Competitive Deckbuilding for Star Wars Destiny: Archetypes

Let me start by welcoming you to my bi-weekly articles series here on flipsidegaming.com! You can expect a wide variety of articles from me concentrating on competitive Destiny play. I will be focusing on general strategy, metagame discussions, deck archetypes, specific decks, and whatever else pops into my brain!

It seems apt to start such an article series at the beginning. How does one build a competitive deck? This is quite a complicated question, so this will be a 3 part series. Before getting started, there are two obvious, but important guidelines. First, not all characters are equal. Finn may have been your favorite character in the Force Awakens, but trust me, he isn’t going in a competitive deck. Second, some cards are better than others, in fact, some are substantially better than others. If you aren’t sure what cards are on this this list, look at decklists people have posted to get a feel for which cards seem to go in every list.

The first step in deckbuilding is determining what your win condition is going to be. Are you going to mill (run your opponent out of cards), Crime Lord, or do damage? Damage decks have been dominating store championship season, so today they will be our focus. Within the damage win condition, you need to isolate what your approach is. Is your deck looking to inflict fast damage, set up the first turn or 2 and then overwhelm your opponent with dice, or control the board and win late game? If you are looking to do fast damage, are you seeking to do board wide damage or burst down one character? As you can see even this initial step is a complex one, so let’s look at three damage archetypes.

Agressive Decks

Aggressive decks tend to do a lot of damage quickly, often seeking to kill one character at the beginning of turn 2. While this approach can be incredibly powerful, they often have several drawbacks. This archetype often has a low health pool, usually in the low 20’s. These decks are also highly dependent on rolling well. If your aggressive deck rolls poorly, well what now? Skilled deck builders are acutely aware of this limitation and include ultra-consistent dice and often include damage mitigation as well. These decks are usually best against decks relying heavily on one character, for example Luke or Awakenings Darth Vader. Aggressive decks tend to struggle against decks that can mitigate a lot of damage, as most of their power is in a limited number of dice.

Emo Kids (Kylo/Vader SoR) is a good example of a deck that seeks to do a lot of damage quickly, usually bursting down one target. Vader’s consistent die pumps out a lot of damage quickly, and outside of free Holocron upgrades, the deck doesn’t play a lot of extra dice. But it doesn’t need extra dice, because it seeks to use Vader’s strong character dice to kill one character quickly. As such this type of deck works great against any deck that relies on one character, like Luke/Rey and Poe/Maz. If Poe or Luke goes down early turn 2, the game is likely over. What makes this deck better than many other aggressive decks is the Sith Holocron. While the deck cannot afford to purchase many upgrades, by getting free upgrades on Kylo Ren, when Vader inevitably dies, Kylo is ready to have a serious impact and close out the game.

Set Up Decks (Mid Range)

Setup decks usually look to win in the mid game by overwhelming their opponent with upgrade dice. It can be terrifying on turn 3 to stare down a board full of redeploy weapons and 1 cost upgrades that do serious work. Setup decks have health pools in the mid to high 20’s, which can be hard for more aggressive decks to handle. However, this archetype is usually vulnerable to board wide damage such as Thermal Detonator. While the archetype boasts a high overall health total, they usually have 1-2 low health characters. Additionally, it relies heavily on finding and playing upgrades. Bad draws, Imperial Inspection, and resource denial, can cause serious problems for this archetype.

EPhasma/Trooper/Guavian is a great example of this deck. It plays 6 redeploy weapons, and a several strong 1 cost upgrades such as Dh-17 Blaster Pistol and Imperial Discipline. While Trooper and Guaivan have low health pools, they are excellent for combining with Phasma’s ability to give them guardian. Therefore, the combination of many upgrades and piles of mitigation allow this deck to succeed in the midgame. This is definitely a deck that has flown under the radar, but is ready to bloom without the oppression of Poe/Maz lurking around every corner. This deck especially counters poor Palpatine, as guardian prevents Palpatine from resolving his dice.

