The Star Wars Destiny world was finally blessed with a rules update as well as Holocron updates for Trilogy and Standard formats. This was a long time coming, especially the new Rules Reference Guide (there literally wasn’t an RRG update for Ways of the Force), even though we’ve had the great FFG Official Rulings thread which has allowed Jeremy and the team to update rulings as needed. In fact, most of the changes have already been covered in that forum, and so I’m not going to cover them at length. Claus from YOURDestiny podcast already wrote a great article that delves into the RRG (though his permalink game needs work!) whereas in this piece I just want to talk about the new holocron a bit.

I’m not going to go into the Trilogy Holocron update, because c’mon son, but let’s dig into the Standard one:

The Date: 11/27/2018

Look, nobody likes to clown on FFG and Lukas more than I do, but people getting upset about the date being 11/27 are not using their brains. We all know how long it takes for Disney to approve these updates, and it makes a lot of sense for them to put the earliest possible date on them (possibly the date they are submitted) so that when they are finally approved they are ready to go ASAP. I think this is pretty smart, and while we all would’ve loved the RRG and Holocron updates two weeks ago, that’s just not a reasonable expectation if you’ve been following this or any other FFG game for more than a few minutes.

Snoke

The rumors of Snoke’s demise been circulating, basically, since his release. Many people assumed he and Yoda would get balanced together, but so dominating has the reign of Snoke been that our little green friend has been completely overlooked. I have no interest in playing coulda/woulda/shoulda when it comes to the decisions of FFG and these updates, but I was surprised that they let Yoda sit tight; I think we’ll see him rise in the ranks very quickly as there are still several Regionals this weekend (TheHyperloops founders local one included).

We were already jamming Snoke into very tight places with our deckbuilding, so there aren’t many places for him to remain in an unchanged deck without help from the -1 plots. However, those -1 plots seem just fine. It’s possible that Snoke will just have Bitter Rivalry stapled to him. I’ve heard plenty of people in our discord contend that Mill will rise up with Snoke “banned,” but Snoke and 2 damage from BR laughs in Mill’s face. And, Snoke decks hit so hard and kill so fast that the damage might not even scare it when it faces non-mill decks. I think everyone assumes Snoke, and especially Thrawn/Snoke will disappear following this update, but I’m skeptical.

OTK Engines

Jeremy and the team went all in on eradicating OTK style engines from the meta. Award Ceremony and Long Con got hit hard; Long Con is essentially unplayable, but not necessarily Award Ceremony, we can still draw a bunch of cards as long as we’re comfortable setting aside other cards from our hand. It’s possible that this isn’t a high enough cost for some OTK engines. This errata murders the Launch Bay style of OTK deck, but my Rigged Elections deck had plenty of dead cards once it drew its whole deck and wouldn’t lose a lot having to pitch four draw spells it didn’t end up needing. The real issue is these decks basically ran off abusing Long Con, which is off the table, so more exploration is needed.

In terms of resetting Shadow Caster and other vehicles, FFG put an end to Cienna Ree who recently took second at the Las Vegas regional, and Strategic Planning, not letting it ready Supports with mods on them. These seem pretty fair, if Power Actions had been around in Awakenings block I think a lot of those cards would’ve been made Power Actions, so this isn’t that shocking. What they did here was a preemptive strike, making sure they didn’t miss anything down the road.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I’m in the camp that breaking up the Thrawn Snoke pairing, and making Snoke less accessible in general, is going to be good for the competitive meta. I don’t have any personal feelings towards it, and I would’ve been fine attending my regional this weekend aiming to fight Thrawn Snoke all day, but alas, this is the world we live in.

There’s no doubt in my mind that good players would continue to gravitate toward Thrawn Snoke rather than try to beat it with something else, because of how the deck’s strength compounds with more preparation in a way other decks can’t keep up with. Every player and ever deck gets better the more you practice, but when a good player has a handle on the meta they can exploit that better with Thrawn’s ability. Further, the deck generates resources like no other, another way for good players to take advantage of the “best” way to do something in the format. Playing Thrawn/Snoke was Easy Mode for a lot of good players in that it was so much more powerful than anything other decks were doing, even being marginal at Thrawn calls wouldn’t be so much of a detriment that one couldn’t take down a regional (as many have already this season).

While Thrawn Snoke isn’t going anywhere because of Bitter Rivalry, the pairing will be played far less, and I think the detriment for those wanting to play it is kind of perfect. Starting with two damage on one of your characters puts it on an even playing field with most other decks, and it still allows the deck to keep mill in check. However, with less of a freehold in the meta, we’re going to see a lot more variety in the decks at regionals, especially in the top cut.

From what I can see there isn’t a clear front-runner to immediately replace Thrawn Snoke in the meta, and that has me more hyped about Destiny than anything. As much as I hope people look for new things to play to mix things up for people who are annoyed by the T/S meta, I hope enough people stick with big vehicle decks and Thrawn/Snoke/BR to make the meta truly exciting and interesting.

I probably won’t be busting out T/S unless mill completely takes over the meta during the next few weeks. I’m looking at Yoda/Boushh, Leia/Lando mill, Jyn Cassian, and Vader/Greedo for my regional Saturday. I think Vader/Greedo could end up being the dominant deck this weekend, and would be shocked if someone couldn’t bring home a regional trophy with it, hallway of the Profundity style.

That’s it for this week. I’d love to hear what you think will do well at this weekend’s regionals, so comment below, on facebook, twitter, or reddit!

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire