This series explores previous format characters and their possible applications in the new standard/infinite format. For last week’s article on Palpatine check it out here!

This and last week are all about Villains. Heroes got a lot of help in Legacies and now we live in a world where villains are behind in power level. FN-2199 previously ruled with an iron fist and its my hope to help him compete in the upcoming meta. Even if it doesn’t end up being the most competitive there are those people who just want to relive the glory days of FN. Maybe, just maybe, I’ve found something truly powerful.

FN-2199, Loyal Trooper

In the past FN didn’t need any help. Hell, you could just throw 15 weapons, 15 events and win any random tournament, he was that good. Unfortunately the rules changed and his point augmented making FN an artifact of the past. But maybe it’s time for him to re-emerge as a contender with the help of a powerful Witch and a Colt 45 drinking, kiss stealing, limousine riding, jet flying, son of a gun. WOOO!

Mother Talzin is arguably under costed and FN still does a great deal of action cheating damage which is incredibly valuable in a format full of awesome dice mitigation like Easy Pickings. There are plenty of ways to build this duo and your build might be vastly different but here’s what I’ve been playing.

My initial testing has been positive. FN, Mother Talzin and Profitable Connection make a great team. FN wants to play 3 cost upgrades, PC gives us an extra money to get us there and all of these 3s go towards a heavy odd count that makes Talzin consistent. In a previous article I talked about building with Mother Talzin and even though this is supposed to be about FN she’s a big part of what makes this deck great. I wanted to expand upon deckbuilding with her and how it applies here specifically.

Building towards her effect is both a trap and necessary. I don’t think you want to go all in on odd cards but you do need to consider more odd cards than usual if you want to trigger her ability reliably. This obviously comes at a price. Free cards let you get ahead on resources and tempo. Weapons that cost two are a mainstay of FN-2199 decks and in this list in particular one of the more powerful starts we can have is playing two 2 cost weapons on the first turn. Having said that I want to have at most a third of the deck being even. I want most if not all of the even cards to be cards that I can keep in my opening hand. A hand with a couple of 2s and a 0 cost will be great to start and will also g ive your deck a higher density of odd cards while you are playing the game. Why a third at most you may ask? This is a great question. I first looked at what I thought were the least number of 2 cost upgrades I could play and started there. I think in theory 5 is acceptable since we have the option of playing a 3 cost on the first turn but I think from a tempo perspective we want to play a 2 and a 1 cost card or play two 2 costs on turn 1. On the following turns we will generally be starting with two resource which makes having the option of two cost upgrades important. From there I wanted some resource cards that were 0 cost like Enrage and Logistics. I’m slightly down on Enrage since I think people might end up going for Talzin first. I rediscovered Mobilize in the DB and that card is perfect for this deck since its like a free resource on turn 1 which is also an odd card. If you count Mobilize that gives us 5 resource cards for the first turn. That feels about right from my experience but it might be off by one in either direction. Currently I’m thinking we can live without Enrage but one is staying in there for the time being. That gives us 9 even cards currently.

Most of this deck consists of good 1 and 3 cost cards. One cost events in particular need to be high impact cards that will grant you good tempo in exchange for your one resource. A great example of this is Feel Your Anger. It is a situationally powerful card that has synergy with Talzin. In a pinch it will do the usual 1 die for 1 resource exchange although usually the card may be better off as a re-roll. Another card and reason to go heavy on odd cards is Witch Magik. Witch Magik is less consistent when your deck isn’t full of all odd cards but the one thing I hadn’t really thought about before is that if you are playing a deck that has a few even cards you can still play it when you know that the top card is odd- activating Mother Talzin will let you know. Once you have that info you can guarantee that you will at least heal for 1 and if you build your deck correctly you will have a bigger ratio of odd to even which will make your odds of healing for 2 or 3 extremely high. If we assign values to these scenarios your expected value is worth it: 1 is an unplayable card albeit it does do something, 2 is a Field Medic which is a solid card many hero decks play, and 3 is one of the best cards in the GAME! If you play and build your deck like I am you will land on a 2 or 3 a very large percentage of the time. Its also important to note that when you do use Witch Magik you’ll know the next three cards and might be able to keep a card on top that is odd by keeping or discarding cards at the end of the round.

I’m not completely sold on a bunch of the cards here. Crystal Ball allows u s some flexibility when deciding who to Talzin, it acts as another way of fixing our dice via focus and a way to ramp up resources over a long game. That sounds pretty good but the resource generating is really slow and Imperial HQ plus all of our resource generating events are of that role and faster. Since this card will be going on Talzin the initial investment of one will be gone and we need to be sure that its better than say paying for a pay side on a die or overwriting a 2 cost upgrade with a 3. I think the fixing of dice and the knowledge of upcoming cards will be the deciding factor- I could see it being a 1 of since we never want to play 2. The weapon suit is very much up for debate. Heirloom Lightsaber is super consistent although I think its worse than all of the other 3 cost weapons. Crossguard Lightsaber is solid since one of its sides is a solid targeting 2 while sometimes being a 3, getting to that is more likely with Talzin’s ability but the modified 2 melee side can’t be resolved without the help of FN’s dice or upgrades. I went with two cost guns because they have redeploy and the modifiers are easy to pair with Talzin. A big question is how many redeploys do we need? I currently think 6 is the minimum and we are playing 8. I opted for the Ancient Lightsaber since the action ability is insane and the cost of shuffling it back in is lessened because we want to play more weapons on FN and his slots become crowded throughout the game. We could play Lightsaber Pull to get to more Ancients which would give us the ability to pull another even card from our deck if drawn first. It’s also cute to have access to the ability to shuffle your deck when you know the next card. If the next card isn’t one you want you can use the pull or if you do want it you can wait until the next turn to play it…adorable.

I apologize if this kind of turned into a mother Talzin article. FN and her work really well together but balancing both deck building constraints is incredibly thought provoking. Let me know if you think I missed any cards or if you have any further thoughts on the even to odd deck building constraint. I consider my articles to be the beginning of a conversation and I always try to respond when there is some good dialogue. Good luck this weekend and as always…

May the Cards on the Top Always be Odd…

-NJCuenca

Bonus Star Wars meme of the day!

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