Today we bring you another Nationals Deck Breakdown, but this time our guest writer is David Leslie who recently piloted this deck to 2nd Place at Australia Nationals. Video game play of the deck can be found at GeneralGamesAus on Twitch. The deck is very powerful there isn’t a single match-up that is happy to sit across from the deck.



(Referring to who to target first)

G’day Hyperloops readers! My name is David Leslie and I managed to pilot this deck to the final table of the Australian National Championships hosted by General Games down in Melbourne, Australia. We had 99 players show up for the event, 8 rounds of swiss and a cut to the top 8. After swiss I placed 3rd with a 7-1 record, my only loss was to Damien Madigan’s Kylo/Phasma who was the 4th seed and running a very similar low cost curve deck. You can check out my deck and my tournament write up here at swdestinydb.com. If you have any questions you can ask them over there, I do my best to respond to everyone.

The idea behind this deck was to focus on the character dice and have a super low cost curve so that I could play out most of my hand every turn. This deck is just about the most aggressive possible deck that I can think of in Destiny at the moment, it bursts damage faster than Kylo/FN-2199 but the longer a game goes on the more it will struggle. Unlike a lot of decks you don’t really ramp up at all, instead your win condition is to kill their main character early on turn 2 without losing one of yours and then the second character should be fairly easy to outpace. Re-rolling your dice even if they are showing damage to hit even more damage is not uncommon. I don’t think I resolved Vader’s 1 ranged damage side once during the tournament unless I was completely out of cards for rerolls. In an aggro matchup it is important that you do more damage in the first turn and claim before your opponent can. If you can do that then there is a good chance you can roll out and kill your opponent’s character before they can get any real value out of them. If your opponent claims early to stop you it is important that you punish them as much as possible by rerolling for max damage. No card in this deck is sacred, if you have to ditch a holocron, boundless or best defence for a reroll that is completely fine. Below is a card by card breakdown of what went into the deck.

Upgrades

It was important for this deck to focus on low cost upgrades, I never intended to hard cast the force powers although I did sometimes, especially in Thrawnkar matches which tended to go longer than aggro matchups. Keeping the low cost curve helped me get value out of every single card in my deck and utilise boundless ambition to it’s maximum.

Dark Counsel x2 – This card is amazing in this deck. It synergizes with anger, makes your dice more consistent and gives you more draw which means more rerolls or a chance to dig for cards you need. It only costs 1 resource so you can still play mitigation on the turn you play it. This card is great no matter what side you roll, blanks included because of the potential for anger.

DH-17 Blaster Pistol x2 – Another 1 cost upgrade that just ups your damage output for a small investment. I tend to throw them on Phasma if my opponent starts hitting Vader. They aren’t nearly as useful on Vader by himself because you won’t be resolving the modified side. Another upgrade that helps turn anger on with it’s two blanks.

Force Illusion x2 – A bread and butter card in this deck. It just helps you win the damage race in an aggro matchup. Because you don’t spend resources on upgrades you can afford to play these early game to soak up your opponents bigger hits.

Force Lightning x2, Mind Probe x2, Sith Holocron x2 – The holocron package. I’m only running the 4 force powers that will have the biggest impact damage wise on a game because this is not a straight holocron deck. They allow for big plays and some great burst damage but in most games if you never see a holocron it is completely fine. As everyone who plays destiny competitively knows cheating out big force powers for free is amazing but in this deck it is not something you rely on because the threat of rend is too real to throw all your eggs in the holocron basket. The holocron also has two blanks to use with anger.

Events

The focus here was running low cost events that had the biggest impact to the board state and were the most flexible. I specifically avoided events that required you to spot a blue character because they would become dead cards very quickly if Vader went down fast.

Anger x2 – Probably one of the more controversial inclusions in this deck, I wouldn’t normally run it but there are enough cheap upgrades with blanks in this deck to make it somewhat viable. Even with all the upgrades with blanks you aren’t guaranteed to roll them when you need it but it can absolutely be amazing when you do. Being able to resolve someone’s own dice against them is a big damage swing and it doesn’t cost you a resource either. You can use manipulate to get yourself the second blank when you need it, forcing your opponent to reroll and if they hit damage you can then use anger to throw it back in their face. Sequencing is important here, you don’t alway want to reroll too soon if you have two blanks showing but you also don’t want to pass because your opponent will be able to infer you have mitigation in your hand.

Boundless Ambition x2 – It is no secret that this card gets work done. While it isn’t as broken here as it is in a Kylo/FN-2199 deck it can have a lot of utility. Again because the curve of this deck is so low you usually don’t have a problem being able to afford it when you need it. A few things I did over the Nationals weekend include using it to dig for mitigation when I needed it and just using it to punish an opponent’s early claim with extra re-rolls for maximum damage. In the top 8 my opponent claimed early with 5 cards in hand while I had a holocron sitting in the pool and 1 card left. I played boundless, found a mind probe, rolled it in and resolved it for 5 damage which won me the game.

