Controlling Your Destiny:

An in-depth look at Vader Raider Control

by Will Klein

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably been enamored with Destiny, just like I have been for the past 2 months. The strategy, deckbuilding potential, and the anticipation created by rolling the dice has really tapped into something special (yeah, like that warm embrace from Han kind of special… mmmm)… was that out loud?

I’m lucky to live in Minneapolis (bahaha! It’s -3°F right now), only 10 minutes from Fantasy Flight’s headquarters with their ridiculously nice game center and an awesome player base. At the first pre-release event in November, I opened a Vader, calmly went and changed my undies, and was hooked ever since.

I’ve loved trying out lots of different decks at casual nights and in testing, but I’ve only used my main squeeze: Vader Raider in tournaments. Blue-yellow villain has access to the best control and direct damage cards in the game paired with some of the strongest character dice and abilities. After 9 tournaments, I still think it’s the best deck in the format and it’s not even close. **distant sounds of an angry mob assembling**

At first glance, Destiny looked like a straightforward game where you jam upgrades on your characters, chuck some dice, and hope for the best (WHEEEEE!!!). It quickly became apparent that there was so much more going on behind the curtain. At this deeper level, (like, so deep man) Destiny is really about the mind tricks and manipulating your opponent’s cards and dice. There’s no doubt that you can drop upgrades as fast as possible, turn your people sideways, and resolve your damage. Jango Veers does it, Han Rey does it, and standard Vader Raider does it. And you will win games that way, just not consistently. That’s what I’m chasing: my dreams… I mean consistency.

It’s almost unavoidable to talk about strategy in Destiny without alluding to the progenitor of all CCGs, Magic the Gathering. (We don’t take kindly to them magician types ‘round these parts.) A lot of the theoretical groundwork on card advantage, tempo, and resource curve are transferrable to Destiny and we would be remiss (so remiss) not to build our foundation there, revising those theories to fit this new world. I want to delve (like, so deep man) into each of these topics in the future, but today I want to talk to you about control. Back in the day, Magic had a lot of powerful control decks. They would counter spells or remove threats and eventually win with finisher cards that they protected along the way. In Destiny, we have all the main ingredients of this formula and we get to start with our finisher already in play!

When I talk about control in Destiny, I’m talking about many things: control events, control upgrades, and even the mentality of control. Sometimes control is about simply passing or holding back, not wasting your actions, cards, or resources (they’re so precious). This version of Vader Raider is about controlling your opponent’s dice as much as possible, and bashing them in the face… carefully.

First I’ll give you the decklist, then we can talk about individual card choices and more esoteric concepts. If you need to see tournament results, check the end of the article (nobody cares).

Vader Raider Control

Rebel War Room (AW171)

Upgrades:

2 Sith Holocron (AW16)

2 Force Choke (AW13)

2 Force Training (AW58)

2 Force Throw (AW57)

2 Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber (AW15)

1 Lightsaber (AW59)

2 Mind Probe (AW60)

Supports:

2 Backup Muscle (AW99)

Events:

2 He Doesn’t Like You (AW97)

1 Intimidate (AW84)

2 Isolation (AW85)

2 Deflect (AW145)

2 Feel Your Anger (AW82)

1 Electroshock (AW159)

1 Use the Force (AW149)

2 Force Strike (AW83)

2 No Mercy (AW86)

Newbies

The first order of business is something that I see a lot of newer players missing. Control events are extremely important because they allow you to wreck your opponent’s best laid plans. You will usually have a chance to respond after your opponent rolls their dice **cough** Jango **cough**. If you allow someone to roll, manipulate, and fire at you without any interaction, you’re gonna have a bad time. As I kept playing more games, I kept wanting more control cards. There’s no better feeling than being in full control of a game, none, at all, ever, right?…

Another thing to notice when looking at the decklist is that every card is just as useful on turn 5 as it is on turn 1. When building decks, you want to make sure that you play as few cards as possible that sometimes become 0 cost events that say “reroll any number of your dice.” I’ll talk more about this point in the card-by-card discussion later.

