A long time ago in a meta far far far far far far far away, we once had Poe/Maz……

If you played in that meta you know the hate flowed through you. You wanted to rip up Poe and all the U-Wings! Well maybe some of them, or other things. But once Poe/Maz was established, the community cried out for change, an errata, anything. Then FN came along……

The OG meta destroyer The OG meta destroyer

But back to Poe, if you remember how oppressive he felt then you know why he was changed to a 16/20 point character. Poe was a lot of fun and the ONLY hero deck at the time that could not only hold its own, but win major events. This was the deck to beat and with that came challengers who tried and failed. Poe/maz was super good and while tournament players might have been rejoicing, a lot of other players were not having a good time playing Destiny. Poe/maz with fast hands could roll and resolve dice faster than you could respond, and they could use AOE damage to clear out any hopes of playing a 3 or 4 wide team. So the meta was rather stale and this was pretty much the only deck winning store champs at a highly consistent rate. We did have emo kids and other decks making some splash in the meta, but those only really had a better chance once Fast Hands was hit.

So why hit Poe again? Well with FN gone Poe would come out on top again and with little opposition (in theory). His effect only makes him better as the game grows. More cards means more vehicles will be released, which means Poe’s toolbox just gets bigger and bigger. So why the nerf? Well I would guess that FFG wanted to shut down Poe here and now before he became a problem again. A good card game should have lots of options for people to play and at a competitive level, an interesting meta should have 3-5 decks so players have a rock-paper-scissors matchup when playing a tournament. If Poe was not changed, we would have gone back to Poe/maz being the new meta deck until something else was discovered. 3-4 character teams would have been immediately dismissed and the meta would have (in my opinion) just gone back to where it had just come from.

I liked Poe as a character, but I didn’t like how consistent he was with creating damage from nothing. Having the majority of your damage come from the hand and not dice is rather counter productive for a game that’s focusing mainly on rolling dice and using them as the primary source of player interaction. I can understand some tricks here and there, but I don’t think Destiny was designed as a game where you just burn the opponent to death with cards the entire game and practically ignore the damage symbols on the dice. For these reasons and possibly more I understand why Poe was hit with this point increase and I believe its ok. Did we really want to see Poe/maz again? Maybe. But with Poe/maz gone, other decks can see play and people wanting to play 3-4 characters can have their chance in this upcoming meta.

Pretty explosions

When Sabine was revealed at Star Wars Celebration we were all pretty excited, here was a cool character from Rebels with great dice and a powerful effect. Then Empire at War was released and FN was still dominant and Sabine went nowhere. People wanted to play Sabine but she was too squishy, with 11 health and a FN/Kylo 2 team that basically got 2 free damage per turn declaring “yellow” every activation, Sabine was forced to sit in the corner. Yes there was the Running Interference lock deck, but that deck went nowhere in tournaments and so once again Sabine was out of the spotlight.

Now we have an errata and FN is no longer around crushing these interesting characters to dust. Kylo 2 exists, but he is lacking a partner. Now Sabine has a chance to shine in the meta. She has great dice, a nasty ability and still some amazing tools in her kit. So why didn’t Sabine get hit with the nerfbat? Well she did actually.

Running Interference is a neat card, and honestly a very powerful card in the right hands. There was a lock where you could force an opponent to basically lose their turn with 2 copies of RI and some tricky maneuvering. FFG changed the entire method of locking someone down by stating that you may discard 1 card to re-roll 0 dice. Before this rule you had to discard 1 card to re-roll at least 1 or more dice. How is this a nerf you may ask? Well if basically makes the entire investment of “locking” down an opponent a waste of cards and resources since they never actually can lose anything other than a card at best. Her ability to potentially stall out your opponent’s turns doesn’t exist anymore, therefore she isnt as powerful as she could be.

Sabine is still powerful as a character though her dice have the Vader suite of damage and her 3 for 1 disrupt side is no joke. She has a VERY high damage potential ceiling and I believe hero players will be able to pilot her to victory. Will she be as consistent as FN or Kylo 2 in damage? Probably not, but she is one of the better known options for Hero aggro at the moment, so check her out.

A master plan

Now that shields are going to actually provide some defensive value, we are going to see hero decks begin to actually see play in local game stores. One of the more interesting ideas is the hero mill deck. Using Rieekan, Padme and/or another character in the team, you can create a strong offense through card removal while bolstering your defense with shields. This is a new concept for tournament level decks since we were all used to explosive damage output and consistency from FN that totally invalidated these types of decks. However with shields being useful and FN being dead (ish), new spots are opening up and I believe hero mill could see the light of day.

