I was trying to come up with a clickbait title but I assume the diehards don’t need much reason to get hyped for the future of the format, or at least until Cover Missions drops. Yesterday BobbySapphire covered the heroes side of things and today I will cover Villains. Its not because I’m bad its just that I like to have a good time.

Just in case you need a refresher on the restricted list and point reductions that occurred a couple of days ago here they are. All of the changes are in red.



Restricted List

A lot of people are thinking that the restricted list is getting too cumbersome and while I don’t think it’s perfect I think it can fix problems without having to ban or errata cards. Every possible fix that you could come up with is going to have a con and the restricted list in my opinion is better than banning cards. Some people say that it might be hard for new players but imagine if the list was just banned cards… it would be easier to know but then you couldn’t play with those cards at all. Admittedly there is the point where the list gets too long but we aren’t there yet ANT rotation is coming soon which will either reset the Standard holocron or remove a bunch of stuff. I look forward to see exactly what FFG decides to do.

Vader’s Fist, Delve and the neutral Theed will all effect villain deckbuilding heavily. Ironically this hurts decks that weren’t doing all that well as of late. Snoke/Mando/Mud Trooper has just started popping off and many of those decks weren’t even using that package. These changes effect Aphra, 4Lom and Vader, TTB decks and I think they won’t be as popular as a result. I forsee a world where people are going to jump ship to the Snoke deck so if you want to Aphra or 4Lom this weekend it will be your last chance before they get nerfed.

Palpatine and Reylo weren’t touched at all and I expect those decks to be popular again in the first few weeks as everyone figures out the how to re-build old archtypes. The big thing that I can’t wait to sink my teeth into is the new character reductions that will certainly have an effect on the metagame.

Balance of The Force

The following characters have been decreased and it will be interesting to see which ones will make a splash. Villains have some of the best cards and with the amount of random decks that occasionally win events one of these is bound to make a splash.

Bib Fortuna

He is now an 8/11 which gives villains a viable option at that cost. Bib’s special has always been intriguing as he could allow you the ability to reuse a powerful die. He’s going to be best as a partner to a character with large dice or a random yellow 8 cost that will provide you with a non embarasing yellow character who’s health is actually above curve – this exactly the kind of thing a support deck would want. The most intriguing 19 point character is Thrawn. Aside from the blank all of Thrawn’s dice will be great to re-buy with Bib’s special. I think this will be a popular pairing right away as Thrawn is a fan favorite.

General Grievous, Fearsome Cyborg

I have a hard time finding a great home for Grievous as the weapons just stink in this format. Blue upgrades are the best ones to pair with his die and his ability but potential partners are a little awkward. He’s a 13/18 and his single die form is kind of intriguing since it lets you build around his special without having to go all in on him. 13 health for 13 is on curve but its just an insane amount of health for a single die character that has the chance to be insanely powerful. He requires a lot of set up and if you want to turbo activate his special you’ll need to play some suboptimal weapons.

Elite partners to consider with Grievous are Mother Talzin but I’ve found her restriction to be rough in this format and many of the weapons in blue you would want are even. Another elite-ish pairing that looked intriguing was Sentinel Messenger and Built to Last. BTL gives a pseudo die and a backup win condition since all the weapons will redeploy to sentinel. The unique weapons aren’t as good as the hero ones and will force you to play multiple Palp sabers and Dooku sabers which will make for occasional awkward draws. These will essentially be 1 cost upgrades with redeploy and are worth the price though. I’m excited to try this pairing the most along with some janky 3 wide ones.

Jabba the Hutt, Renowned Gangster

He’s now 11/14 and at that cost he gets interesting. The biggest question is how much damage does his special have to do to be worth it? I think at 4 we are looking at something powerful and 3 is a maybe. The biggest problem is that he will have to have a bunch of dice in the pool making you very susceptible to cards like easy pickings and Flee the scene. On top of that you’ll have to find a bunch of upgrades, supports and partners that fit that theme.



The best elite partner to me will be Tarkin. They both want you to spam a million dice and the non special sides can be used as indirect via Tarkin’s Power Action. Both of them are leaders which lets them carry Admiral, and use Salt Flats to make their dice consistent. Megablasters dice will be live longer and all those blanks will make sure that you will be using Tarkin’s ability. And guess what? You can play Delve and No Good To me dead to get those big boys out. This could be the real deal!

Blue has access to the best special dice but the partners kind of suck for his purposes. Jabba with double Dark Advisor would probably be fun to build since you have access to all of the ability upgrades that have double specials. Sentinel messenger is a superior card but he can’t hold abilities, have some fun with the trashy advisor while you still can.

Kallus, Agent of the Empire

I hate to be negative but Kallus kind of stinks. (EDIT: I said he didn’t have any subtype since I was looking at swdestinydb and when you click on the shortcard it doesn’t pop out. He still sucks regardless) He has no subtype like trooper or leader and even at the reduced cost of 12/15 he won’t see any play. He’s not interesting and I’m not going to waste my time on him and unless you are a Kallus fanboy(what?) you shouldn’t either.

Maul, Vengeful One

I remember when this was one of the most over hyped cards of all time and it ended up being a stone cold coaster. He’s now a 10/14 and I’m still not excited. Early on his die isn’t great since resolving a 3 for 1 isn’t what you want in round 1. If you look at the rest of his sides they are average to bad.

If you are dying to find a pairing for him I think that putting him with DJ is cute as his ability not only will remove a die but also deal an indirect damage…perhaps that will add up? Both those characters dice are mediocre for the cost and having 22 health is pretty scary. He’s not as bad as Kallus but he’s close.

Palpatine, Darth Sidious

Palpatine is definitely the kind of card that I want to be good since his power action incentivizes you to build your deck in a certain way which I find interesting. I know I trashed mother Talzin but with Palpatines ability to make events cheaper Talzin actually starts looking a bit more playable.

This is a 4 dice start with a phantom 5th die which will play an event for 1, 2 or even 3 less. Bendu’s lair has 2 damage sides which can enable things nicely for our discounts and Forsaken. Alter Fate and Snare our are big payoff events, my thinking is that 4 is probably our max on them. If we ever play them to good effect for 1 or free we are getting incredible value. Vader’s Fist might look a little weird but with Palpatine’s 2 money sides and Become One being free off the Palp Power Action we can get to the 5 if we draw fist it.

Red and yellow pairings don’t seems as exciting although getting to potentially play Delve and Mobilize for cheaper is interesting. Red is probably more interesting since you can play Mobilize into Fist which sounds pretty dirty. The Red partners don’t seem great though, maybe Motti or Wat?

That’s it for today. overall I think these buffs will give us something to play around with. I’m incredibly surprised that Desperate Measures wasn’t placed on the Restricted list but I think they are probably waiting for Covert Missions. Given the set’s theme I’d be surprised if they let that card be playable without restriction.

Let me know who you are excited to try, either on here or on social media. And as always…

Maybe the rolls be with you…

-NJCuenca