Rather than bogart the entire Holocron update I’ve decided to share with my compatriot NJCuenca. He suggested we split things up by Heroes and Villains and that sounds as good as any way to split it up, so I happily agreed. Neither of us only play one side, but over the course of the game I’ve played far more heroes than villains and he’s been on the opposite side of that coin, so it makes sense to divvy it up like that. Anyway, off we go…

The Holocron

There’s a lot to take in here with SIX new additions to the Restricted List nearly doubling the entire thing! From a Hero perspective, we mainly see a hit to two major meta lists: Droids and Mill, both of which cracked the top four of worlds back in October – from a broader perspective, any deck that wanted to play a card on this list can no longer play Theed Palace, and based on the meta since the card was released that was just about every deck out there. We can no longer pair the ubiquitous battlefield with Threepio, but Mill decks generally ran one of the Lothal locations and Ewok decks either don’t run Ewok Warrior at all or have found some other way to use the battlefield to deal damage, so that seems to affect villains, which I’m sure NJC will discuss tomorrow.

Taking a look at the new balance list there’s an even split of new hero and villain point costs to go over, and heroes have a good mix of cards that have seen some high-level competitive play and cards that have been coasters since they’ve been printed. I’ll go into a bit more detail below about potential teams that I like, and each of the characters has my curiosity, but Zeb, Finn, and (of course), Qui-Gon Jinn have my attention.

Cream Rising

It’s easy to identify the main meta decks that didn’t get touched at all, and presume that at least some of them will remain at the top of the meta. For Villains I expect Palpatine and Snoke/Mandolorian Super Command/Mudd Trooper to remail some of the most powerful decks out there. The biggest question will be how Fist decks adapt to having neither Delve or Theed Palace; I think if they could’ve kept Theed and simply used other resource making cards like No Good To Me Dead the Fist decks could’ve survived, but now I’m not so sure. One deck that’s potentially still okay in the villain rainbow realm is Jordan McClure’s Aphra deck that only ran one fist, which is pretty easily replaceable as he clearly didn’t rely on it.

Hero-wise, Five Dice Chopper Droids is still a thing, as is Satine/Droids/AR. Even mill will still be “fine” but it’ll be an interesting Great Taste/Less Filling argument as mill players rail on each other via the internet over which is the better include in the best mill decks, Resistance Ring or No Answer (right now I lean No Answer, but we’ll see how things play out). I think ReyLo still stays strong but loses the ability to field Bendu’s Lair to punish people who don’t want to give us the shield as a ton of people will be backing Bendu’s Lair now (which means claim speed might matter a bit more again). All in all, as big as this shakeup was, there are still several existing decks that should remain a major part of the meta.

Breaking Balance

In this section I’m going to try and give some comps for these new characters and their points as well as suggest some new teams. There’s still a lot to test, and I’m highly skeptical these newly pointed characters can crack the top of the meta, but this is at least where my head is at after my initial reactions. Here are the overall adjustments to the following characters who were balanced:

Bib -1/01

Bo -2/-2

Finn -1/-2

Grievous -2/-2

Jabba -1/-2

Kallus -2/-3

Kit -1/-1

Maul -2/-2

Palp -2/-2

Qui-gon -1/-1

Rex -1/-1

Zeb -2/-3

Finn – Soldier of Necessity (11/14)

Finn is a big boy, and even at 16 points plenty of people have tried to make him work since he’s essentially got four damage sides even though one of them is blue. At 14 points he fits into the same spots you might have looked to fill in with either Cassian if doing Range/Indirect Damage, or K2SO if looking to find a 14 point red character who can lay a beatdown. Zeb is now a direct comp in yellow as he got balanced to a matching 11/14.

Fourteen elite is a weird spot for a ranged character, which is why we haven’t seen too much out of Cassian in aggro decks, but Finn boasts a higher health total and the ability to heal himself via moving damage and his special. While Jyn would be a nice natural fit as she has three ranged sides, but features her own modified side; Kes also sounds intriguing but both limit us to mono-red, we need to look elsewhere.

What I like most about 14 points isn’t necessarily which characters we can pair Finn with, but the structures of the teams we can. What I mean by this is that with a 14 pointer we can go 14/8/8, 14/16, or 14/10/6 for example, and if we want to throw plots into the mix we can run 14/13/3 or 14/14/2.

The character I’m most excited for with Finn, especially with the options at two point plots like Lightsaber Mastery, is Luke, Red Five. Luke also boasts a bunch of gun sides, as does his X-Wing.

