Let’s face it, we all love cards with dice. Even though an uncommon is the same rarity as a rare, but it’s the DIE that really excites us. What die am I opening when I rip this pack open?! As a result the non-die cards sort of get swept under the rug when everyone is doing their spoiler reviews. A few of the events in Empire at War have caught the Star Wars Destiny hype train at Let’s Gooooooooo station, and these are a few that are on our radar. There are obviously plenty more to talk about, but some of them (like Coercion, Buy Out, Lightsaber Pull, and Feint) deserve entire 1500 word posts about them.

Without further ado, here are some EAW events that titilate us here at TheHyperloops:

Reaping the Crystal

NJCuenca: This is a Logistics for a very specific deck but it will excel in that role since it offers action and resource economy. The question is: Will that deck be tier 1? I’m not sure but you bet your ass that I will be trying to make The Power of the Force and Lightsaber Pull decks. This also works for events and supports but I have a feeling I’ll be using this more for upgrades. Neat thing to note is that you can overwrite a 2 into 3 with this card for free!

BobbySapphire: FFG is seeing the way when it comes to resource cheating. Logistics has been a staple in red decks since the dawn of the game, now we have this free card that lets us stick 3 cost weapons on Padawans for 1 resource. That’s freaking insane. So we can play a Lightbow on one Padawan and a 2 cost weapon on our other padawan turn 1. They might actually do some damage before they get thermal’d off the table! In all seriousness, blue hero now stands as one of the few decks that can easily play a 3 cost weapon on turn 1. With proper deckbuilding and mulliganing this should be no problem.

HonestlySarcastc: I like this card a lot and plan to make a build around it using Padawan(s). Lightsaber pull will help you to find your Redeploy Lightsaber options as well as Luke’s saber or Lightbow and this will allow you to stick them on a Padawan for the small cost of 1 resource and 2 cards from hand. That can be a pretty explosive start when taking Rey’s Lightsaber into consideration. It also combines with It Bind’s All things, so with a crazy hand, you can sneak in a “free” 3 cost upgrade on Padawan. It’ll be interesting to see where this takes us, but I thoroughly like where we are going with it.

Rend

NJCuenca: This might not be for all decks but probably for most. Any deck that is trying to play a fairish game will want this card since it will equalize what’s going on. If you’re trying to mitigate then you’ll want this to stop force speeds from making that a challenge and if you are just playing 2 cost upgrades than blowing up Imperial Inspection will let you stay on plan. In a post on Tuesday I posted a fairish budget deck that would benefit from this and you’re going to see this card in that sort of deck a lot. This card is most brutal on Holocron decks since you have to build your deck around it just to make it powerful. This might be the end of Holocron since it was already slow and somewhat inconsistent and now it can just get blown up for free? No thanks.



BobbySapphire: Rend is such a hype card that FFG made it a freaking release promo. When Spirit of Rebellion was released all of the promo cards were dice cards (albeit shitty ones), which, as mentioned earlier, only increase our hype for them. FFG expects Rend to be yuge, and I have to agree. It kills sooooo many strong cards, yet isn’t overly powerful b/c of its niche. What I like most about Rend is that there will always be that push and pull throughout the meta, something that we’ve only had a taste of so far – like in SOR with Imperial Inspection – it was always a consideration, but we really didn’t have to build around it except for the six weeks FNkar was really, really popular. Now we have a new phantom to worry about, is this the week everyone is packing Rend? If so, we can’t run our holocron deck. I love that aspect of competitive CCG playing. It all goes back to leveled play, something we’ve talked about several times on this website; do we play the 0 cost card, or do we play the rends?

HonestlySarcastc: It is a great silver bullet card, but I don’t see myself putting this in deck unless I have a negative match with a Tier 1 deck that runs enough threats that this answers. Salvage Stand, Imperial Inspection, Holocron, Force Speed are some of the bigger mainstream things you’ll want to answer, but occasionally you’ll find it benefitting you by being able to throw Aftermath or Plastoid Armor off the board.

Threaten

NJCuenca: I’m not big into what many call “punisher” cards. Not sure where that name come from but its basically a card that gives two options and your opponent chooses one. Both options seem pretty good for you but I think this will be a question of opportunity cost and consistency. At its ceiling its an Isolation which is a good card but sometimes they will take the damage and your character will die on the following action. I’m not about that life.



BobbySapphire: As soon as the entire set dropped you know I was scouring every single card to see if they can make my girl Aurra Sing better, and I kinda love this one. This needs to be in an aggressive deck to really shine, but with Aurra Sing, or another hard-hitting character that can kill someone in round one, this will be a huge boon. You’re happy to save yourself the 2 or 3 damage, and you’re ecstatic if they want to take that damage. It’s a little limited since you can’t use it against all of those super painful specials in the meta right now, but it’s great for all of the high numbered pay-sides that people are also rocking at the moment.

HonestlySarcastc: This is one of the more interesting die removal options available. If we are playing a very aggressive deck, this will be a great card for punishing Vader’s and Anakin’s high damage sides and against most decks this can at least be a “flank” or “lightsaber throw”. I’m not sure if it’ll be good enough for me, but there is something inherently scary there. Just don’t fall behind in damage or it’ll be bad.

