Tonight I’ll be opening my case of Spark of Hope live on Twitch and YouTube, just like I did with my last few cases. I’ll be drinking wine, eating cheese, and cracking packs!

I’ll also be doing several giveaways tonight for those that can answer my riddles three! My plan is to giveaway and legendary triplicates I open, and since I already have one each of R2-D2 and C-3PO, those will be on the table sooner than others (I also have 2x Pulse Canon, which would be a nice nab right out the gate). I got these by playing at a local shop and their build-a-box tournament. I ended up facing my teammate HonestlySarcastc in the finals and losing despite having a CLEARLY superior deck! Unfortunately, Joe is a master and also rerolls into max damage with his last card every time ;). Here’s a shot of my deck, I really liked it (from this pic I cut both Relentless Pursuits to add Scimitar and Yoda’s Lightsaber).

Dead or Alive was really good, and I ended up switching by battlefield to Nightsister Lair as well. There was a 2x per card limit in the deck so I couldn’t run infinite Dead or Alives =(. Anyway, I had a blast (I even got a kill with Armed to the Teeth on IG-88), even while paying full retail for a box!

Anyway, when I open my case tonight there are specific cards I’m looking for. I’m actually hoping I can stop at around box 3 so that I can save three boxes for giveaways during our GenCon and hopefully Worlds streams. I’ll definitely be saving at least one box for the GenCon stream.

Card #1 – C-3PO

While I’m not certain that some form of the droids deck won’t get an errata before GenCon, current builds have 3PO as the elite character, so he’s the priority over R2D2 who I find to be superior card-wise. Threepio and his focus make for some serious shenanigans though – roll out a couple of support dice, or if Threepio has an upgrade one support die, and if you hit on damage, great, resolve them, Snoke style, for +1 each. If not, you have a 50/50ish chance of hitting Threepio’s focus, which lets you focus resolve Maz Kanata style. So Threepio is a mix of Maz and Snoke, both of whom have been serious competitive players over the course of the game. This is, of course, made possible because of Fateful Companions, which is one of the most absurd plots ever printed. It even works on characters who have an “after” ability who aren’t R2 and Threepio, meaning you could use Jar-Jar and trigger his re-rolls twice, or Biggs and activate two vehicles with him, or Rebel Engineer to search for two mods. Pretty cool!

#2 – R2-D2

While there isn’t any deck that needs elite R2D2 at the moment, he’s so good that I want to complete the square. I also wanted to take a moment and discuss why Droids is so broken, and it’s because of R2-D2. Originally, I wanted to write about the Droids deck and some ways to counter it for today, but too many “people in the know” have told me that there are sweeping changes coming to the RRG due to the oppressive NPE-ness of both Droids and Order 66, and I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time writing an article about something that’s going to change. Anyways…

R2D2 is the reason why Droids is so NPE because he has a Disrupt side that can be immediately resolved for +1 when activated alongside with Threepio via Military Camp or Droids Day Out. Because R2D2 can focus a die and Threepio can resolve it for +1, in whichever order we choose, if we start with our battlefield, and thus the first action, we can auto-disrupt our opponent’s starting resources. This is brutal because it’s automatic. Previously, Han1/Rey1 could accomplish this if Han rolled his 30% chance for his 2 Disrupt side. Even if Han did this for several rounds in a row, his die was a major part of the damage being done in that deck. Even if we use R2’s ability to turn his die to disrupt, Threepio has two resource sides on each of his dice, meaning overall we have a 63% chance of disrupting our opponent’s two resources AND gaining two resources ourselves, letting us start with four resources essentially. Enough to jam out a big support or a big upgrade on our third character. Gross.

This warps the meta in a crazy way because now we have to build decks expecting to not play with any resources round one. We’ll see cards like Logistics, Well Connected, and Truce. I can’t add Fresh Supplies to that list, because while facing this five-dice monstrosity it’s pretty tough to win the roll off. Another way to get back in the game vs. Droids is to claim early round one. This will let us at least use our two resources at the start of round two even if our Droids opponent is also running Droids Day Out to ruin our day.

