Going into Worlds there’s one question on everyone’s mind… are there going to be any nerfs or buffs? I honestly don’t know if there will be any. There’s a chance a product will be released on Force Friday like the 2 Player Starter was released many moons ago but that’s the only chance they will have at injecting new cards into the metagame.

HonestlySarcastc pointed out the following in our podcast last week – if you nerf droids the only viable hero deck is Ewoks (and Reylo but I’m not counting that). Right now the hero/villain balance is pretty good but the percentage of Hero decks that are droids is pretty unbalanced.

I’m never in favor of uncalled for nerfs and unfortunately I’d agree that if you nerf droids too much it is just going to be a sea of Villains: Aphra and Jabba Supports. I looked at the Standard Holocron and the only character that could be re balanced back is Phasma which would only help Villains. I wouldn’t hate putting Phasma back to her printed cost since it would make me take a second look at chrome dome – this would help overall diversity but if you care about the villain/hero balance it will only helps the dark side of diversity.

Sadly the next set won’t be available and the solution of just adding more cards to the format isn’t viable…or is it?

BOLD PREDICTION TIME!

If there isn’t a product for us to purchase to shake up worlds I foresee that FFG will be extending their re-balancing to characters that currently aren’t good enough. Just like they did with Infinite and what FFG does with X-Wing, why not just have the points on the characters be a little more mutable?

With Hero representation being somewhat homogeneous I’m going to suggest 6 Hero Characters that I would love to see reduced.

1. Rose, Skilled Mechanic

Rose is completely overshadowed by C3PO and Satine. Because she has a special side that makes resources she works well with Aayla and not with C-3POs ability. Even if you make her an 8/10 she still might not see play but certain cards like Bubble Shield get even better.

2. Finn, Soldier of Necessity

I don’t love the idea of re balancing Legendary cards as it creates a supply problem for any player who skipped on Legends that were bad but Finn has never seen any kind of competitive play outside of maybe Trilogy. You could easily shave 1 point and it might not matter but if they did 2 It would certainly be playable or at the very least interesting. I like the idea of injecting some life into middle/middle decks and that would certainly do it.

3. Mace Windu, Inspiring Master



Mace is almost playable and you know what? I want to see him at 15. This might be dangerous but it opens things up a little with plots and 15 point characters. Playing him with the new Rey would certainly be something worth trying. Reylo is currently the only playable middle/middle deck because it is able to kill a character quickly. Unfortunately Mace and other partners have a hard time with that. Mace and Aayla don’t have the same synergy as Reylo, and Mace with Amidala doesn’t deal direct damage fast enough.

4. Wedge Antilles, Squad Leader

First off, Wedge needs to have the subtype leader as it’s literally in his name. Reducing him to 14 seems reasonable although I’m still not sure he would be playable. At 13 elite It gets real interesting, I think that’s where I’d want to see him at so he makes a splash.

5. Saw Gerrera, Extremist Leader

Again, I don’t love re-balancing legendary cards but Saw’s special is so unique that i would love to see him in competitive play. At 14 we would get a character at great value that would punish big support metas. I think Saw still has the chance to not be playable even at 14 and of all the reductions of 2 I have suggested I feel this one would be fine.

6. Bo-Katan Kryze, Deathwatch Lieutenant

Bo might be the most over costed hero character – PALPATINE IS CHEAPER THAN HER. Making her 18 elite would probably still make her unplayable but at least you could have some interesting 4 dice starts. A reasonable buff for her is 19 since at 18 she just surges by a whole bunch of other hero characters but its no surprise that big/little decks are also not represented, if you want to have those deck types represented you need to make big characters better.

Additional Thoughts on Diversity

In order to have a diverse metagame organized play would be wise to give additional incentives to players who bring different character line-ups. There are a few ways they can go about this. The first off is giving good prizes to top finishers that have a certain theme. These themes can be based on the current set or movie Star Wars is promoting. Imagine some sweet looking playmat with a bunch of Bounty Hunters given to the top finisher of a character line up with 2 or more Bounty Hunter characters. This sort of thing would appeal to a certain kind of player who may not really care about winning the tournament but they do like the idea of winning a playmat that might be a bit easier to win than the whole event. The important thing is that these prizes need to be good otherwise no one will care. The downside to this is it would be hard to predict what would be underrepresented. Say in the previous example instead of Bounty Hunters it turned out to be droids, that would certainly make the tournament even more Droid-centric.

Another option is one done in other games like Legends of the Five Rings and Universal Fighting System (now known and UniVersus). In those games their top X’ing system only allows for each archetype to occupy one spot – L5R does it by houses and UFS does it by starting character. It would be a little messier in Destiny because you have decks with some of the same characters but they play out differently. I think the best way is to say that 50% or more of your points have have to be different to be considered a different archetype. You would have ways to cheat this a little but you would generally be playing a sub-optimal version of another archetype. The most strict way would be to have no characters being the same but that feels insanely restrictive – not all FOST decks are created alike. Implementing this would change how you would prepare for the event and what you would decide to play. Would you play droids knowing that there’s only one slot available for droids players? I think most people would change their deck choice if this is how top cut was decided. I would certainly be playing something wacky every time without feeling like it was hindering me.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. I hate the idea of FFG nerfing R2 and C3PO since many of us have spent time/money collecting them. If you nerf them its going to be a mostly villain metagame. Since we won’t have new cards for worlds buffing old cards would be a fine solution to make Worlds more interesting. I honestly don’t hate this metagame and feel that there is still plenty to work on even with droids in the metagame. There are some other creative options for increasing deck diversity that wouldn’t affect card pools but would just incentivize the use of other decks. Whatever FFG chooses to do I hope they do it quick since I want to know what format I’ll be preparing for.

Take care and as always…

May the BUFFS be with you…

It’s dangerous to go alone, take this BUFF with you-NJCuenca