The release of the next Star Wars Destiny set – Convergence is close and thankfully the spoilers keep on coming. The following are from Sons of Mandalore. If you are interested in reading more of our HOT! takes check out our other reviews from other content creator spoilers: I Rebel/KOR, Team Covenant

NJCuenca: I was waiting for the day Watto would emerge and he doesn’t disappoint. His health is on par with other 9/12 characters while his die, Power Action and ability are pretty unique. His static ability will almost guarantee that you will have as many resources as you want. For a 12 cost elite, having three 2 sides is unprecedented which makes winning the die roll likely. His Power Action early on will mostly be flavor text although later on in the game, when you are flush with cash, he will allow you to reroll your’s or your opponent’s dice for 1 resource which is certainly not nothing. In certain situations when your opponent focuses you can use the power action to change the outcome or you will gain an extra resource with the same outcome. Kudos to design for making a balanced ability that elegantly captures the flavor of a character.

I’m fairly certain that Watto will find a home in Standard. His ability to almost assuredly make money is something that I want when I design decks. Having a +2 money side on an elite character for only 12 points who’s dice can’t be touched by events is something I’m very interested in. The fact that It’s modified is less of a downside because of his ability and his two base money sides – Watto is going to be rolling in and getting you 3 resources a lot.

HonestlySarcastc: Pseudo protected dice are a hard thing to come by. What Watto lacks in damage, he makes up for in resource ramping and denial. Based on pure theory, he is rocking the equivalent to 3/2/2/3 for value (ignore the discard) and that could be a huge thing if you end up with big fat cards in your deck. Playing out Vader’s Fist is all the rage and has proven to be nigh unstoppable when played Round 1. The power action is quite a gamble, but you can use it offensively as well as defensively which is nice and if you hit, then you profit immensely. I’m not sure how often i throw out that PA, but I’d probably be more inclined to do it when I have no cards in hand or there is a die in the pool with 4 of the same symbols.

I don’t see it being very likely that he is trash and at the very least, he works great with Snoke due to being able to protect his 2 snokeable resource sides so that they can be snoked into huge benefits. We could be seeing the rebirth of Villain expensive things in Trilogy / new Standard with Watto. And we haven’t even gotten to talk about Snoking 3 Discard… do you remember how painful that was??, because I do! Fear Watto as he comes to a snoke deck near you!!!

BobbySapphire: I generally hate these support characters with no damage, but damn is Watto good. Not being able to remove dice is one of the hardest things for an opponent to adjust to, and we’ve seen Triple Laser Turret and TIE Pilot do work at times. Here we’re getting our resources protected, which is very strong. I see Watto shining in a three wide deck, and as previously mentioned Snoke seems like an obvious partner. You can play eSnoke/Watto/First Order Stormtrooper and have access to lots of resources and lots of damage, and having a Snokeable discard sides gets me all kinds of excited.

I dig his power action quite a bit, and think there are some great cards to pair with it. Fragmentation Grenade seems like the most obvious choice but I could also see Watto pairing with someone like Kylo and using Vader’s Lightsaber for the power action. Kylo decks have always needed money and Watto might be the kind of pairing Kylo can live with. I also like Watto with new Palpatine to fuel all of those Abilities you need to throw on him.

NJCuenca: Let your memes be dreams. I’m sure I’ll try this card at some point but once the self loathing sets in I’ll abandon it. Roughly two-thirds of your deck needs to be big toys in order for you to run some trash like this. Maybe Watto makes your resources consistent enough that you can get away with playing a card like this but I doubt it. I would consider running this if you were having a flavor event with Watto and chance cube, don’t forget your Canto Bight Pistols you filthy savage.

HonestlySarcastc: I absolutely do NOT like this card. so I’m fine with 2 costs for some risky yolo business on the top of the deck, but with access to only 3 cards and the opponent being able to discard one of them first, then I dislike this immensely. The deck would already need a decent amount of high costing cards just to get value from Friends in High Place, but imagine that they got to kill off one of the choices… yeah, it’d be TRASH. This is likely to be a niche card for Dryden expensive decks and useless otherwise. This is Elephant poop at the circus, comical and you feel bad for the guy who got shat on!

