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!