How to Mulligan

The ideal starting hand for most matchups is something like: Holocron, Force Throw, Force Choke, and 2 dice control cards. You want to be mulliganing (it’s a real word, I swear) aggressively for Holocron most of the time. Force Throw is the best upgrade in the deck (possibly in the game) and you want to keep at least 1 of these if you have it as well. If you have Deflect in your opening hand against a deck focused on ranged damage, you should definitely keep it as well. At the very least, you want a decent mix of control cards and upgrades. Don’t worry too much about Force Strike, Backup Muscle, or No Mercy early. You only have a 30 card deck, so you will be seeing some of these cards, ideally when you’re about to finish characters off.

Battlefields

Rebel War Room is the perfect battlefield for this deck, especially with the current metagame. Many decks like Jango Veers and Han Rey have trouble taking advantage of it because they need to resolve modified dice with their normal damage. Almost every die side in this deck can be resolved on its own, so you’ll rarely get into a tricky situation. It also helps with limited resources, sometimes forcing your opponent to take it much earlier than they wanted to, in order to prevent 3 damage from the pay sides of Raider, a Saber, or Mind Probe. Keep in mind that you can resolve any die with Rebel War Room, not just one that requires a resource.

If you win the roll, you’ll want to be using the opponent’s battlefield most of the time anyway. Getting those 2 extra shields on Vader is a huge benefit, it really is a 4 point damage swing: 2 shields on your character and 2 shields that they aren’t getting. The only times you’re going to want to take your own battlefield is when you are playing against Poe or Kylo with Emperor’s Throne Room, against Han Rey with Starship Graveyard, or against a mill deck with Command Center.

I’ve seen other builds using Imperial Armory, Separatist Base, or Mos Eisley Spaceport as well.

Imperial Armory will benefit a deck that acts more quickly than you like Jango Veers, allowing them to get even more upgrades out. The more dice they have, the harder it will be for you to control.

Separatist Base is also a liability because Vader Raider only has a paltry 21 health and you don’t want to be giving your opponent guaranteed damage. This isn’t a race, it’s a controlled burn. (well it is a race, but you just wanted to sound poetic.)

Mos Eisley Spaceport works well with Holocron, gaining you some resources. But Mos Eisley doesn’t give you the benefit of being able to use the resource to resolve damage immediately like Rebel War Room does.

So how do you play this deck?

It’s difficult to give broad advice in Destiny because every situation is so unique, but here goes nothin’:

Even if you mulligan aggressively for it, you’re only going to have Holocron in about 50% of your opening hands. When you do have Holocron early, generally play it on Vader first. If your opponent goes after the Raider first you’ve most likely won the game already. If they’ve already managed to ding Vader a bit, play Holocron on the Raider.

In the games without Holocron, you’ll need to just bide your time, making sure to control your opponent’s dice and drop upgrades when you can spare the resources. Vader and Raider’s dice are strong enough to carry games on their own, with minimal help from upgrades. 52% of the time, you will be presenting 3 or more damage to your opponent by just rolling those character dice. Not many character lineups come close to that. Jango Veers is the exception, but they rely on some modified sides.

I cannot stress this enough: you always want to keep resources available for your control cards. Your prime directive (wrong IP dude) is to control your opponent’s dice, even ahead of paying to put upgrades on your characters. I would rather play an upgrade at the end of the round and not be able to roll its die this turn, than allow my opponent free reign to reroll or modify their dice. Even the threat of your control cards will cause players to make suboptimal plays. (Okay, we get it, geeze) Sometimes your opponents will threaten with disrupt and you’ll just have to use the resources for an upgrade rather than losing them. Usually you don’t want to waste resources controlling a disrupt die.

Speaking of disrupt, controlling resources is something else Vader excels at. When you’ve forced your opponent to use their resources or lose them, you can freely manipulate your dice with fixing or rerolls for some large damage swings, but still be on the lookout for He Doesn’t Like You.

