Mace Windu, Inspiring Master is like no other card we’ve seen before. He’s similar to Mother Talzin because you get a payoff for building your deck in a certain way but the mechanic of playing cards from the top of your deck is new in Star Wars Destiny. The great thing about Mace’s ability is that we were already going to build our decks similarly to that anyway. If we build our deck correctly we should be getting his power action consistently. The big deck building issue is this: balancing the number of upgrades and events. Those are the type of cards that I’m going to be playing to start off with since dice supports don’t work with his ability although I can consider a support like Honed Skills because we will be getting a free card from Mace thus making Honed Skills not as much of a sacrifice. Since we are heavily incentivized to play upgrades getting an extra slot seems alright with me. Optimally we’d love it if we played an upgrade from his ability and had free/cheap events to interact with our opponents. Its important that we don’t fall into the trap of playing too many upgrades since they will clog our hands and restrict our ability to interact. If there are upgrades that have come into play abilities those will certainly prove to be very valuable.

Keeping in mind the deck building constraints is very important but we also have to consider who his partner or even partners are going to be. There are so many options because he’s a Mid cost character but I wanted to specifically write about pairing him with the new Ahsoka.

The pairing of Mace Windu and Ahsoka Tano is incredibly intriguing. You might be saying to yourself “but that’s only 27 points” or “Isn’t Yoda or Aayla just better?” I’d say that those are all in the conversation for pairings with also the likes of Luke3, Rey2 with a negative plot and some potential 3 wide pairings that will probably be bad but you can actually play a single die Mace with an elite Yoda and a Gungan Warrior but you’ll need a negative plot. We’ll let the other maniacs figure that one out but my point is that there are a lot possibilities.

What’s most intriguing about Ahsoka with Mace is that they synergize so well. Knighthood is a card that makes Ahsoka deadly and since we are paired with Mace we could easily go through 18 cards of our deck (plus mulligans) by round 2 making the likelihood of seeing it incredibly high. On top of that the standard rotation will be taking both Ancient Lightsaber and Shoto Lightsaber limiting our choices for good two drop sabers. There are plenty of great 3 drop options but those are generally harder to play in the first round…unless you play Profitable Connections. I can’t say for certain that I like Profitable over the potentially even more powerful Lightsaber Mastery but given Mace’s ability and the upgrade options I’m going to start off with Profitable.

When you start off with 3 resources all of the 2 and 3 cost upgrades become options in round 1. My instinct is to be more aggressive in my approach so we’ll be primarily be looking at weapons but there are some intriguing abilities for sure.

Mace’s Lightsaber is a cut above the rest in raw power. 50% of the time you’ll be hitting something of two or more value and then you can move it from Ahsoka to Mace. You don’t have to use the power action in the first round if you aren’t getting your value or if you are worried about Mace dying. Resolving that plus 3 side with Ahsoka’s ability is going to feel real nice and the upside of the special equating to 3 unblockable damage is going to feel like a blowout when it happens. Because of the upside and our 3 resource start I think its a definite 2 of. It’s slightly awkward since its unique but we just have to be mindful to not have any more doubles of unique weapons. Your opponents will go after Mace first if this card comes down, in their eyes, giving you a tough choice between moving it and potentially losing the saber but with redeploys weapons and Mace’s ability churning through our deck its not a tough choice at all.

Theory List

We have some good two drop options for upgrades but two of them happen to be unique – Ezra’s Lightsaber and Luke’s Rod. Both of them could easily be 2 ofs but the uniqueness is awkward especially since I’ve put Mace’s Saber ahead of them. For every other unique we put we are asking to miss with Mace’s ability. Force Wave and Force Jump are 1 ofs that shine in certain match ups. Because of Mace’s power action our ability to play them is greatly increased giving them good opportunity cost. Ataru Strike is a card I’ve never cared for but given Mace’s ability and Ahsoka’s 2 shield side I think it can be very powerful. Beguile I think will be one of the premier removal action in the format since action cheating will be less of an issue. We start with 3 resources making Steadfast a viable option in round 1. Disciplined Mind and Upper Hand are new cards that will most likely be 2 ofs. Disciplined Mind removes all non Jedi Dice which is most of the format. Upper Hand being free removal for specials and blanks makes it a must play in my eyes. The one of events are cards that I want to test but I’ve tried to be focused for the rest of the list.

Cards that didn’t make the list that deserve some investigating: Obi and QGJ Sabers are both very powerful and would help make Ataru’s Strike more consistent but they don’t have redeploy. Die wise they are both better than Heirloom and I could see that being a swap if we think that 3 redeploys is enough vs the 4 that we are currently playing. Soresu Training and Mastery could be the right call for this deck but I feel we have enough quality aggressive upgrades that we don’t have to play them. If the format is very aggressive they might be worth playing since its probably insane in damage dealing match ups. Force Pull I think is for Yoda decks and I will definitely be trying it in my Mace Yoda variants – the special gets much worse the longer the round goes. Adapt is a random event that has been unplaybale up to this point but given that we are playing Mace and two of Knighthood it could be the kind of economy that we might want/need. In theory it seems anti synergistic with Ataru Strike which is why i didn’t hold on to it.

Thanks for reading. Let me know on social media or in the comments what you think of this pairing and which one you are most excited for. I really like Mace’s Design and I look forward to testing him out. Take care and as always…

-NJCuenca

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