Since Aayla Secura got nerfed at the drop of Way of the Force, she fell off the face of the galaxy much like the way she did in the films.

Byeeeee Felucia

Her nerf was needed, as eAayla/eRose/Anakin was going to absolutely dominate the meta, but when compared to Yoda for the same cost, it makes sense why she’s remained in Binders over the last several months. For one, we’ve been living in a three-wide world for quite some time, but with the nerf to Snoke followed by the release of Boushh and Vader, we’ve seen the Destiny meta start to skew to two high-health characters to prevent losing characters quickly.

But, because Vader decks are able to do so much damage in the first round, no character is safe; we have less to do our own damage, and less time to get redeploy weapons out before a character does go down. And, because Yoda is definitely not as strong in a two character deck as he is in a three character deck, we’ve seen his use plummet from damage decks because he struggles so much to close games. Add in the fact that being able to turn an opponent’s die (especially a Vader die), and Aayla is starting to look very attractive.

I’d honestly forgotten how good Aayla was – 50% damage on her dice, changing two dice, one defensively; she’s just so great. Her 10 health is a little suspect, but it’s not terrible with the kind of defense blue hero provides. However, it’s not just this card and her accompanying dice that make me love her in the current meta, it’s the way we play the game with her on our team, and that is more important to me in the deckbuilding process than anything else.

Tempo

Some of the best advice I’ve ever given was to DHaus from TheJediTrials a few days before worlds last year.

I love the kind of tempo we can have by rolling out Aayla first. While there are much fewer melee decks in the meta than in times past to set up big Force Misdirection plays, some of that is made up for by Aayla’s Indirect Damage side (there’s a ton more of THAT in the meta), and we can still set up Guard, Caution, and Aayla’s special, making her dice in the pool to start every round super fortuitous. There aren’t a ton of upgrades we want to put on her, but Force Speed is a big one, as when we combine it with her special ability to give it even more chances to hit, we can set up big rollout + damage situations that would otherwise get mitigated, but she also got a new friend.

With Treasured Lightsaber we’re able to threaten kills more than ever before with Aayla’s dice. By rolling out Aayla first and playing the rest of our turn later, her special threatens to do three unblockable damage, which, if set up in earlier rounds, can be very difficult to overcome. If rolled out before we do anything else, the special damage being a full three means that even an Ancient Lightsaber heal might not be able to protect an opposing character from her wrath. The blue sides are just fine too, but I really like this as a play on Aayla, especially if we want her to be the first target.

Possible Partners

Kit Fisto (Fish Sticks)

Fish Sticks has been talked about a lot by both TheGandork and HonestlySarcastc in our discord, and Gandork missed top cut of his regional with this deck, getting ninth by thousanths of a point on tiebreakers; it also top 4’d the Omaha Regional on Saturday.

Putting Aayla with a tanky partner makes a lot of sense, and it’s one of the reasons that pairing her with Rey was both a popular and strong choice throughout the Legacies meta. Above the tankiness, Kit’s dice are bonkers good, even if we have to pay a resource to resolve the 3X – that 3X is still amazing on defense, as well as with Guard if we can’t afford to pay for it. And, with enough upgrades and/or following a big Close Quarters Assault (or paired with an All In) his 2 Focus side can add bananas consistency to a deck that features four character dice, each with 50% damage sides.

Qui-Gon Jinn and Solidarity

At the risk of trying to make Fetch happen, I think the strength of Qui-Gon Jinn and Aayla can make up the fact that we can’t play 2x of a few important cards. First off, QGJ is gross.

Much like his 1.0 counterpart, which could also be a nice partner for Aayla as well, Qui-Gon weaponizes his shields by making his dice do more damage when he’s shielded up. While having a 3 Shield Side when you already have 2 or 3 shields, but one die fully shielding up your other character (Aayla) is so good it should need a card to be able to do it. I’ve played quite a bit of Qui-Gon2 and it isn’t hard to get two shields on him, making his dice values 2/3/3/3/2/0, that two resources can be absolutely massive, and the other dice also work great with Destiny to ramp into more upgrades, which can also get a buff when you get three shields on him.

Solidarity’s restriction isn’t a huge as people assume, and there are only a handful of cards that we really, really miss two of. But, at the same time a lot of the cards that we’d play two of anyway have similar options to substitute, and it lets us get diverse with our build. We really miss a second Guard and a second Hidden Motive. A second Ancient Lightsaber and Shoto Lightsaber would also be great, but we can still play 1x Lightsaber Pull to get whichever one we really need (usually Shoto). A second Force Illusion would be good in a lot of cases, but because we’re taking so many shields throughout the game we more than make up for the loss of it.

I’ve been playing a ton of this deck, and it’s my choice for the best pairing for Aayla. If I can get it to beat mill, which has risen up over the weekend, I’ll be running it at my regional Saturday.

Poe2

Poe/Aayla was barely a thing back when we could run it with Profitable Connection, but Poe is a sneaky choice while we’re thinking about specials that mitigate our opponent’s dice while giving us a bonus too.

Poe is blessed with all of that focus, but we’re looking at mixed damage sides to the max. This could be a huge issue, but there’s another card that was printed that can help this deck do serious work: L-S1 Canon.

Aayla/Poe has never put out a lot of upgrades because there aren’t many that work really well in the deck. We don’t really want to go with the blue weapon package, so we need to rely on high impact weapons like L-S1 and Handcrafted Light Bow. I haven’t done a deep dive on this deck, but I do like the defensiveness that these characters afford us from a dice-messing-with-our-opponent-perspective. Where I’m very skeptical is the tankiness of Aayla’s partner. Poe doesn’t tank up well, even if we can run things like Field Medic and Dex’s Diner to give him some help; he’s just not as buff as Kit or QGJ.

Old Man Luke

I’d be remiss not to include Luke 3 in the conversation while we’re talking about high-health characters who can tank up. Luke, with his Shields-that-can-also-be-melee sides, certainly fits the bill.

I’ve gone down this road and it hasn’t been as good as I wanted it to be. The force abilities packages seem to be less consistent than the lightsaber packages, but maybe Theed Palace allows us to adjust what we’ve been doing. I was working really hard to get a good combo start with an upgrade on Luke, then using Destiny to play one on Aayla, then power actioning the first ability over to Aayla so she rolls out with four dice round one. Maybe if we use Taking Ground to help ensure we win the battlefield we can rely on Theed Palace to more consistently drop high-impact abilities on Luke round one.

Back in July I made this video that went over the kind of combo start I was trying to achieve with Luke and Destiny, using Stolen Intel to increase the chances of us hitting Destiny and two upgrades:

If sticking with the Destiny plan, going with three cost lightsabers are pretty amazing, many of them have three or four sides with a value of two or more, and that might be good enough to completely eschew Luke’s power action, as he is good enough without it. This one might warrant the most testing of the bunch, as it is likely the hardest to build since we have to evaluate two vastly different styles, or if the Destiny ramping is even good enough to include.

And, if none of these work we could always try taking the second flight of stairs…

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire

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