Hi there Star Wars Destiny fans! Sugi here with another deck all about MILL!!!

This deck idea was born from a Tampa Trilogies tournament we are going to play this weekend at a bar. Simple and clean, this is going to be a fun tournament with friends and playing whatever decks we want. Of course I want to play something that deals little to no damage and forces my opponents to suffer. The standard Trilogies mill list is Yoda/Jedha/Jedha and it has done well for a deck type with limited options (since we only have 1 set to pull from at the time of this article). What I wanted to do was push the deck a little bit harder and find a way to help sustain against bigger decks that can kill fast.

Take A Look, It’s In A Book….

The first idea I had was adding Red to the deck. Trilogies games last a bit longer than standard games do. With less of Seventh Sister, Ancient Lightsaber, Seeker Droids, Leadership, Never Tell Me The Odds and so on, your characters stay on the table a few turns longer. With Talzin leading the charge for aggro decks I wanted to counter her consistency with sustain effects. Rose and Clone Trooper were the only characters that would slot in with the established eYoda/Jedha team comp. I did consider eYoda/Lobot/JarJar (and I might pursue that list on a later date), but it didn’t do exactly what I was looking for in a Mill/Choke deck. Rose became a clear cut winner for this current list because she has 2 special sides that help ramp my economy and keep supports like Bubble Shield and Suppression Field online longer. Rose also adds +1 HP to the overall team comp and I feel that’s important.

Another thing I quickly began to focus on was finding dice that choked out the opponent’s economy, this means I want more discard and disrupt symbols. Rose has all of those things on her character die and I was very excited. If I need resources I can use her special side or even special chain into it with Yoda. Her discard and disrupt are also very welcome rolls to help slow down my opponent and keep my characters online longer.

Reading Rainbow

Something we saw in early R2P2 decks was the ability to create damage on your side of the board and remove it at an equal pace OR outpacing damage dealt with shields and healing. R2P2 did more than just that but the sustainability was a factor of the deck I always loved because it helped keep you alive longer and essentially slow down the opponent’s plans and keep your deck on pace to win. This is a form of removal that’s not clearly cut as compared to a card like Easy Pickings but in my head Caution essentially says “remove 1 die to block up to 3 damage”. Now I understand that is not as simple as Easy Pickings where you pay a cost and resolve an effect. However in game terms of damage VS health, Caution gives you 3 shields in trade for 1 die. Those shields essentially block 3 damage and keeps your team alive longer. Cards Like Lightbow, Frighten and Intimidate do make those shields less effective compared to an actual removal event, but if you can read the table right those 3 shields should do their job with little mitigation messing things up.

Adding Red into a mill deck gives me options I want to explore and trying to push the life of the team as long as I can is a fun challenge. Medical Droid has been a support some people love and others don’t. In early R2P2 decks we saw this making the cut and helping swing games with that 1 heal special effect. However it fell out of favor for other cards like Field Medic with a guaranteed healing effect when you need it as opposed to a 2 in 6 chance. I never stopped wanting to play this support but it was unreliable and without a consistent means of healing, it was more of a novelty play than a necessary one. As I began to look at the cards available in Trilogies I started to see how this droid could actually become way more reliable with Yoda and his infamous special chaining. 1 resource is easy to create with Yoda and Rose plus being able to flip specials into specials means a much much more reliable way to heal 1 damage and essentially remove the effectiveness of opponent’s dice. This is a card I’m excited to play with and see if it will perform the ways I hope it does since the Trilogies format is slower compared to standard.

Suppression Field and Bubble Shield work well as removal and have potential combo plays with Rose. These cards help deal with big plays when you don’t draw removal or can’t afford to play them. Indirect damage is very common in the Trilogies set and these cards help deal with big values like 3 indirect from Veteran Trooper, Saw and Finn. Rose can also heal damage off the supports if you roll or flip into her special so that is an added bonus in getting value from these supports. Are they game defining? No, but they are adding sustain to the deck which means more cards milled, characters staying on the table longer and a higher chance of you winning games.

Mend is probably the flex slot in Red for now. I like paying 2 resources to heal 3 off a character OR support. The clear target is healing the 3 damage off a character but having the option is useful, especially when you can keep Suppression Field around longer to keep eating more dice your opponent rolls. This is replacing the Field Medic slot since that card hasn’t been reprinted in the Legacies block yet (and might never be) but it offers solid healing and Yoda/Rose helps offset that cost with their resource producing specials.

Law and Order is a one of so I can deal with the inevitable Maul’s Lightsaber or Obi-Wan’s Lightsaber plays. Those two cards eat me alive with either massive damage from the +4 or Obi’s Saber creating unblockable damage. Those big numbers are hard to deal with and make quick work of my team so I NEED a card to deal with those bombs. Other cards I am using this against would be Vibrocutlass and Force Meditation in the mirror match. I know I might not see this card when I need it, but I want at least one silver bullet in the deck to help against certain matchups so I can slow down those burst damage decks long enough to get the win.

