A Journey to Tatooine with Deck Analysis 1.0

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A Journey to Tatooine with Deck Analysis

Introduction

After Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s escape from Naboo and the Gungans, they arrive on Tatooine. Here they encounter a young podracing prodigy, Anakin Skywalker. Just as this duo was able to destroy the Trade Federation, they also vanquish their opponents at the Destiny tables.

Battlefield

Mos Espa Arena - Tatooine is the logical battlefield selection. This location provides you a distinct benefit, especially once you witness Anakin’s podracing abilities. The primary issue you will face relating to the battlefield is control. It is difficult to pilot this deck quickly enough to claim, as you want to ensure you are properly shielded prior to resolving your character and upgrade dice, which at times is a tedious process. However, this battlefield is beneficial as it provides little benefit to your opponent, but fairly reliable benefit to you, especially once Anakin’s Podracer hits the table. Remember, you can always choose to lose a resource if you don’t have any and your opponent claims.

Plot

If podracing is involved, there must be betting, thus Double Down is included because we always like our hand at Destiny Deck Analysis. Cards that we included three copies of are highlighted in blue in the following analysis.

Characters

Qui-Gon Jinn - Defiant Jedi Master: As the master of the X fighting style, Qui-Gon uses shields as his primary defense, but also for attack. This can be seen thematically in Destiny, in that his character cards and events bearing his image all utilize this theme.

Anakin Skywalker - Podracing Prodigy: Combined with his podracer, Anakin is both a defensive and disruptive character who provides substantial benefit as a support character. His ability to tinker his podracer die is incredibly thematic along with his ability to disrupt his opponent’s hand or deck concurrently.

Upgrades

Dagger of Mortis: The high damage sides and ability to take shields from force deck mirror matches make this upgrade an excellent inclusion. Ideally, you will ramp into this upgrade mid to late game or, better yet, be able to play all three Shoto Lightsabers.

Force Illusion: This upgrade can help preserve your shields at a critical moment or encourage your opponent to re-roll modified die sides.

Lightsaber Training Staff: Arguably a bad upgrade in most decks, this Lightsaber Training Staff is critical for Anakin’s training and can be surprisingly effective once Qui-Gon has three shields.

Qui-Gon Jinn’s Lightsaber: This is an automatic inclusion as how would Qui-Gon fight without his lightsaber?

Shoto Lightsaber: The most critical component of this deck, the Shoto Lightsabers can provide up to three shields upon activation, which in turn boosts each die side by one, making them the best two cost upgrade in the game.

Supports

Anakin Skywalker’s Podracer: Anakin must be able to compete in the Boonta Eve Classic and how could he do that without his podracer? In the context of this deck, you can use the shields to protect Qui-Gon or the discard to heavily disrupt a mill deck’s mitigation suite.

Defensive Teaching: Qui-Gon must impart some of his knowledge on the force sensitive Anakin! Anyways, Defensive Teaching also allows you to maximize the potential number of shields on Qui-Gon, thus providing greater defense against more aggressive decks.

Events

Caution: Whether it was Padme disguising herself as one of her maidens or Qui-Gon careful not to reveal that he is a Jedi, the mission and deck both use Caution to further their objective.

Easy Pickings: As Anakin is not a damage character, you can reliably trigger Easy Pickings into the late game, as the spot a yellow requirement you are typically able to meet.

Guard: Though this card does not work with Luke Skywalker - Reluctant Instructor’s die, it does synergize with Qui-Gon’s ability. That is, if he has three shields and his die is showing a two damage, you can Guard three dice.

Heightened Awareness: Providing an unexpected burst mid to late game, this card can be used defensively to protect Qui-Gon or offensively to increase his die sides or set up a Riposte.

Hidden Motive: Inexpensive mitigation and damage cards help this deck to ramp quickly, which is a requirement when you are playing only one damage character.

Repulse: As most decks run multiple colors, you can use this card to reliably remove your opponent’s best two dice.

Riposte: This card is effective in a few situations. The first is a mill match-up, where shields are necessary to trigger Qui-Gon’s ability, but beyond that are useless. The second is an aggro match-up, where there is a race to defeat the opponent’s primary character. This card can provide surprise burst damage in both instances that help to maximize your damage potential. Remember to order your actions appropriately though, as it is unfortunate to resolve Qui-Gon’s character and upgrade dice after removing all your shields.

