So It’s been a really long time since I myself have had to build on a budget and I honestly didn’t bother focusing on the budget conscientious players. A recent comment from DatBolas on Reddit requested to aim content a bit more to the newer and or intermediate level players and it got me to thinking that I’ve probably been a little shit focusing too much on competitive players when I already do that with the Patreon Premium Content. I’m going to try to focus more on explaining things more thoroughly and making less assumptions on every one understanding exactly what I’m talking about.

Today I’ll be stripping the Obi Starter down to just the okay or better cards and will be looking to build with 2 of them and then bringing in cards to complete the deck. I’m trying to keep costs low, but I’ll be building with the entire pool accessible except for legendaries. Pictures of the 95% of the starter can be found in our old article https://www.thehyperloops.com/obistarter/ and here is the one card I believe we missed and the list of the starter below that.

There are a ton of TERRIBLE cards but that is expected in a starter. Man, I was cutting out cards and realized that I’m not cut out for playing with jank. I’ve maintained what I could and then found that I ended up with just about nothing left. Avoiding Legends was pretty easy because Ancient Lightsaber no longer exists and It’s not too hard to tell Ezra Saber and Dagger of Mortis to go screw. I ended up going down a Bandolier path for a few reasons. This is the initial list I’ve come up with and man does it look depressing. If you click the picture, it’ll take you to the deck if you need to read any of the cards that are lesser known to you or want to download the deck to use on the program that shall not be named.

For those of you that are newer to me, I tend to think and speak negatively so it’s not as bad as I make it out to be, it’s just that I’m all about the big safe consistent decks of which this isn’t necessarily. So let’s get down in to the nitty-gritty of the deck and the plan.

Character Rationale

The beauty of these two characters is that you shouldn’t really hate any of the sides that show up besides blank and then shields vs mill. Sure, you don’t want all 4 of them showing focus sides, but it’s really hard to be upset with any of the sides when we look at them out of context. Satine gives us a very beautiful reroll on a die that whiffs, but due to her 2r1 Resource side, we’ll likely be making sure to roll her out prior to going down to 0 Resources which could shift sequencing a bit.

The big thing that you REALLY want to think about is what you want to use the Obi Power Action on. For any of the old degenerates who’ve followed my process, they’ll already know that I’ve gone over talking about which die sides benefit the most when they get pumped. Resource and Discard are the absolute best sides as far as “value” is concerned when you are getting to add to the resolution. We don’t have any 2 discard sides in the deck as of current, BUT we do have a 2r1 Resource side on Satine that we can PA into a 3r1 Resource which is great for letting us afford things. Later on in the game, we’ll be looking to PA on Obi Damage or the 2 Focus most likely, but Round 1, that 2r1 is going to be your bread and butter. Don’t forget turning 2 shields into 3 shields might just be one of the best options available to you if you are playing against a deck with heavy firepower so don’t sleep on that side.

For a Price is probably one of the best cards that doesn’t currently see usage. We tend to stay the hell away from Pay sides on our character dice because it increases our expenditures and usually for very little game. Round 1, I much prefer to have 2 damage than a 3r1 damage side and it usually stays that way until that 1 damage is relevant or the resource no longer matters. For a Price sets us up well for both of our characters so that we can either easily find the 2r1 Resource or the 3r1 Melee side. It’s really hard to ask for more from a card that is free to play.

Why Bandolier??

The DB doesn’t have a good picture of Republic Jedi Armor yet so I used the old scan we had access to. So the rationale behind running Bando is that it’s a pretty cheap way to get extra upgrades on our main character in order to setup very large Fatal Blows and Bacta Therapies. Bando itself also gives us a free reroll on an equipment or weapon die which will offer us a bit of consistency later in the round when any of our 8 dice upgrades miss and it makes our equipments not count toward the 3 upgrade restriction. With 2 Character Building points left, going Lightsaber Mastery plot goes hand in hand with the setup because we can always have a Fatal Blow as a ace in the hole sitting there under it. The deck is going to play very defensively and try to play very cheap so that we can be afforded the time to spike off the huge Fatal Blows for kills. Republic Armor gives Obi 2 health when you cast it (1 shield and +1 HP), so it’s really like we paid 1 for mitigation to stop a 2 and then got the die for the other 1 resource and it’s pretty hard to complain about the die if it costs us the equivalent to 1 resource.