Doubt x2 – One of the best mitigation cards in the game, if somewhat risky. If you use it wisely it can be amazing, I use it on dice with 2 blanks like a Z6 Riot Control Baton that is already showing big damage or a dice with lot of modifiers like an electrostaff or jetpack but it can also be used to get rid of vibroknives while you have shields or dice with pay sides while your opponent has no resources.

Feel Your Anger x1 – A slightly situational card that has a big blowout potential. If you use it to remove a single dice then it has done its job. If you get two or more dice then you should be jumping with joy. It is also one of the few blue mitigation cards that does not require you to spot a blue character which can be huge.

Manipulate x2 – A zero cost die manipulation card that can turn your angers on, what is not to love? If you don’t have an anger in hand you can turn a Holocron, DH-17 or Dark Counsel already showing a blank to a different blank side. You can even turn one of you character dice if you are confident you can claim the Emperor’s Throne Room battlefield later or have plenty of rerolls.

New Orders x2 – A pretty standard include in most Vader/Phasma decks because your battlefield is so good for you. It lets you take the shields and then switch the battlefield when it suits you and potentially be able to use it’s effect twice in the same turn if you also manage to claim. I don’t want this in my opening and however, it is much more valuable to be able to play a Best Defence or force illusion to get ahead in the damage race and use New Orders as a kind of action cheat to kill a character second turn.

Rend x2 – I didn’t get as much value out of this card as I’d have liked on the day but a zero cost card that deals with holocrons, force speeds, imperial inspections and salvage stands is amazing value and it was worth including just for the peace of mind.

Sound The Alarm x2 – 0 cost mitigation will always have a place in my decks. It isn’t hard dice removal but a well timed sound the alarm can and will win you games.

Tactical Mastery x1 – I have one of these cards in my deck because sometimes that little extra burst of speed will mean the difference between a win and a loss. It doesn’t work if Phasma goes down early but if you manage to holocron a mind probe onto her and use this you can get huge amounts of value.

The Best Defense… x2 – This card is hands down one of the best mitigation cards in the game. Most people target Vader first because he has the big damage sides and forcing your opponent to split damage can often mean you kill a character before they do. In an aggro matchup that almost always means you win the game. It is also great to see early against Thrawnkar because you don’t care about dealing damage to yourself and removing both of Thrawn’s dice slows the decks ability to ramp resources drastically on that first turn.

Things I Would Consider Changing:

Force Speed x2 – I would seriously consider slotting in two of these over the DH-17s in this deck. They don’t have the double blank but being able to reroll and resolve, use two different mitigation cards uninterrupted or just get to the claim fast can make a huge difference in this deck.

Dug In x2 – Slotting in two of these instead of the angers is probably a good call especially if the DH-17s are getting swapped for force speeds. You claim a lot with this deck and 3 shields is often just as good or better than a force illusion.

Abandon All Hope/Occupation – Including one of these cards in your deck is helpful in the Thrawnkar and Kylo/FN matchups to keep them from using buyout or starting the weapon chain respectively. With anger being removed from the deck I might slot one instead of a manipulate but it warrants some testing.

Intimidation – This has a lot of potential too. Good Thrawnkar decks will be making shields like crazy so this can be the equivalent of 3 damage for free out of hand. In some matchups it is a completely dead card however so it is dependent on your meta.

Matchups:

Thrawn/Unkar – One of your best matchups and one of Thrawnkar’s worst. You can put so much pressure on early that they need to go straight into survival mode which can make it hard for them to focus on their win conditions. A good Thrawnkar player is still absolutely a threat though so don’t let your guard down.

Kylo/FN-2199 – This one is a bit of a coin flip and you can often tell the outcome of the game based on how your first turn goes. If you can get 9 damage onto FN and a force illusion down on whoever they are going for then you are doing well.

Cad/Phasma – Another aggro matchup but your burst is faster and more consistent. They need a couple of turns to stack upgrades on Cad and get their Imperial HQs rolling for Cad’s pay sides so you should be able to burn him down and then just phasma by herself isn’t too hard to mop up. Be aware that they will be running redeploy weapons so if you trade Vader for Cad then their Phasma can be way more stacked than yours.

Hero Mill – Specifically of the Rieekan variety, this deck can mill scarily fast so focus on maximising your damage without ditching to reroll too much. Kill Rieekan last, buy focusing on the other two you keep his mill in check somewhat and by himself he is less scary. You also don’t want to be dealing with Padme’s second chances late game.

As always, we appreciate when fine folks like David take the time out of their day to write about their decks so if you feel the same, show some love in the comments and we’ll try to make sure that it gets to them.

~HonestlySarcastc