Battlefield selection is an oft forgotten important decision. Many moons ago we put out this Gem of an article which pretty much separated battlefields into high priority, low priority, and troll. We are now staring down an impending 5th set and we’ve got a myriad of options available to us to choose from at stage selection.

High Priority

The only decks that should be running these fields are the fastest of the fast decks, otherwise you’ll be handing your opponents a potentially disgusting amount of advantage over the course of the game. A die or two is often left in the pool to speed claim due to the benefit often being immense.

Outer Rim Outpost

This is commonly seen as Sabines weapon of choice. Like a ninja lurking in the shadows, all who trespass on her domain are asking to get punished. I often see unsuspecting players running it to smooth out their resource consumption but end up causing their own doom because they take too many actions over the course of a game. This is also a common choice for Obi Maz which is fine until it runs into Sabine.

Frozen Wastes

Another old favorite for the crazy fast decks to help keep them alive longer. Yoda Hondo is often found fishing in these waters due to the innate speed given by action chaining. It can be both a blessing and a curse depending on how well one rolls. Sabine and other fast decks make sweet love to your dice as she sends them back to your character card, but in a contest of speed, things can get out of hand.

Low Priority

A low priority battlefield is one that still has a beneficial effect, but the effect tends to be so minuscule in normal situations that we don’t often consider it to be imperative to claim. Occasionally we may leave a die on the table to claim, but it is infrequent.

Ewok Village

When Ewok Village first came out I remember thinking that it would be my new “troll” battlefield that would never do anything against me, but would give me some answers to the crazy shield based decks and make it so if my BF was chosen, then it would put shields out that I could claim to get rid of. Shields weren’t very good at the time due to Vibroknife, but the field made an appearance during the Legacy meta when Boba 7th was used since they didn’t get shields often and it gave answers to Caution as well as making it easier to use Maul’s Lightsaber in future rounds by clearing pesky shields off the characters you weren’t trying to focus down.

Obi-Wan’s Hut

Echo Base was a pretty “useless” battlefield during the Awakening’s Meta and as a medium speed deck, you really didn’t want to give the faster decks more health to chew through in addition to the initial 2 shields to start. Obi-Wan’s Hut oddly doesn’t go to the same tune, just because it’s an Echo Base for mono-blue decks, but non-blue decks often won’t pay the 1 resource to get the shield, so at times it can be a huge boon to your own plan, but do almost nothing for the opponent. I decided to put this in the Low Priority area only because there are quite a few Mono-Blue decks in the current meta making it not as one-sided as you would want it to be.

Rebel War Room

If not for Kylo2 Anakin having just won worlds, this battlefield probably wouldn’t even be mentioned. Most decks have gone away from pay sides, but those that still have them can see great success with this strategy. Opponent’s would have to often claim early if they wanted to keep a 0 resources you from claiming to resolve their last die which happened to have a pay side that couldn’t be afforded. It’s main usage was in gun-based decks due to all of the pay sides, but Kylo2 and Anakin each have a pay side which puts the player at an astounding 50% chance to have at least one of the four character dice showing a resource cost.

Troll / No Priority

I was never a big fan of calling them troll battlefields, but the name doesn’t actually matter. The goal here is to either have just about no effect happening for the opponent who gets to claim or even potentially dissuade them from picking your field to start so that you can get the shields. The slowest of the slowest decks often took these fields, but we’ve also seen an uptick in these fields giving some immediate use due to the inclusion of “while you control this battlefield” effects.

Weapons Factory Alpha

Most slow decks nowadays tend to be vehicle based decks or have enough vehicles in deck that they can choose this to gain a benefit for themselves whilst most likely not giving any sort of effect to their opponent. If vehicle decks see a huge uptick in usage this could end up becoming a Low Priority field due to a “free resource” being a pretty large advantage in this game. WFA also doubles to cause most opponents to decide to take their own BF and give away the shields, because a 1 cost T-47 or 2 cost Y-Wing / Fang fighter can be pretty scary in addition to vehicle decks already having a larger health pool and the other deck normally deciding that their own field effect is beneficial enough to them since they are just about guaranteed to be able to claim first.

Fort Anaxes

This seemed pretty weird to see initially, but after testing the card was found to be pretty amazing in the slow tanky 3-wide+ decks. Any decks running a bunch of modifiers tends to be pretty scared of playing on this field and you’d think that a slow deck wouldn’t want their opponent to be in control of it, but there is a weird mind game going on here. Fast decks tend to not have a bunch of additional actions to slow them down enough to get their opponents damage dice out into the pool first, so even when they control it, they can’t use it well enough usually, not to mention that with only 2 characters, they can’t Guardian much. If it’s a slow deck vs slow deck match, then you both are equal in terms of action speed. Being able to spread your damage out between multiple characters in the initial round goes a long way towards keeping those character dice and abilities around and nothing feels as gratifying as eating the 1 damage die sides that you know your opponent wants to reroll.

Secret Facility

This field hardly sees play currently due to very few decks being so slow that they don’t get to claim and them also not wanting either of the previous two fields. This is definitely one of the safest fields you can ever play on since the only downfall tends to be against Planetary Uprising decks which can just completely blow you out via resolving damage and getting the claim effect for more damage.

Special Case

Emperor’s THROWN Room

Until rotation happens, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to leave this baby out. This battlefield has been causing RAGE quits since the beginning and there will always be some Specials based deck that gets to massively abuse it. Awakenings gave us Holocron decks and The Hyperloop combo, SoR was Poe Maz, EaW was Vader2/Phasma, and now in Legacy we’ve got Yoda Hondo as well as Boba Phasma. Deciding when to keep your opponent off of this field is hard, but many a game have been ended by the words “claim to kill” so always take a closer consideration if this is the opponent’s field of choice.

There are a numerous amount of Battlefields to choose from and once rotation comes it might be a brand new world, but until then you are left to the important question of “Two Shields or Not Two Shields!?”

~HonestlySarcastc