Brendan Devitt is just getting his feet wet with competitive CCGs through Star Wars Destiny (unless you count the fact he regularly destroyed his 8 y/o sister at Pokémon back in Middle School). He is a huge Star Wars fan and leaped at the opportunity to get into a Star Wars themed game at the ground level. With a 17th place finish at NA champs and top 4 at Michigan Regionals, he hopes to one day join the ranks of players with finishes that actually matter.

Introduction to Trilogies – Part 1

If you haven’t looked at the Legacies and Rivals cards yet, click the respective links to follow along!

As we near the official release of Legacies there is a lot to be excited about in the world of Destiny. In addition to the slew of new cards headed our way FFG has given us multiple new formats and ways to play the game. Draft and sealed will be side events and fun and exciting options for playing Destiny but won’t make a huge initial impact on the competitive scene. The Standard format, with its two-year rotation, will be the crux of competitive play. The Trilogies format, in the form of Galactic Qualifiers, will also have a place in competitive play. Many competitive players are going to want to have a Trilogies deck that they have tested and feel comfortable sitting down for a long day of swiss play with.

The Trilogies format is going to be the fewest cards a player has to work with since the release of Awakenings and the beginning of Destiny so many people are already comparing the two and using the Awakenings meta as a starting place for what to expect when building and playing trilogies. While I believe this is an apt comparison on many levels there are some key differences. Over the next couple days I’ll be writing about what the initial Trilogies card pool has to offer and how I think that will shape the Trilogies meta.

Evaluating the Characters

The first step of any deck is selecting characters, below is a list of observations on the character availability within the format and some brief takeaways

We have more characters available to choose from than Awakenings

At the launch of Awakenings there were 24 characters total. 12 Heroes, 12 Villains. With such a small pool, potential character pairings were limited. The initial Trilogy format has far more characters to chose from than Awakenings did. Legacies itself has 29 characters to Awakenings 24. In addition to that, there are 8 characters added to the pool through the Two-Player game and Rivals (both legal in the trilogy format). This gives us a total of 37 characters. Because 5 of these characters are neutral, there are effectively 21 Heroes and 21 Villains to choose from. This gives the Trilogy format nearly double the character pool of Awakenings and far more character pairings to explore.

2. Fare thee well action-cheating characters

The Awakenings meta was dominated by action cheating characters. A significant portion of top decks were built around two characters, Jango Fett and Rey. The ability to roll dice into your pool and then to resolve dice before your opponent has a chance to respond is a powerful effect and has been prevalent across the competitive scene since launch. Trilogies will be the first time this is no longer built into any character. The Two-Player game has ensured that Tactical Mastery is still around, and Legacies introduced Three Steps Ahead, Quick Draw, and Attack Run. While there will still be decks that can roll out and resolve using these cards it won’t be an every turn mechanic of how that deck works and will return the game to a more consistent back and forth between opponents.

3. Limited low-cost character options

A huge advantage that Villains had over Heroes in the Awakenings meta was great low-cost characters. The First Order Stormtrooper and Bala-Tik provided Villain players with strong 3 or 4 character decks with a 4 dice start. Legacies has a decent selection of low cost characters and when you throw in the Jawa from Rivals there are multiple options for both Hero and Villain that provide a 5 dice start. The extra health and extra dice that 5-die decks bring to the table are strong starting point and the ability to go rainbow and just play the best cards of each color is crazy powerful, even more so when the card pool is limited. Trilogies doesn’t have any breakout low-cost characters to immediately push one of these decks to the top of the list before taking a deeper look at them in combination.

4. A Balance between damage types

The character and upgrade pool in Awakenings was much more tilted to Ranged damage over Melee. If you wanted to play melee you were playing Vader/Raider or Mono-Blue. The initial Trilogies format has a much better balance as well as introduces a third damage type through indirect damage. Just looking at character dice there are 24 melee sides, 27 ranged sides and 23 indirect damage sides across all available characters.

Characters to Watch For

Poe Dameron – All the Two-Player game characters are strong but the one I think will have the biggest place in the Trilogy meta is Poe. He comes with some of the best dice in the game and a good pool of health. Poe has already established a dominant spot in the Empire at War meta next to his Two-Player game counterpart, Rey. At 15 points the Trilogy format has a ton of new partners for deck builders to explore such as Aayla Secura, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Hondo Ohnaka, or Ketsu Onyo. With Poe and cards from the Two-Player game providing a strong and familiar start, I would expect to see plenty of Poe throughout the Trilogies format.

