisingly high number.
The inclusions of 1 x Hondo Ohnaka was an interesting choice, presumably to dig a little deeper to keep the bombs flowing. The early ground game was shored up with some Gungan Warriors. And on the other end, 3 Hyperspace Disasters maindeck. Lando is still a powerful deck and its 6.3% top-8 rate shouldn’t be seen as a sign that it’s not something to plan for.
In comparison, the Lando Blue from Nancy, France was significantly different from Fecamp.
The deck coming in 3rd place in Nancy played a splash package that included LAW Han Solo, Zeb Orellios, 1 copy of Rey Skywalker and 2 copies on Honnah in the sideboard. It also played a blue focus, with no missed hits.
In fact, there were only 4 cards that shared an exact match between the 2 decks, plus, Bo-Katan and Liberty are must-plays.
The winner at the Cantina Clash did so with a Lando Colossus deck that focused on Cunning cards.
So, are we seeing Lando not convert to the top 8 in the early meta because of some fundamental issues or are we seeing an optimal build still as a work in progress? I would certainly expect that 6.3% top cut rate to go up.
On the other end of the variability spectrum comes Tobias Beckett, a very fun and unique deck developed by the fine folks at SWU Swooperacers.
Where we had a ton of variety in the 2 Lando decks we saw, the 2 Beckett decks, one of which won the PQ in Girona, only differed by 1 card. Unless these 2 players are on a team, that is remarkably similar.
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While Beckett had the overall best performance of the Aggression Vigilance Aggressive Negotiation decks, it had the same Top-8 finishing rate as Jyn Aggression, both at 6.3%. If you combine the 2 as a single type of deck, the draw/Negotiations deck came in with the 3rd best performance, behind Luke and Boba, which we will talk about more in the coming days. It certainly wasn’t the dominating, ban-worth performance a lot of people expected early on.
The biggest take-away from the weekend may be the overall inclusion of Aggression. There were only 7 decks to make the top 8 that did not include red in the base or leader. That’s 78% of the field. There are a lot of reasons this could be. Two of the best leaders, in Luke and Boba, are red. All of the upgrade interaction has been concentrated in Aggression. Access to Aggressive Negotiations doesn’t hurt.
Before Rotation, Command dominated the field with Data Vault and an endless stream of efficient, well statted units. The focus has definitely shifted, which is what we all wanted. One thing that seems clear is that the “meta puzzle” is clearly not figured out. There is room for creativity and room to succeed with solid gameplay.