Matchups:

There are way too many lineups to go over, so I’m only going to talk about the most common decks I see at the top tables in my local tournaments.

Jango Veers

Playing properly against Jango is a difficult thing to learn. Fight hard to take the battlefield, without leaving yourself too open. You want to be activating early, before they can put yet another upgrade on Jango. If they already have the battlefield and get the jump on you by activating Veers, wait them out. Mitigate Veer’s dice the best you can, then take delay actions like Backup Muscle or simply pass until they have to roll Jango or end the turn. Your upgrades are inherently more powerful than theirs, so it’s not unheard of to try to control Veers’ dice and then pass the turn to gain 2 more resources.

Usually you want to be attacking the character without the redeploy weapons. 9 times out of 10 that’s going to be Veers.

Han Rey

Usually you want to take Rey out first in this matchup. But, if you see an opportunity to dish out a lot of damage on Han early with maybe an Intimidate in hand or if you can set up a big No Mercy on him before Second Chance hits the board, the game will be a cakewalk. Rey’s dice are pretty bad and she just won’t be able to carry it on her own. If everybody in your meta is running Han Rey (or Qui-Gon), you might want to play a 2nd Intimidate or even an On the Hunt.

eLuke Ackbar

Always go after Ackbar as fast as possible. You do not want Leadership allowing Luke to activate a second time when he’s got 2 lightsabers and a One with the Force. Be very aware of Force Misdirection and try not to set them up for a blowout against you. Also understand that they have Field Medic, Willpower, Force Misdirection, and sometimes Dug In, so a character isn’t always as close to dead as you think. Take any opportunity you get to put a character away, do not wait 1 more action, even if it means you could set up something stronger.

eJabba + Vader or eDooku

Use your mitigation events to get rid of discard sides and resist the urge to re-roll by discarding as much as possible. Your dice have a lot of disrupt sides that you shouldn’t be shy about using. The less they can control your hand and dice, the better. Always, always, always, (always) go after Jabba first. So much of their deck will be crippled when he is dead and their Vader or Dooku will have a hard time racing you for damage. This will be a battle of control events and upgrades so it’s another deck you’ll want to be claiming the battlefield and activating early against. If you get ahead of their Immobilizes, Force Chokes, and Force Throws, you’ll be a happy camper. One last word of caution: Do not claim the battlefield when your opponent has 5 resources and a focus die showing. They are almost certainly going to Ace in the Hole a Crime Lord and kill Vader instantly. Keep a control card ready for this situation or keep disrupting their resources.

Other Mill Decks

Padame is almost always going to be your target. Again, be careful about discarding to reroll. You need to get in their mindset and realize that the value of the cards in your hand has gone way up.

eGrievous Dooku

Always go after Grievous first and be careful about playing Lightsabers. Remember, Grievous can’t steal ability upgrades. Keep in mind that your No Mercy is great for taking out Dooku. Backup Muscle is excellent for helping to finish him off because it doesn’t activate his ability.

Hyperloop (Poe 2 Hired Gun)

I’ve been playing this deck a lot recently to test, and it can definitely win games against unprepared players. The problem is that any deck with Jango or Vader is going to give it a rough time. Electroshock and Deflect are keys against the deck and can really ruin their day. Unless they play a cunning early, it’s usually right to attack Poe first. If they get the combo off, don’t worry, Vader can make them discard on every iteration of the loop or the Raider can activate one of his dice instantly. If Raider’s got a Mind Probe or Force Throw, it’s going to be tricky for them to play around.

Talkin’ ‘bout Vader and Raider Tips and Tricks:

Something I see so many people miss when playing against Vader is that you get to see what the result of his roll is before you decide what you want to discard. This also means that as the Vader player, you get to see if his Mind Probe rolls its special side before you decide to make them discard. Usually that extra damage is worth not making them discard.

When playing against Jango, when Vader activates there are 2 abilities that happen simultaneously: Vader’s discard trigger and Jango’s trigger. If you control the battlefield you should force the opponent discard their card before they get to choose to roll Jango’s dice. That means they will have less information with which to base their decision. If they control the battlefield, they get to choose which activation happens first.

