Vader/Raider- 0 Cost Sweep 1.0

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Interesting take on Vader Raider! I'll give it a whirl!

@Longbombed Sweet man! Let me know how it fairs you!

There are some notable 0-costs omitted here. I'd be looking to make room for Enrage and Friends in Low Places for sure.

Probably turn Deflect into Isolation while you're at it. The narrowness of Deflect is a consideration in this meta, there are several prominent melee decks where it's dead or nearly so.

I also really feel like you want the 2nd Force Illusion. The damage mitigation is great

Hard to find cards to cut to make room for those, but possible -1 Force Lightning, -2 Rise Again. Rise is just too expensive in a deck trying to make best use of cards - you end up not playing a number of useful cards in order to have the for it. I'd probably take 2x Low Places and 1x Illusion instead of those, Enrage is not strictly necessary when you already spend so little.

@Foz I agree that FILP is a very solid card and could easily be slipped into this deck list for those times that I can't get fast hands and force speed out. Deflect is one of my least favorite cards but with sucha dominating presence of Palp and Poe in my meta- I tend to use it to great success but you're right, it could be easily swapped for other mitigation. Force Illusion is great- except against vibroknife which I think we will be seeing a lot of here shortly. Rise Again on the other hand I have used in this deck A LOT, especially with the amount of 0 costs in the deck.

I apologize for the length of this, apparently I have a lot of feedback after playing the deck (mostly). These are just initial thoughts, I only got to play a few games so I certainly haven't seen every situation. Anyway, I played a similar list for a few games yesterday. I did have Isolation over Deflect, and it felt better. Deflect likely would have been useless against Vader/Raider, and is bad against some of the rest of the field too. Even against decks where they give you random ranged sides (Darth Vader - Dark Apprentice, FN-2199 - Loyal Trooper) the ranged side is never the die you would have chosen to remove. If you expect more Vibroknife here shortly, isn't that likewise a push for removing Deflect which is bad against melee decks?

Force Illusion is so good in the Poe match that I feel like all other considerations are irrelevant. There's still so much Poe showing to events that you should probably take the best cards against it. Same reason Dug in continues to appear in lists - it wins in the match you will play the most. Vibroknife can also be dealt with neatly by Doubt which is one of its best uses. Whatever it resolves, it's out of the pool.

I played Force Throw, which is a card I have typically hated in my Emperor build, but wanted to give it another chance. It still feels terrible. Dice resolve so fast it's hard to pin down a good target to Throw even if it rolls special, and since it only has 1/3 sides you even want, I feel like I reroll it endlessly, never find special, and end up with it being dead most rounds. I play any 3- or 4-cost force ability over this every day of the week. I tried a few more games with 2x Force Lightning, and it felt much better. Of course, I'm not running Rise Again so I typically had a few random resources to pay Force Lightning sides. With Rise Again you probably will not, and in that case I'd probably play a combination of Mind Probe and Force Push (which is relatively weak without Feel Your Anger tricks, but still less fiddly than Throw). Also consider Makashi Training over any of those things since it gives consistent damage and a way to clear enemy melee dice. Another card that can help deal with Vibroknife never hurts, and it too can play from Holocron.

Boundless Ambition was good as expected. Some of the cards here don't lend themselves very well to being played that far into a round, though. Old Vader/Raider had cards that could still be used after the enemy claimed - Hunker Down, Intimidate, Enrage, Take Cover. The cards in this list are better overall, but generally not as good to draw off Boundless, which is an interesting difference. I ended up most of the time using cards for piles or rerolls to make the best out of my dice for the round, which was facilitated by having so many good card plays to make in response to opponent actions before I played Boundless. It can definitely be a strategy to hold back your activations, try to get opponent to claim, then try to reroll into a great turn off of Boundless.

Vibroknife felt a bit on the weak side. There are enough and damaging here that often the get used anyway, and other than the effect its sides are rather weak. It sounds strange,but Force Training could actually be better. is powerful with the Speed/Fast Hands combo, it plays from Holocron, and the can provide a little of whatever you need, most notably . Maybe I just didn't run into the situations where you need/want Vibroknife though - I did play it a bunch, but it didn't seem to do much work. Certainly it will be more valuable if the upgrades are focused more toward melee.

Feel Your Anger may also be worth a look since it has no play restrictions. I could see an argument for avoiding Deflect/Isolation/Electroshock since you can't predict who your opponent will focus, which could leave dead cards once a character dies. It's just a question of how much power you want versus how much risk. In the games last night I wasn't playing FYA, but there were numerous times where if I'd had it, I would have blown out his entire round. There's usually a point in a game where two or 3 blanks come out, and that card just rips apart their turn when that happens.

Regarding Rise Again, I played some of the games against another Vader/Raider list with Rise Again. He was never able to use it. Vader was often eating lethal already on turn 3, by which point you've gotten 6 resources. If you only play 1 1 card by that point, Vader probably has died to all the damage I've resolved before you can play it. If you pay for more card plays, then you can't Rise Again until at least turn 4, and Vader may die on 3 anyway. One game Vader died to a Fast Hands 3 on the first action of the round where he would have played Rise Again. That's the closest he ever got to using it. I guess what I'm saying is, I seriously doubt the card is fast enough in this deck. You give up a lot to hold 5 resources back, and using them on other cards instead probably prevents more than 5 damage. I'd rather play removal than try to sit on Rise Again; you can do so much more with 5. It works better for Palpatine - Galactic Emperor because he has a larger HP buffer which means he can play a few more 1-cost things and still be alive the turn after Vader would be dead, to find those to play Rise Again. Vader's smaller HP means you have to sacrifice more 1-cost plays to have 5 1 turn sooner, and doing so usually doesn't turn out very well.