It's a Brave New World!

Welcome back folks! We just got some exciting news that FFG released a FAQ which took the nerf bat to many of the top decks. Let's all be clear that this nerf is 100% targeting my Kylo/Unkar deadly hate deck for being too OP!

Let's start with a brief moment of silence for

• Kylo/FN (Fn costs more, pairing doesn't work with both elite)
• Kylo/Phasma (Phasma costs more, pairing doesn't work with both elite)
• Cad/Phasma (Phasma costs more, pairing doesn't work with both elite)
• ThrawnKar (Unkar costs more, pairing doesn't work with both elite)
• Poe/Maz (Poe costs more, pairing doesn't work with both elite)

This is specific to Character Nerfs and their points. But, there are other nerfs and buffs as well. Let's look at what is hit by other changes.

• An upgrade can only be overwritten once a turn. This nerfs action cheating characters tremendously. This term is also called "replacing" (not super important, but it is good to call things by their name). 
• Nerf
• Cad
• Sabine
• OG Rey
• FN
• Buff
• Slower decks like a support/vehicle deck
• A general buff to control cards since you will have more chances to interact with an opponents dice. 
• Running Interference took a hit because you can now discard to reroll 0 dice, even while in the RI lock. For those of you that don't know, if my first action is to play an ambush card and activate a character, and play RI for both of those actions, your opponent can only pass or claim. Now they have a third option to pitch and reroll 0. It is still good, but this is a straight up nerf to RI. 
• Nerf
• Sabine/Ezra
• Han/Snap
• Hero Yellow
• Buff
• This buff is a little confusing if you haven't played against this lockout a lot. The first buff is to control cards having a chance interact with dice. The second buff is to big characters. People like Mace and Vader are the main damage sources of decks, but they are useless if they get locked out and killed before being able to do anything that you sank those 21-22 points into. They now have a chance to activate before getting double passed, or passed and then killed next action. 
• It's a Trap got hit really hard. This will hurt ALL aggro hero red. Some people seem confused about this one. But, the reality is that It's a Trap is always threatening to make Hero Red overpowered. This will free up a lot of design space for that color. 
• Nerf
• Hero Red
• Buff
• Future Hero Red
• Imperial Inspection only works once. This will hurt Villain Red's favorite 0 cost support. I think it is still good, but it is not easily abused.
• Nerf 
• Villain Red
• Buff
• Delicious cost upgrades
• Vibroknife. Only this die resolving goes through the shield (and, if it is modifying, that other damage goes through as well). This will hurt ALL melee decks. This will help many hero decks with their love for shields. 
• Nerf
• Melee 
• Buff
• Shields

Looking over the buffs and nerfs, I see the biggest buff going to control cards. Limiting action cheating is going to give control cards more opportunity to do what they are made to do. To me, that means the game is going to go much slower than we are perhaps ready for.

Now, let's compare to see if any of our new potential top decks take a nerf from this.

• Vader/Raider (Vibro)
• Cad + new friend (Replace mechanic)
• Sabine/Ezra (Replace mechanic and RI)

I think Vader/Raider will be fine because still has so many things going for it. I would really just be okay switching out vibro for Ancient Sabers and call it a day.

I think Cad is going to struggle. He lost his perfect partner and took a hit with the replace mechanic. It think he will still be fine, but it will take someone finding out the new way to build him.

Sabine will struggle to get her weapon on her and in her discard pile without just abusing the overwrite. She will also struggle slightly with not being able to lock an opponent with RI. That being said, the way I build her, I don't think the hit will be significant. It will give counterplay, which is not a bad thing.

To me, that means the top decks would be something like

• Vader/Raider
• Sabine/Ezra
• Palp
• EmoTwins

Some wild card decks that I could see rising once refined

• Rey2SO
• HeroMill (3 characters)
• Mace with Padawan or Ezra
• Qui or Ahsoka with Kanan 
• Vehicle/Support (3 characters)
• Han/Snap (I've been playing this, it running slower than Sabine/Ezra will now not hurt it as bad).

What is going to rise? How do I get ahead of the meta and strike first? The answer is related to my last article. The next big deck, and my top 4 old decks that might rise, have low variance. Vader has a great ability, holocrone is consistent, and yellow control momentum and pace. Kylo/Anakin have a deck full of ways to activate the specials. Sabine/Ezra still has its true combos (Activate into ambush weapon into Hidden Agenda+Never Tell Me The Odds+ Infamous for 100% chance of 9 free damage costing 2 resources). Palp just wants to resolve his dice, so his rolls don't actually matter as much. 

