Bespin and Beyond - Tips and Tricks - Part 5

Well I know some of you out there are heading off to a Bespin and Beyond tournament soon so here is #5 in the series called 'B&B: Tips and Tricks'. These posts will highlight a potential strategy you might find yourself playing against and how to combat it. This time lets look at a potential strategy we will probably see the Light side play.

Dark Deal

The Trick:
Dark Deal is a massive way to increase your force drains at Cloud. In fact I thought that it was so good I played with pretty good success at last years regional. The trick to my Dark Deal deck was getting out 3 sites with cheap deploying characters and deploying the DD all at once. I played 4 Imperial Supplies Tactical Support and 6 Dark Deals and about 12 CC sites. There was a problem though I found that if I had to fight to control Bespin: CC I was slowed down considerably. So I upped my cloud cars, and ties too about 12 card slots. I started with Bespin: CC and was able to control it easily. I could usually get DD out on turn 2 or 3.

The same tactics apply and are even enhanced in the B&B enviroment. Without the need too worry about Grimtash you can pick up as many cards as you want without fear. Enhanced starfighters and cloud cars combined with the absent of some rather important Light side nemisis (Falcon, RL, GL) make it even more tempting. If your planing on running Dark Deal look at the counter strategies below and see if you can incorporate some counters to them in your deck.

Re-Deal

Tip: There are some things you can do to counter Dark Deal here are just a few:

To Prevent Dark Deal try:

• 1. Occupy Bespin Cloud City - as long as you occupy it they can’t get Dark Deal off. Of course that means you need to be using starships or vehicles. My preference is cloud cars with maneuvering flaps.
  

• 2. Control Bespin - If you playing Hidden Base and the other guy starts with BCC pull out your Bespin and occupy it. It adds to his deploy and might slow him down long enough for you to control BCC.
  

• 3.Try to control ground locations. If your opponent starts putting down CC sites because they don’t have enough force. Exploit that weakness. Warning: don’t forget about tip #3 the Bewil Gambit. A wise opponent won’t put any locations down before he can get DD off so you might not be able to do this anyway.

To cancel Dark Deal try:

• 1. Surreptitious Glance - it’s a card that cancels Dark Deal. If he is playing 4 or 5 DD though this won’t help much. But hey if your playing Lobot and Lando it has other uses.

• 2. Occupying Locations - Well if he isn’t playing aqualishes then its not hard, just watch out for Bewil. Or you can occupy Bespin the system, Bespin: Cloud City and two generic cloud sectors to cancel it.

• 3. Play operatives and "A gift" yeah its a lot of cards, but if you can get it off fast enough you’ll win.

• 4. Battle, normally to sacrifice for speed the dark side gives up a lot of its battle potential. Just battle if this is the case. Don’t forget to add 4 to the power of that lone CC trooper (+2 if you think he is playing Trooper Assault) and one for every Car or Tie at BCC. This can easily be 12 or more power from a single Trooper so watch out when
  you deploy there and pick your battles wisely.

Your going to see Dark Deal so, just keep your cool and try some of the above strategies and you just might come out ahead.