I want to thank everyone for the positive response to my previous budget article, if you’re new to the game its good piece to check out since it will give you a nice starting point for your collection. I promised that I would bring my budget deck to my local tournament and I did so. What happened? Well, lets first go over what I played:

The only change I made going into the tournament was swapping Obi-Wan’s Hut for Secret Facility. The week before there were a lot of Vaders in my meta and I also tought the starter deck Kylo would make an appearance. Since I had a few supports in my deck I knew I would most likely not be claiming. I ended up playing against 4 Vader decks in the three rounds and one side game the breakdown being: one Anakin/Elite Phasma and the other three were Sith Lord/Phasma. I went 3 and 1 losing to one of the Sith Lord decks, if I had played that match up before I would have been able to anticipate what was in his deck but my inexperience coupled with his solid play slayed me. It was at least close.

The Good

Rey and Poe are much better than people think they are. Who your opponent goes for presents a tough question for your opponent: Poe has better dice but Rey has a really annoying ability that on average seems to account for 3 or 4 damage per game.

The upgrades were all solid and held their weight. C-3PO guaranteed that I would be able to resolve my Poe’s Blaster or Lightsaber special which made my damage very consistent.

Riposte was insane at killing characters as a 1st or 2nd turn action. Combined with Rey’s ability it would usually guarantee 4 damage in the first two actions of the round. The rest of the events did work, Caution combos well with Riposte and since I ended up playing against combat focused decks it caused headaches for my opponents. I ended a couple of my games with a late game Hit and Run plus an All In, that combo was mvp and shows you that even a budget deck can do some end of game action cheating. Flank was solid because I played against 2 character decks but that will vary depending on the metagame.

The Bad

At one point I did unlock the achievement of having all three droids in play. The look on my opponents face when I played BB-8, C-3PO and R2-D2 certainly had some comedic value, my inner child jumped for joy as my opponent was overun by my robot army. This was fun but unnecessary to my victory. In one instance I was able to claim Emperor’s Throne Room and turn R2-D2‘s die to a special allowing me to resolve a damage side I had out and increase the value by 1. That was pretty sweet but aside from that, R2-D2 was unimpressive in comparison to C-3PO, Poe’s Blaster or Jedi Robes. BB-8 did less than that and moving forward I will be cutting them but by all means keep testing them. Two cost supports may have value against Thrunkar because they can’t interact with them so maybe R2- D2 will have some value.

Between Poe’s blaster, C-3PO and Rey’s Lightsaber there was some concern that I might get unique flooded. That came up once and it was the game that I lost so I think I’ll be trying different combinations. This is easily solvable when we break the budget rule but otherwise it’s kind of tough. I’d say that Poe’s Blaster is the best followed by Rey’s Saber and C-3PO being tied.

Now with Empire at War

EAW adds new possibilities. Rend is an auto include in my mind since will give us some more non-combat related disruption. Being able to kill Imperial Inspection, Sith Holocron, Fast Hands, Force Speed or Running Interference will go a long way to staying competitive with the top decks. Below is a YouTube video with my update list and further explanations.

Stage 3: Fully Powered Starter Deck Poe Rey

I’ve been impressed with the character combo so I wanted to test a fully powered version of the deck. This in my mind, currently, means having access to Force Speed and Ancient Lightsaber which costs more than the 2 starters put together! I currently haven’t been blessed with an IRL Ancient Lightsaber but online I’ve dabbled with it in a Lightsaber Pull package. This gives the deck a high level of consistency when it comes to dropping a 2 drop upgrade, playing Rey’s Saber without having to run two copies, hitting regular old Lightsaber and gives us consistent access to Handcrafted Lightbow which may be insanely important vs Thrunkars ability to make a million shields.

I took this to my store last night and went 3 and 0 although my win against Thrunkar was due to time being called. Had we been able to finish the game I certainly would have lost. I didn’t have Ancient Lightsaber and Lightsaber Pull yesterday. I played an extra Lightsaber and two Defensive Position and while I was able to claim at times its probably not consistent enough for me to play both. The above is what I’ve been playing with online and its proved pretty competitive. This is certainly not the most powerful deck but its a good honest deck that has two really good characters that can compete vs anything and can end the game without your opponent taking an action in the mid to late game

Thanks for reading and as always…

May You Always Draw Your Rends at Just the Right Time.

-NJCuenca

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