I will always and forever cherish the release of a new set of any collectible game I play. Shaking up the meta with fresh cards and new archetypes is one of my favorite things about this hobby and after literally half a year with Legacies, I couldn’t be more excited to see what Way of the Force brings. Even better, we’ve got a whole summer full of crazy events to baptize the new set. The North American Championship will be happening less than a month after WotF drops. NOVA will be on its way soon after. We have Store Championships and maybe even the first couple Galactic Qualifiers with Way of the Force, all straight in a row.

The next couple of months are going to be crazy. Deck builders and innovators are going to have a huge leg up over the competition in the next month. As spoiler season comes to a close and we start to get closer and closer to cracking open packs and recycling mountains of booster boxes, I wanted to go over some deck building and play testing tips to keep yourself grounded and make your time with the new set — however abundant or lacking it might be — as productive as possible for future success.

Find new combinations with current archetypes

This is an obvious first step to exploring any new set, but it absolutely bears repeating. The best way to get yourself familiar with the new cards is to keep the variables as small as possible by slotting them into established archetypes and seeing how they function. Are there any new ranged weapons with ambush that make Sabine even better? Does Rose get new vehicles that want damage taken off them for better success? Is there a way to make mill even less fun to play against? All of these questions should be chief in your mind as you go about examining the new set and making changes to the decks you currently have sleeved. Count Dooku – Darth Tyranus fits in great as a replacement buddy for Talzin. I had so much fun with Kylo2/Talzin in Legacies and Dooku just adds to the consistency engine that Talzin produces. Even if having to pay for his 3 side feels like a bit of a bummer, I like the idea of being able to pick and choose when I want to utilize it, which is fairly easy with him, Talzin, and all the 1-cost upgrades that we saw featured in Kylo2/Talzin.

I think it’s important to note that in the three set transitions we’ve had so far in Destiny, none of the winning character combinations in an old set have survived the transition. A lot of this has to do with the fact that there have been nerfs, sure — but it’s good to keep in mind that innovation in character suite is key to conquering the meta. Even at Worlds, where the meta was stale and “solved,” we saw a handful of new suites sweep the stage and do extremely well. Finding the hottest new character combination is absolutely key, and you can’t do that if you’re copying everyone else. I like starting with mono lists when exploring a new set. Considering the sheer volume of cards we have at this point, it’s easy to put together a good deck with a single color and using one color lets you explore the new cards without getting entirely overwhelmed by all the options.

Use old cards in new combinations

In the excitement of a new set, we sometimes forget that we have a whole slew of other cards that are waiting for the right moment to be abused. There have been several instances where often forgotten cards in Awakenings and Spirit of Rebellion have been brought back into the limelight through successful decks. Big hitters from Legacies like Leadership used to mostly be considered garbage cards until the advent of Seventh Sister slamming her ID9 Seeker Droids in your face. OTK, despite being almost completely viable in Empire at War, wasn’t even discovered until Maul’s Saber and Spirit of Rebellion. That deck was begging to break open the R2P2 meta, but was found too late. Hyperspace Jump was an overcosted card that was only used as a gimmick until decks like OTK and vehicles became prevalent and skipping your opponent’s turn with the card was a probable outcome. Rieekan is a joke card… right?

Snagging these old diamonds in the rough and putting them to good use will help you succeed before your opponents. Do yourself a favor and pour through some of your old cards and see if you can’t find something that shines a bit brighter with some new friends. Flip through your binders or use one of the many digital databases to just give the cards a good reread and make sure you’re not missing something that could be potentially broken with a new set of characters. Really give yourself a moment with each card to consider whether or not it’s viable in a new set.

Find the whole greater than the sum of its parts

As an extension of the last point, some cards just don’t function very well on their own. Modified HWK-290 is a garbage card by itself, but when it’s paired with Rose, it ends up being incredible. Two of the surprise deck lists at Worlds this year were the Hyperloops’ Yoda-driven vehicles list that used ranged upgrades and Artificery’s 4-wide vehicles. Both of those decks have a lot of cards that, on their own, aren’t exactly exciting — boring pistols we’ve seen since Awakenings for the former and a suite of four characters whose dice don’t really seem to mesh well for the latter. Both of these decks had a lot going for them, though, and they ultimately made the top cut in both cases. In the instance of Artificery’s list, Temple Guard‘s Guardian keyword felt really good and having two yellow characters meant that your Spot Yellow cards were a lot safer than they were in other vehicles lists. Also, forcing your opponent to churn through over thirty hit points before a single shield is put down forces them to climb a huge wall.

