“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment” – Rita Mae Brown

I have about two decades of experience playing card games and I often forget about the times where I was just a wee young lad being a plebeian with my cookie cutter Haymaker (Pokemon) deck. I started off wanting to run the fan favorites with my Venusaur, Blastoise, and Charizard tri-color deck and if the card player I am today could meet my younger self, then younger me would have the Strawberry Bubblicious gum slapped out of his mouth. I learned the hard way about terrible decks and getting smushed by fast and efficient decks very often. I often asked “Why?” (Yeah, I was like that kid pictured below) and I wasn’t always given the answer (back then internet wasn’t widely available, curse you GOOGLE!!!!).

More expansions came out and I eventually had to compare and contrast between which Basic Pokemon to run and it sent me along the course of basing my decks off of logic and trying to determining efficiency. Depending on how addicted to Discord you are, you may have frequently heard me talking about running “8 die” droid decks and no, that isn’t some alternate format. I was essentially equating some character abilities to be valued at what a die is worth. For the sake of explaining, let’s look at the 3 droids.

Hidden / Extra Dice

3PO has a point adjustment to be 9/11 so there are a couple of ways to get a 5 die start with our 30 points and you may wonder where the heck the other 3 dice are. Well when we look at the abilities, R2 can one of your dice to any side which is a “focus”, Chopper can play a Mod with the cost decreased by 1 which is a “resource”, and 3PO can resolve a die whilst increasing the value by 1 which is pretty much the definition a “modified +1“. Therefore, I’d call the deck an 8 die starting deck and that is why the value gained seems so off the charts. At the same time though, if an opponent can knock out 3PO then they have theoretically removed FOUR of your dice (3.5 i guess but R2 isn’t the same any more). If we take a look at some of the characters that have been very good, you should start to notice a pattern.

The Hero part is pretty lacking, but back in the day there was a lot of Rey2 abuse and I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole. Each of the first 4 character’s abilities are / were considerably obscene because you could think of each of them as a 3 die character in their elite form provided that you could properly make use of the ability. Rey and Kylo pretty much require each other similar to how R2 and 3PO do, but the abilities are a shade less powerful / not guaranteed to get value so calling both abilities one to one and a half dice is probably far more accurate than saying two, but it’s nearly irrelevant for that differential due to a point I’ll make later. Sentinel Messenger is a highly used character that can also get extra effect from his ability, but “drawing” cards in this game is a bit harder to gauge due to the game starting you with a 5 card hand each Round. Powerful abilities go a long way to starting the game ahead of opponent’s who don’t play them and I vehemently suggest having as many starting dice as possible, but there is a caveat to consider.

Di(c)e Value

As you can see from Jar Jar’s and Vader’s dice, all things are not created equal. There is no world where I could justify both of those dice being considered as “1 die in value” because the overall value is so far from equivalent that you could probably have 3 of Jar Jar’s dice and still prefer Vader’s. This is where things get very tricky though and we have to ask “Where do I draw the line?” and to that, I would say this: Look at your best 3 (or 4) sides. Jar Jar’s is resource, disrupt, and shield?? which doesn’t seem so bad but once we hit the 4th side we realize that it pretty much doesn’t exist and we likely didn’t even want the shield. Depending on what you’re looking for the character dice to do, I’d say he’s either barely 1 die or just a smidgen less than one. Vader on the other hand is 2 Resources, 3 Melee, then 4r1 melee, with a tie for 4th as 2 damage or 2 shields so I’d go as far as to say his die is worth 1.5 to 2 dice based on which sides you get to resolve. His worst non-blank side is roughly equal to the best side on what I would call a “normal” die. A normal die to me is going to look like 1 Resource, 2 damage, and then some mixup of Focus, Damage, Shields, or Disrupt (i tend to dismiss Discard and then Specials are based on the effect) usually with a value of 1 – 2. Things like health and team building points matter, but usually you build with a goal in mind already and you just compare all of those things with similar point costed characters. Let’s take a look at some Character’s with no “ability” but that have powerful specials.

Yoda and Han are a couple of fan favorites with Han only making the rounds occasionally, where as Yoda has been trying to hold the fort for Hero for a long time now. Neither character has an actual ability to help increase their “starting dice”, but both of them came hot off the presses with a lot of strength in certain parts of their dice. Yoda is a terror when it comes to special chaining, but pretty much all of his usefulness is put into the 2 Focus and both of his Special sides. The special being able to get a Resource and Focus another die is a full two dice effect (as well as being flexible to resolve for one shield or mill one card), but the fact that he can resolve a special for a Resource, then turn his other die to a Special and continue for another Resource and turning another die puts him in a solid spot to go nuts if left unmitigated and gets him into that 3-4 dice value worth of resolution. Yoda’s issue is the same as every other character with a powerful die, which is that when an opponent uses mitigation, then they stopped more than 1 die of value. Han Solo is strong in that 2 Damage, 2 Damage, 1 Resource is already a good die, but then you look at his Special being able to get 2 Indirect and 1 Resource and you just hope to always hit Special.

It’s very hard to make valuations in regards to how many “dice” a Yoda1 / Han3 deck technically starts off with in value perspective so I try to stray away thinking that much, but I think it’s pretty safe to call it a 5 die start provided that you get to resolve a Yoda special or Han special. Most of the consideration and trying to be “correct” doesn’t actually matter, but when you break things down to that level, then it’s much easier to see the power in certain lineups. Starting with at least 5 dice worth of value should keep you in the ball park of Tier 2 or better decks, but the card quality of the deck and cost efficiency do come into play so keep that in mind. Droids can start with 8, but that doesn’t win it every game, so it isn’t the end all be all for a deck. I’d much rather be Borgoth (Red dice) than the Subdued Demon (Black dice) though, because there is no way for the demon to win that fight, even if he had 3000 health. I like to start with more dice because I “NEED MOAR POWA!”.

Until next time, Happy New Years and let’s go into 2020 focusing on the good things about Star Wars Destiny, which are the friends we’ve made and the fun we had along the way.

~HonestlySarcastc