Bacta Therapy is above curve if you get to heal 5 damage using it and it is a card that people go above and beyond to try to avoid running in to. Going from a 2 health Obi back to 7 health can be depressing for an opponent, but it’s not as scary as needing to remove damage character dice before you get blasted for 6+ damage from a Fatal Blow. No Mercy was a huge burst card that people loved to play because you could steal games with it. Fatal Blow is much easier to see coming, but much harder to stop outside of killing the character. Fatal Blow is pretty much your win condition and why we packed 2 in the deck to go along with the 1 hiding under Lightsaber Mastery.

Mitigation

Flee the scene is ridiculously hard to play because it gives your opponent 3 actions in a row uncontested. A player could roll out, resolve once, and then pass and the Round would end right there so it takes some getting used to, but if you’ve rolled out and gotten mitigated a couple of times already or your opponent has been very slow with their action pacing then you can often end up done with a good portion of your own Round before jamming this to blow up their plans and then them either continue in shambles or get what they can and ending the Round. Obi just wants more time to build up, so getting a couple of resources and an upgrade and the round ending is probably in our favor and it is why I’ve included it.

Easy Pickings isn’t actually a budget card seeing as they cost about $8-$9 each, but it is pretty much a Yellow Hero staple until it rotates out of standard and if you are going to go to big events, then you’ll likely want / need them. You really do want the blowout cards like this but if you must replace it, then any 1 cost mitigate 1 die cards will suffice. You can’t really afford Entangle with all of the 2 cost cards already in deck, so maybe a Pacify or another calculated risk could help out. Worst case scenario just run Way of Light. People are normally playing around Easy Pickings when they see Yellow Hero which also gives you better pacing to get away with a blowout Flee the Scene.

There are very few Jedi dice being played, so this is pretty equivalent to “Spot Obi. Remove a die.” to us. We have some blow out niche cards already, so we want consistency at some point. Hidden Motive, Pacify, and Calculated Risk are our 0-cost pseudo mitigation options to help us out Round 1 to smooth things over and if you’re Blue, you should be running Hidden Motive. Hidden costs around $10 if i’m not mistaken so if you don’t have any, just double up on Pacify and Calculated Risk. You don’t really have other viable options or they would be in deck already.

Damage Dice

We’re pretty limited on the die option slots when avoiding Legends, but honestly with them being unique and us needing multiple upgrades out, i’d heavily consider spending the $5 – $8 on Ezra’s Lightsaber so that you can have a bunch of 1 of 2-cost plays to go upgrade wide. I avoided a 2nd treasured lightsaber because we already need the base on Obi for Fatal Blow and don’t really have more base sides to help out, but the draw is honestly needed. I’d probably consider running Heirloom Lightsaber over regular Lightsaber for that reason too, but I was trying to use what was given to us in the starter if it was close enough. We probably lose anyways if Obi dies, so the Redeploy might not matter at all unless we jam it on Satine and try to use it before she dies off which isn’t very likely.

Other Considerations

So this is past the budget, but Soresu Mastery would setup Deflecting Slash to be better and potentially in main deck and could consider running Jedi Holocron to draw cards and play Soresu for the discount. If we just want to draw, then Renewed Purpose is an option so that we can find Aquata’s and Bandolier’s. Comm Tower is that option for getting extra value off of leftover good dice or threatening the opponent to claim early if they want to avoid us claiming for the value. I was originally going to run Hired Muscle because that is the jack of all trades to get the pump with Obi because 3 discard is absolutely bonkers there and I could then run Entourage for a similar rationale and Rendezvous to use off of Satine and Hired Muscle, but then the budget went out the window and Bandolier is much more wallet friendly so I went down that path. Realistically, Legend Qui-gon probably plays that 18 point slot much better because he can more adequately abuse the shields, but we all have to start some where.

Commenting here is most preferred, with Reddit being 2nd. I really try to stay away from Facebook and want to be more productive with my time. I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of reading my news feed WAY too many times so I get in and then out and have notifications disabled for the most part. Let me know your thoughts on this type / format and any questions or suggestions that you may have. At this stage, we aren’t really doing this for ourselves or to grow our Patreon, we genuinely like the community and competition (money usually helps with motivation though), so if you have something to say, whether it sound positive or negative, please say it, because we all have room to grow and improve.

~HonestlySarcastc

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