Alright, let’s dive right in to another attempt at going budget in destiny whilst maintaining the competitiveness to have a solid shot at winning an event. This beauty has been pulled from the Team Hyperloops archives and was adjusted into the current configuration by Andrew “Reflex” Cox himself, so we’re looking into the deck box of a Continental Champion! Post Worlds, he ran it at a Prime and got Top 4 with it.

We’ll be starting off in it’s purest form and then talk about potential adjustments to make for the few expensive cards, in this case it is just Easy Pickings.

How Does It Work

So many of you are aware that Arena of Death is on the restricted list along with Ewok Warrior, but that restriction can be bypassed with Chirpa bringing in the sole Ewok Warrior after the setup phase. Having to run the Bitter Rivalry plot to get access to Arena isn’t amazing, but the battlefield is the closer that the deck seemingly requires. Due to both Chirpa and Bitter Rivalry being after setup effects, you get to choose which order to do them in and you’ll want to have Bitter Rivalry resolve first so that the opponent doesn’t get to put the 2 damage into the Ewok Warrior. As the Plowoks player, if your opponent takes their Battlefield, then you’ll want to put the 2 shields split between your Hoth troopers 1 each in most situations.

Your first few actions will involve activating your Plo Koon which will do 1 indirect, and then 2 direct damage, and then trying to get your Hoth Troopers in before an opponent activates all of their characters. Assuming that you can protect all of your characters and not lose access to Hoth Trooper pings, you output 6 damage just by activating which is a pretty solid amount when you realize that you didn’t have to resolve dice. You’ll notice that this version is running Flee the Scenes and Into Garbage Chute and the rationale is that if you can blowout opposing damage dice, then you get to go further into the game relatively unscathed which would mean that your own damage doesn’t decrease and you’ll be less reliant on getting Arena of Death out.

Mitigation

There are only 6 mitigation cards total in the deck, 8 if we include Diplomatic Protection and I feel that it is actually really light, a bit too light, but it is not my deck nor did I test it, so I can’t judge it harshly. Each of the 6-8 cards are complete blowout options. Any time you get to Easy Pick, Flee, Garbage Chute, or use Diplomatic you should get a decent amount of benefits from it. I’m a bit surprised about the lack of Hidden Motive, but we’re going budget so I’m glad that it isn’t there. Hasty exit has also disappeared which makes using Rigged Detonation hard too, so you’ll have to keep that in mind if you decide to claim at any point.

Edit: I forgot to talk about Flee the Scene. The rationales it that you get most of your damage done in the first few actions, so if you Flee 2 dice after and the opponent ends the round, then you’re super happy to have paid 1 for a “Retreat” or “Hyperspace Jump“, and if they don’t then you got to use a Super Easy Pickings pretty much.

Damage

4 Vehicles, 2 Ammo Reserves, 2 Glider Attack, 2 Chain Lightning, 2 Inflict Pains, and 2 Rigged Detonation puts us at a total of 14 cards for doing damage. You’ll notice that Strength In Numbers is missing from that list of cards and it’s because you only start with 5 characters and it’s easy for that to dwindle quickly., so it being omitted from the list makes perfect sense. I’m not a big fan of quadruple vehicles, but the need for Arena of Death is high, so four is reasonable. Each of the non-vehicle damage cards seems to aim for 2-3 damage and that adds up quickly. Chain Lightning is a great sneaky character finisher against most decks with there being multiples of Leaders, Apprentice, or Droids in most. You can deal a damage to your own character, to then do the 2 to theirs that matches the Sub-Type of Trooper, Leader, and / or Jedi.

The leftover cards are: Respite which is there to help with resources and turn potentially useless Hoth Troopers into a resource as well as thin through the deck a little to find your key cards, Truce for quick ramp as well as a slight spike on Rigged, Target Acquired for taking down problem targets, and Across the Galaxy for getting to Arena of Death.

Matchups

Keep in mind that I have very limited playing of the Ewok type lists but I’ll speculate on how you want to go about fighting particular popular matches. Don’t assume this is a gospel and you must follow it to a tee, but merely a guideline on my expectations.

Reylo – Rey seems to be the primary target because if you have to deal with her Special and Luke’s Protection each round, you likely won’t be able to finish her off. Kylo has higher damage output but by the time you successfully kill either one, your damage will be lowered considerably. Try to prevent them from shielding up via Rey special if you can.

Chopper – You want to kill any guy that they let you so that you can decrease their damage output. If they kill off a couple of your 4-5 HP guys and start doing 3PO ability on shields, it’s insanely hard to punch through it, similarly to Reylo, except R2 is an auto focus so it is guaranteed to happen.

Villain Supports – You have to be careful about Desperate Measures if you decide to play a Vehicle, but you can sneak it in late in the round to hit them if they allow it then you don’t care if DM it. I would think it pertinent to take out whichever character has 2 dice in the matchup, but allegedly this is a decent match for Plowoks because the Villain Support damage output is rather slow. Depending on whether you are playing against Aphra or 4-Lom could change that a lot due to the 4-Lom’s ability to actually take out specific low HP targets and having access to Modular Frame.

Mill – Mill tends to struggle with their mitigation being pretty useless, but depending on if the variant can shield up heavy and whether it is 2-Wide or 3-Wide makes a rather large difference with almost no 2-Wide decks being able to cope with the damage output.

Everything Else – You’re on your own, but the name of the game is staying alive and dealing damage so try to decide how you want to best go about it and go for the gold.

Budget Change

So Easy Picking is the only one to replace here and there aren’t many options that can replace it. Entangle is an expensive card, but it’s from a Starter so if you have that, then feel free to swap them in. Otherwise, I’d probably be looking into some combination of Hasty Exit and something else, EMP, Hidden Motives (i know i know, not budget but IDK what one has access to), or Disciplined Mind (probably the best choice). The rest of the deck is cheap, but if you are missing some stuff, I’d lean on the side of adding more removal.

Final Thoughts

Alright, so me being me and my incessant need for perfection and improvement. After getting games with the list, if you find yourself often getting your small guys blown apart too quickly, then my suggestion is to make a few cuts in an effort to increase survivability by adding more removal. I’d likely cut 1 Crait, 1 Garbage Chute,1 Rigged Detonation for 2 Disciplined Mind, and 1 Entangle. Targeted removal is hard to come by and quite necessary in a lot of matchups so Disciplined made the most sense because the normal expectation is that Plo and Chirpa end up being the last of your guys alive. I could very well be wrong, so take it with a grain of salt. Good Luck my fellow destiny players and up and coming new players on the conquest of crushing souls at big events!

~HonestlySarcastc

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