Endurance

NJCuenca: This is an auto for any Palpatine deck since the biggest reason you lose is because people blow up your dice. Aside from that this could be part of a Vader, Hera (dat vehicle life) or even a Crime Lord/ Ace in the Hole deck (I always hated having my crime lord die get eaten.) Basically the die that you want back has to be super important to your strategy. I’m not even sure that getting back a Vader die will be good enough but maybe.



BobbySapphire: If we’re following the rule that 1 resource and 1 card should equal 2 damage, this needs to be played in the right decks. Like Threaten, I think this one really shines in a more aggressive deck, or at least one that hits really, really hard. There’s nothing worse than playing your Rocket Launcher of Millenium Falcon, rolling the 4R, and getting it removed. Both of those cards are big investments, but with cheating and overwriting, hopefully you left yourself a resource. In decks where we want specific dice to resolve (like Palpatine, Vehicles, and Darth Vader, Sith Lord) this card will be a must-add. One thing I want to mention is that it’s going to be difficult to test – a lot of people, early in formats, cut removal to test out all of the new toys and mechanics available to us. Don’t foget about this card when regionals roll around, I know I won’t forget to throw it in my decks once people start packing more removal.

HonestlySarcastc: This is going to be a premiere card for the Big Guy / Little Guy decks. Palpatine especially needed this because his die is “worth” so much. It’s only good in those types of decks or ones that have massive upgrades / supports that get removed. If we go away from removal it’ll be bad, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

Truce

NJCuenca:

BobbySapphire: I like this card quite a bit. I think we’ve written about it before, but at the risk of repeating myself, if we are going big we should be running this card. A deck that’s dropping big weapons and vehicles can do more with a resource than decks playing fair. That we get ambush allows this card to act as an Imperial War Machine for yellow decks Villain or Hero, which means we could kill an important character, or even win the freaking game, before our opponent can even use the resource that we generously gave them.

HonestlySarcastc: I absolutely HATE giving the opponent additional resources, BUT when the option is with Ambush, it changes that a little bit. Some decks really need that one extra resource to pay for a damage die with a resource cost, or to sneak in that first turn Force Throw or Z6 Riot Control Baton and giving 1 resource via ambush to get that accomplished can be the nuts. Truce isn’t going to be for the faint of heart, but it can help a lot of decks immediately bypass Imperial Inspection and lend that sick 3 Cost upgrade to then bash with. I’ll definitely try it out in my new iterations of Rainbow and can see where it takes me.

Defiance

NJCuenca:

BobbySapphire: I want to like this card, but so far I don’t see too many places where I love it. For it to be effective we want characters with high dice sides. Heroes lack that, and since we can’t use it on characters with specials, it has limited use. However, on someone like Luke or Sabine, it could just be exactly what we need. I’d rather simply play Field Medic, but we do get a reroll out of it, which has some serious value. I could see this becoming a staple in any BIG/little three-dice deck – it’s definitely one of those cards that I can see myself undervaluing originally only for it to become the best card ever printed in any game ever.

HonestlySarcastc: We have another event for big guy little guy decks, but this time it is Hero only. It is a bit gimmicky due to the reroll, but a lot of the characters you would use it on have 50% sides with 2-3 value so i believe it’ll see some play. Sometimes you’ll Whammy out with a blank, but sometimes Mace will heal 4 and make an opponent cry. It is definitely a gambling man’s (or woman’s) kinda card.

The Moment You’ve All Been Waiting For

Right now is the time where we are all opening out Boxes / Packs like it is Christmas in September (except BobbySapphire) and we thought that you’d like sharing our joy and pains.

Last night I (HonestlySarcastc) opened 2 boxes of EaW simultaneously and my fiancee wanted to join in on it so we’re cracking presents in bed (i got in late).

1st Legends from each Box

This is how I think most of you would feel right here. I joked online about cracking bad legends and this is how Karma got me.

2nd Legends

I’m not a big Sabine fan, but she has value and I love me some Lando Sniper. This is making up for the shenanigans that the box started off with.

3rd + 4th Legend from Box 1

Are you kidding. Mace in council was telling me to focus my inner chi and relax, but that wasn’t happening. I’m not quite sure how i didn’t just do this on the bed sheets.

5th Legend (B1) and 3rd Legend (B2) (Fiancee cracks slow)

Still no Thrawn by the 8th pack. Things are not looking good for our “Hero”.

6th Legend (B1) 4th Legend (B2)

I’m not that ecstatic about this since I don’t care about either of these but I channeled my inner BobbySapphire since I know I can sell them to him.

Legends 5 and 6 of Box 2

I was ready to join the list of sad people opening their boxes. We recovered quite nicely after that daunting start. Two more boxes to go that I’ll be hopefully picking up tonight. Wish me luck!

One bonus gif that I feel FFG did to us with some of their Legend choices in EaW!

May the force be with your pack pulls!

~ Hyperloops