Luke Skywalker, Reluctant Instructor is clearly a pushed character from a stats perspective. He’s versatile, resilient and has an ability that can give you additional value when you are rolling hot or he can make sure the ability investment you made on him will not be wasted. The biggest question isn’t will he be good but more so in what capacity.

Last week we built with Snoke in mind but even though Luke is more expensive he’s even harder to build with because the hero and melee cards are just better. As a whole, blue abilities are just worse than melee weapons but perhaps his ability will give us just the right amount of incentive to move us into that direction. Enter in Force Wave.

This is the card that makes me go YES! I want to be doing that. I want to be resolving two Force Waves in a turn. If that seems like overkill you’d be wrong. Sometimes people have an answer for one Force Wave but two? Not so much.

This was the first deck I built and I really wanted to push the blue abilities move Power Action. Luke’s Training is a fantastic card as you can use your blue ability card for a reroll and then play it which is slow but value. Once you can’t use Wave anymore you can swap it out for either a Mind Probe or a One with the Force. People will generally go for Yoda which makes the whole moving over a Force Wave from Luke to Yoda a risky proposition. This is why I’ve favored One with The Force over Mind Probe because of that added value assurance – overwriting after using Wave with OWTF, Dagger of Mortis or even Ezra’s Lightsaber will make sure that your hard earned dollars won’t be wasted.

The big problem is besides Force Wave and the occasional Mind Probe play the deck feels a little under powered and clunky. As of now I’ve gone about 4-2 with the deck and I’m sure the card choices aren’t perfect since the list of playable blue and gray cards is long. Building mono blue Luke decks will give you nightmares and if you decide to include another color you can forget about sleeping altogether.

Yellow Cards Are Too Dank

Although I haven’t completely shelved Luke/Yoda I wanted to move on for now. I decided I wanted another color and since I wanted to try new cards I decided to try a Luke/Maz Built to Last deck.

While big dick energy is generally overpowered this was not. I don’t think this duo is necessarily bad but this list is. My immediate thoughts after the couple of games I played were to cut Maz’s Vault, Hyperspace Jump, Truce and Zeb Orrelios’ Bo-Rifle. The first three need to be cut because you aren’t fast enough to abuse them and the third is because even with Redeploy the Rifle isn’t good enough. Paying 3 for 1 is fine but we can do better and having a weapon that is modifier makes your opponents Force Illusions even better unless you pay one which at that point you might be trading a 3 for 1 for their illusion but the choice is there’s. Other issues with it include that you can’t use Maz’s ability to resolve it – which is a big part of the power of the deck; and +2s and 2 for 1s are kind of poop from a three cost weapon. Renewed Purpose seemed like a great add with all the resources we’d be generating but because I was giving resources to my opponent I wasn’t overwhelming them like I thought I would.

This deck suffers from a low health secondary character and Maz’s dice stink since we aren’t focusing into anything terribly exciting. If you are looking into yellow character’s I’d consider Cassian and Hondo. If you are into the whole Dark Saber thing Hondo is where it’s at!

Red Alert!

Rounding out the colors we have red. The partner that stood out to me the most was Poe because they are both excellent characters from a pure point perspective. We give up on Luke’s ability but we have two tanky characters with great dice and an extra color.

One of the big issues with the deck is that there isn’t a great battlefield for it. I kind of like Citadel Landing Zone since it gives you an incentive to claim while not being completely insane if you are behind in claim speed, our starting dice are very solid making rerolling two dice a positive proposition. On turns you have Defensive Position going into the next round you will have a little extra incentive to claim. I think you generally want to take the shields and put them on Poe. Making those Hit and Runs live for as long as possible is key. Having your lowest health character be 12 is going to cause headaches once you draw a Force Illusion. While I think Pacify hype is a little overblown Suppressive Fire is the real deal. Being able to stop the best Thrawn or Cad Bane dice before Snoke can resolve them is going to be tight.

The big question is: Is this better than R2P2 or P2Aayla? I think so because of the higher chance to win the roll off, better starting dice (Aayla’s are arguably better though) and higher health. If you are a fan of very good fair decks you could do much worse.

Are You Still Feeling Blue?

Luke will mostly likely be at his best with another blue character. I might just do a whole article on pairings with just blue characters. Look at this group!

A few of them might seem odd but with the point increase to Aayla you have to at least consider Kanan (I won’t fault you if you don’t). Rey1 will come with Profitable Connections making her an interesting sleeper character. Rey2, Aayla and Yoda are all proven characters and you’ll see any of those at your next store champs while the lists get flushed out. I’m slightly interested in trying Ezra2 with Luke since building with him won’t be as intuitive. Ezra does suffer from a lack of health but his power action might prove to be better than we think.

Ezra’s ability goes perfectly with Built to Last since it will give you a better chance of hitting unique upgrades and having an extra card will be great for using Destiny. Renewed Purpose doubles down on that and it might be overkill but drawing 3 cards for 1 is just value. All that extra draw will get us to honed skills making a 4 upgraded character a scary proposition. The removal and upgrade suit will be the hardest part of all of this but this deck has a clear plan and great synergy. I love Pacify in this deck because we can use bad Ezra dice to protect himself and we have buttloads of shield hate with Shotos, Dagger of Mortis and unblockable damage if we want to use this on opposing dice. I’m trying this deck out tonight at my local store, wish me luck!

Thanks for reading! Where do you think Luke will shine? Let us know in the comments or on social media. Take care and as always…

Always wear a shirt, especially if you are at home and its hot.

@NJCuenca

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