I’ve been working on an article detailing my various forays into Blue Hero with Empire at War for a couple weeks at this point, and I’m currently 5000 words in with no end in sight.

Whoops, let’s back up a minute. Blue Hero in Star Wars: Destiny is the deepest, most synergistic color/affiliation pairing in the game, and just about everyone are playing un-optimized lists.

Not far enough. My name is Trevor Holmes, you might know me as ArchitectGaming, and I have a deckbuilding addiction.

There we go.

I fully intended on my first article for TheHyperloops.com to be literally anything else than what I’ll be discussing today. An introduction to ‘me’ and my theories on deckbuilding and gameplay. An analytical discussion on context and how it affects literally everything we see and do in games. A primer on card game fundamentals like card advantage, rate, tempo, and macro-archetypes. All of those topics (well, the ones that don’t involve me) are required reading for anyone focused on maximizing their deck building and playing skills, which I’ll assume your interested in since you’ve found your way to this excellent website.

Still, I’ve got a secret, and I can’t hold it in any longer. Since Empire at War has released I’ve been hard at work finding the best thing you can be doing in the format, but truthfully, I’ve been holding something back. See, it’s not that I meant to keep it from you. Usually I work on a deck to the point where I’m happy with its performance, confident that its ‘close’ to the best it can be, then I write about it and share it for others to enjoy. It’s kind of my thing. Today I’m here to come clean and show you what I’ve been working on. It’s called Blue Hero, a.k.a The Unsolvable Puzzle, a.k.a. 1,000 Ways to Die.

This is the entrance to the Labyrinth. You’ve been warned.

Choose Your Blue Hero

Blue Hero has a wealth of powerful cards available to it, which is both a blessing and a curse. The days of Use the Force as mitigation because that’s all we’ve got! are long gone, replaced by Caution, Guard, and lightsabers of the Shoto and Ancient variety. Don’t even get me started on Rey’s Lightsaber, Luke’s Protection, and Yoda’s Quarters. Yes, you heard that right, Yoda’s Quarters. More on that later. Blue Hero’s power extends beyond upgrades, events, and supports to characters as well. Kanan Jarrus, Rey, and Ahsoka Tano join an impressive array of potential contributors, including (but not limited to) Qui Gon, Rey (you know, that one) and Luke Skywalker. The depth of character pairing and decklist options available to builders is overwhelming, which makes ‘finding the best build’ all but impossible.

Still, I plan on trying anyways. One thing we need to know going in is the fact that the options available to us are deep, which means we need a ‘plan’ for what our deck is trying to accomplish. The core of that ‘plan’ revolves around this concept of identity, which I’ll explain further in a future article, but I’ll give an overview here. Basically, identity is the idea that we are building to accomplish a specific goal and playing to our strengths, which we all do already to some extent and is manifested in decisions like Personal Shield over Z6 Riot Control Baton in Thrawnkar, or Rise Again in a more midrange Blue Villain build. For Blue Hero, most often our identity is tied to our character pairing, and how our pairing influences the relative strengths and weaknesses of various deckbuilding options. Let’s break it down.

As I see it, there are four main ways to build Blue Hero decks in Destiny: three die ‘Main/Support’, two character Rey, two character ‘consistent dice’, and three character Padawan. I’ll give a brief explanation of the main differences between the four, and then we’ll dive in individually for a deeper look. Keep in mind that I could spend an entire article on each of these archetypes (and probably will at some point), so in the interest of article length I won’t be able to cover everything I would like. This is agonizing for me, but we’ll get through it together.

Main/Support builds utilize Mace Windu, Luke Skywalker or Ahsoka as a primary character and fills out the build with another character in a support role. These builds are most often characterized by strong character dice, few upgrades, the ability to ‘hit hard’, and usually play more expensive, swingy effects like Master of the Council or My Ally is the Force.

