Admiral, one of the Legendary cards from Star Wars Destiny’s latest set Spark of Hope, was one of those cards I saw and knew that it would either be completely busted or it would end up being unplayable due to its high cost. I generally don’t say things like that since its a cop out on a real opinion but it was really a need to withhold judgement before testing began. Because of its price point I thought could see it being playable for a big character reset deck and when effects like this are playable they tend to get out of hand. Some of you might be thinking that this card is way too expensive and I completely get that opinion but one of the big things that many probably don’t realize is that if you overwrite another upgrade you will still get the ready triggered ability. This makes its way more affordable for a big Leader character deck that wanted to play upgrades anyway.

Extremely powerful cards like these that pay you off for building your deck in a certain way can sometimes be maddening because if you don’t draw them your deck might not be powerful enough. For a deck to be viable it either needs to be good without it or guarantee that it could draw it every game. Thankfully the game rewards you pretty well for putting upgrades on your characters and you can probably find ways to kill your opponent with your other upgrades. On top of that this card is a round 2 or 3 card which gives you more time to draw it compared to other build around cards.

As far as the readying a vehicle part of the ability goes I’m ignoring that. We have other more affordable ways to do that effect and because you are investing heavily in a vehicle theme you would have to pay full price for the upgrade. I’m not about that life.

Who Do We Put It On?

Below are the possible big and mid leader characters that could be worth exploring. Since this effect is somewhat expensive we need to be sure that the dice we are resolving are worth the effort which means resolving 2s, 3s and 4s (if we can get them).

I didn’t include characters that can’t do any damage since readying them seems like you are spinning your wheels. I included all the mid characters because you can have some double leader line ups which can definitely add a little flexibility to who you would be readying. Most of these characters have been tier one at some point in time with the exception of just a few. I added Grievous since i won a store champ with him but admittedly that was somewhat luck. You have to admit that he is on plan and who among us doesn’t want to ready a loaded Fearsome Cyborg? Yoda and Thrawn are new and the jury is out on both of them. They are big characters that can’t protect their dice and I’m not particularly high on either of them but they are flavorful characters that I look forward to trying at least a little bit.

What Now?

Now that we have a list we can start thinking about characters that seem particularly complimentary to the strategy. if anything jumps out at you I say run with it because you already have a starting point for excitement. Your first draft wont be perfect but you can try anything. The first two things that jumped out at me were Mace and Palpatine.. Palpatine jumps out at me because he’s a character that pays you off for playing upgrades on him and Palpatine with red was already considered tier 1 by many people. Mace because his ability pays you off for playing upgrades AND he lets you see more cards to get to Admiral more reliably. His die is reasonable enough and he leaves us plenty of points to work with. A third deck that jumps out at me that was once thought to be playable is the duo of Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso. Both are leaders and a late game Admiral could be enough to push them over the top.

Admiral Palpatine

There are plenty of things to try in this list and I have skewed more torwards new cards because I haven’t tried them all. Counterintelligence seems like a must play considering how many powerful dice this deck has. I went with the Niman package because Training is actually really good in this deck giving palp +1 health and allowing for special chaining for our disgusting upgrades. The cost of cards in this deck are very high but I think we can make something like this work. We might need to trim the fat somewhere an it might prove that 1 Admiral is enough or Force Wave isn’t what we want to be doing but the polishing process happens with playtesting.

Jyn Erso and Cassian

This list needs a lot of polish but the idea is just the regular 2 wide aggro with a late game character ready. I opted for a lot of redeploys because of how expensive readying is. You are in Command is solely for Admiral but I think its adds extra power. I foresee myself keeping Admiral in my opener just to discard it so I can bring it back later when I draw You are in Command. Jyn’s ability can also let you look at the top 3 cards of your deck to dump Admiral in your discard pile which can set up some sweet plays. The action cheating is necessary considering the gross mitigation that exists in this format. Overall if you liked this deck before Admiral gives it some nice mid to late game punch. The question is will the 4 slots be worth it?

Mace/x

I’ve done the most work on Mace decks and admittedly it hasn’t gone well. Here is what I think is my best list to date.

Both characters are good to Admiral although you will generally be looking to go all in with Mace. I have 4 redeploys just in case things go horribly wrong and only the niman package is “only for blue” characters. I feel this is worth it since it can pump up your resources a bunch. I have opted not to play Mace’s Lightsaber because I don’t think I will ever have 3 resources and be able to activate Padme, without using the power action I don’t think its worth it. The deck has been teched out against a heavy indirect meta since it seems we will be seeing a lot of that but Aquatas could be something else.

I have opted for Theed because quicksilver baton’s trigger works really well with it, making it so you get an extra resource. This deck is pretty slow and you won’t be claiming against faster decks.

Pacify is fine since we just need to buy time to set up and any free way of doing that is welcomed. The 1 honed skills has earned its place since it can make. I’ve been through 3 character combos with Mace already and still need to try a few more. Below is a video I filmed intended for Patrons but since I have a lot of content in store for them I figured I’d share it. We did a game 2 and 3 which I will post for Patrons.

Thanks for reading and watching!

-NJCuenca