All of these decks are very consistent. I could easily see cards like Deadly, Hate, or NTMTO being in the next big deck because of the known damage. I could also see Ahsoka rise with Diceless upgrades like Thermal Paint and fearless to get consistent results through reactivation, regardless of dice rolls. Qui-Gon is also in a strong spot to make a move with his 80% damage die sides. 

Who knows though, maybe the game will be just slow enough for vehicle decks to set up their alpha strikes. Looking back at X-Wing, the game completely changed when big alpha strikes had both enough time to get it off and control enough to get consistent damage (Wave VIII when Guidance Chips were introduced). I think the same thing is happening in Destiny, and we are getting closer to that shift. Don't get me wrong, rolling well will always be really strong. But, you won't win an all day tournament if you are relying on rolls. 

I know you are all in morning of Kylo/Unkar no longer being a thing. Fear not, because I have the new and improved Dooku/Unkar.

Variance and Destiny Deck Building

Greetings Destiny community! I am a long time X Wing player who has moved to Destiny for a faster game to better fit with my other hobby of distance running. I stream the decks I write about Thursdays on Twitch, so come hangout and comment for things you want to see! We also are streaming our bimonthly tournaments at Outflank Games on Saturdays through the same channel. 

I want to discuss something that has really influenced my approach to list building and deck building from X Wing, and how it has started to manifest as a Destiny player. For me, this all has to do with variance. This really great article from last year helped push me forward in my table top competitive results.

Here is the article that got me going on the potential strengths of yellow. Specifically, it got me going on Sabine. I have been having a lot of fun with the Sabine/Ezra pairing. I believe it to be a Tier I deck, but one that is hard to master. This is my current version:

There are a few different things happening here. The first is control. Ezra has become one of my favorite hero's to play simply because he gives two yellow dice for 10 points. Yellow dice, when combined with things like Loth-Cat Mouse and Double Cross, let me control an opponents die of my choosing with little cost to me. Not only that, Ezra has a 1/3rd chance of one of his die rolling a special or disrupt. So, rolling him in as my first action puts pressure on my opponent without any events played. Electroshock is just a staple and you're a fool for not having it 90% of the time. 

Hidden Agenda is a sleeper in this deck. It influences four cards in my deck (have been playing with the idea of adding more 2/3 cost control) to let me play them for way too cheap. I also put it out to bait my opponent when I actually don't have an event to play with it. 

The next control comes from running interference and Hyperspace. Having two RI on the board, or really just one, can slow or stop your opponent from being efficient. I tap one to play a card and tap one to roll in a character. My opponent can now do very little to mitigate my dice, giving me a chance to resolve them all. There are a lot of interesting ways to use these cards once you get used to them. I have done things like tapped one on resolving a die while resolving a resource side so that I could electroshock my opponents before he resolved it. Or, tapped one playing a card from my hand with ambush I didn't need, but to prevent my opponent from deflecting Sabine's dice. Hyperspace with Hidden Agenda is a get out of jail free card. I was playing against a K-2SO the other day showing lethal damage. I had two resources, so I infamous-ed Hidden Agenda into Hyperspace to end the round before the damage was done. Next round I had plenty of combos set up in my hand to deal with K-2SO. 

If you don't understand how the Sabine combo works, I'll quickly explain it. Almost all of Sabine's weapons have ambush. In fact, to a lot of people, they all should have ambush to be in this deck. I run one Thermal, so that I can get it from my discard fro 2 and replace it with Second Chance. Anyway, back to the killing bits. Sabine has one holdout on her and one X-8 in her hand. You overwrite the Holdout with the X-8, activate Sabine and use her ability to overwrite the X-8 with the Holdout you just discarded. You have now rolled in Sabine and have a floating action. This is where the combo gets out of control. You can RI the card you play and activating a character, giving many opponents the only option of claiming. You can resolve Hidden Agenda to an Infamous Never Tell Me The Odds for a unstoppable 9 damage.

The incredible thing about this is how low my variance is. I get to change my dice and resolve without my opponent interfering. There are multiple times that I am not even thinking about my roll because I need such little damage to kill someone or I have NTMTO.

