Four in-person 2v2 duels preceded by a rousing match of Slapshot.  All four duels featured lightsaber wielders as major characters and in most cases, minor characters as well.

Darth Plagueis & Apprentice Sidious and Sora Bulq defeated Master Obi-Wan & Jedi Knight Anakin and Saesee Tiin & Agen Kolar on Geonosis Arena

Obi-Wan & Anakin aggressively ran up, as you might expect.  The dark side decided to see if Obi-Wan really had the defense he was acting like he had.  He didn’t and got killed without doing more than defending a couple of times.  Anakin fought valiantly alongside the Jedi duo, ultimately bringing the game down to Plagueis versus Agen, and they even went through their decks a second time.  Agen the minor was no match for Plagueis the major, and didn’t pull any lucky cards to help his cause.  Neither dark side deck had a very good game but losing Obi-Wan immediately was too much to overcome.  It was good to see Sora Bulq in another match, and while I don’t think he’s going to be any kind of favorite deck to play, he’s fun and appears pretty balanced.

Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, Jedi Hunter defeated Koda of Kashyyk and Mace Windu on Kamino Platform

If more duels were like this one, we wouldn’t play Epic Duels very often.  This was a direct-damage-to-Yoda fest and, as a result, not a lot of fun.  Darth Sidious is ranked #1 among us due to games like this.  He got both LIGHTNINGs and ORDER 66 early in the game, dispensing mucho damage to Yoda, that Yoda could do nothing about, in addition to other characters on the board, Wookies and the like.  Then Vader came out of nowhere with a double I HAVE YOU NOW, enough to kill Yoda off without Yoda ever having played any cards, and the game was over.

Count Dooku and Plo Koon defeated Emperor Palpatine and Grievous on Autobot Mountain Base

It was a good game with lots of back and forth but Palpatine just didn’t draw YOU WILL DIE and was unable to prevent Grievous from getting carved up by the opposing Jedi and shot up by their strong minors.  We’ve toned Plo Koon down some over the years, but I nonetheless think he remains really, really tough, appropriately rated Tier 2A.  We might have to remove or reduce the damage from PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE as the defense card came up fairly big in this game when Grievous tried to make a hit-and-run escape.  In the end it was Emperor with no minors and no help of any kind against Dooku with both minors and a beat up Plo Koon, so Emperor conceded.

Luminara Unduli & Barriss Offee and Aayla Secura defeated Quinlan Vos and Qui-Gon Jinn and Padawan Obi-Wan on Megatron’s Throne Room

This was a good game that came down to the wire.  Qui-Gon got killed fairly early, as he often does, but really without doing much of anything this game, probably the deciding factor.  Obi-Wan and Quinlan dished out enough damage to take down Aayla and eventually Luminara but Aayla did plenty of damage to both Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and used CLEVER PLAN to keep Qui-Gon in danger and easy to finish off.  My take-away is how really strong Aayla Secura is, with good offense plus enough defense to make her a problem to kill, plus a very effective movement card, what more could you want?  In the end though, it could have gone either way.  Quinlan spent an A11 BRINK on finishing off Luminara and as a major, and squared off one-on-one against Barriss Offee.  Barriss is only a minor, but she hadn’t used either of her power attack cards while Quinlan had already used most of his arsenal, including his power defense.  Left with only a few weak defense cards from a Red deck, Quinlan couldn’t hold off an A7 from Barriss and on the day of women’s marches all of the U.S., the women overcame the men.