Mother Talzin and Aayla Secura – These opposing Blue ladies bring some very good dice and interesting abilities at a cost of only 9/12. I expect them to make solid partners for high cost characters. They can provide consistency while their partner is alive and close out games as the last woman standing. I also expect both of them would be the core of any Rainbow decks that may emerge and probably in many 3 wide decks.

Yoda – Yoda looks to be the ultimate support character and is one of the most anticipated characters of Legacies. He is our first character with no blank sides on his dice and comes with two powerful special sides. I’m not convinced Trilogies provides him with a partner that will really allow for Yoda to flourish but I doubt that will keep people from trying.

Battle Droid – At 6 cost Battle Droid provides us with the first possible ‘swarm’ deck in Destiny. With dice dedicated to dealing damage, even if it’s a small amount per dice, this could be a huge pain to deal with. The Battle droid can also fill a similar role to what the 7 cost First Order Storm Trooper did in the Awakenings meta. Having a 6 point character who provides access to Red allows a lot of flexibility when deck building. A single battle droid will often be targeted last in favor of bigger scarier characters and the consistency of damage from its dice will add up round after round.

Upgrades and Supports

Once characters are selected, the next piece of the puzzle for me is figuring out what other dice-cards to use in filling out my deck, my observations and takeaways are as such:

So many choices

The Awakenings meta had a total of 43 dice-cards to choose from (14 Villain, 14 Hero, and 15 Neutral). Legacies surpasses this with 45 dice-cards (14 Villain, 13 Hero, and 18 Neutral). Additionally, the Trilogy meta has 17 options from the Two-Player game and Rivals, 6 Villain, 6 Hero, and 5 Neutral. This bounty of options should really help in deck building. In Awakenings there were characters and decks that couldn’t reach their potential due to lack of upgrade options. I played eLeia/eAckbar for a while and one of the upgrades in the deck was Comlink. I think Comlink is crap; I did then and do now. It made it into the deck because there just wasn’t anything better for that card slot. The Trilogy meta won’t always allow for a deck to be as fine tuned as in standard play but most should be able to find a suite of upgrades that work well together.

Yellow got the short end of the stick

Rogues have gotten a lot of fun cards to play with over the past few sets and seem to consistently have many of the best events. What they didn’t get for the Trilogies format is much in the way of quality dice-cards. Yellow starts at a disadvantage by not being represented at all in the Two-Player game. Red and Blue received 12 extra dice-card options between them including three extremely powerful unique weapons: Rey’s Lightsaber, Poe Dameron’s Blaster and Captain Phasma’s Blaster. Yellow has some interesting and possibly situationally good upgrades and supports but there isn’t anything I want to build a deck around or that feels like a clear upgrade or even on par with many of the powerful yellow upgrades present in the current card pool.

Redeploy isn’t going anywhere but it’s going to cost you a little more.

When it comes to upgrades, redeploy is the strongest Keyword in the game. When new upgrades are announced the first thing I am looking for is redeploy. In the Awakening meta there were 4 upgrades with redeploy and they had an average cost of 2.25. The initial Trilogies card pool contains 5 redeploy weapons (E-11 Blaster, Vibrocutlass, Canto Bight Pistol, Rey’s Lightsaber and Vibrosword) with an average cost of 3. Additionally, there are two other weapons with conditional Redeploy (Heirloom Lightsaber and Captain Phasma’s Blaster) both of which are also 3 cost. The Trilogies format decks will benefit from so many redeploy options but with only one 2 resource redeploy weapon they are going to be harder to get on the table.

There is a solid group of neutral Gray options

In Awakenings there was a single neutral Gray weapon, the mighty Holdout Blaster. In Legacies we get 4 neutral Gray weapons (Canto Bight Pistol, Hidden Blaster, Hunting Rifle, and Stun Baton) plus 2 more options from the Rivals set (T-21 Repeating Blaster and Vibrosword). These weapons appear well balanced and I don’t expect any of them to be as ubiquitous through multiple meta like the Holdout Blaster has been. What these 6 neutral Gray weapons do is open the door for a lot of character pairings without worrying that you won’t have enough weapons to support what that deck is trying to do. The dice-cards from a character’s respective faction are going to be a strong part of a deck but these will slot in nicely when those fall short or there just aren’t enough options.

