Wednesday is a little late in the week for me to be writing my weekly column, but I’ve been moving this week and moving with two kids and my wife’s busy schedule is brutal to juggle, but we’re making it happen. I finally have all of my gaming stuff moved into my office, and while I only have my computer set up, this is my view, so I’m up here power-leveling my mental health while I write and watch TheHyperloops gameplay videos from the last two days.

I got a new keyboard and a new headset and I’m really looking forward to the final two weeks of grinding going into GenCon.

GenCon is definitely the hot-button topic in Destiny, even though FFG is trying to derail the OP hype by announcing the next Destiny set, alternate win conditions and Piloting (oh my!). But, I’m going to stay focused on GenCon even though the new cards look wicked sweet and fun. GenCon holds a special place in my heart because my team has done so well there the last two years, and because I’ve top 8’d each North American Championship. I’d love if worlds was this tournament for me, but not having gone to the first, and the 18 month wait before the third one definitely has me feeling GenCon far more.

Anyway, this is an important time for competitive Destiny because we’re about to hit GenCon’s NA Champs, NOVA’s Grand Championship, with two international Grands mixed in before Worlds in October. In my two days off of playing games to move I’ve tried to flex my mental muscles in my time lifting copious boxes of shit that I couldn’t convince my wife to throw out thinking about what I think I know about Destiny right now, and here’s what I think I know.

1. There is no meta, only Droids and Ewoks

A meta (short for metagame) is a part of competitive gaming where you evaluate what is being played and make choices about what you’re playing based on these observations. Right now, there’s almost nothing to observe. There’s been one competitive tournament, a 20-person local in Alabama, that was streamed and has had any attention. It was won by a Droids deck with AR, Han4, and Mean Streets. It beat Yoda/Gungan/Marauder/AR hero vehicles. We can also glean from our locals what people are playing, and I’m sure many of our locals have been won, most recently, by Droids. Droids is really good, and will absolutely be a part of the meta when it forms, but to assume that just because the deck is really strong that it’ll be even 25% of the meta at a major tournament is a ridiculously bold statement. At worlds last year, Rey/Aayla/Proftable, which everyone knew would be the most played deck at worlds, was only 22% of the decks at the event. That is a TON, and it doesn’t even make up a quarter of the decks.

Right now, there’s no way to say what the meta at GenCon will be. For one, people refuse to play what the perceived best deck is. People always want to attack the best deck, and so many people will be working hard to test against droids and try to beat it. I know that’s what I’ve been doing, and I’m sure a bunch of people have been working that angle as well. People also tend to play 2-wide way more than they play 3-wide, which takes away from how many droids decks will get played. Beyond that, people like to play characters they have an emotional connection to in some way; we’ll see people who play ReyLo because they think Rey deserves to fall in love with a murderer, we’ll see people who play Ewoks to troll, people will play Jango Fett or IG-88 because they love bounty hunters, or Vader or Maul because they love sith. Very few players play a deck just because they think it will crush souls, and those of us who do might migrate to Droids or Aphra, but I would bet a lot of money that there are more two-wide than three wides at GenCon (but I might take 6+ wide if that were an option).

I think Droids will be about 12-15% of the meta at GenCon, and the only deck I see being a larger part of the meta there is Ewoks because they are both a good deck and a meme deck, which will lead to people from both camps playing it.

2. Mill might finally go away

Mill is still a very strong strategy, and will always be in a game with 30 card decks (though Execute Order 66 almost saved us), but I think it’s asking for trouble if you run it in a world full of Droids and Ewoks. Droids decks crumble if you can spike C-3PO at the beginning of round 2, but a mill deck NEVER spikes Threepio, he is gaining our opponents extra resources every round, and if we can’t mill them by the end of round three we’re going to have a real hard time closing out.

I’ve had a few mill decks that I’ve really really liked against the field, but I’ve also played against a lot that focus on spiking a character (probably in an effort to spike Threepio) as soon as possible, which means decks are peripherally working on spiking our Leia’s as quickly as possible, which is bad. I think Leia is the go-to mill character right now because of speed; she’s the only character that I think can actively mill out by turn three, and I think a lot needs to go right for that to even happen. There are probably some mill decks out there that can actually mitigate most of what Droids puts out for a few rounds, but the dice reach a tipping point that can’t be stopped when Threepio is left unchecked, and those decks that can survive don’t actually mill well enough to finish a game versus a deck like Droids that takes ten million actions.

