Welcome back ladies and girls to another round of.. HOW CRAZY CAN “THE KEN” BE!! After the Star Wars Legacies preview articles dropped, I, like everyone else, saw Yoda and was wondering how broken he might actually be. So far, I’ve seen quite a bit of the decks out there with Poe (TP25) and Yoda, but I wasn’t a fan of them, so I wanted to just make someone new more brutal. I chose Zeb as my original go-to guy as I love that his dice can go either melee or ranged and help with things such as the Light Bow to let you roll out with it and then resolve them to your hearts content. Also with Zeb’s ability, he makes it so that his dice can’t be Deflected (AW145). With the heroes chosen, the next step is to find out what to include. Obviously with Yoda you want to include stuff that has specials so you can chain them and make it work out for you. At least that’s what the idea was with this deck at this point. Having played it today, I feel more like Yoda doesn’t need to particularly special-chain for this deck.
Battlefield
Imperial Academy, Lothal (EW156)
Character
2x Yoda – Wizened Master (LG33)
2x Zeb Orrelios – The Last Lasat (LG50)
Upgrade
2x Handcrafted Light Bow (SR39)
2x Force Speed (SR55)
2x Force Illusion (SR135)
2x Ancient Lightsaber (EW49)
2x Shoto Lightsaber (EW51)
2x Rey’s Lightsaber (TP30)
2x Zeb Orrelios’s Bo-Rifle (LG54)
Support
1x Chopper (EW42)
1x R2-D2 (LG35)
Event
2x All In (AW152)
2x Electroshock (AW159)
2x Guard (SR103)
2x Overconfidence (SR130)
2x Sound The Alarm (TP45)
2x Easy Pickings (LG117)
2x Impulsive (LG119)
Building the Deck
The deck above is on the tenth revision of the cards. I slowly started putting in more and more removal and felt it was getting a little too removal heavy at the cost of doing damage. I was running with two R2-D2 copies but would run into always having the extra of him floating around and decided to go with Chopper just because he has two more melee sides as well as the removal that in a pinch could be used. Opening hands, you usually want to have a Force Speed and one of the many 3-drop upgrades to apply. Usually you’ll want to play down Force Speed if you get it and then roll in Yoda to see if you can get the specials and get that extra money flowing in. I had run Truce (EW142) for a few versions, but always hated giving my opponent money so I decided to take it out. It’s something that I might actually put back in later.
In Practice
During my tournament today, I went 2-2 with this deck, having only gotten in 3 games though as I had the first-round bye. My first match was against Tarkin (LG12)/Seventh Sister (EW10). It was my buddy Rob who I was playing and he and I had been testing the decks for the last few days so we both knew something about each other’s decks. The problem was that we both had new set jitters and decided to change things up the last minute. His were more drastic than mine, but we both had little surprises for each other. I was able to get the only win from him after taking down Seventh Sister. After playing the games against him as much as I did, I found out that if you go after Tarkin, you’ll lose. Yes he can get force powers with Sith Holocron (AW16), but Seventh Sister is the bigger threat as she has 3 dice she’s throwing out at the start as well as access to all the blue-only and spot removals.
Second game was against an Aayla (LG29)/Qui-gon (AW37) deck. The game towards the end would have been a win for me, but he had two turns in a row that I rolled straight up melee damage and he had Force Misdirection (AW116) to take care of it all. In retrospect I should have pitched hard to get the Lightbows out so he couldn’t do his Qui-gon shenanigans but I totally forgot about that. You live and learn.
Third and final was against a Talzin/Kallus odd deck. It was a fun little game that actually got down to the wire at the end, and I got greedy and should have just killed Kallus instead of taking out Talzin, it was a great game regardless.
Things I have learned
One: I shouldn’t have put in Impulsive at the last minute. I originally had in Rend (EW150) and that would have saved my bacon quite a few times today. Yoda’s special chaining is good, but only if you can do something worthwhile with it. Just getting Lightbow specials isn’t bad, but I need to add something else big into it, think things like Force Throw, Force Focus, and other specials might need to be added in the future. While I can see the potential of Yoda, in this particular deck I’m not sure how someone like Aayla, or even OG Rey (AW38) might not be better suited instead of Yoda himself. Sure, he was able to get me extra resources each turn, but I felt the damage output was quite small compared to other decks I faced. I originally started out with a Qui-gon/Yoda deck as well and after playtesting it for a bit I didn’t like the way that deck was working out for me. There wasn’t enough shield love to go around and if Qui-gon bit the dust, Yoda was left with no real way to do any damage. This meta as well as all new ideas are just so new that almost anything can be great and terrible at the same time. This is a deck that I’m going to put on the back burner for a bit and try out some of the other stuff I’ve been meaning to take a crack at. Interesting to note is that I did get to see a Chewie (SR43)/Yoda deck today and it’s something I’d like to try as well just for the heck of it. Seems like it would be fun to turn your opponent’s dice to big sides then either fling them with Force Throw (AW57), or get rid of them with Roguish Charm (LG53) and gain some extra money with it.
Until next time, keep your dice off the blanks (unless you are running Tarkin and you don’t care, you’re going to deal some indirect damage!!)
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