Only a few support options

Supports have had an interesting place in Destiny. They offer strong and usually consistent dice that don’t disappear when a character dies, but supports come with a higher cost and slow down a deck. Dice supports had little to no effect in the competitive Awakenings meta. I don’t think supports will be abundant in Trilogies but there are three that I think could make an impact.

Kylo Ren’s Starfighter – At 2 cost with 4 potential damage sides and a meta shaping special Kylo Ren’s Starfighter may very well be the best card in Legacies. Just the threat of sitting down across the table from a deck running it will keep most mono-colored decks at home. Getting this out on the table Turn 1 will be a huge advantage. Much like the Mind Probe special of Awakenings it not only can deal a ton of damage, but even before it is rolled out your opponent may feel forced to make non-ideal plays to clear cards from their hand just based upon the threat of the special being rolled and resolved.

Separatist Landing Craft – This card brings a new mechanic to the game of Destiny. The power to add a character to your team beyond your starting characters could prove extremely powerful. The caveat being the need to roll and resolve a special while having two resources to pay for it. This is an obvious include in a droid swarm deck but I am most interested to see if it finds a place in other Villain Command decks. For 4 resources, split between playing the support and resolving the special, adding a Battle Droid to any game should provide a huge swing in board state. Add in any shields or resources netted through the Landing Craft’s die on the way and this support could provide a ton of value. I think the trick will be to find the ability to consistently resolve the special as well as having the resources to pay for it without limiting the deck to just trying to get this play off to win.

R2-D2 – R2-D2’s partner in crime C-3PO has made a place for himself in the competitive meta with a great ability that can provide needed consistency and flexibility to a deck. At 1 cost with no blanks and a special that provides card draw and focus R2-D2 may be able to carve a spot for himself in the Trilogies meta. He will work best with Yoda, Poe, or Aayla by providing another special that can trigger or join in on consecutive special resolutions. These characters may prove to have enough consistency on their own but if not look for R2-D2 to get slotted in to assist with consistency.

Upgrades to watch for

Two-Player Game Weapons – The Two-Player game provided some fantastic weapons which are even better when paired with their titular characters. Based upon the strength of the upgrades themselves and the characters they pair with I would be very surprised not to see them widespread in the Trilogies meta.

Heirloom Lightsaber – This is just a straight up powerful upgrade. It provides a neutral option with 3 base damage sides, including a 3 melee, and redeploy when placed on a blue character. Heirloom Lightsaber is an auto-include in any blue melee deck. The fact that this comes with the starter kits will make it plentiful and widely played.

Crystal Ball and Dark Counsel – At one cost these upgrades can add fantastic value to any Blue Villain deck. Each has a pair of focus sides as well as resource sides, allowing them to provide consistency to a deck and to pay from themselves quickly. Personally, I favor Dark Counsel over Crystal Ball for its awesome special, allowing a card to be drawn and the die rerolled into the pool. There may be decks out there though that can get more value from Crystal Ball if paired with Mother Talzine or other nightsister themed cards that mechanically benefit from knowing the top card of a deck.

Obi-Wans Lightsaber and Maul’s Lightsaber – What is more iconic Star Wars than a good lightsaber? How about two awesome lightsabers? Legacies really delivers with two powerful and fun lightsabers. These will both make the cut for their faction in any blue melee deck. As a unique upgrade I’d expect a lot of decks to only run these as a one of but depending on what other upgrades best fit into the deck and how well the deck can take advantage of the unique strengths of these weapons some may run two to increase the odds of getting them onto the board.

Vibrocutlass – I feel the need to at least pick one Yellow upgrade and Vibrocutlass, while not as exciting as the multiple lightsaber options already listed, is a strong upgrade option. It has pretty much everything I want in a weapon; Redeploy, three high base damage side, and a great ability. The issue is the cards 4 cost. 4 cost upgrades are just hard to get on the board. The majority of 4 cost upgrades that have made a place for themselves in the competitive meta have done so as a part of a Sith Holocron suite. Affording and playing a 4 cost upgrade has yet to prove a tenable strategy for the vast majority of competitive decks. Vibrocutlass may just be strong enough to buck that trend in the Trilogies meta.

That’s it for today, in Part II we’ll take a look at events, economy, and battlefields.

Thanks for reading!

Brendan Devitt