The Rules Reference Guide has shaken up our Destiny world by laying ruin to all of the “Tier 1” decks. As the competitive players try to piece back together the shambles we call decks and figure out what is left, I want to shed some light on some old cards and decks that might make their triumphant return to the competitive stage. Cards that once never thought they would see the light of day from our binders return to fight the good fight and grind us to victory. The players who played from the beginning of the game will float down memory lane, where as the newer players may have never known the soul crushing power they exhibited in a format of old.

The Good

Han / Rey



Enigma666 (Destiny’s most known Han Rey Player) must be ecstatic to see that this duo is making a potential comeback. Zach Bunn attempted to pilot this at Nova (US Nationals) during the SoR format but fell short. There was a new “trick” introduced at that point in the form of “Fair Trade” which was often good enough to kick Nine’s down a notch in the first round and jump start the hero advantage. If you’re a bit lost, the explanation is this: Play an Ambush upgrade on Rey, roll out Han and if you had “Fair Trade” in hand, you had a 75% chance to accelerate your own resources while taking one of theirs at the very least if not taking both of their resources. Han has 3 sides on each die you were fine showing up (2 Disrupt and double Resource) which is 50% so when you include his second die that increased the odds to 75%.

EaW gave us another Ambush upgrade in the form of X-8 Sniper Rifle which made the consistency for the double action starts stronger. Concentrate from the 2P Starter is to help fix die sides when it was safe to do so and Truce helps for our pay sides when we are poor, as well as making our Fair Trades and Disrupt sides better. I’ve talked about it a bit on the podcast but have yet to really sit down with it and try to make the magic come together.

Second Chance

We haven’t really seen Second Chance since the nerf on Ammo Belt happened and I’ll be honest, I wish I didn’t have to see it again. Sabine is going to cause fits and nightmares with how often she smashes this down and crushes the opponent. If things get out of hand, we could potentially see a nerf to this card that ends up removing it from the game after use, but it is still too early for people to cry about it. We’ll let Regional season come and go and see if people outcry will occur. This combined with Starship Graveyard is one of the old Negative Playing Experiences for players as they continually tried to kill Han only to have this put on top of the deck every round. It was so destructive that we’ve had to write articles on how to play around it.

The Bad

Jango Veers…. i mean Jango / Phasma2

Jango Veers has been “upgraded” into Jango Phasma2 and any one who started this game at the very beginning of Awakenings format will remember the tyranny caused by Jango and his action cheat. Cries of “broken” were shouted from the rooftops and then he slowly faded away as players learned to build better decks with better damage output and could punish the duo which has 19 health at the time. Well he’s back and there is no promise of grandeur, but we do have better upgrades now as well as a better partner and some more explosive events for him.

Intimidate

Intimidate was one of my favorite “counter plays” to make back during Awakenings. Opponent’s would quick claim the battlefield so that they could cast “Dug In” to put 3 shields on the guy i’m targeting then KAPOW, got em and the glee that they once had has drained from their face. With blue hero making a good showing, Caution, is an auto include as well as the aforementioned Dug In for any moderately fast red deck and players choosing an opponent’s battlefield to put 2 shields on, making Intimidate a great card even when it is outside of the Quigon match.

The Ugly

Jabba Dooku

The premiere mill / control deck of old is looking to rear it’s ugly head with the format slowing down a bit. It feels like I’m cheating by having 2 sets of villain lineups as opposed to 1 hero, but I can’t guarantee that either villain set will be as good as the hero ones. The damage output may be too low, but packing 4 character dice with double Discard sides is pretty scary when we’ve become much more accustomed to using up our entire hand in a round and burning through our deck. We also pack some new force powers, control cards, and bait and switch to set up some insane discard actions. The sky is the limit when you can easily burn out 4 cards from an opponents hand and then take your time controlling their dice. The format is rampant with slow grind 3 and 4 character decks and this pairing is set to abuse that methodology.

Hunker Down

This still might be too slow but with the reintroduction of 3 character and 4 character ranged redeploy decks, good ol Hunker Down would make realistic sense. Even against Melee decks it should realistically afford you two shields and vibroknife is no longer as good as it used to be, should packing this should get you some well sought advantage.

Dodge

Anyone who has seen 5 Die Villain or Sabine load up a board of ranged (Sabine via Never Tell Me the Odds) may consider bringing this back into the mix rightfully so. Dodge was mainstream as a near TWO of back during Awakening for hosing an opponent’s entire round at times and it may make it’s return. In most situations Sabine has an additional action to resolve her dice, but when she gets Running Interference going, she gets an explosive option from Never Tell Me the Odds and then the opponent can’t cast a card. Hidden Agenda can circumvent that situation and it is an odd option, but if you have a few 2+ Cost events, then you may be running Agenda anyways and are perfectly content with that happening for a blowout turn.

Are you excited about the current format and the wide variety of decks to play? If we’re lucky it’ll stay this way for a while and we’ll have a plethora of options to choose from when we go to our next big event. If you’d like to see what we’re cooking up at the Hyperloops Discord, then join our Patreon because it’s becoming one of the hottest places to be for seeing what’s hot. Tabletop Simulator League Season 3 Top Cut is in full swing and we’re getting lots of games in trying to take down another one for the group, so prepare yourselves for that and future events.

~ HonestlySarcastc