I frequently hear about the meta being stale and people not being super interested in playing it. Realistically we have 5 decks that are reasonably strong but have other decks that they struggle immensely against and people are just picking and choosing between them for events. It’s a reasonable analysis, but if you want to try to go elsewhere, I’ll briefly talk about the generic plans of attack that you’ll want to aim for and a few staples which are commonly known, but for some reason still aren’t being included in every single list (that can have them) to try to combat them.

The Five Decks of Note

Rey Kylo

Reylo (or KReylo) has a bunch of different variations available so the way you attack it is kind of based on their plan. If you can build a decent board state for yourself then taking down Kylo should give you more time because Rey is more tanky than she is good at doing damage. If you have a high health pool and struggle on damage output, then you go for Rey because trying to shoot through the shields round after round while the damage gets in is often too much to get through. Usually you go after Kylo so that he can’t Power Action and get the damage whilst also protecting Rey. They struggle at having hard mitigation so you can usually do whatever you were looking to do for the round and their damage is really hard to stop round after round. If you haven’t killed one of them by the end of Round 2, you are likely going to lose.

Struggles Against: High HP Big board state decks. Multi-dice removal. Order 66.

Chopper Droids

The metal terrors have a few different ways to play them and they can have supports, big upgrades, only small upgrades then tons of action cheating vs tons of mitigation. The key way to beat them hasn’t changed though, which is to obliterate 1 of the droids as fast as possible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them lose a game where all 3 were intact at the start of Round 3. The grand hope is to kill one at the end of Round 1, but not every deck has the firepower to do that. Round 2 is absolutely necessary and preferably it’s super early. I’ve been of the mind that going for Chopper is the correct play in the FC variants if people are doing to run random R2 Supports and it shuts down 3-4 dice usually, especially if you have to make trades.

Struggles Against: High HP Big board state decks. Massive Firepower Early. Fast Chopper.

Palpatine

Palpatine gets split into Red with Motti or 3 different Yellow variants with Watto, Jango, or Jabba. The yellow variants tend to build around a Fatal Blow plan or just abusing Force Storm where as the Red Variant is all about Admiral and can come out of no where with multiple untaps to decimate the opponent. I haven’t played much of either myself, but usually speaking they crush Rainbow Villain Supports so badly that they had to start running Scorched Earth to combat them / stand a chance. If you are aggressive, going for Palpatine is the clear answer, but if you have to funnel in lots of indirect then killing the secondary character whilst you build up your board should help assuming you are support based. It’s hard to beat him as a board state based deck, but if you can output 7-8 damage of the same type of damage then you can work your way through shields in theory.

Struggles Against: Massive Firepower Early. Mill. Fast Chopper.

Rainbow Villain Supports (Aphra or 4 Lom or Thrawn)

Rainbow Villain Supports is mainly split between Aphra and 4 Lom variants, but Thrawn popped up as an alternative option which was super interesting in the Rainbow Villain mirrors because it would get access to their own Desperate Measures to mess up their plan. There is a Jango variant also which uses him to resource engine a bit extra. The builds have lots of different stuff but you can pretty much guarantee that they are running at least 6 pieces of 0-cost mitigation or more, 2 Desperate Measures, and a Delve / Fist / Megablaster / and maybe No Good To Me Dead package. They don’t always have to Fist Round 1, but getting hit with that Round 1 or 2 is usually how they like to obliterate people with Megablaster being the secondary option for the bigs. There are normally some small supports to help the damage like Conscript Squads / Fickle or BT-1 / 0-0-0. Usually going after the 2 character die seems like the greatest plan, but if you are Support based you likely have to go after the Yellow character no matter what so that you don’t get blown out by Desperate Measures. I think vs Thrawn you might actually go for Greedo first, but it is pure speculation. 7 damage to stop the die and spot yellows vs 13 for Thrawn seems like a world of difference.

Struggles Against: Desperate Measures slowing them down. Mill. Palpatine.

Mill

People absolutely HATE mill. It’s in an interestingly similar spot to Palpatine right now with the decks that it can beat and the ones that it loses to. Mill has a few different variants that are known and probably some that haven’t been explored yet. Mill has a better shot against Reylo than Palpatine in my view, but it’s an auto-loss to Chopper usually speaking. It’s nearly an auto-win against Rainbow Supports and Palpatine though so know your meta and playing it might be a good choice. Determining threat in mill can be hard. Yoda Leia variants it’s usually Yoda if you can do it Round 2 because you can avoid a random First Aid as well as shut down most of the removal, Force Jumps, Nimans and their resource engine, but if you can Round 2 Leia then Yoda struggles to close the game. The known 3 wide variant you likely do it based on how hard you can hit. Anakin powers the spot yellows and Ani’s pod and is only 7 health so going after him seems reasonable, but popping Lor is usually the preferred result due to the focus + discard sides.

Struggles Against: Heavy Fire Power. Decks that you need to kill a target (Chopper). Order 66.

Staples

Alright, so for most of you this section may seem like I’m telling you stuff that you already know, and in that case it isn’t for you. It’s for the people who are less in the know and just making random piles and going to town and then getting trounced by the big baddies.

EMP is super strong against the larger percent of the field which is on Rainbow Villain Supports in the Aphra and 4-Lom shell as well as against the Chopper Droids decks. Being able to stop 2 damage for 0 resources is lights out and having the dead card in other matches is beyond reasonable. Even if you can only hit random decks with Sentinel Messengers or an R2-D2 support from Reylo it’s not always completely dead.

For the love of all that is holy, if you can run this card, RUN TWO. I’m seeing villain yellow lists with 0 – 1 at times and it’s just plan crazy talk when you can expect to run into a deck it is good against in any top cut and like twice in a 6 round event. Sure, it’s usually dead vs Reylo and Chopper, but taking 5 from a Vader’s Fist one time is better than 6+ each round.

I was going to put Easy Pickings as well, but that is probably an auto include. Flee the Scene is still lesser known. If you are running a 2 Wide Hero Yellow deck, you should just include it. It’ll takes some time getting acclimated with the usage, but the card is pretty bananas when you’ve finished up most of the stuff that you wanted to do. It’s the closest thing we have to something that ends the round at an affordable cost and outside of Chopper, the other 4 lists tend to resolve things very slowly. Realistically because you have access to Easy Pickings, any average player and above is likely to slow down and resolve dice before rolling more in that share sides so that they don’t get blown out by Easy, which makes setting up your Flee situations even easier.

Alright, so the staples section wasn’t very much, but just think about what you’ll expect to see in your meta and how fast or slow your deck operates. There are likely to be some actual tech cards that you can use help the matches you are struggling against. No Good To Me Dead is useful for furthering your plan in the Villain Yellow decks but its by no means a necessary evil. Scorched Earth against Palpatine has proven to be solid for the last bit of pushing power that you need. Good luck everybody.

~HonestlySarcastc