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Since the Two-Player Starter and Empire at War dropped, the meta has been rife with all sorts of nasty, whiny, 17-cost blue villains. I’m looking at you, Kylo: Tormented One and Darth Vader: Dark Apprentice. As things have started to feel like they’ve stagnated in the competitive scene, most of us in the Artificery crew have been experimenting with a wide variety of decks. Mostly heroes. God, do we ever wish heroes were more exciting and competitive right now.

Unfortunately, we’re not coming at you with a heroes list today. What we do have is a list that we’ve had a lot of fun experimenting with: 7th Jango. This deck list originally began as a break from the standard metagame, but it has since evolved into a deck that we think has actual legs in the competitive scene, particularly once a new Rules Reference comes out and we see most of the decks in the top tier take a hit in power. You can see the list I’m currently running here and catch the rest of the crew’s card choices at the bottom.

Let’s dig in.

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Character Suite

Elite Jango Fett + Elite Seventh Sister makes for a 2-character, 5-dice suite, which is something that few character combinations can boast, let alone pull off competently. While none of these dice are especially stellar (neither character has better die sides than Phasma2), they make up for their deficits in quantity over quality. Neither Jango nor Sister have bad dice; they’re mostly par for the course, leaving a lot to be desired in terms of overall oomph. Where these characters excel is in their ability to field a number of dice threats while building up their power and stagnating their opponent’s ramp and damage. Blue/Yellow villains has access to the best removal in the set and a collection of pretty stellar upgrades in the 2- and 3-cost range.

This is not a flashy deck that wins off its character dice or action cheating or some big combo play alone. The purpose of 7th Jango is to use its five dice to consistently output damage, generate resources, and survive long enough to be a midrange threat once your opponent starts floundering. If you’re not doing damage in the early rounds, you’re probably pumping out resources to start building your pool of dice. The Empire at War metagame features a metric ton of removal, but starting with five dice that are low impact individually but high impact together makes removal significantly less useful. The ID9 Droid might not be godly, but all its sides have a purpose and it gets much, much better once a second droid is on the field. Jango’s reaction ability has died off since his days of Awakenings prominence, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. Outside of Sabine (struggles against the best decks in the format), Rey (who even cares?), and Cad Bane, there are few times when you don’t have the opportunity to use He Doesn’t Like you to remove an opponent’s die. Better yet, there’s always the chance that you just roll well with Jango and his upgrades — well enough to put out the last few points of damage you need to kill off a character.

Both Jango and Seventh Sister represent a threat on the board. Jango has his ability and better overall dice while Seventh Sister has her ID9 Droid and the looming threat of gaining another one. There’s not a particularly good choice to target first and that makes it all the more easy for you to just stack your upgrades on the character your opponent isn’t committing to while putting your redeploy stuff on the other. The 20 base Health leaves a lot to be desired, especially considering your dice are woefully average at winning the battlefield roll, but Force Illusion, Ancient Lightsaber, and shield generation from Seventh Sister provide deceptively good survivability while the aforementioned events keep your opponent from resolving their best dice.

The whole, in this case, is indeed greater than the sum of its parts, and that is the draw of 7th Jango.

Card Selection

As I stated above, blue/yellow villains has access to hands down the best removal in the game, including but not limited to:

There are literally too many good removal cards to include in your deck list and I haven’t even named all the subpar options. That’s crazy.

In the same vein, blue/yellow villains also has access to a hefty amount of upgrades, most of which have pretty substantial value for their cost:

Yeah, it’s the same exact situation here: There are too many good upgrades for us to include as well. It isn’t even fair. We haven’t even touched on trying to be more cute with our card selection. Close Quarters Assault in order to rip your opponent’s hand from them and inhibit their ability to reroll into better dice after you’ve removed the good sides? Deadly to completely circumvent your opponent’s shields or Force Illusion with one of your blank character dice? How about Relentless Pursuit to make your opponent regret using Enrage and The Best Defense? All In to use one of two ID9 Droid dice to flip your dice into lethal? Bait and Switch to change Jango’s two resource sides into surprise damage?

We’re looking at pure, raw value from our card selection. This deck list doesn’t have to settle for anything and it even has the added benefit of including a ‘rainbow’ that pulls from blue, yellow, and gray in equal measure. The variety in cards is obscene, allowing for creative freedom when it comes to deckbuilding. Outside of Seventh Sister (who is only going for ~$18), you could fairly easily have a budget Jango/Sister list without having to worry about utilizing legendary cards. The intention with 7th Jango is to thoroughly exploit the quality of all these exceptionally good cards while riding off the average quality but high quantity of our character dice. While some decks are looking to outright win off character dice by the end of Round 2, 7th Jango is trying to delay the game long enough for your opponent to expend important resources while you continue to bolster your own.

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Strategy

You’re going to want to hard mulligan for your better 2-cost upgrades. If you’re running a Holocron suite, you’re obviously looking for one of those and a force power to go along with it. ID9 Droid is never a bad keep because it immediately makes Seventh Sister a 4-dice threat that is just going to keep getting bigger if she isn’t handled — and if she is, Jango just becomes a beefcake. Outside of Holocron and ID9, your best cards to keep and play on the first turn likely include Ancient Lightsaber, Vibroknife, or something with redeploy. Having these cards provides early safety against a variety of different situations; Ancient Lightsaber keeps you alive, Vibroknife makes it so that you don’t have to worry about your first target getting extra health from Force Illusion, and redeploy weapons make your opponent think twice about killing a certain character.