This is a variation on Sabine/Ezra. It follows the same formula, but uses snap to keep an opponent from claiming. The Planetary + Separatist Base is also super funny. This deck also is leaning more toward my goal of not needing my dice anymore. 2 x Planetary and Separatist base is 3 damage without having to do anything. 

To recap, what makes the Sabine/Ezra and Han/Snap deck low variance and very strong is: not relying on rolls, having easy mitigation, and having guaranteed damage. To test that this is more than I one off, I wanted to try it with Villains. 

This deck revolves around Deadly, Hate, Backup Muscle, and Kylo2 ability. That's six damage a turn for one copy of each without relying on dice rolls. The only variance in it is hitting Kylo's ability. Friends in Low Places and As I Have Foreseen really help to bring it lower. 

I am not sure how to design the rest of the upgrades. I went Holocron because I thought it would be funny to imagine Unkar Mindprobing people, but I am not sure about it needing to be included. I also have On The Hunt to reduce shields, but I'm thinking it will be replaced. 

Control. This deck has 8 events of control, Unkar for a discard/resource generation, and Salvage Stand to keep my opponent upset. 

This deck should not be Tier I, but it has beaten some really tough decks including Sabine/Ezra and ThrawnKar. I would just roll out Unkar with hate, hit Salvage Stand. Play As I Have Foreseen to guarantee the two from Kylo. Put deadly on whoever had the worse roll, and take away a dice for two more. There just isn't any way for my opponent to stop it. I strongly believe decks like these are the way the meta will react to control like ThrawnKar this set, and it all revolves around yellow. Yellow in both heroes and Villians has the strongest cards right now. But, I think there is something to mixing it with other colors if not to simply survive Kylo2 onslaught.

I wanted to talk briefly about variance in blue. I think I am in the majority that were originally interested in this game for the prospect of playing a Jedi or a Sith with Lightsabers and Force Powers. Sadly, blue has become very reliant on dice rolls, so they are not consistent enough to take on current decks like Sabine/Ezra, Cad/Phasma, Kylo/Fn, and ThrawnKar. 

Blue and Yellow

That being said, I think there are some select cards from blue that could pair nicely with yellow for a consistent deck. 

For neutral, Lightsaber Pull and Ancient Lightsaber reign the highest for me. Ancient Lightsaber is great because it always does what you want it to do. For the cost of an action, it will heal two and return to your deck. Lightsaber pull essentially takes your best blue weapon, and it makes two extra copies of it. So, if I only need Ancient Lightsaber, but I really need Ancient Lightsaber, I can run two Lightsaber Pulls and increase the odds I pull the cards I need. There is also a natural combo of using the Ancient Lightsaber's action to heal two, and then Lightsaber Pull it back into your hand to do it again. If you run two copies of each, you have the potential to heal 8 before having to manually pull it from the bottom of the deck. 

Blue/Yellow Villian

I already shared what I consider to be my silliest and strongest blue/yellow grouping with Kylo/Unkar. But, we can also do things like revisit the tried and true Vader/Raider. 

Although it doesn't have the potential to hit as hard as the normal Vader/Raider, this one is a lot more consistent. More importantly, it gets rid of having to reroll. Vader/Raider has four events and two upgrades that will help their dice to do damage without looking for a reroll. There are 8 events of control, and Force Illusion, Endurance, and Ancient Lightsaber for defensive playing. 

Again, I know that this deck is not going to hit as hard as something like my Vader/Magna Guard melee deck. But, by reducing the variance of rolling dice, I can more accurately estimate what my deck is capable of, and what I need to do in a match. Not only that, my Vader/Magna deck relies on rolling and having enough chances to reroll into something I can use. That just gives my opponent more time to mitigate my dice.

Blue/Yellow Hero

Sadly, the blue yellow pairing is not as strong in hero. Without access to Deadly, Backup Muscle, Bait and Switch, and Force Strike, blue hero can't put out the damage as consistently. What hero does have, which I feel is often over looked, is great upgrade dice.

 The idea is to get One with the Force out on Ezra before he dies. Reaping the Crystal, Truce, Destiny, and Ezra's dice make that possible turn 1 or 2. If that doesn't happen, I try to get Master of the Council for Luke. The beauty of One With The Force and Master of the Council is they have no bad sides or blanks. I would almost always be okay resolving any of those sides. 

If you have any ideas of how to better blue/yellow, please comment!