It’s time for another Star Wars™: Unlimited designer deck showcase! This week’s deck was provided by Ryan Serrano. Read on to see what he has in store for us today! 

Grand Inquisitor Aggro

Anyone who’s sat across a table from me to play a TCG knows that I can be a bit of a gambler. When staring at my collection, I always find myself possessed to build high-risk, high-reward decks. It may be an adolescent impulse, but I’m happy to have a lower win rate if those wins feel like I earned them through clever deck construction or unexpected exploits. Thus, I present to you: Red/Blue Grand Inquisitor Aggro.

This deck started out as a conversation with senior designer Jeremy Zwirn one night in the FFG studio about what deck could rack up the most damage over the first several turns of the game. And if it’s speed we’re looking for, then we want a deck that can get multiple attacks off with the same units so we can maximize our damage output and quickly take out our opponent’s base.

Grand Inquisitor shows off a key tool in Aggression’s arsenal that will help us here: readying units. The poor folks who think they can deal with your exhausted units “next turn” will quickly find out that any and every unit in your play area is potentially an immediate threat. Play Inferno Four from hand, then use Grand Inquisitor’s leader ability to ready it and threaten your opponent’s base right away! Or double up on a Seventh Sister you’ve stuck to the board, hitting twice in a single turn!

Grand Inquisitor’s readying lets you build up a decent amount of damage on your opponent’s base while you sculpt the perfect combo hand for your leader to deploy on round 5, hopefully finishing your opponent off. I know a Cantina Braggart who would love to prove some doubters wrong by swinging for 15 damage in a single phase with a Fallen Lightsaber.

The cost of all of this readying is that Grand Inquisitor damages your own units, but luckily we’ve paired him with Vigilance, an aspect that can mitigate this in a number of ways. Moment of Peace, Security Complex, and Resilient all help your units’ survivability, and Scout Bike Pursuer’s Grit keyword makes him perfect for any self-damage deck. One copy of Takedown can get you out of a jam or remove a pesky Sentinel getting in the way of your perfectly nice base damage. This package can also be part of a flexible Vigilance sideboard plan (for instance, more base healing so you can come out on top of an aggro mirror match).

More Designer Decks to Come

Tune in next week for another deck provided by the Star Wars: Unlimited designers! What new strategies will they unveil? We hope to see you all then!