Raider is an extremely strong character and compliments Vader perfectly (he’s like a mini Jango!) On every single activation you should be considering whether to resolve one of his character or upgrade dice immediately. Almost always put Force Training on Raider too (do it before Vader dies!). Even resolving the resource side can save you an action to put out a larger upgrade on Vader quickly. If Raider gets a Mind Probe or Force Throw, it can power out some huge damage instantly.

When you’ve got a Force Choke, always consider using the special to turn your own Raider’s die to the 3 damage side. The Raider can even Force Choke Vader, to turn his die to a 3 melee side if the Raider has the Force Choke (ooo, so thematic).

How to play against Vader Raider:

(Don’t tell them how to beat you! C’mon man.)

Okay, so 95% of the time you should be going for Vader first unless they do some early Holocron shenanigans and you’re facing a Force Throwing, Mind Probing Raider (which is a really risky play for the Vader Raider player).

If you’re playing Han Rey or Jango Veers you should try to get your blank dice rerolled with your extra actions to prevent Feel Your Anger from Time Walking you. (Don’t use Magic references you dweeb! Time Walk is a card that lets you take an extra turn).

Ranged damage decks tend to have a lot more modified sides on their dice. You have to be aware that 1 ranged damage die you’re using to activate all those modified sides is almost certainly not going to survive until your next action. You should always be trying to set up multiple unmodified range damage sides to get your Jetpack to actually fire.

Be extremely careful when looking at fairly innocent looking board states from Vader Raider. (And as the Vader Raider player, you should be looking to capitalize on these board states.) In a recent event, my opponent claimed the battlefield when my board was 1 resource, 1 card in hand, 1 Vader die on blank, Force Choke on special, Raider on blank, and Force Training on Special.

I used Force Strike on Vader’s die, Force Choked my own Raider to a 3 damage side, and used the special on Force Training to deal 1 damage and gain 1 resource, dealing 7 total damage.

Exhaustive Discussion About Every Freaking Card:

When looking at control events, the benchmark I use is a 1 cost event that removes 1 die of your choice from your opponent’s pool. The closer a card is to that ideal, the better. Today we’ll look at the blue, yellow, and grey villain and neutral cards being the heart of this deck.

There are 16 cards we have access to that fit the description. (who is “we,” you and the mouse in your pocket?)

The Events

The Good: Deflect, He Doesn’t Like You, Isolation, Electroshock, Feel Your Anger, Use the Force.

Deflect is one of the best events in the game. It hits Jango Veers and Han Rey hard with lots of other decks accidentally (oopsy daisy!) having ranged damage sides like Mind Probe, One With the Force, or even Ackbar. Even if ranged damage wasn’t the side they necessarily wanted on something like Force Throw, you can still remove the die, preventing them from rerolling or manipulating it.

He Doesn’t Like You is incredible value for the cost. Being able to feign helplessness and suddenly remove their best die for your worst die is priceless (exactly 0 galactic credits). Even though you need to give up a die, the fact that it costs 0 puts it at or above the benchmark.

This is the card that replaced Hidden in Shadow in my earlier builds and it has been an MVP ever since.

Isolation is restricted to character dice, but character dice are generally the strongest in the game. Your opponent will be relying on them for most of the early game too. Slightly below the benchmark, but still incredibly powerful.

Electroshock is similar to Isolation. You are restricted to a value 2 or less die, but there are surprisingly few 3+ sides in Awakenings, especially on characters. (shockingly few!) Electroshock can remove specials as well, in case you weren’t aware. (we know that already, geeze!). I’m only using 1 in the deck because anything over 5 non-blue cards starts to put a strain on No Mercy and if your opponent decides to take out the Raider first it becomes a dead card.