Our current selection of spoilers for Way of the Force suggests that the designers are leaning towards having cards that have different interactions with different character suites. Fifth Brother’s Lightsaber, for instance, is by itself a really, really bad Heirloom Lightsaber and an even worse Maul’s. But when it’s paired with Fifth Brother, the upgrade has a lot of opportunities to be extremely oppressive, particularly if you can manage to use his consistently. Cards like Luke’s Training and Clandestine Operation show that now, more than ever, single-die uses of a character are going to have more oomph than they have in the past. This could lead to a situation like we saw with Yoda/Rieekan/Partisan mill — a 3-dice suite that does everything it needs to despite being a die down. For the majority of combinations, you want that extra die, but as we start seeing these new character-centric events, there is inevitably going to a situation in which a combination of them has a lot of power.

Cheat as often as you can

You don’t have to use a dice tray to cheat in this game. There’s a reason cards like Maul’s Saber, FN-2199, and Running Interference got hit with the nerf hammer. There’s a reason why people hate to play against Sabine. There’s a reason vehicles players slam down Scruffy and say event when they’re sitting across from a deck with access to Hyperspace Jump. There’s a reason a lot of us want to see Boundless Ambition banned. There’s a reason Friends in Low Places is a mainstay in yellow decks. Resolving a die twice in a single round… cheating through actions to avoid letting your opponent interact with you… outright telling your opponent that they’re not allowed to play the game for a few minutes — these are all effects that can make a card incredibly powerful and will oftentimes win you the game.

For instance, Furious Assault is a card that imitates what makes Nines and Maul’s Saber so broken. Sure, it only does it for one round and it isn’t free, but if this card gets played in the mid- to late- game on a character with three upgrades, it’s going to either end the game or put you back into it. Finding these cards in the set and exploiting them to the best of your ability is the fastest way to break out in a new metagame. There’s a reason people look at certain decks, shake their head, and say “I like it, but it feels too fair.” Playing fair doesn’t always win you Destiny. Doing the back and forth with your opponent and leaving yourself at the mercy of their removal or letting them respond to your actions can lead to disastrous results. On the flip side of things, you should be wary of over committing yourself to a gimmick or being over reliant on a specific combination of cards — especially if all of that stuff costs a lot of resources or doesn’t actually get the job done in the end. Han/Rey has fallen out of rotation because while it might spend an entire turn acting on its own, it doesn’t have a way to utilize its character dice for early leads and getting its contradictory sides to work together can sometimes be like pulling teeth.

Lose a lot

You should always be a humble winner and an introspective loser in Destiny, but especially in the next few weeks. The worst thing you can do when a new set comes out is be the guy who’s posting their deck list titled “37-0 STREAK IMBA BUILD,” insisting you’re a god, and believing you’re doing anything other than making click bait. You don’t really learn anything about your playstyle or the deck you’re testing when you win game after game after game. If you were that good, you wouldn’t have to playtest or worry about match-ups. Blowout games are an indication of a deck’s ceiling, usually when your opponent doesn’t end up doing particularly well or have the answers they need to stifle your momentum. Blowouts don’t do anything to tell you about bad match-ups or prepare you for the nail-biting, game defining moments that will make or break your performance in a tournament.

Straight up, the best way to learn about a new card is to get stomped by them. It only takes once for you to your dice into two 3 sides and have them immediately get removed by Easy Pickings for you to have an imprint in your head that’ll prevent you from making that mistake ever again. As an extension of that idea, the best way to counter a new card is to play it and get stomped with it. Humbling yourself through losses helps teach you the best way to go improving — as long as you’re being introspective about the loss and treating it as a learning experience. Use the next couple of weeks to make educated mistakes that help narrow down the cards you want to use going forward with this tumultuous summer season of Destiny. Don’t be afraid to slot in one-ofs to try a card; your decks don’t have to be perfect for this first couple weeks of WotF, but they DO have to be making purposeful steps towards perfection.

There are a lot of exciting new cards coming in Way of the Force. I’ve experienced a slog in Destiny the last couple of months (I mean, who hasn’t?) that has kept me from enjoying the game an especially great deal, but I couldn’t be more hyped for this new set to drop. The progression of the game looks incredibly fun and I’m excited to explore all the new shenanigans that comes with this set! I hope you’re all as excited as I am and ready to start slamming through games once we get all our shiny new cards. As a final note to top off the end of this article, I want to mention one simple suggestion: Find a group of solid players who you share a camaraderie with. There’s no better way to avoid the embarrassment of consistent losses than using supportive but competitive players who are there to test you as much as they build you up. There’s a great swath of players in the Artificery Discord and beyond; don’t be shy to use our community to help spearhead your improvement as a player.