When I first saw Director Krennic, Death Star Mastermind and Construct the Death Star from Covert Missions I knew I would want to build a deck with both cards.

Alternate win condition decks have always been my jam and while I loath mill decks there is something about card alternate win conditions that have always seemed much more fun. Just to give you a little bit of background on my success with these kind of decks I ended up breaking a format where THREE cards in the deck I designed were banned from competitive play (EPIC LCG with Kark life win condition). In Marvel/DC VS System I also played a deck(Rigged Election, Stall out Round 5 OTK) that won with an alternate win condition. The first time I played it the deck was a huge surprise and the second time it was thought to be unplayable because the most played deck played a card that seemed to hose it(Micro Sentinels). In my testing it turned out that people had to draw both copies for it to completely crush while the first copy was beatable Anyway, I played those decks and only one time was the deck truly oppressive while the other times they had great match ups and bad match ups with some unwinnable ones. I think Construct the Death Star will have great match ups and some bad ones. I think it will be similar to mill and I have a suspicion that it will actually have a favorable match up vs mill but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Concept to Characters

At its heart this a clear example of a concept driving deckbuilding, check out my article on what that exactly means if you haven’t. Construct the Death Star is the driving force for wanting to build the deck. Krennic while being very good with CDS is not necessary to winning. I have included him because I promised to cover a new character every week and there is a good chance he is the best man for the job – I’d be surprised if he wasn’t. I did do a little bit of searching for decks without Krennic but hes reasonable at worst and optimal at best.

15 resources might seem like a lot but that will generally be 7 activations/14 resource dice. We want lots of resource sides on our dice and the dice cards we play should have a lot of resource side. On its face we’d need 8 activations but there is one card in particular that is of the utmost importance to speeding things up by one.

This is the card that will let us cheat on the number of CDS Actions we will have to take. In reality we only need to use this once to change the countdown from 8 CDS Actions to 7. 6 is mostly a pipe dream against most decks but if we ever face off against a mill deck or a deck that only does indirect damage the number will certainly be 6 if you get the plans in round 1 and get three activations by round 3. Against aggressive decks that are faster to claim my hope is that it will be the last card we play in the round and in the following round we will take another Plans Action. We will then overwriting the plans with another upgrade immediately to save resources and avoid the drawback. With that in mind I have filled the deck with lots of 1 cost upgrades/supports.

Of the enabling upgrades/supports these two and DS Plans standout as the best. Nexus seems like an auto include if we are playing blue since it will always roll a resource. Director is also another one of those cards that you can overwrite for value or just have getting you an extra Krennic or whatever red die you’d like. The deck list I have settled on looks a little something like this.

None of the other cards feel like absolute stone cold locks although Face the Enemy and Covert Mission look like they are close to it. Since I want to play a bunch cheap cards Sentinel Messenger seems like an easy include, with him comes Automated Defense, Hidden Motive, Nexus of Power and Forsaken which are all solid cards. He seems like the best man for the job because of his cost and because of what blue gives us. Some might be confused by the inclusion of Nute Gunray but he has two resource sides, can carry a Director and an Admiral and his ability could lead to a backdoor mill win condition which isn’t completely crazy given that Krennic has a 2 discard side. Admiral is far from a lock but to me it represents at least another CDS action and since Director and Admiral are titles it gets a bit better with You are in Command Now. I admit that playing it on Krennic might be too cute and risky but it could accelerate our clock enormously. In the end the cost might not be worth it and focusing on cheap upgrades/cards cards might be the way to go.

This is an example of the kind of cheap upgrades I’d like to include in my decklist. I almost included Macrobinaculars and if I decide that Admiral isn’t good enough that would be a card I would look at (Having two resource sides is almost like having two 2 damage sides in an aggro deck.) I don’t think any of them are locks but they go with our plan of overwriting for value.

This battlefield works pretty well in our deck. We have so many one costs that it’s essentially giving us another overwrite with a draw card. Its better than an overwrite since you can put in a support or place an upgrade on another character – very useful when you know where your opponent is attacking. Other options might be more powerful but our deck is almost never going to claim and this is a battlefield that our opponents won’t get much value from. I think Theed is the other battlefield I would consider since it does something round one while not being super impactful for your opponent later on. Bedu’s Lair and Comm Tower are worth considering in 2 character CDS builds but in a 3 wide deck you probably won’t be able to claim.

What About Yellow?

Watto has especially good sides for CDS and an ability that protects against blue events which are heavily played. Jabba could give us an additional card each turn while having two resource sides. Jango Fett is probably the most oddball option but he would make cards like Microbinoculars, Mandalorian Vambraces and Crytal Ball free while providing two resource sides on his dice. We can also consider Pyke Sentinel just to get the cheapest yellow character but not getting a die for 6 of your deck building points seems rough. Yellow cards like Desperate Measures, Bartering and Deja Vu could see their way into this archetype but none of them see completely necessary. The previous deck list has Nute Gunray over a yellow 8 cost character but unfortunately all the 8 cost characters are underwhelming. Elite Watto/Krennic/Fost/CDS seems like a reasonable combination worth looking into but we lose out on a bunch of great cards.

That’s where I’m at right now with this and I hope you enjoyed this article. I spent a good amount of time looking at all standard legal cards so if you think I missed any key cards please let me know in the comments or on social media. Take care and as always…

@NJCuenca

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