Legacies is in its honeymoon phase, where everyone is messing around trying out new characters, new cards, etc. Plenty of regionals are around the corner and most competitive players are out there searching for the best deck once Legacies becomes tournament legal. So how do we go about finding that best deck? Keep reading to find out.
One of the aspects of deck building people sometimes forget is that we’re not merely searching for broken character combos; we’re searching for broken cards in general. In fact, it’s almost more effective to highlight broken cards, and then find the best characters with which to abuse those cards. Why do I say that? Well, it seems to me that in Destiny, the characters are by far the most important, so they’re most likely to be play-tested adequately. Meanwhile, the hundreds of events and upgrades in the set are probably tested as well, but when a deck performs great, people are more likely to point to the characters than they are to point at the cards (see below). Thus, if you’re truly searching for busted in half cards, don’t look at the characters, look elsewhere. Yes I know there are exceptions to this, (I’m looking at you FN-2199), but most of the truly broken characters will get, or have been, Balance of the Forced.
Now, I don’t have nearly enough space in this article to address all the broken cards, so I’ll try to stick to some of the one’s we’ve already seen in pre-Legacies meta, and explain how they have influenced the game’s top decks. Hopefully we can then bring these cards into Legacies, and find the best decks to abuse them.
So.. Who’s on the broken list?
#1: Shoto Lightsaber
What makes this card so broken? The numbers are absolutely insane. If you keep in mind that the shield has a value of 1, the sides of this die are 2, 2, 3, 2, 2. Only it’s actually better than that, as half of the value can’t be mitigated by your opponent. What’s a great three cost upgrade? Riot Baton? Which has 2, 2, 3 for a buck, 1 and 2 blanks. Sure it gets a re-roll and has redeploy, but for 1 resource more you can have 2 Shotos with straight better value on both dice. Who cares about redeploy when your character can’t die???
So how did this card effect the meta? Well it’s pretty obvious. The two best Shoto abusers are by far Qui-Gon Jinn, and Rey 2. Both synergize with the shield proc, Rey with being able to ping 1 damage, and Qui-Gon being able to turn any shields given him into damage instead. Shoto isn’t the only card that made these decks rise to the top of the meta, but I’ll be bold and call them the biggest influence in their success.
(Side notes: It’s worth acknowledging that Shoto is bad turn one, when you don’t have 2 blue weapons. Also, Lightsaber Pull is a big help for Shoto abuse).
#2 Honor Guard + Docking Bay
What are some of the best removal options out there? He Doesn’t Like You? Electroshock? Nah. 1 Die for 1 die isn’t truly busted, nor is 1 resource for 1 die. The truly busted cards are those that break this mold and give you more removal for less cards and resources. Cards like Defensive Position and Force Misdirection come to mind, but they have fairly significant drawbacks. How about a 0 cost removal that doesn’t even take up a card in your hand? And can be used once per round? Sound broken? That’s because it is. Honor Guard with DockingBay has everything going for it. 0 cost for 1 die, plus it doesn’t even take up a card in your hand, and it can be used more than twice in a game thanks to infinite recursion. Now, this does have a significant drawback in that you need your battlefield, otherwise the card is almost slightly below average. However, having a battlefield that benefits you enough to make up for a 4 HP swing (starting shields) is incredibly important for any deck, which is why this deserves to be on the broken list. Take my battlefield so you can have starting shields? Okay, I’ll just remove a die for free every round.
This is another example of a broken card that enabled R2P2 to perform well, enabling it to have an edge even in the games where its opponents got starting shields.
#3 Ancient Lightsaber’s Insurmountable Leads
Why don’t I just say Ancient Lightsaber? Well, it’s not really that broken of a card. However, it suddenly transforms into one once you’ve secured a lead. Why do I say this? Well, healing 2 while losing an upgrade is not that good, especially if you’re behind. You need to keep those dice to be able to come back into the game. However, once you’re ahead, say you got the first kill in a 2v2 match, you already have an inherent die advantage, and no longer need the upgrade advantage. This is where you can simply say goodbye to Ancient, and put your character out of kill range for the one remaining opponent character. In other words, this card lets you “win more” by effectively eliminating any chance of your opponent coming back. (It’s also worth noting that once it gets late enough in the game, and both players have an abundance of resources, Ancient once again becomes a heal with no drawbacks.) In addition to all this, you also have a “Get out of Jail free” card for your mill match-ups, where Ancient can either win the game for you entirely, or at least buy you another round.
How did we see this in our previous meta? Well, when you’ve been trying to kill that Rey all game, and you lose a character, not only would you now have less dice with which to kill Rey, but she’d Ancient heal, Field Medic, then play Rey’s Saber and go from 4 effective HP to 10. Qui-Gon Kanan would do this as well, where if you fail to kill Qui-Gon in time, they pick off one of your characters then Ancient heal and shield up on Qui-Gon and you’d never be able to kill him. It’s also worth noting that both these decks have focus, and are good at abusing the only good side on Ancient, the +3.
#4 Synchronicity
Typical damage curve is 1 resource and card for 2 damage. Synchronicity is 0 resources for 2 Unblockable damage (which is pretty neat in a shield heavy meta). I feel like this one is obvious, no more needs to be said.
Qui-Gon Kanan were the sole abusers of this card last meta (R2P2 could run it, but it was much less consistent in that deck). It was the card that would sometimes allow for a turn 1 Bala kill, or other crazy high damage spikes early game.
#5 Ready effects
Readying a character is an extremely slippery slope for card balance. You really have no idea what that could mean. The best uses of this could see 5 extremely powerful dice being rolled in twice in one turn, all for the cheap cost of 1 (Leadership), or 0 (Price of Failure). Yes these cards have the drawback of either exhausting or defeating one of your other characters, but the potential upside is limitless, and mathematically insane. Price of Failure at its best deals one damage to yourself to ready an extremely powerful character. Seem busted? Exhaust your one die character with Leadership and a resource to ready your 5 die character. Seem busted?
Last meta didn’t really see these cards abused, although in the past few weeks we’ve seen the Seventh Sister OTK deck surface, which is entirely built around the Seaker Droids X sides and the ready effects of various cards. All of which leads to upwards of 20 damage in a single round as early as turn 2/3 (or even 1 with the dream draw). Yup… totally fair….
These are just some of the cards that we know for a fact are above the curve. But why have I picked these? Well, they’re the specific cards I’m looking to break in my Obi-Wan Kenobi and Rose deck. You get the Shoto and Ancient package. Obi has great sides for Synchronicity and you have Hero Red so we can run Honor Guard recursion. On top of this Leadership can give you all those free shields twice in a turn while also rolling back in those juicy 19 point character dice. (see my article here with my first thoughts on the deck Legacies Deck Idea: Obi-Wan Rose )
Hopefully you can begin to see how all this works. While it’s not likely that this technique will find the most broken deck in the meta, it should help you identify one that will perform above the curve. Go out and find the most busted cards in the game, find characters that can use them, and bring them to your regionals. Only time will tell which decks will be best in Legacies but I’m inclined to think that R2P2 and Qui-Gon Kanan will still be great decks, after all they’re still the best Shoto decks out there. So feel free to bring them if you can’t find something new.
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Check out some Obi-Rose gameplay here:
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