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#117 Tatooine Thunder Rifle
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Entry: 16 December 1999
The Unofficial Jedi's Guide to the YJCCG Galaxy.
Compiled by jinnandtonic, December 1999.
Thoughts? You like this? You hate this? Email me!
The Unofficial Jedi's Guide to the YJCCG Galaxy is THE card strategy reference for Decipher's Young Jedi CCG. Starting with the first expansion, 'The Menace of Darth Maul', each individual card will be discussed until it can be discussed no further. Nevertheless, if I have missed something, email me at jinnandtonic@yahoo.com.au, and I will update it accordingly.
jinnandtonic's Grades:
Economy: A
The Tatooine Thunder Rifle tries very, very hard indeed to square up to the Blaster Rifle in terms of economy, and just about does it. Deploying for a slightly expensive two counters, it gives a bonus of Power +2 and a Destiny ? draw to any Tusken Raider, or a simple Destiny ? draw bonus to any other character. But probably the best thing about this card is its attractive Destiny of 5, just one short of the Blaster Rifle. If you can get this card working with a rampaging horde of Tusken Raiders, it is *more* effective - that's right - *more* effective than the Blaster Rifle in terms of economy of use.
Decipher: A
I have no real problems with the Tatooine Thunder Rifle, another cool theme card for the players of YJCCG to use in their decks. Conceptually the idea works fine - sure, Tusken Raiders would be more accustomed to using such weapons than the average Joe, and I can see nothing wrong the Tatooine Thunder Rifle in terms of statistics. The image is great, and the flavor text on the card is more descriptive and relevant than that on a few other cards I could think of. A big tick / thumbs up / pat-on-the-back for Decipher overall.
Overall Usefulness: B+
For all the 'almost a Blaster Rifle' accolades I have showered on this card already, it is a bit of a shame that it is not more useful than it is. For this card to be worth using, Tusken Raiders have to be worth using. Specifically, Tusken Raiders have to be worth building a deck theme about. And they are. But, unfortunately, the maximum Tusken Raiders any non-cheating YJCCG player can put into a deck is 10. Both Tusken Raider variants are green-dot cards, so any Tusken Raider theme deck you build is going to have something of a secondary theme as well. Which makes matching your combinations up together much more difficult, and therefore makes this card less useful. Still, it is a powerful and very useful card - but its full potential is difficult to realise in a deck.
FLAVOR TEXT: A large blaster used by gangsters and assassins, the Thunder rifle is a powerful weapon.
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CARD FACTS:
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COMMON, ORANGE-DOT, NON-STACKABLE WEAPON
Deploy: 2
Destiny: 5
Game Text:
Adds oo? to any Tusken Raider in battle (Power +2 AND Destiny ? draw)
Adds ? to any other character in battle (Destiny ? draw)
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SPECIFIC INTERACTING CARDS:
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Tusken Raider, Nomad
(#95, Menace of Darth Maul, Common, Green-Dot) OR
Tusken Raider, Marksman
(#96, Menace of Darth Maul, Common, Green-Dot)
The Tusken Raiders by nature are not the most powerful of characters, typically having a base Power of 2. The Tatooine Thunder Rifle helps out with that though, giving Power +2 and a Destiny ? draw to any Tusken Raider in battle. Which means that this card can give anything from a Power bonus of +3 to +8, depending on how much Destiny you draw. If you draw another Tatooine Thunder Rifle as Destiny for example, you'll be laughing, your Tusken Raider having, effectively, 9 Power before location bonuses are added. Nice.
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IN BRIEF:
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While the Tatooine Thunder Rifle, in reality, is very close to being a super-effective card in YJCCG, it is probably arguable that it is a super-effective card. The only reason that it is not super-effective in play is due to the card's lack of support. A few Tusken Raiders in the red-dot and blue-dot categories, and the Tatooine Thunder Rifle is good enough to be a broken card. It is however, still a fairly powerful card now, even with a maximum of ten Tusken Raiders available to play with in a deck. It is obviously the perfect card to use in any deck using Tusken Raiders, giving your ragged minions an extra useful Power bonus, yet still usable to the remainder of the characters in your deck. And all without sacrificing too much Destiny or Deploy. Not bad at all.
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GENERAL PLAY TIPS:
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* The Tatooine Thunder Rifle deck? Not really a catchy name for a deck theme. How about the Desert Storm deck? Much better. For the maximum fun, pick out two copies of Tatooine: Desert Landing Site at first, and work from there. For the green-dot category, pick out ten copies of Tusken Raider, Nomad for starters. Sure, the Nomad variant has a scatter-gun spread of location bonuses, but using the Marksman variant and focusing on the Podrace Arena means that we won't be able to have nearly as much fun with Sniper! You should be packing somewhere between 4 and 7 copies of the Tatooine Thunder Rifle in terms of weaponry, and multiples of Sniper, Opee Sea Killer for this strand of the deck. But what about the other strand? What about the red-dot and blue-dot categories? It's open, really. Look at some of the cheap and nasty cards from Jedi Council to get you through (e.g. Galactic Representative, multiples of Coruscant: Galactic Senate and a couple more senators).
* Tusken Raider, Nomad + Sniper + Tatooine Thunder Rifle + Destiny = 6 on Tatooine = 15 Power. Take a few potshots at Anakin, and hit him this time, for goodness sake!
* Unfortunately, the chances are not great for more Tusken Raider-themed cards in the future. Which means that the sandpeople may well stay as underdeveloped in YJCCG as they currently are. Pity. Even if it does reflect the amount of on-screen time they were given in the film!
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ADDITIONS:
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Up to you. Think of anything else cool about his card, or combos that you have used to great effect? What about a particular game in which this card made you win? Send anything like that to jinnandtonic@yahoo.com.au and I'll add it here. I am seriously thinking of patenting that 'Desert Storm' title for a deck theme. I wonder if the Pentagon have already done that though?
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