Cards like this were always cool to look at but never applicable in high level play. Well things might have finally changed where heroes can not only play their cards, but make impactful decisions in a tournament setting. Now I have heard people say that the FAQ/errata update didn’t actually buff heroes, but more or less nerf villains to the worse power levels heroes were at. Part of this might be true and it might be incorrect. Regardless of how you feel about the changes to the rules, the fact remains that hero decks currently have a good chance to actually be competitive. That’s a good look for Destiny in my opinion. Seeing these cards become useful again is wonderful! Having to reassess cards now is making the game fun because I can look for hero cards I want to play that are now useful in the meta. Most of us wanted to play villain AND hero decks at our stores. This might be the first time both are on a kinda even setting. Don’t get me wrong, villains still have better options at better costs. But I hope through this rules change, FFG sees that their approach for hero design needs to change.

It’s A Trap!!!

Here is a change I actually think is best for red hero decks going forward. The original card had ambush and one of the most powerful and explosive effects in the game. It was not uncommon to see a turn 3-4 blowout of 10-12+ damage from a red hero deck because your opponent rolled out a ranged damage side and then was pretty much dead on the spot. Nick Obee from the Knights of Ren says that this card was possibly one of the main reasons red hero characters were given low die values because this card could just turn their dice to some obscene damage for extremely little investment. I must agree with him on that statement, having a red hero with the potential to freely flip any of their red dice to easy damage WITH ambush speed was a big chokepoint for red heroes. You had to design them weaker than everyone else because they just had such explosive potential. You couldn’t print any 3 damage sides for free because an elite character could pay 1 resource and get 6 free damage. You HAD to print high values with a resource cost OR a super high point cost essentially making them unplayable (cough cough K2SO…..) So the current design of red heroes is pretty weak compared to the other character colors and this card was most likely one of the culprits.

Now that we have changed this card, I think we will see red heroes begin to grow. They no longer have the most insane explosion of damage you cannot respond to. So now they can become more potent with their dice and their post costs. This hopefully will allow for future red heroes to become nasty and fun to play without the fear of 1 resource creating vast amounts of damage and value from a single card. Is the card playable? Well it’s not as good as it used to be, that’s for sure. Will it slot into decks? Probably not, but that’s honestly ok if that means red heroes can expand and grow some legs over time. The larger implications of changing this card I believe is not relative to the card effect, but more to the damage it did to red heroes in their design. I am happy to see this no longer stifle red heroes to the point of being forcibly weaker out of fear of this card being abused in play.

Will Luminara ever be good?

This new step in errata and rules changing is a good sign I feel for Destiny. YES I agree that it would have been better if these issues were addressed in testing or before the cards were printed or so on and so on. I agree that its hard for a casual player or a new player to remember all these new changes and point costs and information. I do agree this is annoying at times how FFG let the meta be so stale and heroes so underrated and undervalued.I will say however we don’t know the whole story and probably never will. I am not making an excuse for FFG but I will say that working for Disney and LFL means a LOT of people have to approve the brand and licensing of Star Wars. I am also willing to guess that some decisions made for Destiny were not made by gamers or designers, but by people in offices at the higher levels of FFG/Disney/LFL. So even though mistakes have been made, I cannot say FFG is the only one to blame.

I am happy they finally took the game and made necessary adjustments that we wanted and needed. I don’t agree with all of them but I am happy so see that the game is not going to be villain ONLY and pretty much 2 villains out of the many many characters we have available. Will heroes stop getting the short end of the stick? Who knows. I hope they begin to flourish and become powerful threats because Star Wars is about the battle or good vs evil. Heroes vs Villains. Red vs Blue. I am ready to see a game where players can take their cards and play them at tournaments or casual nights and enjoy Destiny because the game is fun. I’ve played plenty of Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh where the meta was literally 1 deck for months. It’s not fun and a lot of players usually go somewhere else and wait out that mess. But now that things have been changed, I think we will begin to see more players showing up at local events and more than 1 deck rising to the top of the heap. I have hope that this is a good step in the right direction for Destiny. I will not excuse FFG for making obvious mistakes with cards and characters, but I will applaud them for actually doing something about it.

In the end we as the players got a big win for Destiny. Discord is full of new ideas for decks and players are discussing what they played at their locals. Forums and Facebook have posts with new ideas and the community is talking more than ever about cards, characters and ways to play. That’s a great look for us because we can play Destiny again in