Last week I swore I would review a new character for the recently spoiled Star Wars Destiny set Covert Missions. I will be doing that but I want this piece to also be a timeless deck building article. We’ve done similar articles before so pardon me if this is redundant but a friend liked the sound of “Character to concept OR Concept to Character Deckbuilding.” These are two different approaches and I want to go over what this really means. I’ll use a CM character to make sure even experienced players will get something out of this.

Character to Concept

This starts with a character that you think is sweet and you want to make the best deck you can with that character. Characters usually will give you a clear concept that it wants you to follow. Let’s take a look at Poe Dameron, Reckless Aviator since he gives us a pretty clear concept that he wants you to follow in order to unlock his full potential.

Without looking at Poe’s Power Action you would think he is a bit overcosted. His Power Action is what possibly will make him worth his points.

Poe’s Concept

In order to unlock his full potential Poe wants to be using his ability while piloting a vehicle every round. Since his ability only works once per vehicle(unless you heal the vehicle) we will want to be playing multiple vehicles – probably something like 1 or 2 per turn. In my mind damage dealing vehicles that cost between 1 and 3 are the best fit for what Poe wants to do since they are easier to spam. If everything goes according to plan Poe will have a virtual 3rd die every turn that will deal 2 damage. That’s certainly worth his point costs.

These are the kind of vehicles we are looking at and Bucket synergyses with Poe’s ability. There is one lineup that jumps to mind that would certainly wrap up this concept up nicely.

This would be a 2 die Rose but not sure why the DB was being such a douche bag.

This deck certainly has synergy, Rose can heal the vehicles to keep Poe’s ability on for longer, grand design draws cards to maintain a good amount of cards, Abandoned Refinery will make sure that we can replace cheap vehicles while drawing cards, and Eject plus First Aid do an awesome job keeping Poe alive. Missing out on Yellow is kind of a bummer and so below is an alternate list with yellow.

It’s a similar enough list except that this one gets access to a few more powerful cards. This is probably a better deck as having access to Armored Reinforcements, Cloud Car and Easy Pickings is a fine place to be. Cloud Car might look underwhelming but with the battlefield and Eject it is bonkers. When that doesn’t come together its serviceable albeit not exciting. You probably want to find space for an N-1 Starfighter as being able to destroy vehicles is a great option to have. I really want to try the 4x X-Wing since if you ever draw an opening hand with two of them then the 3rd one can be retrieved with AR. AR can otherwise retrieve Black One which is incredibly consistent with Poe. I have yet to unlock the achievement of having 4x X-Wing in play and hopefully I can get that trophy!

Evaluating Poe – a quick aside.

When I started writing this I thought that Poe was straight up garbage but it seems like there might be enough cheap vehicles, ways to draw them and ways to keep Poe alive that he might be viable after all. Still, his Power Action is similar to that of Snoke and when we compare them Poe seems overcosted. Snoke starts with characters in play which give him access to multiple dice that he can use for his PA while Poe needs to jump through hoops to get there. If you only play one vehicle there is a good chance your opponent will be able to control it, this is one of the reasons I focused so heavily on having cheap vehicles in order to overwhelm your opponent’s mitigation. Simply put Snoke is 13 points while Poe is 17 and the better die doesn’t make up for the difference in the PA being worse.

Concept to Character

Concept deck building worries about characters last. I think of it as a group of cards that you want in a deck you are making before you consider characters. Recently I’ve been working on finding a deck for these three cards.

Funny enough I came upon these cards because of deck I was working on that started as a character to concept – it was my Jabba/Tarking deck that I posted a couple of weeks ago. After playtesting it I discovered that the deck had some glaring weaknesses but I had enjoyed having both Admiral and Grand Moff in the same deck.

In order to use Grand Moff to its potential we need a powerful battlefield with a great claim effect. This led me to Mean Streets. If we control a Scoundrel we can add counters to it every time we use the Grand Moff ability. I tried this approach with Jabba and Tarkin but was really missing the ability to do direct damage. After using the SWDestiny.com I arrived on pair that are both Leaders with direct damage and one of them is a Scoundrel.

Click on image for link to the DB

This deck is a lot of fun when it gets going. Grand Moff can keep generating an absurd amount of resources via playing events for free with Mean Streets, once you’ve gained value from it Admiral is a great finisher. Scorched Earth with Mean Streets seemed too cute to leave at home but more defensive measures are also worth considering. Truce is probably worth considering since it works so well with Tobias’ special.

The above deck is a great example of a concept that blossomed into a pretty reasonable and powerful deck. Many times when you go from character to concept you will find a concept you really like but realize that there might be better characters than the ones you are currently using.

Thanks for reading and I hope you found this helpful and enjoyable. If you have any thoughts please leave your comments on here or on social media.

@NJCuenca

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