Development

In my search for all things Tarkin/Aphra I discovered that at times I wouldn’t be using Tarkin’s power action because people would be mitigating my dice. Easy Pickings is card that is nearly impossible to play around when playing Tarkin and that card is extremely prevalent. This isn’t usually a problem because you can overload the board with dice and create an incremental advantage. The problem with playing these long drawn out games with two characters is that sometimes you would just get outlasted by heavier HP/shield decks that were more aggressive. While I love Tarkin he is somewhat schizophrenic in his approach. A 2 discard side is great early in the round but not so much when you are rerolling. His two focus should be better than it is but is sometimes lacking because you hit good sides on certain dice, they control others and then the 2 focus really is only a 1 focus.

Rainbow Aphra aka Rasta answers the problem of not being able to outlast the more aggressive decks. Nightsister and Ciena Ree have relevant abilities that we trade out for Tarkin’s Power action. We’d rather have Tarkin’s Power Action but the additional 5 health and color make it worth it. Aphra’s ability makes BT-1 one of the best cards in the format and her ability to draw cards lets you grind through every round by exhausting your opponents hand and dice.

It’s easier to grind here and one of the best things about this deck is that we can take our battlefield with less fear of losing the race. In Tarkin/Aphra we’d have to do indirect to one of our characters which always felt kind of bad. Here, Ciena or Nightsister will soak it up which feels much better when you are building so heavily around Aphra.

Below is a video deck tech followed by my current list that varies slightly from the one in the video. I feel this list is pretty close to where it needs to be but given the amount of match-ups I need to test It’s hard to say just yet.

Cards of Note

Astromech – Might seem odd for it to be a two of but it makes our damage very consistent, we want to hit one of these every game. It costs 1 because of Aphra just in case that wasn’t completely apparent. It’s a poor man’s c-3p0.

Kylo Ren’s Starfighter – This card is kind of high variance but it gets better the more you play with it. If your opponent is fast you probably don’t want to spend your first two actions to resolve the die unless they are mono colored. With all of the mono colored decks out its really nice to be able to have such a scary card that creates tension. This card combos with Partnership to make it even more scary. Sure that’s only 33% of the time but when you have an Ark Angel you will generally be rolling in 5 dice and you are likely to hit something Impactful – you can generally set up a next turn Relentless Pursuit. The ship also has a 2 base side which is great for Astromech to fix into in the late game as a consolation prize.

Partneship – Its a card that you won’t use very often but when you do it will seal the deal. There is a chance that we might want to abandon this plan but I’ve seen it do enough work that I want to keep testing it.

Omitted cards and Characters

Force Illusion – Due to Aphra’s dank ability to draw cards when you do yourself inidrect damage removing the top cards of your deck is a real cost. In addition, since we are moving damage around our opponent can just chose to switch targets which makes it less good in our deck. This could certainly be a one of but I would never play two in this deck.

He Doesn’t Like You – I love this card but not in this deck. When I tested it I found that I almost never want to keep it in my opening hand. Reason being is that since we want to draw both a droid, a vehicle and (ideally) a Tech Team you want to mulligan for the first two aggressively. After turn 1 you will generally not be claiming which makes it dead many times on your first action of the round since you won’t have dice in the pool. If you needed that card to be removal then you are screwed. The current list has 5 pieces of value removal and I’d play the 2nd Entangle before I played any of these.

Flank – Right now all of the removal can effect two dice. Money isn’t too much of an issue in this deck which might make the second entangle better but a 1 and 1 split seems reasonable enough given the spot requirements. In yesterday’s tournament report Edwin talks about how 1 for 1 removal isn’t great right now and I agree with him.

Mother Talzin and First Order Stormtrooper – This with Aphra was the original line up and I went away from it because I felt mom’s ability did very little and at times gave my opponents knowledge of the next card that was coming. Using it on your opponent is reasonable enough and while I did do that i found It wasn’t impactful enough. I’m a big fan of Best Defense and using it on FOST makes him pretty likely to die after. This doesn’t seem like a big deal but Cienas big health pool makes it much more likely that you will keep 4 dice for longer.

Dark Advisor – If we want to go deep and dust off you coasters try this guy out. His special is cool but the indirect damage doesn’t work with Ciena’s modifier making him worse in my eyes. Nightsister’s ability is also very good when you have four 0 cost hand discard events to tax their rerolls.

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to aks. Have an awesome weekend and as always…

May the rolls be with you! (Unless I’m rerolling you with Nightsister)

@NJCuenca

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