by Elven Archer
I've played several hundred games of Queen's Gambit (and I'm one of the WBC champions). I try to be flexible when playing as the TF. If the Naboo player goes after Maul early, I often kill a bunch of palace guards and let Maul die.My favorite strategy is to let several palace guards move lots of spaces, including window ledge movement. I then use my 3rd floor droids to kill them all off. The net result for me is the same: the palace guards are dead. The benefit of waiting for them on the 3rd floor is that they had to use several card plays to get there. If I just kill them on the bottom floor, my opponent is using his card plays to hurt me elsewhere.
There is something to be said for playing a bunch of Maul cards tho. If I get 3 bonus cards from killing Qui-Gon, my position is that much stronger. If I do this quickly enough, my opponent doesn't get to use Qui-Gon's fury and Qui-Gon recovers 3. Those 2 cards can really hurt the TF.
I like to put one starfighter card down. No need to waste 3 or 4 card plays on those early if the naboo player has no intention of playing Anakin cards for awhile. If Naboo does start in on Anakin cards, then I'll play more.
To summarize:
1. Kill palace guards (and Panaka or queen's, whoever presents as a target)
2. Kill one Jedi (occasionally, if I'm rolling well, I'll kill 'em both)
3. Keep an eye on Anakin (one SF card, more if he starts playing Ani)
4. Get bonus cards by killing gungans