We did our take (red, blue, yellow) on these characters before but these are specifically my thoughts after I’ve played with these characters for a bit. Since most decks are raw right now I didn’t want to focus on the decks but more so on the characters that I’ve been working on. There will be some decklists of course because they are always fun to look at but since swdestinydb won’t publish decklists before the release that won’t be the focus.

Yoda, Wizened Master

Man is he good. Yoda is the antenna to your router, the engine in your car and your machine that mines Bitcoin. The hype is real! BWWAAA! BWA! BWA! BWA! BWA! BWWAAAaaa

Well, he’s at least better than Kanan which makes him an obvious partner to Qui-Gon. He doesn’t produce damage by himself but he’s a better enabler and has a more consistent die. From a pure damage perspective your nut draws are higher with Kanan but Yoda plays better defense and synergises with Qui-gon better. When you’re hitting the special and the 2 focus side he’s allowing your other dice to be on their optimum side and hitting a resource side early is great. With two dice on him that means that 89% of the time Yoda is rolling straight fire.

At the beginning of the game your other characters and some small upgrades will be what you want to fix but if left for last he can add shields and almost guarantee that his upgrades will be at their most deadly. Notable late game upgrades are Obi-Wan’s Lightsaber, Handcrafter Lightbow and Luke’s Lightsaber. Given the point costs you might instinctively think killing Qui-Gon first is the right approach but when you see Yoda suited up like he’s about to fight the Hulk you might start to wonder if you were wrong all along.

Ok, that’s all specifically Yoda since trolls will be like “Article about how good Yoda is pretty helpful, NOT!”

Saw Guerrera, Extremist Leader

I don’t know about Saw. Building his deck and choosing his partners is really hard conceptually. Usually I can theorize and imagine how things will play out but with Saw I know I’ll need a bunch of testing until I can truly figure out if he’s good enough. Do you try to throw things from your hand? That seems powerful but then you have some clunky draws that have a bunch of heavy things and no interaction or they depend on emptying your hand. I don’t think using it on your opponent is correct unless you have perfect information which doesn’t happen all that often and even if you do there might not be anything big enough to be worth it. Once your opponent is aware that you have the info regarding some big card in their hand they can just discard it making that strategy unreliable. Threatening the discard once you have the info I found is pretty nice, this makes them play in a way they normally wouldn’t but that might not be good enough to be tier one. Saw is definitely the type of card I like since it really makes me think. Having a deck that primarily relies on indirect damage makes you think about the value of that. The 3 indirect damage is great while 2 isn’t the hottest early but is fine once you’re 1 versus 1. Do you reroll when you hit that 2 early? So much thinking…

I’ve currently been testing Yoda as his partner and its been interesting but the results have been mixed. It’s important to note that I found the deck I built really hard to play.

Saw Yoda or Soda as I’ll refer to it has some interesting synergies going on here and I like that we have some pretty powerful draws. Saw can be inconsistent which is why I like Yoda as the partner. This deck is slow and at times can threaten to be a mill deck especially if your opponent ever Force Illusions away a big indirect damage amount. There’s no die control here since I’m focusing heavily on synergy. Our Force Illusions, Cautions and Second Chances should buy us enough time to splash damage them to death. Notably, Double-Dealing is just ridiculous when you get it early allowing you to play all of the powerful supports.

There are a bunch of other possible pairings that I’m considering. Hera would give you red allowing you access to red vehicles, a 2 cost plot and Hera is powerful in her own right. Resolving the specials would be a lot tougher since it would be less consistent. Alternatively, you could go real deep and play Akbar and go a bit harder on the discard, this would make Saw’s discard a bit more impactful since it would do damage via Akbar’s ability when you snag your opponent’s last card. He’s pretty squishy which would make him a tempting target and his color combo doesn’t have a great way to protect him. Red does bring some interesting options and not having to build around Hera’s ability would make deck building more flexible. Akbar would make Saw’s dice more consistent via the 2 focus side and his money sides would help cast big cards but if we are talking about consistency Yoda is better. If you want to keep playing in the deep end you can pair him with Rose or Maz Kanata and a 3 cost plot. Profitable Connection seems better than Preemptive Strike but I could be wrong about that. Given a good starting hand the early extra resource translates to more damage over time. Since Saw is 16 you can play two 7 cost characters or an 8 and a Jawa (eww!) so there is plenty to try before dismissing Forest.

Tarkin, Grand Moff

Tarkin works well when you have access to a bunch of cheap dice. A one cost upgrade that would consistently do 2 indirect damage is good but consistency is an issue when you are trying to pair dice for his action ability. When dice are free then Tarkin’s ability becomes gravy. The level one pairing is Seventh Sister since she comes with an free extra die and blue has access to a couple of 0 cost dice upgrades in Force Speed and Sith Holocron. Doctor Aphra is the other partner that people seem to be excited about. Yellow has great events and her die has a discard side which will pair with Tarkin’s making that another virtual 2 damage side. Let’s not forget about her droid cheapening ability, making BT-1 cost 1 puts that card at an elite level and making Probe Droid and BB-H8 free makes those worth considering. I’ve left those decks for the masses and have been focusing on Tarkin/Phasma.

The whole premise of this deck is delaying the game until you have someone upgraded with Grand Moff, Commanding Presence and something offensive. With Grand Moff you can always get Emperor’s Throne Room and on the following turns you can start resolving the Commanding Presence and Phasma specials via the Grand Moff action ability to reliably do damage. I was trying to see if this long term benefit could be good enough and currently I don’t think so but I’ll keep working on it since this is my last draft which so happens to be my most defensive. I was having the most success when Phasma wasn’t dying quickly, I feel pretty good about any game where I can resolve her dice for 3 turns. Doing enough damage early with Phasma will let you leverage late game indirect damage into direct damage. This pairing might just be better as a guns deck without getting too cute with Grand Moff and Commanding Presence. I just really like the idea of having a recurable effect for the rest of the game but perhaps the effect isn’t worth the effort. I can get that same kind of thing from playing a fast deck with a great battlefield and New Orders. Next week I’ll have a pairing just like that once I’ve tuned it a little.

Thanks for reading and as always…

-NJCuenca

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