Card Dissection: Crime Lord (AW23)

So there you are: you got some starter games in for Star Wars: Destiny, bought some boosters, and think you have a good handle on everything. There’s a lot of straightforward cards in Awakenings and nothing too out there in the starter sets, Finn’s (AW45) deckbuilding ability aside. You might think you have a pretty good handle on what you need to do to defend your characters until you get to your endgame. Then you see Crime Lord (AW23) and your mind melts.

The Art: The artwork, while fairly subdued with a similar color pallet used across the board, is very well done and a great example of the ‘realistic’ art style adorning this game. While it prominently features Jabba—one of its strongest pairings, but more on that later—you also get to see some of the fringe benefits of being a Huttese crime lord, replete with a captured and bikini-clad Leia and everyone’s favorite monkey lizard.

Die: eiuryfghiewsnviefvn Oh, sorry, I drooled all over my keyboard thinking about using every single face of this die—which doesn’t miss, by the way. 2 Focus, 2 Shields, 2 Resources, 3 Disrupt for a resource, and two opportunities to land the Special. Thematically, it really shines as the kind of behind-the-scenes support that an illegitimate business-slug might lend you, from money to influence to assassination contracts. I know, right?! Look, a lot of attention in Star Wars: Destiny gets paid to very specific parts of a card, like the special ability in most cases, but I could go through a game with Crime Lord (AW23) out and be very happy if I never managed to land a single Special side. If nothing else, you get an amazing die for your efforts in playing it. Absolutely everything is useful in applying pressure, and there’s no time for piddly little 1s on those die faces. Just watch your opponent’s gears kick into overdrive deciding if they want to save up for something big or just spend those resources now before you burn everything to the ground. And getting that disrupt side off with My Kind of Scum (AW100) on the table? That’s what dreams are made of.

Ability: Woo boy, talk about a ticking time bomb. Five resources to mark a character that’s defeated at the end of the round, even if Crime Lord (AW23) somehow leaves play. That’s just crazy, and there’s nothing you can do about it if it hits. Just having that possibility hanging around out there makes your opponent play defense against it, even if you have no intention of pushing the game that way. As a quick side note, the five resources are not a cost, they’re part of resolving the ability. Not to insult anyone’s intelligence, but there have been questions regarding using Crime Lord (AW23) in conjunction with Rebel War Room (AW171), which is a Battlefield that lets you resolve a die without paying its cost; there’s no getting around those five resources (at least not yet). The special ability is something you have to plan for, and something the entire table can see coming from a mile away, but there are a few ways to pop it off unexpectedly. Using the aforementioned My Kind of Scum (AW100) is a fantastic way to suddenly have more resources than you began the round with, or being evil and chancing a use of Ace in the Hole (AW92) to roll the die into the pool (I wouldn’t do that without some form of dice manipulation, though). It’s an extremely powerful game-winning ability.

Cost: In my opinion, four resources is a bargain. Yes, that means it’s ‘slow’ and something you have to devote some effort into getting out there, but it can very easily pay for itself rather quickly, especially if you can focus the resource generation sides. While the special ability will cost you another five resources to fire, it also lets you kill off a character that you haven’t even touched the entire game. If you draw Crime Lord (AW23), find the money somewhere; I promise it’s worth it.

Deck Options: Of course, many people are going to say how well this fits into a control-style deck, which it does. You can put all your effort into messing with your opponent’s plan until you manage to play it out, and never have to worry about dealing damage. Personally, I like to build a team that includes someone not focused on control to expand my options, not to mention that whoever has Crime Lord (AW23) attached to them has a humongous target on their back. Having someone in play that can cause some hurt can force your opponent into some tough decisions. Who does this upgrade pair well with? Jabba the Hutt (AW20), not-so-shockingly. The reason I say that is because the die sides synergize very well and Jabba has a 1-in-3 chance to roll a focus, plus an innate ability that lets you reroll a yellow die after he’s activated. That’s a lot of ways to improve your odds of making Crime Lord’s (AW23) die do what you want it to do. Like I said before, attaching this card to someone your opponent’s might not typically focus on—like Jabba the Hutt (AW20)—when you have a heavy hitter ready to stir stuff up forces decisions to be made and you should be ready to pivot in the opposite direction at any given time. I don’t think this card only belongs in control decks, but neither does it work in a purely aggro-style deck either. There should be some element of trickiness built in, and getting it out should be part of your strategy if you’re bothering to include it.

Final Thoughts: Crime Lord (AW23) is a game changer, both on a large and small scale. In the grand scheme, it shows us that absolutely anything can be coming down the pipes and the sky’s the limit to imaginative abilities. Playing it on the table, though, will instantly shift the focus of a game. Whether your opponent immediately goes into defensive mode, starts focusing on a new character, or speeds up their endgame to beat it, you’ve adjusted the entire tempo of the rest of the game simply by playing one card. While it’s incredibly effective just by using it in the most straightforward way, there are also a number of ways to cheat it in or surprise your opponents. Yes, I might have said that it’s weak in an aggro-only deck, but just imagine the surprise if you were to attach it to Jango Fett (AW21) or Bala-Tik (AW19), or maybe rolling in with that Ace in the Hole (AW92) and then claiming Emperor’s Throne Room (AW167). However you decide to use it, Yellow is all about being tricky, and only your own ingenuity is holding you back.

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