Christmas / Winter Vacation is sadly on it’s way out and our short intermission during Regional season is coming to a close. It is now time to get back into the swing of things and focus on what matters the most. Glory! and how to best arrive there. As many of us are aware, there is a great evil lurking about and he is Wanted….

That is roughly what is on most players agendas currently and to be quite frank, it’s a tough one to accomplish whilst also not putting yourself in precarious situations against other decks. What we’re going to go over today are some cards that can be helpful against the Vader match whilst still being useful in other ones. Vader’s Card for those that don’t have it handy or memorized.

Introducing My Little Friend

Feel free to call me Captain Obvious for this one. It’s the only actual mitigation that removes his die without him being able to power action it back. Don’t argue semantics with Improvised Defense either, because then we’re introducing the element of stupidity into the equation.

Backstabbing like a Boss

Double-Cross has a high cost to it, but due to Vader’s high value sides, you’ll often be pretty content with any of the sides you get to resolve from his die. 2 Resource and this becomes a pseudo He Doesn’t Like You and everything else ends up being at least a “4 damage” swing in that you’ve prevented 2+ damage / shields and gained 2+ damage / shields which ends up being close enough to linear in cost. Not the normal actual cost, but much cheaper than the actual cost to stop a new Vader die.

Suiting Up

Man do I not love this card, but villain is a barren wasteland of viable options for trying to stem the bleeding. 1 Resource + 1 Card = 2 damage right. If Vader resolves a 2 Melee side, it’s the equivalent to removing that die, so there isn’t much that we can ask for. It’s lesser against the bigger damage sides, but once again, could we have mitigated his die twice, not likely.

I NEED A MEDIC!!!!

Healing took a back seat for quite a while as we all wanted to get maximum efficiency and try to stop 3+ damage for 1 Card + 1 Resource. It’s time for it to return in the form of Field Medic. If you have a high priority target like Jyn and multiple red characters that are likely to be targeted, Rebel Engineer maybe, then you can get away with First Aid which is a blowout if you get to heal 4 in Round 1.

S.H.I.E.L.D.

What is as good as health? “Effective Health!” is what we tend to call things that are like health, but not really health. Getting shields can often be done at / near the end of the round to setup for the subsequent round. Be sure to not start jamming shields on your characters before you take some damage unless you actually wanted your opponent to switch targets before they even got started.

Call Me Maybe

Super situational, but potentially devastating is how I like to view these two. Sensor Placement only works on 2 of Vader’s die sides, but if you find the resource one then it become a 0 cost remove his die which is pretty brutal there. Anger is the hands down winner for pure value gained if you get to use it on any of the Vader damage, 0 for 4-8 damage is obscene.

A Forgotten Friend

There are a whole lot of people not running Blue right now and that means not being able to run what is arguably the best piece of mitigation in the game. If you can pack this and aren’t running two, you may need to have your head checked out. I played Lando Wedge at the NH Regional and it was the first time these had stayed unsleeved since the Vibroknife nerf happened I think.

Until Next Time

There are probably several other cards that I haven’t thought about / considered, but these are the ones that I’ve been thinking about. You’ll notice that I didn’t entertain the thought of any of the cards that change die sides and that is because in a game where you can discard to reroll, I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on those. I hope I’ve been some help to you as you try to survive the onslaught of the Boogeyman. Feel free to leave your thoughts or other cards that were missed in the comments, until next time!

~HonestlySarcastc

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