Zeb – The Last Lasat (11/14)

Zeb’s health is really above Curve at 14 points (like, really above curve), and a three point reduction might actually be too insane. Zeb has made a splash in the meta before both as a partner for Rey1 (way back in the day) as well as with Yoda for maximum action cheat shenanigans. His melee sides give him a bit more flexiblity in pairings, though this isn’t knew; Zeb is one of the most flexible characters in the game because his damage can be resolved as melee or ranged, it’s sort of shocking he hasn’t been better than he has. At 14 points though I think that might actually change.

I like all of the ranged option characters listed above, even Finn, as his 50% damage sides per die pair nicely even with the modified sides of Luke, Jyn, and Finn. Some other interesting melee pairings are Mace Windu who can also dig for weapons, giving the best color pairing in the game the value of high health (between Mace giving himself a shield and Zeb’s health), card digging so you don’t have to have crazy mulligans and can keep mitigation from round to round. It does lack the ramp to really match some of the better ramp decks we’ve seen, but if those go away with the restriction of Delve/Fist/Theed a pairing like Mace/Zeb could really out aggro most decks while bringing some of the best possible mitigation to the game.

Another super intriguing play with Zeb is Aayla + Built to Last. There are a ton of unique upgrades in yellow and blue between all of the unique lightsabers and blasters, and what you sacrifice in health and card digging you get in resource ramp in this pairing. This might be the first competitive deck we actually see Insight in simply for the extra card draw to combo with BTL.

As hyped as I am for Qui-Gon Jinn to be at 17 points, I think I’m most excited for Zeb, and could probably write 5,000 more words on him.

Qui-Gon Jinn – Defian Jedi Master (13/17)

I don’t really have much to say about Qui-Gon that I haven’t already. I’ve used this guy twice in Regionals, once to great success and once to utter failure. Both times I used a -1 plot, first to include Aayla, then to include Yoda. I now no longer have to do either, and while I think Yoda is the absolute best pairing for Qui-Gon, he’s still going to struggle with Reylo and Palpatine. Palpatine is just about an auto loss, and as long as Palp is pushed in the meta, Qui-Gon won’t be. Sad!

Rex – Clone Captain (10/13)

It remains to be seen if Rex can break into the meta, but everyone playing Bendu’s Lair gives him a nice little footing should we decide to sleeve him up. Rex is awful for Bendu’s as you’ll never get to resolve the die as long as Rex’s clone trooper is alive or has a resource to steal it. Regardless, bumping Rex down to 13 does give him a few interesting options. For one, you can pair him with a clone trooper and a 9 point character like Aayla or Old Man Han to really bump the health, abilities, and damage potential.

Outside of three-wide, pairing him with Zeb or Cassian and Armored Reinforcement is fairly interesting should Desperate Measures fall out of favor in the meta. All in all I’m not too excited about the potential for Rex, but mainly because I want to use him with a clone trooper which really limits what we can do with the final nine points. As I mentioned, Aayla and Han are both very solid fits here, but they don’t seem gamebreaking, and I’m just not sure Rex will ever be good enough to push the meta.

Kit Fisto – Shi-Cho Master (12/15)

Kit being bumped down to 15 points is certainly the least exciting of the bunch. We’ve got plenty of 15 point blue characters that haven’t worked well enough together to break the meta, and even with Kit’s strong ability and two focus side he isn’t going to change that. His best pairing might be Yoda with Lightsaber Mastery, but again, this isn’t new, and I don’t think Kit was better than Mace Windu at 16, I don’t think he’s better than Luke or either Rey at 15.

Bo-Katan Kryze – Deathwatch Lieutenant (13/18)

I don’t quite know what to make of Bo-Katan. She is, of course, very strong. 12 health with unreal damage sides of 3/2/(3 or 2), and to boot we can include yellow villain upgrades in our decks. To be honest, she probably requires her own article exploring all that she can be. The last time anyone did this was long ago on ABG’s website.

The ability to include yellow villain upgrades doesn’t do a lot for us, though Armor Plating and Pulse Canon can certainly do some serious work. I’m not sure going all in on her ability to buff her special damage side is good enough especially with such a severe lack of special chaining available at 12 points. I’m not sure pairing her with Han is the best mono yellow deck, and pairing her with Aayla seriously lacks synergy. There isn’t a whole lot to pair with her in general, though Bail Organa could be interesting if you are still trying to make Admiral happen. I don’t know if there’s a point cost that makes Bo-Katan playable, at least not with damage sides so free and huge that they’d actually balance her down to in good conscience.

While this was pretty reactionary, I hope it served as a good jumping off point for thought and conversation. I haven’t worked much on Destiny post worlds, essentially waiting for this balance or Covert Missions to happen before diving back in. This has me at least wading in the waters, as I’m super excited to try and make Zeb happen on TTS in the coming weeks.

Be sure to comment on Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit to get the conversation going as to who you are excited to build with, and make sure you crack it back here tomorrow for our Villain review!

Thanks for reading!

BobbySapphire