Due to the holiday Budge and Casual Tuesdays has moved for this week but don’t worry we’ll be back to normal next week. Last week I wrote about Mono Blue Heroes on a budget but this week I’m going to be writing about a conceptual advantage a budget player can have over their more wallet whaling foe.

When in doubt a good strategy is to try to roll more dice than your opponents. The easiest way is to start the game off with more dice and five beautiful dice are easily attainable within a budget. Since dice are the resources that generate damage this is an easy way to win the damage race, the decks I’m going to suggest have a starting damage ceiling of 10 to 12 damage. More dice is so good that many thought that the introduction of five dice decks would be a problem because they would create resources and damage too quickly for other decks to keep up but this hasn’t been the case. But you, the budget hero, will swarm opponents with dice and show them the power of a five dice start! The great thing about the five dice decks is that they don’t require any legendary character cards while still having insane damage upside. I cracked some boxes yesterday and I wasn’t upset when I opened some of the less exciting characters (unless its the Grand Inquisitor, Funk that guy). That’s because I do enjoy playing with all of the characters even if its just for a little bit. Owning a wide range of cheap (both in price and point cost) characters is a great way to mix up your play experience without breaking the bank. Oh, and did I mention that you get five dice! I’m going to be focusing on the villains side today and next week we’ll get to the five dice hero decks.

Inspection Bay



Not a single legendary and I would be scared to play against this at a tournament. Its similar to the old Phasma guardian in approach except that the characters don’t have guardian which is obviously a bummer. Still, this deck does have some things going for it that the previous deck did not. With Ciena and Bazine we can comfortably run Imperial Inspection which is one of the most format warping cards in the game. There’s a very good chance that Bazine will be the first to die so I opted for no spot yellow cards. It’s more than likely that Captain Phasma will be the last to die and so we have included Tactical Mastery as the final punch card for those late game 1v1 situations. There seem to be a bunch of heavy dice running around so The Best Defense can do a great job of stopping them and is especially good against mill decks. Deadly is for the mid game when they have decided who to focus on, slap it on Bazine or Ciena and go to work. You’d prefer to have the shields and will generally win most rolls because of your five dice but if you play against another slow deck your battlefield might just be what the doctor ordered. Ascencion Gun will do some cute things when you hit the special but is generally in there because of the two base sides.

How Expensive?

All of the cards in the deck are under 5 dollars each with the characters costing 8 each at elite and LL-30 Blasters costing around 9 for a play set. Info retrieved from Ebay so your respective source may vary slightly. If you purchased the starters like I previously advised then the Phasma and the F-11Ds will already be part of your collection. The first starters will be going out of print soon and they have a bunch of great cards so I’d consider getting them sooner rather than later.

Fully Powered Version?

If you weren’t on a budget Holdout Blaster and X-8 Night Sniper comes to mind as a card you’d want for this deck and I’d certainly be interested in trying a Slave 1, AT-ST, Hound’s Tooth build with Friends in High Places if you’re into that sort of thing.

Dirty Weapons

These are similar lists but with different character line ups they will play out differently. The fight dirties in the second list will hit harder than the ones in the first one but I think they are reasonable in both. Overall I think the 1st list is better but the 2nd one has a higher upside, a bunch of 3 damage base sides and bigger Fight Dirties. Truce is great in combination with pay side dice and Fight Dirty giving you some surprise damage moments. Both are Weapons Cache decks which is a card that hasn’t been used because weapon decks tend to be FN 2199, Cad Bane or Sabine decks and its generally better to play 2 drops in those decks than play weapon’s cache. If you have an unlimited budget than FN would be a better choice but Weapon’s Cache helps fill out the 2 drop hole in a budget friendly way while providing resources in an interesting way.

How Expensive?

These are similar in Price to the previous section’s decklist although Bala-Tik is even cheaper and has been a staple since the game started. Relby Mortar Guns are about 8 for a set but aren’t completely necessery for this concept – you could slot more IQAs and Phasma Guns in those slots. They happen to be better than those because its a better die and isn’t unique. Weapon’s Cache is very cheap and should only run you a couple of dollars.

Fully Powered Version?

Holdout Blaster and X-8 Night Sniper should be considered and if you still want to Weapon’s Cache then Rocket Launcher seems something you’d want in your arsenal. Its possible that a 5 dice weapon deck is better than a 4 dice FN deck but I doubt it. I suppose they are different enough and have their own strengths and weaknesses but overall when you start having access to Riot Batons and Rocket Launchers its hard to imagine not wanting to FN people competitively.

Thanks for reading and as always..

May you roll all of your dice for damage.

-NJCuenca

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