Last week I wrote about five dice villain decks for the person on a budget. Those decks were great and really allowed you to compete thanks to the sheer power of the number of starting dice. Also, the combination of a nine point Phasma providing ten health coupled with The Best Defense really allowed for great control which usually can be stunting on your own offensive development but thanks to the starting dice the power was there to start a quick clock.

Due to popular demand I’ll be going over a couple of five dice hero decks that are a bit more interesting than their villain counterparts. The cards are less obviously good and so it forces us to stretch out our imaginations in order to make things work.

Budget Boom

This may in fact be my greatest masterpiece. When building a deck around a card like Planned Explosion it’s important to not go too hard on such a concept since a card like Friends in Low Places or a random discard will ruin your day. Playing sub par cards in order to get value from a card you’ve built around is sometimes fine but too much of that will make your deck completely unplayable unless you draw your payoff card. Here I’ve tried to choose set up cards that also hold some weight on their own.

Gameplay

The plan here is to set up the explosion for round two by playing a bunch of cheap upgrades and supports on the first round. I’d keep Planned Explosion if you have all of the other cheap upgrades and hope you get there on the first round. If you don’t get the PE you can still play a decent beatdown roll with the late game possibility of milling out your opponent. WHAT? That’s right, with Second Chance, C3PO and a couple of Scouts your opponent will be completely shocked that you were able to do that. This flexibility isn’t the deck being unfocused but just a side benefit of the cards chosen since those cards work well with Planned Explosion and a general beatdown plan.

While he’s alive Snap combined with Cargo Hold will allow you to move all upgrades on the target you want to kill. If you can set off an explosion before he dies you should be able to win the game. You can also move a Second Chance onto him with Cargo Hold which can prolong the shenanigans.

Card Choices

-Overkill is somewhat narrow but has great numbers for PE and is very real as a beatdown threat.

-Chance Cube has big numbers for PE and can accelerate your playing of upgrades or if you have nothing to play you can just play it and activate it on the next round.

-Extortion is another one cost upgrade to add to your count and can choke your opponent which works well with Snap’s ability. It also combos cutely with Truce and has a discard side if you ever get into mill mode.

-Scout has a 2 side for a one cost upgrade and has an ability that will protect your dice from removal and can help mill your opponent if they try to go through their deck too quickly. Protecting your dice and hand is great when you plan on exploding.

-New Orders will give you access to your battlefield in the match ups where it will shine and will allow you to switch it if your opponents is better. You prefer to have the shields and will generally be getting them but the one copy of NE gives you some nice flexibility.

Possible Includes

-Another Rend if Imperial Inspections are everywhere in your meta. This deck is very soft to that card.

-Jetpack has solid numbers for PE and could go in the Overkill spot or could be added in addition if you find yourself flushed with cash without enough damage dealing cards.

-Cheat can help you double up on copies of PE but you have to draw it first. Might still be worth it depending on how the match ups pan out.

Budget Boom is powerful and gives us varied play experience which I really like when I’m looking for something fun/budget to play. Its weakness is that it relies somewhat heavily on rolling well but it does include C-3PO and BB-8 that can help us with our roll quality. The deck below is a little more straight forward for a five dice deck and doesn’t need to roll as well.

Budget Rainbow Fives

I’ve excluded Rey and Maz from any of the builds I’ve made because those cards rely heavily on other (monetarily expensive)cards in order to operate at a high level. Otherwise, their power level is comparable to the characters I’ve chosen. Kanan is good by himself and his action cheating ability is inherent to his card. However, running him at elite and wanting five dice forces this combo.

Gameplay

This is a Riposte deck because many of our upgrades add shields and Caution is incredible in this deck since there are so many dice. Aside from that the deck plays a bunch of upgrades and tries to resolve damage like a fair deck. Playing Jedi Robes on Kanan, who is probably your opponent’s first target, and then replacing with a gun will keep him alive longer, start a riposte count and make it easy to overwrite into a redeploy saber or gun later.

Card Choices

-The mixed damage upgrades might seem awkward but redeploy is important and Awakening does a good job of resolving all of the modified sides in this deck.

-The rest of the cards are just die control cards and Riposte/Caution combo. Bad Feeling is a card I’ve been itching to find a home and here we have a lot of dice, heck, I wanted to fit it into the first deck but I couldn’t find the space.

-Ascension Gun is important since Kanan can action cheat focus into a 2 range which will do a lot of damage with the modifiers of Ezra and Pilot.

Possible Includes

-Holdout and x-8 Night Sniper should probably be in there. Holdout more so because of the redeploy although sniper is very good and better in the late game.

-Because we are 3 color we can include pretty much anything. We could try to get more range or melee focused but this set up gives us more redeploy which is important for winning long games regardless of damage types. You could consider some Rocket Launchers, DL-44s and Bowcasters as weapons. With 5 dice deck won’t be hurting for money and having the redeploy from Bowcaster should be important.

That’s all for today. Let me know if you have any questions or comments and as always…

-NJCuenca

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