The one thing they did nail in the Droids deck is the parity of the mirror. If the Droids player with the battlefield disrupts us, they can only go to four resources, which we can do with our droid triggers. The second droid player will be able to match the resource count of the first player for resources.

I have Jango on the list pretty high, and I contemplated switching him with #5, but really Jango is a deckbuilder’s dream. A cool ability that makes money, 14 cost elite with 11 health and 50% damage sides; that’s what’s up. Throw in two resource sides and we’re cooking with combo gas. I’m already working hard on Jango/Daka Vow of Vengeance combo, and I have my list exactly where I want it should Execute Order 66 receive a nerf via some alteration to Rebel Traitor. Jango doesn’t have many great partners at the moment, but the fact that he’s 14 and can fit in with a 9/7(fost) 10/6 or 8/8 for four dice is very attractive. Unfortunately Tarkin seems to be in a terrible position meta-wise, because they would also make a great fit should some 0-cost equipment get printed.

I’m not the first to say this, but Jango’s time to shine is likely the future, but with the Daka combo he’s very, very close. If his equipment suite gets any sort of help he’s going to be a force, and there’s already potential for Jango/Snoke/Profitable to go ham with damage and resources. I haven’t tried that one yet, but it’s in my top 3 lists to explore if the Order 66 decks change; between Jango’s two resource sides and Bounty Hunter Mask just producing a resource, we can get Fists and Entourages online really quickly.

It might be pretty weird to see an Uncommon on a list like this but never before has there been an uncommon we need six of. Since Uncommons have similar rarity to Rares in that there is only one UC per pack, we can’t even expect to get one per box, and sometimes it can work out that we only get a couple in a case. On top of that, there are always one or two Uncommons that are short printed, and reports are that Execute Order 66 (and the matching plot) have been very hard to come by. They’re on ebay for $11!!

Execute Order 66 is as meta-warping as the Droids deck. This card essentially says that two-character decks are obsolete because of its combination with Rebel Traitor. If Three-Wide decks weren’t already en-vogue they will be now that EO66 is on the streets. The fact that when we run an EO66 deck we can shuffle up to four from outside the deck means that we don’t get hurt too badly if we face three-wide decks, even if we still end up with one or two in our main deck; it can still dow work against a deck that relies on one big and two little, but a deck like Aphra really doesn’t care about it’s character dice, and Droids will have already resolved their dice by the time you can EO66 them. So, it’s not a great spot in the meta for this card, but if two wide decks come back into the meta in a big way this card is going to do work. It’s kind of shocking that they would even make a card like this, but I like the design idea of the plot, assigning the opponent’s characters a type. I hope they can continue to find ways to develop cool shit like this without invalidating 75% of the archtypes next time.

Two cost abilities get me very excited. I tried to make them work with Luke/Aayla Profitable back in the day, and now I want to use them with Forbidden Lore. Either Hero or Villain, there are some nice 0-cost cards that cheat Abilities out, and having a form, which has no blanks, cost 1 is nice, even if the die isn’t incredibly strong, but it’s one of the best support die in the game. If you look at those specials as two focus sides, this die is pretty insane, but that you can adjust opponent’s dice too just make it amazing. I love this card for its ability to modify your own die in the pool by playing it on your ready character; I can see it being especially nice in Vader turning the side-character’s die to a resource early or damage late, and of course it can blank an opponent’s die in the pool.

I think this card is going to be a staple in blue decks until it rotates out. It’s utility is so great, and because Order 66 is keeping blue upgrade decks in check it isn’t seeing the time it deserves.

That’s it for today, be sure to comment on Facebook about which cards you hope to open, or have been excited to already open, and I hope you consider joining me tonight for my live stream where I’ll be giving away Legendary cards, so long as you can answer my Star Wars Trivia Questions!!

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire