Unfortunately I will not be in attendance at Adepticon this year. This does give me the opportunity to be able to speak openly about what I would be looking at taking to worlds without having to hold anything close to the chest.
So today we’re just going to run through some lists that I would consider taking to worlds. We’re going to look at at least one list for each faction.
Big Hitters Right Now
Very in general, what are the archetypes that are doing well right now?
We got the old reliable, defensive clone list with a force user. This type of list resists tons of damage and has a great linebacker. Hard to crack, but, if a few wounds do stick it hurts this archetype a lot.
Another list that has made big waves is the 14 activation Ewok list. This list is very much a gatekeeper as if you do not have a plan, it will roll over you.
Bounty Hunters are still good in a few different iterations. Boba is still excellent, Bossk has play, Cad can be rather tricksy.
Aggro lists; this is a rather large bucket that includes a few things. The epitome of it is Black Sun lists. These lists will come at you and wipe you off the table. These lists often end up being a problem for the slow and steady lists.
A lot of experimental droids lists have been doing well in the past few tournaments. They’re probably the dark horse for this tourney.
(Also check out this article, it’s much more in depth on the meta right now for the upcoming worlds.)
CIS
Experimental Droids has been making a splash lately with a variety of really good players giving them a shot. The TLDR of most of these lists is that having speed 3 moves is great, and you need to make the BXs stay alive and hit hard. This list will want to shoot the crap out of anything while staying at range 4-5 and eventually closing to range 3. This list can deliver quite a lot of really long range firepower and support its guns well. Bringing four points of repair plus recoverable shields should keep those BXs fighting for a long time. The BXs in Experimental also gain a lot of firepower from being able to add more dice to their attack pools, plus having excellent order and aim support. The BXs should never be shooting with only two dice or fewer than one or two aim tokens.
Geonosians in General
Geonosians are an even darker horse going into worlds. Geos are still a fairly unknown commodity. People have been working on them but they have not cracked the key to them nor given up on them. Geos work differently enough to other units you could surely do some interesting and great things with them. Check out this article for more thoughts on Geos.
CIS in General
The best CIS lists right now appear to be experimental droids. Personally I would consider running CIS with worlds but the two things I would consider would need a bunch of practice and stress testing. Experimental droids are fairly proven at this point but are hard to run, while Geos are unproven and also very difficult to run.
Rebels
A faction that hasn’t seen a lot of top level success of late, but been consistently doing decently is Rebels. the two general flavours of Rebels right now are Echo Base and HeroHammer, both including Veterans.
This is the shape of a list I’ve been playing for a long time. It combines a decent amount of long range firepower, boosted by Boba, as well as some high quality shooting and finish. This list is also able to effectively line back with two units who can do so in Boba and the Ewoks.
This next list is what our frenemy (🫶) Ryan Silowski from STABcast ran at LVO. Echo base fits into the two types of; bring all the emplacements, or bring tauns. Both are solid and can put out a lot of fire. These lists do have a lot of squishy activations though. If/when you start getting attacks into them they will start to go down rather quickly. The key to playing with them is shoot while not getting shot, the key to beating them is the same but in reverse.
Shadow Collective
First flavour of Shadow Collective is putting Bossk in a list. Bossk seems to be very under utilized in Shadow Collective. This list gives you a really durable range 3-4 gunline that pours out a lot of great quality shots with Bossk offering some true final killing power, plus maybe a bounty. Another idea for Bossk in Shadow Collective would be to pair him with a bus to get more aims, a line of sight blocker and maybe even a medic.
Definitely a list I would give consideration to going into worlds, either as something to play yourself or something to have a plan for. This list will go and kill anything it’s allowed to get close to. The only way to stop this list is to stop it before it gets to you. A list similar to this was the Runner-Up last year and I expect something in this ilk to go deep into the tournament.
Empire
The faction that received a big release right before Worlds last year is also receiving one this year. The big release this year are of course the Inquisitors.
The Inquisitors may make a big showing, though their release date is the same day lists are due, and only a few days before many people are traveling. Personally Empire is the one faction I do not own so would not be flexing into them. However, everyone should understand what Inquisitors do before you get to worlds, particularly if you are running a force user. That all being said, the aggressive force user isn’t that common right now, which is what the Inquisitors would really hurt. Most of the force users being played right now are passive/defensive and want to stick with their army, those who are playing this style for worlds have much less to fear from the Inquisitors. The Inquisitors will also die to a stiff breeze if ever caught.
Now what, I wonder, was the highest placing Empire list at LVO? Blizzard……
Somehow, Blizzard has returned. Blizzard keeps doing what it has always done. Blizzard is highly lethal, has an excellent blue player deck, and can pivot in a couple ways. This list will still surely be a threat to take out worlds. Blizzard also happened to be the list that knocked a certain player (me, sigh) out of worlds last year in the Top 8. Especially for those who have plenty of blizzard under their belt, it is still an excellent choice for worlds.
I mentioned Boba up above. This list I threw together after looking at some tournament results. It really is a grab bag of stuff. This list shows more that Empire can bring a bunch of stuff to the field and it’s all fairly decent. Bringing a decent chunk of high velocity is also a decent call right now as dodge spam is really common.
Republic
We have finally reached my proper competitive faction. Every major I have competed in has been with GAR. GAR also happens to be the presumed favourite for worlds this year. I would expect that the largest faction share will go to Republic at worlds.
Now what would I consider bringing from GAR? Plenty to be honest. I have experimented this year with three archetypes. Those are gunline plus force user, Cody gunline and Wookiee battleforce.
This list has been a jolly romp. It is quite fun to play, especially when you get to just charge at the enemy and hit em. I would never bring this list as is to a big tournament as it faces a lot of pitfalls. If/when I want to bring an aggressive fur list I’ll lean towards ewoks as they have a lot more consistency by virtue of how many more activations and wounds you get. This Wookiee list tends to fall apart really quickly once it starts to fall apart. Yoda is still really good though and can win games (more to come on that later).
This was a list I toyed around with for quite awhile and got to this version. I would consider taking this list or something similar to worlds. The thing this list lacks is an effective linebacker, your hope is to not worry about that by just yeeting everything you see off the table. The BARC with Long-Range Comlink is really fun as it can be a very independent operator, though it’s usually more effective as another part of your cohesive army shooting in one direction. This list also should have the ability to actually punch through some of the dodge/guardian heavy lists with shear weight of dice. You have eight activations with solid shots, often fire supporting some of them together.
Some spin on 501st could be decent. 501st did a lot of work in popularizing the support force user with barrier. However, 501st is probably not the ideal pick for worlds, I certainly wouldn’t be taking it.
This list is the one that Nathan Dribble piloted to victory at LVO. It went with and against the popular sentiment by bringing Republic and a force user, but no one was thinking Obi-Wan. Results speak for themselves though and I must admit that I took another look at Obi and there is certainly more play there then popular sentiment would have you think. Obi has picked up in my local scene and he is way better then we all gave him credit. Obi would certainly be on my shortlist of things to take to worlds.
We’re really starting to get solidly into the box here. A list that has been at or near the top for awhile is Yoda plus stuff, often with Padmé.
This list supports its troopers well, keeping them alive as long as possible while doing quite the number on the enemy. As the end of the game approaches, Yoda is still Yoda and can win games single-handedly. The reason I decided against this awhile ago, (when I was still planning on attending) was that Yoda requires so much finesse and most importantly, practice. If you’re planning on taking Yoda to worlds you will need many many games with him under your belt. I wasn’t committed to that much practice with Yoda so marked him off my list.
Now we finally get to the answer, what would I take to worlds? One of the above lists. Turns out what I played last year is still very relevant , so, if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.
The key aspect of both lists is that they put out quite a bit of firepower at range while being very durable to return fire. Then we have a great linebacker or aggressive force user depending on the situation. Anakin has won me many a game.
The primary difference between these two lists is that one of them includes boil. Boil is a great addition to this archetype as guardian really assists your dodge castle, (particularly against High Velocity). Additionally, having guardian available means you always have defensive tech available, even at the start of the turn before dodges build up, or the end of the turn once you’re out of dodges.
In my estimation armour will be much less prevalent this year at worlds, mostly due to Darktroopers falling off. However, armour will still be something that can’t just be ignored as in the past. This means maintaining some ranged impact is important to me.
Wrap-up
This smorgasbord of lists that we’ve gone through today shows off one important thing about worlds this year, there are many lists that could go all the way. We may all have our favourites of course, but really, would anyone put good money on a certain archetype? I know that when it came down to it, I decided that my ideal path would’ve been the old reliable as trying some new fancy thing is usually less ideal then something you have lots of practice with.
Good luck at worlds all! Will be sad to not see you all.
LVO results: Remember to check out past tournaments when making your decisions about future tournaments. LVO is the last very big tournament so I used it as reference extensively.