Feel Your Anger shines best in the late game. If your opponent is rolling 2 regular dice (with 1 blank side), you have a 30% chance of seeing 1 blank. For 4 dice that increases to a 52% chance. Towards the mid to late game, with 6 dice that goes up to 66%. So far that doesn’t sound too great, with only about a 50% chance of hitting the benchmark. What those stats don’t show, is that, even when rolling just 4 normal dice, your opponent has a 13% chance of rolling 2 or more blanks. Hitting their 2 best dice for 1 resource, a card, and an action is usually a blowout and swings like that can win games. And those numbers only go up against cards like Datapad, DH-17, Holocron, and Stormtrooper. Later in the game it can become difficult to control a larger amount of dice being rolled at once.

Use the Force is a softer form of control and your wild card (WILD CARD!). In a Vader deck, the opponent is naturally going to get fewer reroll opportunities because Vader is making them discard, so you’ll want to use this when it’s going to be painful for them to discard for a reroll near the end of a turn. It also works well as a third copy of Force Strike that must be used carefully or, in a pinch (ouch!), it can set up a Force Choke or Force Throw to the special side.

The Bad: Scramble, Reversal, Block, Disturbance in the Force

The problem with Scramble is how situational it is. It’s how you want your eggs, but not how you want your opponent’s dice most of the time. The only time you are going to want to use it, is when your opponent has their dice on the best possible sides, or nearly the best possible. Even in that situation, your opponent is going to reroll and then get an action with no chance for a response from you. It’s always tricky playing cards that might do nothing or worse than nothing (Probe, I’m looking at you too!). While Scramble is playable in hero because of their limited control cards, villains have so many better options that it becomes difficult to justify.

Reversal has potential and might be playable as a single copy in some resource rich decks like Poe 2 Hired Gun.

Block has a tough chance making the cut in the metagame right now. Most decks that play melee damage have fewer dice and resolve them quickly without having to rely on a lot of modified sides. If Vader Raider or Grievous Dooku start dominating the metagame the card might become more useful.

Disturbance in the Force is even more situational than Scramble and it costs a resource.

The Ugly: (Not bad, but they just doesn’t quite fit in this deck) Unpredictable, Mind Trick, Flank, Dodge, Disarm, Confiscation

Unpredictable is an okay card in some decks. Sometimes it fixes your die, sometimes it hinders your opponent, sometimes it puts a shield on Han. The problem is that I don’t like relying on a lucky roll to control a die (it takes him out of his safe space). In this deck it gets knocked out of contention because it’s yellow and gets outclassed by electroshock completely removing the die.

Mind Trick is another close call to make the deck. It’s essentially 2 cost to remove the best die in the opponent’s pool plus 1 or 2 less exciting dice. Unfortunately, the cost is just too much for this deck. (stop being so frugal and live a little!)

Flank is one of the strongest die control cards. I would even consider playing it in a 2 character, non-Jango deck (ooo, scandalous!). You just need to play around keeping your own flanks active. It’s also non-blue, again hurting No Mercy potency. The other problem is that against a lot of decks you want to be activating early to set up your dice from the control upgrades like Force Choke or Force Throw rather than playing around your own flank. (what did he just say??)

Dodge is much better than its counterpart Block right now. Most of the ranged damage decks need to set up with a lot of modified sides. This usually allows for some blowout opportunities. It’s non-blue and costs 2 resources though, which makes it a difficult to fit in this deck.

Disarm is another strong card. Unfortunately this deck doesn’t have as many expendable dice as other decks. There are also very few modified sides that might be sitting idle in the pool which are excellent targets for Disarm.

Confiscation has really impressed me the more I have played it. But again, it’s too cost prohibitive, usually costing 2 for the best effect.

The Upgrades

Sith Holocron The obvious powerhouse of the deck. When you start the game with Holocron, you’re playing a completely different game than when you don’t. But, even if you mulligan as aggressively as possible for Holocron, you’ll only get it 52% of the time first turn, so you’re going to need to know how to win games without it.

Force Choke is probably the second best die control upgrade in the game. You can do so many tricks like spinning an opponent’s die to a 3 (or sometimes 4 side) and then resolving the Force Throw special to hit them with it immediately. It doesn’t have to be your opponent’s character’s either, as I explained in the character tips and tricks section. In addition to that, the unblockable damage is exactly what you need to finish off characters in the late game.

Force Training is a slot that sometimes goes to Immobilize, so now is a good time to talk about both cards. There are definitely pros and cons to both cards. First their strengths: Force Training has essentially 3 damage sides, a focus, and 2 resource sides. You will only be disappointed when hitting the blank on this die. (don’t act like you know me!) It does all the things you want to move your game plan forward. The other positive is that, as long as Vader is alive, you should be putting this directly on the Raider, making him even more potent when you might need him in the late game. The potential to roll 3 melee with the Raider and a +2 on Force Training can be huge for ending the game against some more powerful characters with dwindling health. Isolation on the other hand is great for controlling your opponent’s dice pool. The shields can keep this low health deck in the game longer and can also set up some great Feel Your Anger plays. Unfortunately, the downside is that it does no damage and does not remove the die. It’s great in an eJabba Vader control deck where the opponent will be low on cards or where you would want the opponent to discard more cards to reroll. We want permanent die removal. It also becomes much worse against control decks because less damage upgrades means that you won’t be putting out as much pressure for them to deal with. You won’t out-control the control deck, you need to damage them from every angle.

If your local meta has a lot of Ackbar 2 Rebel Troopers using It’s a Trap, you might want to consider taking Force Training out because the ranged damage side can easily be used against you. I could see playing Immobilize in this case.

Force Throw The best control upgrade in the game. Removing a die and dealing the damage is absurd value. End of story.

Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber The best damage dealing upgrade in the game for its cost. (wow, you can actually be brief when you try!)

Lightsaber Originally this wasn’t even in the deck and it still very rarely sees play. It is definitely the 30th card. It is just too expensive and Kylo’s Saber outclasses it by a mile. It is only useful when Vader is getting low on health and you can’t be sure if your opponent is going to be able to kill him right away. It’s also good to have if Vader has already died of course. Very rarely, it’s nice to get 2 activation in the same round with it too. This could easily be a 2nd Use the Force, 2nd Intimidate, an Immobilize, a Mind Trick, or even On the Hunt.

Mind Probe Another big damage upgrade that can come out of nowhere to activate the same action when it gets played by Holocron and rolls its special. Keep in mind that when you roll Mind Probe on Vader, you get to see what the result of your roll is before you decided whether to make the opponent discard a card. Getting one of these on Raider has the ridiculous benefit of being able to activate immediately with his ability.

Not Being Used:

Immobilize See Force Training above.

Hidden in Shadow and Hunker Down These cards were taken out in favor of more dice control cards. One key to notice in the current decklist is that every card is good in the early game and in the late game. The later you draw Hidden or Hunker the less effective they will be. If you’re against melee, Hunker is practically dead. The best cases I was getting out of either of these cards was 2-3 shields. A dice mitigation card can easily get rid of that much damage from an opposing die and control of the board is so much more important for keeping your characters alive and damaging theirs.

It Binds All Things (is not an upgrade dummy) belongs in this section because it powers out upgrades and the problem it creates is similar to the Hidden in Shadow problem. It’s great on turn 1, but practically dead on turn 5. Holocron can come down turn 5 and power a Mind Probe die into play that same turn. But why not play both? This sets us up for even more opportunities to have dead cards. The redundancy of Holocron and It Binds will create a lot of situations where you’re discarding one or the other just for the rerolls. Plus with only 11 upgrades in the deck it can target, it’s going to be tough to get as much use as a deck like Rey 2 Padawan gets out of it.

It’s a good card in hero decks, but doesn’t work to maximal effect here.

The following yellow upgrades immediately lose points for their yellowness, but I won’t fault them just for that:

Flamethrower is just too expensive at 3 with the 4 damage side costing an extra resource.

Gaffi Stick is popular in Vader Raider and I have trouble seeing why (because you’re blind!?). It has 2 damage sides, one that costs a resource, and a situational damage side. Very rarely will you have a melee damage sitting on the board that can’t be resolved. There are only 5 modified melee damage sides in the whole deck, plus we’re using Rebel War Room in case we run out of resources. This die just doesn’t compare with Force Training which has 3 free damage sides a focus side and 2 resource sides.

Redeploying a mediocre upgrade doesn’t make it better enough. (umm, I think you meant betterer?)

On the Hunt is a card I would consider in a meta rife with shields. It’s another backup control card that occasional can add to some damage. Definitely a solid upgrade, but the existence of Intimidate makes it a tough fit in this deck.

The Direct Damage Suite

The real strength of Vader Raider, comes from its ability to deal tons of damage from a seemingly innocuous board state.

Backup Muscle Vader Raider can pump out a lot of damage fast, but sometimes finishing off a character can be tricky if your opponent is loading them up with shields. Backup Muscle’s strength is its inevitability. Without a Field Medic or Draw Attention, a character on 3 health is guaranteed to die to Backup Muscle as long as you can hold on.

No Mercy This card simply wins games. You should almost always be playing toward this end game. Even if you’re only resolving the 1 ranged damage on a Force Throw, you can easily kill a character by adding 3 or 4 damage to that. No need to spot a blue character (in case Vader’s dead) and it can add to either type of damage.

Force Strike 11% of the time Vader spits hot fire. For those times when he’s not feeling so spicy, there’s Force Strike. Dealing 3 damage unexpectedly is huge for finishing characters off and there’s no way to stop it. Always keep in mind that it isn’t required that you resolve the die immediately. If you have a modified side sitting out there and you’re sure the opponent is out of control, you can turn Vader’s die to a 3 and leave it for your next action. The same is true if you want to turn Kylo’s saber to its modified +3 side and next action resolve it with a melee die.

Intimidate Against a field of Han Rey or Qui-Gon decks, this card shines. (ooo shiny!!!) Most decks have at least a few shields which usually makes this a 2-3 damage card for 0 cost. Depending on how the metagame shifts this could become a 2 of again.

Not Being Used:

Power of the Force When you get Holocron(s) out early, this card can be incredible. But the times when Holocron is buried, Power of the Force will be a dead card. (sad face)

The Power of the Dark Side On paper it seems like 2 unblockable damage a turn is amazing. Unfortunately the reality will be rerolling your Force Throw and hitting the 1 disrupt. It also adds to your action count, preventing you from potentially claiming the battlefield.

(wow, that was a lot of cards.)

Other thoughts:

“Well, I can just discard it to reroll” is not a good justification for a card being extremely situational.

Tournaments:

So far I’ve played in 9 tournaments, all with a variation of this Vader Raider. I took out Hidden in Shadow, Hunker Down, and Power of the Force after January 1st for reasons I gave in the card breakdown and losing games where those cards were dead in my hand.

Most of these tournaments have been at the Fantasy Flight Games Center and a few at Tower Games in Minneapolis:

3-0, FFGC, Dec 5th (8 Players, 3 Rounds)

4-0, FFGC, Dec 12th (26 Players, 4 Rounds)

5-0, FFGC, Dec 18th (26 Players, 3 Rounds plus cut to Top 4)

2-2, FFGC, Dec 19th (16 Players, 4 Rounds)

2-1, Tower, Dec 29th (24 Players, 3 Rounds)

3-1, FFGC, Jan 1st (52 Players, 4 Rounds plus cut to Top 4)

3-0, Tower, Jan 5th (22 Players, 3 Rounds)

4-0, FFGC, Jan 9th (31 Players, 4 Rounds)

3-0, Tower, Jan 12th (12 Players, 3 Rounds)

Conclusion:

So if you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed all the fun we’ve had in the past 5000 words. (so many great memories!). If I hurt your feelings by saying mean things about a pet card, I’m not sorry, I just want my cards to be the best they can be. (YEAH, **insert motivational poster**). Have fun, stay safe, play well, and remember that it’s just a game.

Next time we can have even more fun talkin bout lots of cards and decks and stuff!

Love,

Will

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