The upcoming set of Star Wars Destiny, Spark of Hope, is getting aggressive with the printing of very inexpensive character. Back in my day we only had one 7 cost character and we liked it (or at least villains liked since they had it.) Fast forward to today and we see Spark of Hope will be bringing Two 5 cost and one 4 cost character (so far).

Limited Format THOTs

With these in mind you might think there will be even more “oh so unbelievably cheap characters” but I don’t think that’s a slam dunk. Two of them are common which makes me think that there’s a good chance there will be some more but I wouldn’t expect all color/alignment variations. One thing that jumped out at me is the implication of this set as a limited format. If there are a bunch of cheap characters to draft it will certainly make limited a little more varied, one of my biggest gripes about playing current limited formats is that you are always playing the same characters over and over again which makes things stale pretty quickly but with access to more characters that certainly will add replay value. If done correctly I’m optimistic that this will be a great set and I’m hoping that this sort of design will continue. I love playing with and against different characters and this change in design should aid my draft malaise. I do expect that you will be able to play Ewok Warrior even if you do not have a Unique Warrior because its a common and I don’t think they can afford so many stone cold unplayble cards when you draft. Heck, Nightsister Zombie seems pretty bad unless you have a very specific deck and while it’s technically playable I’d feel really bad about it unless I had another Witch and some curses.

Constructed Implications

Printing cheap colored characters makes it really easy to slot in another color and they have been really cautious about that. Ewok Warrior doesn’t let you do it since you need another Ewok and at that point you could play a cheaper yellow character. Nightsister Zombie will give you access to Blue for 5 points, if I had a dollar for every time I wanted a 7 cost blue character I’d have more money.(EDIT: I misread the card and Though you had to assign indirect to it first not last. I edited the article to reflect that.) NZ does feel balanced as it’s a 5 point character that can do a damage in a super specific Witch/Curse deck. That really restricts the cards influence in the metagame since spending 5 on a character just for the color isn’t great. On top of that it’s drawback is very real as your opponents who do indirect will have to deal with it last which is fine since its ability is bad without a witch in play. You can do some deckbuilding gymnastics and include cards like Respite, Aftermath(newly spoiled reprint) and others that let you get value from a disposable character. In Infinite you have access to other cards like Price of Failure to throw into the Sarlac pit, poor little bastards. This all takes a lot of effort and isn’t generically good unlike Hoth Trooper.

Hoth Trooper can slot into any hero combination of characters and do a damage a turn until he can no longer roll out before one of your opponent’s characters. This downside might keep him from being truly great but he being a trooper also gives him access to Military Camp so his activation is essentially free. These decks are most likely going to be full of redeploy weapons which will work really well with little HT. You might be saying to yourself “HT doesn’t look broken” and that’s very true. The only thing to worry about is that it could just make it so you can play the best yellow and blue characters at their cost and have access to all 3 colors while still being able to deal 1 damage a turn from your 5 point red character. Red already has Gungan Warrior which hasn’t dominated play but with every point subtraction the risk of getting caught is a perfect rainbow storm intensifies.

I ain’t afraid of no ghost, zombie or storm and I welcome our new tiny overlords with open arms. Thanks for reading and as always…

-NJCuenca

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