Late Game Damage Decks

Late game decks seek to survive even longer and often depend on vehicles to finish the game. These decks usually have incredibly high health pools of 29 or more. Quite often these decks will use Endless Ranks to push this health total even higher. These decks often take a while to set up and are vulnerable to resource denial and can be weak to bursting down a few characters quickly. This archetype is especially weak to decks that do board wide damage, such as Poe/Maz. Having said that, they have already won several Store Championships this season prior to the Fast Hands nerf. This archetype is usually quite strong against midrange decks that don’t get going right away, and aggressive decks that either don’t roll well or have their damage removed.

Trooper/Trooper/TiePilot/Bala is a powerful 4 character deck. This deck seeks to play redeploy upgrades, supports, and Endless Ranks. Therefore, although the characters may have low health, they are able to return from the dead. All the while, vehicles like Slave I and Tie Fighter are doing extensive work. Aftermath is plays a critical role in the deck, providing what seems like endless resources.

How to Choose?

For many the question will be, ok so … which type of deck should I be using then? The answer is not entirely satisfying, that depends. It depends first on the deck builder. Do you have a playstyle that you prefer or excel at? For me, that is control. I would much prefer to give up the opportunity to inflict fast damage for the opportunity to control the board and win via a late game deck. However, while this type of deck might fit my preference it isn’t always the best choice for the competitive player. I ran into this harsh reality during the Awakenings meta. I fell in love with a Jabba/Dooku mill deck. However, most players in my meta were playing ultra-aggressive decks that made it impossible to succeed with a slower mill deck. So I had to put away my pet deck, and respond to what I saw around me. Unfortunately, we aren’t building perfect little machines here that function in a vacuum. Rather, games are played within a meta. That is, other players and decks define to some degree what is going to be good. And what makes this aspect quite frustrating at times is that it is ever changing and region specific. A great example of this is during Awakenings, certain UK Destiny communities were touting the power of Qui-Gonn/Rey decks. While this claim was rejected by most Destiny communities, if you played in these UK communities, Qui-Gonn/Rey was still a defining deck, and any deck builder that did not account for this deck was making a grievous error.

The easy choice – Decks that do it all!

Our deckbuilding decision can be made much easier by the appearance of decks that fit multiple roles. A good example of this is the Funkar deck that has become so popular since its win at the European Championships (FN/EUnkar/FoSt). These decks fill multiple roles, and thus can accomplish different goals, sometimes simultaneously. The reason why Funkar has become so popular is because it manages to function as a control deck, setup deck and a burst damage deck simultaneously. What makes the deck so satisfying is it can adjust to what is needed in a matchup or what it draws. One of the drawbacks of running setup decks is that they struggle when not drawing weapons. However, when Funkar doesn’t draw weapons, that means it is getting its control package online and preventing damage while waiting. While FN would love to overwrite 5 weapons on turn 1, and blow up a main character, the deck also wants to put Salvage Stand and Imperial Inspection on the board early, to disrupt their opponent’s plan. It feels great to use your knowledge of your metagame to decide what to mulligan for and which direction to go early.   Let’s take a closer look at the deck to see what makes it so strong.

Breaking this list down by function we see that FN and his ability provides a lot of burst with high impact weapons such as Rocket Launcher, Flame Thrower, and Riot Baton. Additionally, the 2 cost weapons such as Holdout Blaster and Vibroknife allow the deck to function as a setup deck, allowing for a strong midgame. The powerful removal events and control supports allow the deck to reach the endgame if need be, by slowing down the opponent’s deck. Finally, Unkar ties all these roles together by providing the deck with extra money. In many ways, to me, this is an example of the perfect deck. It performs different roles based on matchups and draws. However, even such a “perfect” deck has to figure out where it stands in each game. Since the deck does not have a straightforward plan, it is critical to determine what your role is in each game. Are you the control player or the aggressor? If you are playing against a mill deck, you better amp up the aggression. However, if you are going up against Palpatine, you better be ready to control those Palpatine dice above all else!

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I hope you enjoyed my first foray into building a competitive deck. In the next installment, I will examine more specifics regarding the process of determining how many upgrades, events, and supports should go in your deck. As you can probably already guess, the answer is, that depends!

Until then you can find me at www.patreon.com/TinyGrimes creating regular content and on Itunes/Youtube with the Smugglers Den and other videos.