BobbySapphire: This card is a coaster. Other than some yolo-swaggins type plays, probably most often in raft, I can’t see a good reason to play this card in your constructed deck. The fact that your opponent gets first choice to discard is fairly ridiculous, and as of yet we don’t have many cards that can set up the top of our deck. If we see some of those cards, and can stack some serious juice on the top, then sure maybe this card climbs out of the binder, but the reward is not worth the risk otherwise.

NJCuenca: I need to unpack a lot of thoughts about this card since it’s very interesting. The first thing I want to figure out is how much indirect do I have to do to my opponent for a card like this to be worth it. If it was just 2 resources for 4 or 5 indirect damage I could see that being a card I would want to play. The second question is how much damage are resources worth? If you look at a card like Enrage 1 resource is worth about a damage to your character. You have to at least be making that much of a jump. If I pay 3 indirect to play a Vader’s Fist off of this card I’ll be interested – since it’s coming from one card that’s better than playing 3 Enrages. That’s pretty much the card that your opponent will be thinking of at which point you get into a mind game of what you should be betting. If your opponent bets the same amount as you they will also take the damage and get to play something for free.

What does this all mean you might be asking? At the beginning of the game, where a card like this is at its most powerful, If your opponent has anything that costs 2 or 3 in their hand then they will most likely bet an amount trying to tie or beat the amount, in my mind this number will either be 3 or 4. This card ends up being a bit too much of a gamble for me. Too many things can go wrong like your opponent playing something large from hand while tying or beating your number. You may have dealt 5 indirect for one card but your opponent played a Vader’s fist or some other card that is going to quickly equalize or surpass that damage output…and they also did it for free.

HonestlySarcastc: The gambling is very real with these cards. I’m not sure if I could bring myself to play this card, but i believe that I’ll often be ecstatic when an opponent does. The theory is that a 2 cost event that dealt damage would do 3 damage and that means as the opponent, i should be able to easily reveal 3 if not 4 tokens and then if i take the damage and get to play a 2+ cost card for free then I gained immense value. As the player who played it though, there is an issue: If i lose the wager, then I’ve lost 2 resources and am now further back from playing the expensive card that I wanted to play, so how much damage can I self inflict as well as how big are the cards I’m running to find value from this? Maybe this is to be “Delve #3 and #4”, but it’s a very risky game you are playing, especially if you are behind in damage due to having a bunch of expensive things or opponent being more aggressive than you. I’m very skeptical about playing it, but I can at least see this being a great option for sticking down Round 1 Fists or Bombardments which are SCARY!!! This will likely end up being a great card against Mill decks because you can easily throw out a 6 and not bat an eye. Only time will tell if this card will just be a fart in the wind, but I’ll definitely be watching to see people clear out a room with this stinker!

BobbySapphire: Here’s another card that I don’t think will see much play. It has obvious similarities to Delve, but this time through a bidding war. I very much like the idea of turning damage into resources, and with a three or four wide deck and some bubble shields this card could certainly do some work, especially in an Aphra deck. But, how badly do you want a card out for free that you can’t already power out in a deck you’ve constructed to power out high-cost supports? There are far more consistent ways to accumulate resources and drop bombs onto the table, and gambling in a way that could cost us two resources to let our opponents play a card for free does not feel like something that is going to win us competitive games of destiny.

If you like gambling as much as I do you’ll see these cards look quite fun, and in a home game I think you could have a blast with them (imagine playing Barter with Blood in a multiplayer game?!), but from a competitive standpoint I’m only looking at Watto from this group.

Thanks for reading, please let us know what you think of these spoilers in the comments or on social media.

-The Hyperloops

For those looking to be ahead of the competitive curve, do consider signing up for our Patreon. We’ve got a 250+ person discord channel that boasts a near constant discussion of competitive Star Wars Destiny playing. In addition to that we release dozens of extra videos to our $10 tournament prep tier, as well as exclusive articles, deck lists, and primers. It’s a wealth of information, and I challenge you to ask around among our subscribers to see if they think it’s worth it. I have an idea of what they’ll say. Not only do you get all of that, but you also get this dope playmat after 2 months of being on the Tournament Prep Tier OR instead you can receive a set of our OVERWRITE and POWER ACTION tokens (pictured below the mat).

Cloud City