If you want to check up on the previous articles you can here: Jack, Shane and Brian

Tommy

Hi, Tommy from the Golden Dice Podcast here. Today we are going to continue on with our “best and worst of” series. In this article I’ll quickly highlight some of the cards from Convergence that I think will make a big splash or may be unplayable garbage. Keep in mind that my evaluation of these cards is coming from a constructed, and particularly standard point of view.

Top Character

Padme – When characters began being spoiled from this set a lot of people in the community were talking about how many characters had a 2 focus side. Then FFG decided to drop the bomb that is Padme on us. A 3 focus side on a character is something that we have not yet seen in this game. I believe that focus as a die side is one of the most powerful sides any die can have. Couple that with her amazing ability to resolve ALL of your focus sides as indirect damage and you have the makings of a meta defining character.

Now let’s look at some of her other traits. 11/14 is a flexible enough price point to give you a number of interesting pairings. 10 health will certainly make her a target but she is not so fragile that she would die immediately. Finally she’s a Leader. Hero Red has long been considered an under powered color but this is a new day. The support kit that goes along with hero red in this set is pretty strong. It offers playable removal and great heal. Her ship has also been printed and will help keep her on the table by giving her a shield when it’s activated as well as allowing you to roll her into the pool when it activates.

Bottom Character

Ezra Bridger – Well this is a character that I think has a neat ability but will almost never see competitive play. He comes in at 9/12 with 8 health and the sub types of Spectre and Scavenger. 8 health is rough at that point cost in my opinion and those sub types do very little with this current card pool. His die sides are at best okay with a 1Rng, 2Rng, 1Dr, 1Dc, 1Re, and a blank. You are allowed to play blue upgrades on him for whatever that is worth. The real thing that this character offers is the ability to resolve your opponents dice as long as they are in their pool and they have claimed the battlefield. This is a very interesting and unique ability but I’m not at all convinced that it will be very good at all. I think this will be far too easy for people to play around and on the off chance that players leave dice in their pool they probably won’t be showing much that will help you advance your win condition. I am aware that you could play cards that will allow you to turn your opponent’s dice to the side of your choice but I still think you are reaching if you think this is good enough to build around. At the end of it all I think there is just way too many other characters that can fit into this point slot over Ezra. Satine is the big one for me and she gives you access to yellow too.

Best Support

Entourage – Entourage is an interesting card, mainly because it allows you to search for another scoundrel. It’s got great die sides for its cost of 3 but the special is where it gets spicy and we see the ceiling of damage output for this card get scary. The special does 1 damage for each scoundrel you have in play at the time of the resolution. If you run a scoundrel as one of your characters and play this card you now have 2 in play. Oh wait, we get to search for another scoundrel when we play it. It just so happens that you could go get a second of this bad boy if you have the economy to support that sort of thing. If not no big deal, just go get a hired muscle or fickle mercenaries. Both of them cost 1 so they should be easy enough to play. I’m sure you can see the potential for where this goes. Sure you would need a stack of cash to make this happen but scoundrels like money. Han Solo, Beckett, Lando, and Watto can all do a fine job of making you a quick buck so that you can begin to support this degenerate idea of flooding the board with a scoundrel army in a true tribal fashion.

Worst Support

Punishing One – I’ll start by saying that I actually think the raw numbers of this support are actually pretty strong. My concern would be the downgrade mechanic in general. I have not been able to come up with a standard constructed deck, that incorporated bounties, that I think has any real potential. Unfortunately this card is the most upsetting casualty of this for me. The fact that it cost 2 is both good and bad. It’s good because you will easily be able to get it on the table and it’s bad because it makes you more vulnerable to abilities that could remove it from the table. Anytime you have a vehicle that has a built in way of readying itself you want to try and slap some mods on it but with its low cost of 2 it’s just too easy to destroy.

Best Upgrade

Grievance Striker – So I know it’s not Force Storm. I took the easy road with some of my previous picks but I thought I’d throw you something off speed for this one. It’s a 2 cost neutral grey weapon with redeploy and has 3 black damage sides. Not to mention two of them are 2’s. In addition to that you will get an extra ping damage if it’s played on Obi-Wan or Grievous. This pick will not define the meta in any way but I do think it’s hard to argue with the raw value of this upgrade. Overall I think that the upgrades in this set are a little behind where we see supports but this one is a welcome addition to the card pool in my opinion.

Worst Upgrade

Soresu Training – While fun and thematic, this card does very little other than provide shields. In a damage deck and a mill deck it does absolutely nothing to advance your win condition. The only thing this upgrade will do is help you stay alive but only 50% of the time. I would much rather see a card go in a deck slot that can do both of these things. You could definitely make a stronger argument to include it in a mill build but traditionally mill decks don’t run that many cards with dice so your slots are even more limited there. Aside from giving you the shields the special can save you 1 resource since you could have just overwritten it anyway. I know I would just rather have Soresu Mastery on my character when I roll it out since I would have a chance to remove a die with its special too.

Best Event

We’re Home – This card is good in ways that just aren’t apparent on the surface. Obviously readying a vehicle is good, especially since mods came out. What’s sneaky about this card is that you don’t have to roll the resource on the dice you’re rolling with it. You have the ability to set that up beforehand. Another subtle part of this card that is pretty cool is that your vehicle will basically immediately ready. This will prevent your opponent from being able to use that N1 special against your vehicle. Oh and technically you don’t even need a scoundrel to do any of this.

Worst Event

Barter With Blood – Come on Brian. This card is ugly. None of this feels like a destiny card to me. I’m not a fan of the mechanics and I’m definitely not a fan of putting my opponent in a position where they can potentially gain the upper hand on my action. This card feels like an extremely risky version of Delve and honestly I’m not that high on Delve in the first place.

Best Wildcard

Lightsaber Mastery – I’m a huge fan of the design behind this card. Bringing side boards to this game in this creative and limiting way feels like a very clever and healthy way to do it. Either of the two cards that are attached to this plot can essentially become the 6th card in your hand. I can’t wait to see what moves we will get in the future.

Worst Wildcard

Force Flow – There is almost no reason you would ever take this plot over Lightsaber Mastery. This thing is a one time use for 2 points that could’ve been spent on your characters or even a different plot. I have a hard time thinking of other ways to spend 2 points that are worse than this mainly because there is a die symbol that does the exact same thing and a ton of characters in this set have that symbol all over their dice.