Roll The Dice

I am running 7 upgrades in total and these three are the best means to keep your opponents on the defensive based on the card pool, at least that’s what I believe. When I went through all the upgrades I wanted cheap cards so I could play removal over and over each round. Then I began to see that without dice to help mill/choke I couldn’t win fast enough and damage would eventually outpace me. So now what was I supposed to do? I had an idea after the new “Way of the Force” spoilers and Bo-Katan was revealed. Facebook sparked an idea after we all discussed the Hero Crime Lord deck, I needed to disrupt resources with my mill deck. Decks in Trilogies are in dire need of resources and if I can steal them or destroy them faster than my opponent can spend them, I should have a strong advantage. With this in mind I looked for ways to eat cards and resources while removing dice and just being an annoyance.

Roguish Charm came into the mix after having that idea sparked. 1 disrupt, 1 discard, 1 resource. Those die faces fulfill everything I want from the deck and an upgrade. Stop the opponent from paying for cards, remove cards from the hand or make money to pay for my cards. This was perfect since it had all the stuff I wanted to do and then the special was icing on the cake. Die removal from events is nice, but being able to threaten die removal on the board and from hand feels nasty. Yoda can help special chain into this card as well with the proper sequencing. But the beauty of this effect is how you can remove a die and potentially gain resources too. Resistance bombers beware! But the die on Roguish Charm has everything this decks wants, choke/mill/ramp/removal.

Bartering is probably one of the most useful utility 1 drop upgrades in Legacies and this deck can absolutely use it to hurt people. 1 focus is good, when you need to get that special or discard you can do it without spending cards. Focus has always been a good die face but decks like mine that want to use all the cards really appreciate dice than can help create consistency with a good roll. 1 discard is pretty standard for what we are trying to do. The 1 resource and +1 modified resource are great, more ramp means playing more cards. The special is what’s really neat here. Your die essentially has 3 resource sides, 2 base and 1 modified (but that’s not really an issue) which means more money more consistently. The special is neat because it is forcing your opponent to draw a card which takes 1 card off the top and reduces the number of cards you have to get rid of. Yes your opponent gets more options, more rerolls and they could not discard the newly added at the end of the turn. Ok, these are all true statements but you also are getting cards out of the deck, you are flooding their hand with cards they might not be able to afford and if they pitch to reroll you can still remove those dice. This card is not perfect but it does what you need, get cards out of the deck. Putting cards from deck into hand is the worst place to move 1 card, but moving those cards is the primary goal so you’re still accomplishing what you want. You have to prepare to deal with what’s in the opponent’s hand, but your deck has the tools to do that better than any.

Rebellion Leader is a fun card I always wanted to play but never saw a way to do that. After adding in Rose I saw that I was able to consistently make resources with Yoda chaining into Rose and boom easy money. A turn 1 Rebellion Leader is NO joke because those die sides are pretty insane early game. 2 indirect we don’t honestly care about so i just reroll or focus that die side to something else. 2 and 3 focus is good, really good. 2 discard is going to be your best way to pressure the opponent and just chew through their hand. 3 shields is by far the strongest defensive side here because you can fully protect one of your characters and that’s important for mill decks. 2 resources? YES PLZ! All the die faces are good on this card but the power action is also very useful because you can remove and opponent’s die showing the same symbol as one of yours. So that Boba Special? How about the Veteran trooper 3 indirect? The power action isn’t perfect but it does put pressure on the opponent and with so many different symbols across your dice, this should proc more often than not.

The upgrade suite is really weird compared to standard lists but I believe that these die faces are impactful and very synergistic with what I want to do, slow you down to a crawl and remove all your options. I am excited to keep testing these in Tampa and beyond because this deck is a lot of fun to play and has a lot of flexibility in any given situation.

Have Fun

After working on this list and tweaking it over and over, I am really excited to give this a go Sunday. I don’t think I’m going to stop playing this after Sunday either. Testing has been good and the deck has plenty of options to deal with threats and dice that can really hurt. The characters have plenty of strong points and each of them brings value to the table. What I love most is how you can switch from one character to another if someone dies. The upgrades and supports work well together and you have three strong threats on the table starting out turn 1. This deck is complicated to pilot because with so many options, you have to know which ones are more useful in the current situations presented to you. I do think this is a lot of fun to pilot and can recommend to any mill player. For those asking if this is better than the Blue/Yellow list out there, I don’t know if this is better. I didn’t build this list to compete with the Yoda/JarJar/Jedha or Yoda/Jedha/Jedha list. i built this to be my own mill list and to play how I want to play so if this becomes popular that was not my intent.

The event coming up is supposed to be two communities coming together, playing Destiny and talking trash. This is not a deck I built to maximize the fullest competitive values of all the cards in the Trilogies card pool. This is a deck I built to play against friends and have a good time. By no means does that mean I’m going to go easy on them, but why play games if you’re not having fun? I love mill decks and anyone who knows me should be fully aware of what decks I play and how i want to win games. And that’s something I want to encourage to anyone reading this. Have fun! Yes you can win games and win prizes and swag. But at the end of the day I love spending time with friends, fellow players and Star Wars fans. Once games are over we still spend hours talking, laughing and making new memories. That’s why I play Destiny (and games in general), the people. I don’t remember my wins as much as I remember meals afterwards, snaking a booster box, cube drafting or just shooting the breeze after regionals. Winning games can be fun and that’s fine but I find these friendships to be most valuable to me personally. Meeting so many people and creating community is so much cooler to me than a spot gloss because I now have friends for years past any specific game and I am eternally grateful for that opportunity.

-Sugi