Welcome back to my Road to Trilogy series! If you’ve missed my previous articles on Convergence Starter Events or a General Grievous Trilogy deck, these are set of articles that are mainly focused on the new player who picks up one of these starters and is looking to get the most of it during their learning period of the game. These are budget decks and the goal was after a month of opening packs either via draft or escalation play, they can build upon that starter into a deck that one could begin Trilogy constructed play with and not take a big hit in the pocketbook. So let’s take a look at the hero side of the starter decks: Obi-Wan and Satine!

The Starter

After playing a few starter vs starter games, I definitely feel like this deck has the advantage due to Grievous only starting off with 25 (23 with discount) points. Obi-Wan also has 4 sides that are 2 or greater and really have an impact on the droids’ plans–those shields can be brutal at blocking indirect! Tip for droid players early on: try to roll the ranged sides rather than indirect and take someone out!

What cards do we like here? The upgrades are fine outside of the Mandalorian Jetpack. In fact, as you’ll see as we go on here, the yellow cards in this starter seem to be the weakest. Channel the Force is a more specific Beguile. Overqualified and Upper Hand are our only other good removal and it’s still a bit weak. The name of the game is shield, shield, shield to survive. So how can we improve our starter experience?

The Bump to 30

Remember that we are coming from the point of view of a new player acquiring cards one-by-one via opening packs and maybe a bit of trading. So here are a few cards one could add in order to make it a 30-card deck with relative ease. And again, we are trying to work towards that 10 dice and 10 dice removal/mitigation deckbuilding guideline.

Dice

Electroripper – If you are staying yellow, you absolutely need this card. A 2-cost weapon with good damage sides and can do a bit of spread against wide decks.

Force Pull – The Blue play restriction is rough, but it does damage, focuses, and makes money and those specials could be damage sides as well while removing options from your opponent.

Soresu Training – Not an ideal pick without it’s legendary partner, but again it does what this starter was designed to do–focus, shield, and make money. Remember that focus sides can equal damage!

Removal

Disciplined Mind – A+ spot Jedi removal for a deck where your star is a Jedi. Easy 2x include.

Deflecting Slash – True this can slow down your sequencing and we don’t have Soresu Mastery, but removal is slim pickings and this does the job against most deck. Activate and remove in one action should get you back on track.

Flee the Scene – The reason to maybe be yellow! Takes some practice with the timing, but against slower decks you can punch in your damage and then just peel off two dice with not much to worry about while you wait for two actions.

Electroshock – Satine is not the target, so this reprint is a solid 1-cost removal card.

Other than that, just go up to 2x of the included starter removal cards.

Utility

Lightsaber Mastery – Better than the starter plot and gets us an extra Slash to play, then put whatever other Move event seems relevant under it. It’s also super gorgeous to look at!!

Overall I feel at this stage this deck is definitely weaker than the Grievous starter was at the same point. We didn’t add a character die and our removal didn’t get better. It also wants to play aggressive with damage upgrades, but has little 0-cost removal to deal with dice after you play a 2-drop (and the pay sides will hurt). What I think this deck can do is help teach that new player how to sequence out playing dice cards vs holding money to mitigate and working on their tempo. Good news is I think the problems can easily be solved, even if it’s a bit frustrating

The Final Form

Sorry to say, but yes, if you want to stay with these heroes then you need to buy a second starter (much like the Grievous deck). You get to double up on the solid upgrades and removal, gain a second Truce for helping with resources, and get that fourth character die with Satine who will really help with the focusing into damage. Other than that, you just double up on all the good dice mitigation pointed out above. And for only $30 plus some some easy to attain events and 2x of only one rare in the Electroripper, this is a fine deck for someone starting out and wanting to play hero. Know when and where to play upgrades and learn to sequence properly!

An All-Blue Alternative

So this one takes a bit more work than just buying two fixed decks, but wanted to offer another option in case you can acquire Mace and Ahsoka. Oh and I threw in a legendary because it’s Mace! This is more of a “glass cannon” build where you just want to hit hard and fast and removal is a bit light. It also makes our Deflecting Slashes a bit better as well. With more blue upgrades, It Binds All Things is now a nice way to save some money while still pushing the aggressive tempo and being able to play a removal card. If you happen to get lucky and open some Soresu Mastery, then adding the four-card Soresu package to either of these decks would be something to try out as well!

Overall I think the Obi-Wan and Satine starter deck is bit more of a challenge to make work in Trilogy, but by no means do I think either of these final versions are bad decks. A new player would learn a lot by playing these “blue hero” style of decks at their local weekly meetups, especially so if they are Jedi fans and are drawn to the theme of these character swinging their big laser swords around!