Rainbow 4-Hero Vehicles - tuned for my playstyle, with notes 1.0

• Versions
• 2.0
• 1.0

Big thanks to Tacster for the decklist, and to the shop I’ve been playing at, Covenant Tulsa. Great store with friendly staff and players.

Part I – Lessons from gameplay

I’ve had great results with this deck, and it’s taught me a lot about the game. Here are some of my takeaways:

1 - Vehicles are like extra character dice that cost resources but can’t be killed.

2 - Character activations are resources that can be commodified.

3 - A good deal of the gameplay in Destiny revolves around mitigating uncertainty. In games like Magic the uncertainty is largely from randomized card draw, but in Destiny you’ve also got dice.

You’ll see that many of the Events I play are built around combining lessons 2 and 3. My characters are bad, with bad dice – so it’s “inexpensive” to trade their activations for other effects like mitigation. A card like Respite trades an uncertain outcome (whatever you’d roll from the character you’re exhausting) for a certain outcome (a resource and a card). Consistency is incredibly important for my gameplan -- play a vehicle every turn -- so I’m willing to spend a spend a card and a character activation for the guarantee that I’ll have three resources. Caution turns one of my bad character dice into 3 shields. That’s a big upgrade from what I could otherwise expect from rolling in one of my characters, and the shields fit perfectly with “bad characters but lots of life” plan.

4 - The “bandwidth” of a deck, or how quickly it is able to play out all its actions in a round, has some subtle impact on gameplay.

Imagine a game in which there is no removal or cards played, and dice are resolved individually. If your opponent is playing 2 elite characters with 1 upgrade die each, it will take them 8 actions to activate both characters and resolve 6 dice. Meanwhile, I am playing 4 single-die characters and two single-die supports. It will take me twice as many activations to get my character dice into play, and another 2 extra activations for the supports (unlike upgrades, which piggy-back on their character activations). It will take me 12 actions to activate and resolve all my dice. When you add events back into it, my turns become even more bloated.

The important takeaway is that it takes the opponent 2 actions to put all their dice into their pool, whereas it takes me 6 actions. We both have the same number of dice, but there are three-times as many decision points for my opponent on WHEN to use removal on my dice. There is also three times as much hidden information: we know what the opponent has in their pool after the 2 activations, but mine won’t be fully revealed until after 6 activations. As we know from “The Monty Hall Problem”, we make statistically better decisions after some of the initially hidden information is revealed. So I force my opponent into making this decision several times a round, based on less information that I get: “do I remove this now, or let him resolve it and see if something more important comes up later?” It’s a small thing with minimal impact on actual games, but’s not nothing.

At the very least, I take so many actions every round that I’m never able to claim.

Part II - Changes I’ve made to the original list

I love playing 4 characters. Having 31 life is nice for a slow deck like this one, and having lot of characters with bad dice means I minimize the drawback of cards that remove my character dice or exhaust characters as a cost: Caution, Loth-Cat and Mouse, Into The Garbage Chute, and Respite.

I've only been playing Destiny for two months, so I made some adjustments to the original decklist to fit my experience level and play style. For the most part, I've eliminated cards that require the most skill (Rally Aid and Scruffy Looking Nerf-Herder) and replaced them with cards that are easier to play: Loth-Cat and Mouse and Respite. Loth Cat costs zero resources, and almost always removes one of my bad character dice. That's much easier to play than Nerf Herder, which works best when you have a good knowledge of popular archetypes and their lines of play, which I do not.

Initially I didn't like Rally Aid because I was playing too conservatively to make it really shine -- you want to play out your hand before you Rally Aid to reduce the cost of the last vehicle in your hand, and I always had a full hand of removal that I wasn't willing to throw away (via rerolls). So instead I chose the more consistent but less powerful route of using single-use resource cards like Respite to pay for vehicles. I've also found that actually having resources in play is important to resolve Hired Gun's damage sides and the big side from Resistance Bomber -- actual resources, not discounts.

I also replaced both copies of Aftermath with Well-Connected. Aftermath has the potential to gain you 4 resources over the course of the game, but I am willing to trade the potential extra resources for the consistency of having one resource early. This is a deck that really wants 3 resources on the first turn, and on most turns later, so that I can drop a 3-cost vehicle and start stabilizing the board ASAP.

Finally, I replaced the Entangle from the original list with a second ETA-2 Interceptor. I've got enough removal and would like the play a vehicle every turn.

Part III – Lines of play

~For mulliganing you want to start with a vehicle and one of the resource cards to pay for it.

~The first actions of most turns are to activate a vehicle, then reroll it with Rookie Pilot if necessary.

~I am quick to use Jedi Temple Guard to guardian away damage dice, so I like to roll in Ezra Bridger - Force-sensitive Thief or Hired Gun and use them to play Caution on the Temple Guard. Otherwise, I will play Caution on whoever is drawing all the early damage from the opponent.

~I tend to play very fast. If not, I will lose to the “damage done” tiebreaker when time is called.

~C-3PO and R2-D2 are like mitigation cards that you can play off of Tech Team. C-3PO will sometimes remove himself to change indirect damage into melee/ranged, or to change Y-Wing into its special. But more frequently I use him to get a resource (if Hired Gun rolls a damage side, or I get to use the big side of Resistance Bomber) or to turn the last discard/disrupt die of the round into a point of damage.

~Tech Team on the first turn is great, but you’ll either need to control the battlefield or have another resource from somewhere in order to play a 3-cost vehicle on turn one.

~I’ve seen a lot of decks (or players?) that equip up a character, activate them, and spend most of their remaining cards in hand on rerolls. I tend to play out my cards rather than throwing them away. Remember, this deck sacrifices in other areas to make it more consistent on the mitigation side of things, so you’re using Caution, Respite, Loth-Cat and Mouse, Into the Garbage Chute, C-3PO and R2D2 to “reroll” your dice.

~The order of preference for playing vehicles:

1. Y-Wing. Between its activation, reroll off Rookie Pilot, or the pseudo refocus off C-3PO or R2D2, there’s a great chance this is going to be doing 4 points of damage a turn.
2. ETA-2 Interceptor. This and Fang Fighter both have two Ranged sides that help with the modifier sides on Rookie Pilot and Ezra Bridger, but the Interceptor also has the extra 3 Indirect side.
3. Fang Fighter. It beats the Airspeeder because of the 3 Ranged side and the Ambush is sometimes nice, but it’s surprisingly close.
4. T-47 Airspeeder. Using the special to draw cards is pretty nice.

There you go. Thanks again to Tacster for the deck! --John