As we draw nearer (hopefully) to heavy spoiler season, I thought I’d give my two cents on the characters we’ve seen so far. All the characters that have been spoiled are intriguing to some degree – I don’t think any of them are slam dunks, nor are any of them complete duds. Below are some of my initial thoughts:
As the current meta has moved more and more towards indirect damage, with Aphra’s murder droids and Planetary Bombardments hitting the table left and right, I’ve started to consider what cards might be good additions to decks. Cards that might be difficult to play or use effectively when your characters are being cut down quickly by direct damage, but that become more effective when your full cast of characters is surviving longer into the game. One of the first cards that came to mind was The Power of the Force.
This past weekend I took a relatively unknown deck to the US National tournament – eAphra/Executioner/Executioner, AKA “Curtain Call” (since those Executioners love coming back on stage). I went 7-1 in the swiss rounds, claiming the top spot from my day and proceeding to the round of 32. Unfortunately, I lost a close match in the round of 32, ending my tournament there. Below is the story of the deck and the story of my tournament. Hope you enjoy!
Early results from the Way of the Force meta are in, and it appears we are living in a 3-wide meta – 12 of the top 16 decks from UK Nationals last weekend were 3-wides, leaving no doubt that wider decks have taken over the meta. This leaves effects that trigger after character deaths in a great spot. Previous cards like Aftermath and Bala-Tik should pick up more value in this meta, and I expect them to start to see more play. But there’s an additional card that triggers after death, one that more recently came onto the destiny scene – the Executioner. The Executioner has been overlooked thus far, seen as a pretty average non-unique character, similar to a FOST but costing 1 additional point. But with the meta in 3-wide mode, the Executioner suddenly becomes a lot more spicy, with opportunities for multiple procs of the passive in a game. As such, we’ve been exploring some builds including Executioners in the lead-up to NOVA, and are excited to share them with you. Hope you enjoy!
In this edition of Deck Building 101, I’m going to go in depth on removal cards, what makes them good or bad, and how to decide on removal for you deck. The inspiration for this article was some discussions with Jon about what kind of removal he likes vs what kind of removal I like. I prefer cards like Doubt and Hasty Exit, which he dislikes putting is his decks. On the flip side, he loves having cards like Flank is his deck, while I tend to shy away from those sorts of cards. So who’s right? The answer is, well, complicated. There are different characteristics that give value to removal cards, and depending on what you are trying to do with your deck you will value certain types of removal cards more than others. The goal of this article is to explain what those characteristics are, and to help give you some insight into choosing the right removal cards for your deck.