You should be running enough removal that you don’t have to worry about keeping more than maybe one during the mulligan, but it’s worth noting that some events are worth holding onto. He Doesn’t Like You is great against an opponent that you know is going to play fair with his actions; it lets Jango activate through a reaction and immediately have the ability to remove a die. Isolation is great against 3-character suites that use characters like Mace Windu, Darth Vader, and K2SO. Electroshock is better against lists like Kylo/Nines that don’t have high-value die sides. Both Isolation and Electroshock are liable to be useless later if the required character dies, so keep that in mind!

Here’s the most important rule to playing this deck, especially if you’re a new player: Don’t play an upgrade if you’re not going to have resources for removal. Read that again. Read it twice more. This is the biggest mistake I see new players make in Destiny and it’s a mistake that will lose you numerous games, particularly with a deck like this that relies on its removal. If you’re holding Feel Your Anger or Overconfidence and you don’t have the resources to play it on your opponent’s 3 Damage die because you got greedy and wanted to play a Vibroknife instead, you’ve made a mistake that could potentially lose you the game. This is especially important in the first couple of rounds when you haven’t generated resources. Jango/Sister only has 20 Health and it can’t afford to be in a health deficit early against aggro lists. The value you’re going to get from a single upgrade die will only rarely outweigh the benefit you gain from making sure one of your characters doesn’t take damage to the face.

Usually you’re only avoiding about 2 Damage with removal — and hey, that’s fine! But sometimes your opponent rolls two blanks and Feel Your Anger ruins their round. Sometimes your opponent hits 3 Melee on Vader and has a +3 Melee on their Ancient Lightsaber, so your Isolation prevents 6 or more damage and forces a reroll. These are the plays that win tight games and if you play your upgrade before you have the extra resources for removal, you’re going to lose more games of Destiny than you should.

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Abandon Your Sister

by Pearl Yeti

This deck evolved from my take on Kylo2/FN-2199: low upgrade count with a focus on control with a splash of choke. Your five starting dice have no paid sides, in direct contrast to many of the popular decks in the meta like Kylo2/FN and Cad/Phasma. Because of this I enjoy kicking off the game with Abandon All Hope and halting any round one ramp my opponent drew into. Abandon All Hope is even better if you draw a Truce – your opponent begins the game with no resources but at least you have one.

The upgrade suite leans to the cheap side and is there to push out speed, damage, survivability and control in equal measure. In an ideal world you know where the damage is going before you place your first upgrade, but don’t sweat it if you put an X-8 on Jango or an ID9 on Sister and then have your opponent go after the upgraded character first. In that case, you’ll just want to overwrite that upgrade with a timely Ancient Lightsaber or Force Illusion.

The event suite makes use of some of my favorite cards in the pool: Abandon All Hope, Relentless Pursuit and Truce.

Abandon All Hope isn’t just an opening game gimmick, it is a very strong defense against the paid damage coming at you from across the table as well as the only way to effectively fight Thrawnkar’s build-up to a Crime Lord or a big Buy Out.

Truce pairs fantastically with the Disrupt sides on Sister and her Droids – with the flexiblity given by its Ambush you can either use it to pay for an X-8 resolution, a just-in-time Feel Your Anger, or just to save up for a rainy day without rewarding your opponent when you’ve got a dice out with Disrupt to take away your opponent’s resource.

Last is Relentless Pursuit, a card I never see other players running and always hits people as a surprise when it comes out of hand. The current meta is filled with cards that deal damage to your own characters – a glance at the Australian National Top 8 lists shows that every single one of them has either Enrage or The Best Defense. These cards are used on what your opponent assumes is the secondary target, putting damage on the board that they think they can deal with later. This is where Relentless Pursuit shines, moving over an Enrage damage or two The Best Defense damage over to the primary target. It can also be used to get around strong cards like Dug In and Force Illusion – just put a couple of damage on the secondary target and then the next action move it over to defeat the primary target.

Most importantly with this deck: have fun! Because of the (often wonky) card choice this deck plays differently than any other in the meta.

If you’re low on some of the Legendaries in this deck, swap them out for similarly costed upgrades like Vibroknife or Holdout Blaster. If you take out Force Speed I recommend replacing it with All In to keep up this deck’s tempo.

Sweet Suite Sister

by XeroHour

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My version of Jango/Seventh Sister utilizes a Holocron Suite for both damage and control. It also incorporates a few weapons to help Jango be lethal in the absence of Sith Holocron. LL-30 is just an all around amazing weapon and great in this deck. If Jango goes down first, the LL-30 can redeploy to 7th Sister and you can overwrite it with a more useful ability like Force Push or Force Throw. All In has won me so many games since both the Holocron and the ID9 Seeker Droids have Focus sides. When you get three ID9 dice out, that Focus side becomes extremely lethal with All In. My deck seems to focus a bit more on control than Pearl Yeti’s or Lasci’s variants. When I play Blue/Yellow Villain, I tend to gravitate more towards the control suite of cards. Out of all the Empire at War decks I have played with so far, this one is by far the one I’ve had the most fun with. Not only because I tend to win a lot with it, but I just find the ebb and flow of the game to be exciting with Jango and 7th Sister’s abilities. Starting the game with five dice is a great advantage and one that makes 7th Sister very lethal. Add in Jango’s ability to activate and resolve and you get some crazy consistent damage.

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