July 11, 2019

About a week ago, I wrote about potential changes to old decks using new cards from Spark of Hope. We are now almost one whole week past the release of Spark of Hope and content creators, competitors, and casual players alike are diving head first into deck construction. Trying new things and shaking up the meta is, after all, one of the most exciting parts of a new set in any collectible card game. Whether you are an experienced deck build or a novice, new toys are fun!

In my article last week, I ended my musings with ideas to update Palpatine-Wat, and that was one of the first decks I began working on and testing when Spark of Hope released. For reference, here was my pre-SoH list:

Convergence Palpatine-Wat

The list was not quite standard, but everyone has their own take, and that was mine. It was designed primarily to go all in on pre-nerf Force Storm as an aggro deck.

There were two primary reasons I was excited to tweak Palpatine-Wat. Primarily, Spark of Hope brought four new abilities that The Emperor could take advantage of:



(Not pictured above is Ancient Magicks because it is not something I’d ever consider for Palpatine in Standard).

Mastermind and the two Niman Cards were very appealing to me for Palpatine. They are all cheap and all have useful sides and special effects; the focus (and special chaining) potential of the Niman cards in particular appeared to be very synergistic with other abilities like Force Storm or Force Wave.

The other reason I was interested in giving Emperor Palpatine a new look was because I was intrigued by a new character that could fit in the 12 pt Red Villain slot: Conan Motti.

Wat is a very efficient support character because he sports two focus sides and two resource sides. However, his special ability was wasted in the Palpatine decks of old – even if you ran Vader’s Fist, Wat doesn’t interact with it. On the other hand, Motti’s ability can turn any card in your hand into free mitigation and would almost certainly always be helpful.

But before we can talk about what we want the deck to look like, we have to talk about what we want the deck to do.

The Basics of Deck Design

Whenever you build a deck, whether from scratch or modifying an older deck, the first question you should ask is: What is my win condition? I could write a whole article on win conditions in card games – and for anyone interested, I’m sure there are many articles out there. However, here is the triage version.

In Destiny, generally you win by either defeating each of your opponent’s characters or milling out your opponent’s deck. While either of those options are your literal win conditions, that is not what we’re talking about here. The win condition I’m referring to is the board state, combo, or trigger that ensures that you win the game.

For some decks, like a Middle-Middle deck, it may be when both of your characters survive long enough to get multiple upgrades each so that you can out tempo your opponent. For others, like a hero vehicle build, it may be surviving until Round Four so that you’ve amassed your fleet of vehicles and can simply overwhelm the opponent with your dozen+ dice. In an aggro deck, like Vader or Phasma, it may mean killing an opponents key character by early second round. With a mill deck, it may be limiting your opponent from developing their board state through Round 3.

With that in mind, what is Palpatine’s win condition?

Palpatine attains galactic dominance by ramping his board state and becoming an unstoppable killing machine. He wants to be both the unstoppable force and the immovable object, and he does this by building up his offensive power and health via ability upgrades.

The First Revision

This was my first draft at bringing Palpatine into the brave new world of Spark of Hope. As you can see, I added in Motti in order to give him a go, and also swapped in a couple of new abilities, namely Mastermind and Niman Mastery. You’ll also notice I have some oddball stuff in there like Cultural Records. This truly was a first (and rough) draft, and I wanted to test out new cards in general as much as refine the deck.

I quickly discovered a few things. Cultural Records didn’t work at all towards my win condition and slowed me down too much. Two Crash Landings and two The Best Defense… were too much to play a longer game in a post-Force Storm nerf world because Motti can only have so much damage shoveled to him. And, though I had a cheaper upgrade package than before, Palp’s health still didn’t seem to ramp as fast as I felt it could.

I didn’t test for too long with this build because I knew it wasn’t where it needed to be. So, with the above observations in mind, we went to version two.

Palpatine 2: The Emperor Strikes Back

I think this may have been my second most tested version, but before I get into that let’s look at the changes I made. As I addressed above, Cultural Records was not cutting it, so that came out. I also added Niman Trainings to help get Palpatine ramped faster. With the deck now moving toward a more long-term game plan, I also added in two bacta therapy – which would also synergize with having more low cost abilities hit the board earlier. My final addition was two Mega-Blaster Troopers. With both Motti and Palpatine being leaders, the ability is always turned on, and I was hoping that they would provide a way for Motti to close out the game if Palpatine went down. Finally, I also added additional removal pieces in two copies of A Sinister Peace to capitalize on playing a longer game.

As I mentioned, I got to jam quite a few games with this version, and quickly began to learn some things. Megablaster never felt good to invest resources in. and drawing both was a killer. That problem was exacerbated by running Motti over Wat, who would have had two resource sides. And, on the subject of Motti, I found that his upsides were not making up for the loss of Wat.

Motti is great because two of his dice sides not only rip a card from your opponent’s hand, but also create free removal for you – in other words,he creates both value and tempo with a quasi-action cheat (remove and discard at the same time). The problem was that his two discard side cost a resource and rarely felt good to resolve – I’d usually rather have either saved the resource, or played a more efficient one cost removal card and used his die to focus or make my money back. Additionally, there were times where the discard sides sat there because there was nothing for me to remove, or alternatively didn’t come up when I needed the free removal. At the end of the day, I decided the consistency of Wat was more valuable than the high roll potential of Motti.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

That brings us to this version. Ever since FFG revealed Admiral, the Destiny community has been abuzz. Admiral gives the potential to reset a character twice in one round, for a grand total of three activations. That is extremely powerful, especially with a heavy-hitting character. And, while it does boast a Leader-only play restriction, the ruler of the galaxy is indeed a leader.

Admiral proved to lived up to its hype. Any time I triple activated Palpatine I won. Sometimes, it only took one reset. And, given how expensive the on-play reset can be, it is a good thing that you can get value out of just the special. On top of that, your Niman package can help chain to the special.

You will notice I made a few other changes too. I changed back to Wat. I dropped the ineffective Mega Blasters. For space concerns, I cut the A Sinister Peaces. I also had to drop one of the two Niman Masteries to make room. That was a tough cut, but since Palpatine can only equip one at a time it was the choice I made.

To compensate for the loss of Mega Blasters, I did add a Vader’s Fist to give Wat a way to close out a game and to add a bomb beyond my two Force Storms. Finally, I added in a Separatist Embargo, which I believe to be a strong card. It can lockout your opponent’s strongest plays or cards. Just as importantly, if you are the aggressor you can always use it to stop them from locking you out by calling itself.

The Prognosis

The core of the deck is solid. However, like any good deck doctor, I am going to continue to refine it. In fact, I’ve already made a couple of changes. I cut the You Are in Command Now as it needed to be drawn at the right time and usually felt dead. In its place, I put in a second Separatist Embargo to help protect my game plan – though ultimately I may cut to one or even zero, depending on the meta. I also decided that I did need more removal, so I put the A Sinister Peaces back into the deck in place of the Masterminds. I like what they do and appreciate them being one resource abilities. However, I realized that A Sinister Peace will cost zero to save two+ health; Mastermind gives one health and a die that is not offense-oriented for one resource.

Remember though, the takeaway from this article should not be whether or not Palpatine-Wat is Top Tier, or if my list is the optimal version (it probably isn’t). But, I’m hoping walking you through the basics of the deck refining process will inspire you to improve your own builds!

WRITTEN BY:

MOOPHISTO

