I wasn’t planning to continue my implications series just yet, but the FFG Live Stream from last week featured Jeremy committing Ewok Genocide with his blue hero deck featuring a new Yoda and the Convergence Ahsoka teamed up to outshield anything the Ewoks could dish out.

Thanks in advance to the I Rebel Facebook Page and their Spark of Hope photo album

Starting with Aayla

When Drew Warren of ArrowBrook Gaming hit me up last week asking what I thought about Aayla hypothetically coming off the balance list. My response was que estas loco??

Lo and behold, just a few days later Aayla is balanced back down to 12 and the blue hero landscape has completely changed. I’ve already begun testing with 12 point Aayla, and while I think my Aayla/Mace/Lightsaber Mastery deck is probably pretty solid I don’t think it quite hangs with some of the decks that I think will dominate the meta… yet. Blue hero is just missing a lot. It is missing powerful mitigation events and powerful upgrades, but it is really, really close. And with just a few cards spoiled from Spark of Hope I already think Blue Hero will be making a huge comeback when Spark Drops.

Aayla, at 13, already had some fine partners, most notably Old Man Luke, along with Lightsaber Mastery. While Luke seems really great on paper (cardboard?), he just hasn’t ever shone like we expected him to when he was first spoiled. His ability is good, and his dice are exceptional, but there’s no way to sequence his rounds in a way that really abuses his ability. For that matter, blue abilities have just been lackluster, and even though that has changed a bit with Forms we’re still missing enough strong abilities to really abuse both Luke and Luke’s Training which would allow the deck to keep up with economic powerhouses like Aphra, Watto, and Wat decks (formerly Snoke decks).

The reason why I really like Mace/Aayla/LM (though I must admit, Kit/Aayla/LM is kind of intriguing), is because the best mitigation cards in Blue Hero are no longer events, they’re upgrades. With the impending rise of Aphra, combined with the brokenness of Entourage, Aquata Breather A99 becomes a must-include in blue hero decks. When you consider that a blue hero deck, especially one with Aayla, wants to run Force Jump, we’ve got a pretty decent little upgrade based mitigation package that Mace can help us find. This is great for a number of reasons, for one Aquata is free, so we can activate Mace aggressively even if we want to play a 2 cost upgrade that round and gives us a shield to boot. We can hit Force Jump, roll out, and use Theed Palace or the focus of Aayla or Mace to help find another resource for another upgrade. What I like most about running this deck with a lot of upgrades is that you can mulligan VERY aggressively for It Binds All Things, giving the deck the economic jump it needs. Mace’s ability providing a shield could also allow us to pack Adapt for another resource. We might even look at Luke’s Training if enough abilities make the cut, but that’s unlikely. (Random thought interjection, is there a three-wide Aayla/Lor/Ezra deck that uses abilities and uses Lor to recur Luke’s Trainings and Mitigation???)

The New Hotness

Okay, let’s let the past die and look at the actual blue cards I like from Spark of Hope for Blue heroes.

I’m not sure I actually like Yoda, but I think I like him more than most people do. The reaction has been pretty medium, mostly because of those 1X and 1Sh sides, but no blanks go a long way; people love to say “when would you ever resolve those???” but how many times have you ended a round with a blank on a die? You’ll never have to do that, and I firmly believe a shield is better than nothing (and even that a shield is better than most things). Though Yoda might mean shield removal comes back into the fold, there’s no doubt that having six shields is absolutely absurd, especially with all of the ways to get “free” shields off of other cards.

Personally, I think his Apprentice text is a trap, at least right now. We could, of course, get a really nice apprentice to pair with Yoda2, but I would still recommend Aayla, though 1 die Ahsoka or Ezra with Built to Last is also very interesting.

Like with Yoda, some people are underwhelmed by this little green saber, but I think it’s pretty dope, even if we’re not packing Yoda. Like Yoda and Yoda’s spirit before it, Yoda’s Lightsaber features no blanks and four damage sides. It might cut like a piece of paper, but if we’re playing a deck that can shield up having 33% 2 unblockable sides is NOICE, especially if the meta gets really shieldy with all of these great new blue hero cards. While this isn’t going to blow the doors down crushing our opponents, it’s a nice value play that is free off a Binds or Built to Last, while still packing a little punch when needed.

I don’t know if anyone loved the original Mind Trick as I did. Even when it fell out of common play within the meta, I never really left it behind whether it be in my oft-copied Stairs deck or my Yoda-based mill decks. This card is a mind trick on steroids, stepping up from requiring Spot Blue to Spot Jedi, which is a huge restriction as we can’t run it in Lor-based mill decks, and even running it in a deck where you only have one jedi is a real gamble, meaning it only likely shows up as a one-of in those decks. I still like this mainly as a removal card, because there aren’t going to be too many situations where we want to actually remove our own dice, especially not with the overabundance of focus sides in blue hero between Aayla, Mace, Yoda, R2D2, and many more. However, options are great, and just having the option to set up a kill shot is worth inclusion. This card may still end up only as a 1x as I don’t see Beguile going anywhere, as Beguile is just absolutely broken against Vader decks, so as long as those are hanging around we’ll have to shade that way. Still, mitigation is what Blue hero is missing and this helps get the job done.

This is a neutral card, and while I do like it in blue hero decks without a lot of focus as well as three-wide blue hero decks I think it could potentially do some work for villains as well. There’s not a ton to say about this one, but for one resource we have a focus ability on a stick. It’s probably much more consistent than R2-D2, who I normally use in this role, but R2 is obviously much more versatile. Still, if we’re working with characters that only have one or two damage sides we actually want to hit, it helps to set up big damage strings without having to waste a focus die. When we focus early in a round only to get our dice mitigated it feels really bad as we essentially gave away a die for free, with Force Connection we don’t give up much, especially if we’re able to use it three times. It might be too big a liability to run in two-wide decks, and it is kind of a bummer that it doesn’t work with non-blue characters, but in a three wide blue-hero deck I think it would really shine as a one-of.

I really love the lightsaber forms, and Form VI is a dope one. With our second form we learn a lot about the design space Jeremy is working with, as it copies Soresu Mastery in having two special sides in addition to a come-into-play effect. I love that Niman Mastery can be offensive or defensive, and the turn a die as it comes into play is going to be a huge boon for this card. It can’t hit Support dice, so we’ll still get rocked by Entourage and Vader’s Fist, but it should do enough to make it seem regular play. It’s 2X side is hot, giving this card a ton of range as an offensive and defensive powerhouse. I think it will end up showing its true strength in villain decks simply because of Forbidden Lore, but I can’t see a Blue Hero deck not running at least one copy, no matter what. It’s that good.

This card, I think, is the coup-de-grace. While it’s damage sides are pretty weak it is almost strictly better than the Jedi Republic Armor in that it actually fields some damage sides, and I’ve found that JRA was actually much worse than Jedi Robes ever was because of the lack of Focus. All three of these upgrades are great candidates for overwriting, as we can probably find something stronger as the game progresses, but the two extra health is going to help us move towards that late game stage all while potentially shielding us up even more or doing some damage.

I think this card might single-handedly save the faction of Blue Hero because of all that it does. It’s exactly what Blue Hero needs, something offensive and defensive at the same time, and while combined with Niman Mastery we can field a pretty full sweet of versatile cards that will give us whatever we need to progress our game state. Really though, what this card does, in combination with Aayla’s unbalancing, is allow the person who should’ve been the true hero of the Skywalker Saga to take the main stage in competitive Destiny.

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire

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