Smuggler’s Run: This is an excellent resource generation card, especially with an elite Anakin Skywalker. This can help you ramp into two Shoto Lightsabers first round or a variety of other damage, shield, and mitigation cards.

Start Your Engines: Searching for Anakin’s podracer is a slow process, but once it hits the table provides speed, defensive, and disruptive capabilities.

Synchronicity: With the shield and melee synergy in this deck, Synchronicity is another card that can provide consistent and surprising damage when it is needed the most.

Strategy

This is a control deck that relies on a built out board state to function properly, thus takes considerable skill to consistently win. You want to get maximum value from Anakin before he is defeated, but concurrently realize that he is the most expendable. If you can avoid dealing damage to Qui-Gon beyond shield removal, do so. The ideal starting hand consists of two Shoto Lightsabers, a Smuggler’s Run, a Caution, and another mitigation card. Begin by activating Anakin with Smuggler’s Run, gaining a resource and resolving the die showing a resource, play out your upgrades on Qui-Gon, use Caution when applicable to protect Qui-Gon. If your hand is less than ideal, try to protect Qui-Gon while you build out your board state in other ways. For instance, an Anakin’s Podracer can be used to shield Qui-Gon first turn and discard critical cards from your opponent’s hand. Regardless of your starting hand, your strategy should be to build out your board state while protecting Qui-Gon at all costs.

Pay special attention to the ordering of your actions as some cards will require certain dice to be in your pool, whether Anakin’s or Qui-Gon’s (e.g. Caution or Guard). This means you will want to be efficient with your actions and have the proper dice in your pool at all times to use your cards that have those requirements.

Defensive teaching is another excellent card that you would like to see hit the table mid to late game. This allows you to better protect Qui-Gon by maximizing your shield dice and card effects, rather than settling for a caution for two shields or a similar misuse of shields. For instance, with two Shoto Lightsabers and a Lightsaber Training Staff on Qui-Gon, you gain two shields upon activation, which is not enough to trigger Qui-Gon’s upgrade ability. Now, cards like Heightened Awareness and Caution are incredibly ineffective as they would only provide one shield. However, if both Defensive Teaching are in play, you can gain up to five shields, thus eliminating the aforementioned inefficiency.

Gameplay

Having played a few games with this deck, I can say that it is surprisingly effective for being a primary support deck. The games I have one have been because I was able to prevent damage early game while ramping effectively, while the games I lost I failed to hit Qui-Gon’s damage sides and also was unable to ramp effectively.

Game 1: Vader3/Greedo: This game fell apart quickly, as I failed to draw upgrades and was not rolling Qui-Gon’s damage sides. A double Force Speed special into 16 damage ended my hopes of winning this game.

Game 2: Vader3/Greedo: Thanks to poor rolls by my opponent, I was able to ramp fairly well and protect Qui-Gon into the late game, at which point I had so many shields it was difficult for my opponent to get through them. This was still a close game, but I pulled out the victory through a Synchronicity, Heightened Awareness, and Riposte combination.

Game 3: Yoda/Leia2: This game was incredible. As mill decks are unable to remove Qui-Gon’s shields, my deck runs at maximum efficiency. I was able to get Anakin’s podracer down early, but failed to find many upgrades until later in the game. Thankfully, with Anakin and his podracer, I was able to discard three cards from my opponent’s hand every round, thus severely hurting their ability to mitigate Qui-Gon’s dice. In the end, it came down to either one damage or one card, where I had both almosted defeated them and almost milled them. Had I hit one more damage side or one more discard side I would have won.

Game 4: Jabba2/Arihnda: An interesting matchup, I never felt too uncomfortable as indirect damage was able to be distributed to my shields, with excess going to Anakin. I ramped effectively and had a few surprise bursts of 6-10 damage throughout the game. These were enough to defeat Arihnda and eventually Jabba.

I am looking forward to getting in more testing with this incredibly thematic deck and am curious as to how it performs for you! Do you think any changes should be made? How has your testing gone? Thanks for reading my analysis and be sure to like and follow Destiny Deck Analysis on facebook for more articles, deck analyses, and tournament reports!