Adapting to the Snap Switch

This is the second in a series of throwback articles. These were originally posted to Deciphers Page and Forums. Credits will be given when I can locate them.

For those of you that did not make it out to the Vegas Open, it was a great weekend. Lots of prizes and lots of fun were had by all that attended. I also learned a lot in my few days in Sin City, after spending close to 30 hrs drafting over two days there I think I have learned how to draft much better than I did before...I hope so at least. I mean really, 30 hrs spent doing anything should make you a master at it, except knitting, knitting is tricky stuff. The other thing that I learned on the weekend was the fact that nearly everyone was talking about the Snap Switch deck. Most were commenting
that Shift in Tactics should be changed, and many wanted to ban Rousing Leap. In either case much of the talk of the weekend revolved around this deck. There was a few people playing it in the constructed tournaments that were run and you can believe that it will rear its head at most major events this summer. In order to prepare for this most of my constructed decks will probably run a few cards dedicated to taking down this monster but not too many that it will take away from the deck strategy itself.

For those of you out there that may not be aware of the Snap Switch deck, it revolves around drawing a monster hand with Begging for Mercy, then dropping a lone Kizen with a weapon to fight, pumping up the defense of said Kizen via Collaborative strike
or Anticipation, taking them all back into hand with Rousing Leap and repeating until their defense is very large, then Snap Switch their defense and tactics and playing Shift in Tactics to make their battle destiny whatever their defense was, usually in the area of about 70 giving them a power of 100+ and ending the game. Cards that can hurt this
deck are Easy Prey, which gives them no battle destiny, however they still get their power (which is usually around 30), so that is not the greatest. There is Do Not Push that makes all their interrupts cost 3 more energy, but that card is discarded after one turn so even if you have all four in hand your opponent will just wait until that card is not on the table. Overburdened is one of the best defenses against this deck, and a few Overburdened (lost) can shut this beast down. Still, you know your opponent will have Trumped for protection so you will need a handful of Trumped yourself in order to win
that war. Most decks use at least a few copies of Overburdened and always four Trumped anyhow, so it is easy to use those as defenses against the Snap Switch deck, however there is one other card that splashes into most decks and can make a world of difference - Faded.

Playing Faded on the opponents lone Kizen means they cannot target him with any cards and leave him helpless. In order to make this work you have to use the timing system to your advantage. When you see them play their Kizen down you know the fight is coming; hopefully you have a decent hand with some Trumped and Overburdened and at least one Faded. Play the Overburdened as soon as they deploy their Kizen and let them trump them, you don’t want to get into a Trump war until you are sure that you can win. Once they initiate the battle play Faded as a reaction to that while the battle is pending. This way they cannot play any of their interrupts that play during a battle because it is still pending and not actually in a battle phase yet. They will try and Trump it, but because you baited some of their Trumped with Overburdened you should be able to win the trump war and then the battle will proceed and you can trounce the lone Kizen that they deployed. If you don’t manage to get the right cards that you need in hand Premeditated Reaction is a great card for protecting against the combo as well.

To a deck that I had built previously, I just added a few Faded and the Premeditated Reaction and that was really all I needed to change. This is a space-oriented deck focusing on keeping ships on the table with immunity to attrition and using Protective Fire to give immunity to the ships that don’t have it. Price of the Game is included to lower the destiny of the opponent, either to make sure their Racing Sloops don’t invert or to make sure they have no attrition when they are fighting against Dhanake. Cerebral Incursion also helps in space to make sure you are not losing ships to attrition.

The deck isn’t designed as a deck just to kill the Snap Switch deck - its just a normal deck with a few cards added to make sure it can handle the Snap Switch if and when it should come up against it. You might think that throwing in cards just to combat one very specific deck type is a little extreme, but after you go from 40 cards in your reserve to game over in one battle you might see things in a different light.

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