Three character Padawan builds look to play a much slower game, maximizing health, redeploy upgrades and economy cards like Padawan’s ability and It Binds All Things. These builds try to flood the board with dice and deal damage while remaining competitive after the first (and second) character goes down.

Two character Rey builds tend to prioritize aggression and speed, utilizing Rey’s ability to chain actions with cards like Force Speed, Vibroknife and Jedi Robes. These builds tend to play ‘smaller’, looking to maximize upgrades on the board and play out every card in hand each round.

Finally, two character ‘consistent dice’ builds look to play a more middle of the road strategy, trading Rey’s speed for consistency in character dice. These builds tend to play for the long game better, with the hopes that trading Rey’s velocity for better dice translates to more ‘game’ if/when they lose their first character.

Main/Support Builds

While there are a few different ways to build Main/Support, my preferred Mono Blue option is Luke/Kanan ‘Toolbox’. This build is similar to Luke/Rey of formats past, with Kanan as a clear upgrade over Rey and a few new tools thanks to Empire at War. Main/Support builds are all about maximizing that expensive character, so most of our strategy revolves around resolving Luke’s character dice for big damage.

Main/Support strategies exist in this weird duality where their strength is also their weakness, in the sense that they ‘live and die’ based on how successfully then can execute their Plan A. Getting our Luke dice removed hurts us badly, which is why we value effects that either give us extra value from our character dice like My Ally is the Force/Defiance or protects them from removal like Endurance/Force Speed. As a result, we value these effects highly, and tend to play more reactive than normal Aggro builds. Since we need to buy time to set up My Ally is the Force or Swiftness plays (another staple for this archetype) Main/Support strategies prioritize mitigation events and conditional effects over upgrades and ‘general’ interaction.

This is why, for the most part, Main/Support strategies should play as many events as possible while minimizing upgrades (that cost resources). This type of strategy relies heavily on keeping our ‘Main’ alive (usually), so minimizing burst damage while leaning on our strong character dice is a traditional path to victory.

A few final thoughts on Main/Support deal mostly with how the strategy affects cards we traditionally think of as ‘strong’ for Blue Hero. Caution is excellent as always, as we’re most often trading a Kanan die for three health, but Guard isn’t as strong for us as you might expect. As we can’t afford to play many upgrades, Guard usually requires us to remove our character dice to prevent damage which carries a higher ‘opportunity cost’ when we don’t have many character dice to begin with. Losing a Luke die to remove some opposing dice could potentially halve our damage output for that turn, and while saving ourselves from taking damage is nice, we also need to be doing damage if we want to win. That’s the high quality analysis you came here for, I know. This condition makes Ancient Lightsaber excellent for us, as we can use it to ‘turn on’ Guard without having to give up Luke’s dice in the process. So, we’re still playing two copies of Guard, as it is an incredible card, just be aware of the fact that it isn’t ‘as good’ for this build as it is for others.

A very quick note on Partnership; we can play to maximize it if we wish by using Training Remote or some other support to give us the second effect, but I hesitate to go that far down the rabbit hole for one card. Right now, I like Partnership as a flex card that we can Swiftness out to activate with an extra action in a pinch, either to deal quick damage or get our dice on the field for Caution/Guard.

Three Character Builds

Three character builds can be three die (all non-uniques) or four die, by pairing either Rey or Kanan with some combination of Padawan/Jedi Acolyte/Jedi Instructor. To be honest, the four die versions are easily better, so I’ll be speaking in reference to those in this section. The strength of three character lies almost entirely in their health and the upgrade engine made possible thanks to Padawan and It Binds All Things, so the traditional builds tend to lean in that direction. They play a longer game than Main/Support strategies, looking to take advantage of lots of health and the lack of a ‘clear target’ to outlast and outdamage their opponent.

If we’re looking to take advantage of high health, multiple characters, and redeploy, focusing our engine around upgrades and taking advantage of said upgrades is the next logical step. The best way I believe we can do this is through The Power of the Force, an old card from Awakenings that just gets better with each new set release.

Eventually I’ll talk about The Power of the Force in a future article on rate, so I won’t go too deep on that here, though I definitely could. For today, all I’ll say is that if we can play PotF with just three upgrades out (so resolving any die we choose for a value of 3), we’re already pretty far ahead, and things can get crazy quickly. Pre-Empire at War we basically had Force Speed, Force Illusion and Journals of Ben Kenobi as cheap upgrades options, and the two-cost upgrades were mostly abilities that didn’t gel with Padawan. Now, not only do we gain Keen Instincts as another free upgrade that provides at least a little value, we also gain Bestow, Funeral Pyre and Ancient Lightsaber and Shoto Lightsaber as two cost Blue weapons for It Binds All Things and Padawan to abuse.

As for what we do with our newfound Power, I’ll let you figure out for yourself, but resolving for a ton of resources to dump a hand full of upgrades, deal a crazy amount of damage with a lowly one melee die, or use it on focus to focus our entire board should be enough to get you interested.

For all of its strengths, three character has weaknesses as well. Guard is unreliable for us in the early rounds, as Kanan only has one melee side unless we want to go really deep on a Focus into Melee into Guard play. The deck plays very slow, which is the case with most Blue hero builds, but a fast opponent that can dish out damage quickly can punish us for devoting half our deck to upgrades. If we get our engine rolling it can be difficult to stop, but we still play 15 non-upgrades and our characters don’t do much on their own, so a poor early draw can often be fatal.

Two Character Rey Builds

Three and a half sets in and Rey is still one of the best Blue characters available to us, which is a good thing. Her low point cost coupled with her action cheating ability and two melee damage sides (one modified, obviously), to consistently hit Guard makes her an excellent pairing for some of the mid-costed Blue character options like Ahsoka Tano and Qui Gon. The fact that she is costed close to ‘Support’ levels while also providing decent health and dice for her cost makes her a great middle of the road character than can hold her own when our first character goes down.

Two character Rey decks tend to be aggressive, looking to take advantage of her ability to put dice out quickly and either resolve before our opponent can mitigate, or control once they roll in with our all-star events like Caution and Guard. Because of this, Rey builds tend to play a more traditional damage dealing/controlling game, using cards like Synchronicity, Riposte and Jedi Robes bring surprise damage and health to the table.

My preferred Rey build pairs her with Qui Gon, where we can maximize our shield ‘sub-game’ while providing the most consistent damage dealing dice in the game to overcome Rey’s inconsistencies. When supported, Qui Gon’s dice deal damage on 4 sides (with the fifth giving a resource) and we can utilize his ability to chip away at our opponent bit by bit with Luke’s Protection, Shoto Lightsaber and card draw effects. Qui/Rey builds tend to use every part of the buffalo and are card hungry, so Trust Your Instincts to reroll dice and redraw a used Luke’s Protection for another shield or damage are common plays the deck is looking to make.

Qui Gon/Rey offers so much survivability in the form of incidental shields that it can basically attack on two axes. It is capable of quick burst damage with Riposte, Synchronicity and a potential eight melee damage off character dice alone, while also retaining the ability to outlast opposing damage with Caution, Jedi Robes, Rey’s Lightsaber and Shoto Lightsaber providing shields, while Ancient Lightsaber and Yoda’s Quarters heals any damage that might get through.

You can sit there and scoff, but Yoda’s Quarters can do some serious work when we are dragging games out four rounds or more. If our opponent targets Qui Gon they are in for a barrage of Caution and Protective Mentor on Rey, where Jedi Robes and Rey’s Lightsaber keeps the shields coming. If they target Rey, we can go the other way with Protective Mentor, and they’ll have to outrace all our shields pinging for damage and Yoda’s Quarters healing whatever damage gets through. Turning Rey’s at times poor character dice into three shields on Qui Gon or two health off herself is a core strategy for this archetype, and successfully overcomes the deck’s primary ‘weakness’.

Two Character ‘Consistent Dice’ Builds

Finally, the last Blue Hero option I’ll cover today are the two character builds that don’t play Rey. These builds elect to move away from Rey’s awkward dice in favor of more consistency, usually with Kanan Jarrus. As the only 10/13 option for Blue Hero, Kanan fills an area of need in the Blue character tree, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see him pop up here in multiple lists. Rey 2.0 is the very definition of a consistent mid-tier character, but she doesn’t have a good option to pair with in Blue besides Kanan, which leaves two points on the table, at which point we might be better off pairing with Ahoska or Qui Gon instead.

Personally, I find Kanan Qui Gon to be a better pairing, as Qui Gon is such a powerful card when supported correctly, but I haven’t given an Ahsoka list, so I’ll do so here. Ahsoka Tano exists in this weird spot where her ability entices us to play her at one die, but the rest of Blue Hero’s card pool incentivizes four die builds. This tension is exacerbated further thanks to the fact that the one card we would really want to play in an Ahsoka build that uses her ability (Fearless) is outclassed completely by Ancient Lightsaber and Shoto Lightsaber. Blue doesn’t have great ‘traditional’ resource generation, relying instead on cards like Destiny and It Binds All Things, so her ability can be difficult to trigger without giving up something in return.

Still, if I were to make a four die Ahsoka build that takes advantage of her ability, this is how it would look.

The first thing we need to realize if we’re looking to play a build like this is the fact that we need to get something extra out of activating Ahsoka a second time. Two resources for a maximum of 4 more damage if we hit perfect is great, but the baseline is closer to two damage and a removed die or some other non-damage resolve. Fearless just isn’t worth the investment, until the point where we are triggering it for the 4th time, and even then I’d rather take two ‘fair’ rolls with an upgrade that gives me value.

All of that being said, the next best thing for Ahsoka to take advantage of is one giant upgrade, be it Master of the Council or One With the Force. I’m choosing Council here, as the rest of our deck revolves around finding those resources to afford the activation, so there will be times we are flooded and can get that third activation. Our resources come from Chance Cube, which can either roll naturally or can be focused with Kanan to an immediate resolve, and from Destiny, which can power out our upgrades for ‘free’, letting us use the two resources we get every turn for Ahsoka activations.

This type of build is definitely powerful, but can be a tough nut to crack. We need to interact with our opponent but cannot rely on paying resources for traditional mitigation, which points us in the direction of Heroism and Sound the Alarm. Actually, besides Concentrate (an excellent trick to use with Force Speed), our other 13 events cost zero, assuring us that our money is going where it matters, to upgrades and Ahsoka’s ability.

One card I’ve been impressed with lately that we can take advantage of here is Training Remote. Remote pairs nicely with our consistent character dice, ensuring we can gain extra of whatever we want, be it resources to support Ahsoka, damage, shields, or focus to set multiple dice. On top of all of that, Remote is great as a Destiny target if nothing better presents itself, especially if we hit that two side, but it’s primarily in there to tack on to one of our character dice showing resource so we can afford to keep our activations coming.

Conclusion

As this article has hopefully shown, Blue Hero has tons of options available to it, and can be built a myriad of different ways. The pool of ‘playable’ cards is deep, and extends beyond the usual suspects of Caution, Guard, and Force Speed. Hopefully my analysis has given a model that you can use to build your own decks, and the concepts and ideas I’ve discussed here can be taken and applied to any subset of cards you choose. While you can throw 30 ‘legal’ cards together and call it a deck, the intricacies and relative value of the cards you choose and how they interact with each other, the pairing itself, and your primary gameplan can provide ‘hidden’ value that you might not expect. If you want to take your deckbuilding and playing ability to the next level, thinking about how Training Remote’s relative value adjusts whether we are playing Rey or Kanan, or how Guard’s strength diminishes based on exactly which Blue die we are removing can really elevate your game.

Thanks for reading,

Trevor Holmes

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