How often do you find yourself day dreaming about some upcoming event and how great it is going to be only for it to arrive and the actuality just never lived up to your expectations? I don’t know about you, but for me it happens far too often that I think about pizza, pad thai, or some snack that I haven’t had in a while and I have hankering for it, so what do I do? Of course I go I get it and indulge in my wants only for it not to be as good as I pictured it would be. Today I’ll be going over some of the Covert Mission cards that I’ve had a chance to put into action and the cards that failed to meet my expectations as well as those that exceeded them.

The big man himself. Without having put him on the table I was undecided on whether the 2 resource discount was going to be absolutely bananas or largely irrelevant due to being a 14 health deck. I predicated my initial thoughts on there being some busted abilities to put on him that also needed to devalue mitigation. I’ve had some time to play him and overall the deck is scary to play against if you don’t have the fire power to put him down quickly. I feel that I was spot on about him needing absolutely busted abilities and we happened to get them in the same set. Both Shien Mastery and Death Field can be downright oppressive when allowed to resolve multiple times in the same round and them coming down Round 1, which is where an opponent usually runs very light on mitigation to get their own plan online, can put an opponent so far behind in the damage race that they can’t climb out of it. Bane is not a cheap deck to play, but I don’t see it being any worse than a Tier 2 gatekeeper deck. By himself, Bane feels so so and reliant on a meta that is light on mitigation or damage output, but combined with his preferred Haymakers it can feel nearly impossible to mitigate him for long enough to take him down before you die to indirect.

Final Prognosis: Bane is very real and will be at a tournament near you.

Trandoshan Hunter is a follow up on a long line of cards that need downgrades to operate and I was skeptical that the health pool would be able to cope with the aggression coming down the pipeline early on in the meta. I’m a big believer in 3 color decks and was skeptical of running a 3 wide 5 die deck as 2 color due to the lack of available mitigation / necessary synergy cards. The reality is that I still haven’t put him on the table as a 3 color because I definitely want to be playing with 2 Elite Trandoshan if I’m playing him at all. In the old days, we had to roll and reroll for days to hit the best sides on our dice, where as these guys get to play with the easy probability of finding 1 or 2 good sides on the 4 dice they have and then Power Action the failures to the best available side. It’s bananas to see that if an opponent had no mitigation, that I would easily 12 damage a character right off the table Round 1. I’d lock it in as a 2 color deck for the foreseeable future and just try to figure out what to build them around. It’s a solid budget deck with no frills and raw aggression, but seeing as you need 4 of their dice, if they cost as much as Tie Fighters or X-wings (real money) then is it actually budget??

Final Prognosis: Trandoshans will be around through the end of the meta and popping a cap in some Bane knee caps as well as people still trying to run Palpatine.

I saw Abandoned Refinery and thought that it was going to be the new Battlefield for my crazy 8 million dice decks and that I was going to be abusing it with Merchant Freighter. It was going to be glorious and I was all about that life. What I quickly found was that my personal action pacing is so slow that I never really got to use it a single time, but I should’ve known that already. Did I think I was going to somehow being playing Energy Bows and Conscript Squads and be throwing them out for each other round after round whilst still maintaining the battlefield??? After several games and new theories, I think it’ll be specific to certain decks that just can’t really use Theed well or want to actively ditch supports or upgrades like an Aphra or a Jango deck. Merchant Freighter on the other hand was everything that I thought it would be, a much better It Binds All Things / Tech Team that is much slower, which you usually want and the end of it’s life 3 rounds later is largely irrelevant. I was all in on Armored Reinforcement for Merchant Freighter decks only to find out that the tutor part of AR was much more important than the Resource ever was, because when i tutored up Merchant Freighter I often couldn’t do anything amazing with the 3rd resource that I couldn’t already do.

Final Prognosis: Abandoned Refinery is pretty blah in most places, but is still secretly broken somewhere down the line. Merchant Freighter is STRONG and helps to durdle with the best of them.

It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t talk about the card that I raved about when it was spoiled. Face the Enemy (FtE) when I first saw it spoiled floored me and I couldn’t fathom how the hell they let this get printed. I felt it was going to completely take over rounds and set up some pretty heinous feel bad situations. I got the chance to put the card on the table when I opened one in my Build From a Box Draft and I opted to not even include it at all, that’s how bad it was going to be. But that is draft, and unfortunately for most, I was absolutely RIGHT about how BROKEN it is in constructed. Sure, activating a character first seems like it’d leave an opponent some time to get things situated before it messed up their day, but that really isn’t a large requirement and we aren’t running a deck with one character. Jamming FtE and then clearing out all of the removal before focusing your dice to max damage is downright DISGUSTING. It’s easily an automatic 2 of include in every Red Villain deck going forward and I can already foresee it being heavily included in the top cut decks at Worlds 2020.

Final Prognosis: If you are Red Villain, it will be in your deck or you are out of your mind. Definitely the chase uncommon that’ll be $5 – $8.

Notable quick hit mentions that I haven’t had enough time with. I’ve not played a legitimate Piloting deck much at all, but I thought that Assail was going to be the new Pinned Down, but it’s felt pretty mediocre even with that sweet Ambush text on it. Eject on the other hand was supposed to be the bees knees in a new deck where you would throw away your Merchant Freighter or Podracers, but the timing for that is relatively brutal and it’s hard to Pilot a cheap vehicle that you would actually want to toss in the scrap heap even though a 4 health swing is pretty sweet. The jury is still out on these as I try to figure out an entirely new archetype as my preconceived notions / concepts based on it’s predecessors don’t exactly apply.

As I get more time at the table to play I’ll likely come back and see if my current thoughts still apply as well as what other cards have made their way into my decks that I thought would never see the light of day. If you’re looking to play online games of destiny in a league format with prizes on the line then don’t forget that Artificery League is on going and you still have time to join if you want with 20+ days left to get your 8 games in. https://artificery.com/product/star-wars-destiny-league-season-xvii-3-02-2020-start/. Good luck at your drafts and upcoming Store championship events and if you need some ideas on what to play or want to join a highly competitive community, then join our Patreon on the $10 for the best shot at increasing your chances as well as taking your game to the next step.

~HonestlySarcastc