Now that Regionals season is over for me, and with Convergence being at least a month away, it seems like as good a time as ever to bring out those characters I’ve been wanting to play that aren’t quite good enough for the competitive meta. At the top of that list for me is Dryden Vos. His special represents some crazy upside and encourages wacky deckbuilding, which makes him both a fun character to play and a fun character to deckbuild around. So though I don’t think he’ll ever approach Tier 1, I’ve always wanted to see what I could do with Vos. In today’s article (and hopefully at some locals in the coming weeks), I’m going to explore deckbuilding with Dryden Vos.
How to exploit his special?
The first thing to consider is what kinds of cards I’d want to pull with a Dryden special. This really comes down to 2 different types of cards:
- Big supports and upgrades (Vader’s Fist, Planetary Bombardment, Darksaber, etc.)
- Expensive, resource generation events (Mobilize, Delve, First Claim)
Playing the big supports/upgrades is your #1 plan, but these expensive resource generation events can also be ludicrous if pulled with a Vos special.
The second thing to consider is how else you might play these big expensive cards if we don’t roll any Dryden specials. Thus, we want to also include cards like Delve and Friend’s in High Places, so that we have other ways to cheat out expensive cards. Alright, let’s start building some decks.
This version comes with the standard set of expensive Red/Yellow stuff: Planetary, AT-ST, Pirate Speeder Tank, etc. It Doubles Down on the craziness by adding a 3rd Delve and a 3rd Leadership. Delve is certainly a great card when you have so many expensive supports in the deck, and helps make the deck less reliant on rolling Dryden specials. Cienna also comes with the added benefit of providing Leadership, and having 3 of them increases your odds of an early leadership play. Dryden’s dice are pretty beastly, so even without any upgrades a leadership play can be pretty powerful (and increase your odds of rolling specials). Sounds pretty spicy to me!
This time we’re going the Blue route, and Talzin seems like a great choice here. Her auto focus allows us to play Chance Cube, and much of her removal suite (Armor Plating, Force Illusion, and Witch Magick) is actually pretty good when pulled by a Dryden special (you don’t need your opponent’s dice to be in the pool), which is nice. The support suite is certainly worse than Red, but we do get Vader’s Fist as an option. Additionally, we get Command Shuttle, which allows us to duplicate Dryden’s special (bet you haven’t seen that card in awhile!). The final kicker is the addition of Retribution, which isn’t a game changer, but does help us get value out of our character dice even if the opponent removes them. This version probably has less upside than the Cienna version, but seems a bit more consistent, and has a much better defensive package.
For this last Dryden deck, we’re going to get really crazy. We’re going with the Red package, only this time we’re using Calling in Favors to guarantee that we can play Delve round 1 if we draw it. Mobilize also becomes a sick round one play, and kill off the Battle Droid with The Best Defense and cards like In The Crosshairs and Reversal become devastating 1 cost removal options late in the game. This deck is probably the least consistent of them all, but I have a soft spot for Calling in Favors, and the idea of using it with cards like Delve and Mobilize sounds fun to me!
That’s all I’ve got for today, but I hope you’ve gained some inspiration! I love trying wacky deck ideas and making them work reasonably well (Jabba2/Snoke was a pet project of mine in between NOVA and the release of ATG, and I actually got it to work pretty well). With the competitive scene headed into a lull before the release of convergence, now is the perfect time to try some of these ideas out and have some fun at your locals!
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