3. Bigs are back

If we’re talking spiking an 8-health character, we can’t look much further than the big bads of the Sith order, each of whom command their own powerful deck in Star Wars Destiny. Maul and Palp are both fully capable of spiking a character; Vader with his powerful character dice and Palp with his onslaught of upgrade dice, ramping out of control with his lightsaber. Maul and Vader can each go wide as well, Maul with his power action and Vader with Fear and Dead men. This triumvirate of evil are a little roll dependent, Vader especially, but each boast enough power to clear out the focal character of our opponent’s team at the beginning of round two.

I think each has its merits and each is strong enough to consider for GenCon. Each is strong against mitigation in their own way: Vader has his power action to re-roll removed dice into the pool. Palpatine puts out an ungodly amount of dice and gets to roll an ability out a second time, and Maul starts with Profitable Connection, allowing him to start the game by jamming a 3-cost weapon to help facilitiate his power action, so even if two out of three of his dice get removed he can still PA, and the re-roll it includes helps with the consistency of hitting damage. Our opponents shouldn’t be able to remove all of our dice every round, and we can look for a spot to Seize the Day and steal a kill even if we’re facing down lots of mitigation. Vader also uses the action cheat cards, and can spike damage harder than anyone. He and Palpatine can also take advantage of Admiral, though Vader needs to do it through the event You Are In Command Now. I’ve tried both versions with Admiral and they help with those control matchups; first we run them out of mitigation and then we get a full activation without having to worry about mitigation, though we do get far less rerolls, something Palp deals with better than Vader.

4. Niman Mastery is the best Blue Upgrade

I loved Niman Mastery when I first saw it; a two-cost ability with no blanks and a come-into-play ability? Holy shit! I soured on it a little for no real reason, but after getting absolutely blown out by it by some random dude on TTS I started putting it in more of my blue, damage-based decks, and it has been a godsend. Whether it is in Vader setting up my FOST die to a 2R or a Resource, or setting up my Qui-Gon character and upgrade dice for huge swings, this card can do it all. It’s offensive, it’s defensive, it’s cheap. I love it.

Because we aren’t restricted to weapons like we were before the Awakenings block rotated out (because of Shoto Lightsaber), Niman can slot into a lot more decks, and its mitigating qualities makes it the perfect addition to any and every blue deck that lacks both mitigation and focus. We wouldn’t play it in something like droids that just wants high-value base damage sides, but for any deck that is predominantly blue I think Niman Mastery makes the cut even though it likely means we leave Soresu Mastery on the bench (though I still really like running one Soresu in mono blue decks since we can have a form on each character).

5. The GenCon Stream is going to be sick

The North American Championships at GenCon will be streamed this year for the first time every by us at TheHyperloops. A very special thanks to my good friend Andrew “Reflex” Cox (last year’s GenCon champ) for helping me coordinate stream commentary from Jackalmen Games and the Golden Dice Podcast. Jackalmen is also doing our stream overlay and donating a bunch of equipment for us to operate at peak efficiency. The stream is sponsored by SurlyGoodDesigns, an Etsy shop that a buddy of mine runs that makes excellent acrylic tokens. He made a special token set for the stream (see above) and will be selling them starting the weekend of GenCon. We’ll also be streaming X-Wing, just because the internet cost at GenCon is close to $1,000 and we might as well stream both games!

I’ll be personally giving away three booster boxes from my own collection, one Legaices, one Way of the Force, and one Spark of Hope. I’m hoping we can give away even more, but I can really only confirm what I’m personally willing to give away. I’m on a give-away kick after giving away six legendaries on my case-opening stream a couple of weeks ago, including an Admiral, a Threepio, and an R2D2!

I hope you circle the event on your calendars, and check out the stream. I’d really love to see us actually get 100 people viewing a Destiny stream outside of worlds. Viewership for Star Wars Destiny has always been very paltry, and it leads me to believe that only like 200 people worldwide even care about competitive Destiny. I’d love to be wrong about that! We’ll be spamming the internet with the links to the streams at the event, but it’ll be available on both twitch and youtube.

Those are five things I THINK I know about Star Wars Destiny. I’m probably wrong about some of them (definitely not 5), but we’ll find out in two weeks!

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire