



If you've been keeping track of the SotR Meta, Hit and Run was featured prominently in Poe/Maz, and is one of the most feared cards in the deck. The ability to Hit and Run and immediately resolve Poe's dice, or to immediately roll in Maz to focus and then resolve Poe's dice was one of the most powerful plays the deck could make, as it was impossible to interact with consecutive ambush and action cheats capable of putting out 3+ damage. Being able to do 3+ damage without being interrupted and without any upgrades is potent enough to keep any deck on the map, and you need not look further than Force Strike and Darth Vader (AWK) to realize this.





It's a Trap! is a card that hasn't really seen much table time since the Awakenings meta, where it was featured in decks like Poe/Rey and Leia/Ackbar. This card is more specific in that it only allows you to turn red dice, which requires an entire deck built around it. Hero variants featuring Baze, either paired with Rey (AWK) or Termmin "Snap" Wexley may have included this card, but by the time Gencon and NOVA came around, those decks were not seeing play in the top tables. The combination of needing an opponent's die to show a particular side and the restriction on being able to only turn red dice makes this card much harder to use.





One common aspect that both cards share is that the more powerful the red character and dice being used, the stronger the cards are. Since it costs a resource to play, It's a Trap! has been harder to use with the current suite or red characters, as Baze's 3 ranged damage side costs a resource, and Poe has better ways to fix his dice to specials, but what if there were another expensive red character to utilize?





At first glance, his first effect is obviously a downside, and since his second effect is once per game, it's easy to dismiss this character as unplayable since paying 2 additional resources to equip a weapon just to ready him is a poor downside. Weapon upgrades provide the most damage out of any other kind of upgrade, and this K2SO sacrifices his ability to build himself up in exchange for an explosive ability.





So what does this character have that Darth Vader (AWK) and Luke does not? Why even bother?





K2SO is a red hero character, and at 20 points, he's designed to have some of the best character dice. A trait all characters at this point range share.



More importantly, he's the first red hero character at that point range, with melee sides, to have access to and be fully supported by both Hit and Run and It's a Trap!, arguably the two best cards that red heroes, and perhaps heroes in general, have access to.





Against a melee-centric deck, It's a Trap! is 6 damage just off of K2SO's character die. Hit and Run offers a free activation and the ability to immediately resolve any dice, and let's not forget that Red Heroes in general have access to some of the best and least situational removal cards out of the entire Hero Suite in both Honor Guard and Field Medic.



You can even pair him up with our favorite action cheating Heroine, Rey (AWK), and use cards like Bestow to set up game ending turns reminiscent of Price of Failure turns with Darth Vader (AWK)! Imagine blowout turns involving It's a Trap! to resolve 6+ damage (none of it pay sides!) and then using something like Bestow to toss K2SO a Vibroknife or a Lightsaber and having him activate again!



A potential start to a decklist capable of the above may look like this:









With Honor Guard, Defensive Position, Field Medic, and Deflect, this list runs what is possibly the strongest suite of removal that heroes have access to. The upgrade lineup may be tricky to optimize, as you want to maximize the amount of red dice upgrades that provide melee, and minimize on weapons in case you need to suit up K2SO if Rey goes down quickly. Fortunately, we have some great choices in both Survival Gear and Promotion, both cards that are fairly costed with K2SO, and have melee sides to turn into with It's a Trap! Electrostaff doesn't have any synergy effect wise with any of the dice in this list, but it adds a +3 modifier to K2SO's already monstrous damage potential. Rey and all of her uprade dice are already easy enough to get on board with her action cheats, so putting upgrades on Rey and depending on those upgrades to be in the pool for It's a Trap! is not unrealistic. Rey's Lightsaber is basically impossible to play manually on K2SO, but fortunately redeploying an upgrade costs nothing, and Redeploying anything onto K2SO will trigger his effect, assuming a bestow play hasn't already done that.















Earlier, we looked into some various hero decks and analyzed a few strengths and weaknesses that shed some light on why heroes don't see competitive play. The breakdown is that the overall card pool for heroes is much weaker than the overall card pool for villains, and it leads to their removal being weaker and being more dependent on rolls due to the lesser quality of hero cards and characters.Of the available hero card pool, however, two cards come into mind immediately as standout cards that are potentially just as impactful, if not more impactful, than current villain cards.Those two cards are Hit and Run and It's a trap!:Enter K2SO, a character many dismissed as a reskinned version of Luke, and strictly worse than Darth Vader (AWK):This deck looks capable of blowout potential against any melee-centric deck, and will probably hold its own against ranged decks due to deflect and the setup of K2SO's effect to end the game. There might not be a lot of talk about K2SO right now, and perhaps this isn't the right list to propel a 20+ point hero character into the meta, but always keep old cards in mind when making comparisons between characters. You may find that the color a character provides access to can potentially change a character's playability!