Tusken Trooper Swarm Battlegroup 1.0

• Versions
• 2.0
• 1.0

Hi! I'm Nappehboy, a video and card game enthusiast with over 17 years of playing card games competitively. I do my best to innovate strategies and play outside the box deck ideas, but above all, I build decks that I truly believe can compete with whatever an opponent can throw at me. This is one of those decks.

(Author's Note) Playing on a budget:

If you want to play a truly budget version, you can remove the AT-STs (the only legendary cards in the deck) and replace them with an additional First Order Tie Fighter, and a speeder bike.

Character Overview:

First Order Stormtrooper - One of the weakest characters in the game, at least at first glance. It's die is attempting to do lots of ranged damage and as such 50% of the time you'll get at least one damage out of a stormtrooper. Unfortunately, they also come with 2 blanks, meaning 33% of the time the stormtrooper does nothing. This downside can be mitigated a huge amount by certain events in the game or even by discarding a card to re-roll your dice, but sometimes you are just at the mercy of your rolls. So, why are we building a battlegroup with stormtrooper if it's "weak?" The truth is, while it's die might be bad, it's still a die. Much like in your average card game where having more cards than your opponent means you are "ahead," being up dice on your opponent in Star Wars Destinies tends to lead to a win. The stormtrooper has the upside of being a "non unique" character, which while it sounds like a downside initially, is actually an impressive benefit. Non unique characters are affected by some powerful events that can allow them to either all activate at once or even be returned to play once they are defeated, helping to make them feel more like a squad of endless soldiers as opposed to singular entities. While the stormtrooper has many upsides, it's starting HP is very low and it's die isn't defensive at all, so be prepared to lose characters when you play this battlegroup.

Tusken Raider- Similar to the stormtrooper, the tusken raider is a non unique character whom is fairly frail, but tries to make up for it with a stream of steady damage. Unlike the stormtrooper, the tusken does melee damage, which is useful to avoid getting all of your damage in a turn prevented by a single event. In addition, the Tusken Raider is a yellow card and gives us access to a few important pieces for our strategy, specifically "He doesn't like you" which excels in this deck as most of our character's dice are expendable. He also allows us to use jetpack alongside our stormtroopers, which has high damage sides that require you to have ranged damage from other sources, which stormtroopers bring plenty of. Lastly the tusken raider's ability is very useful in late game situations where you just need to do a few points of damage, because it doesn't allow your opponent to respond if you roll a 3 damage die, you simply discard a card, pay one resource, and finish them off before they get to do anything, making him a potent threat in the closing turns of the game.

Battlefield Overview: Rebel War Room is a very strong battlefield for this group. 12 of the 15 dice generated have a side that requires you to pay a resource in order to do damage and rebel war room helps to mitigate all those costs significantly, making it easier for you to continue dealing damage without hamstringing your resource generation towards an AT-ST. In addition, not many other decks can truly take advantage of Rebel War Room all that often, meaning it's both a battlefield that is great for you and lackluster for the average opponent, making it the easy battlefield of choice for our purposes.

Gameplay:

This deck is looking to overwhelm one enemy character quickly with a ton of early game damage, then play a 4 vs 1 or 4 vs 2 game from turn three onward. None of your units are critical to your strategy so it's hard for your opponent to truly disrupt what you are doing. Your battlegroup is filled with various dice that have more than one blank on them, so events like "Nowhere to Run" shine in a deck like this more than anywhere else. Some events like "Squad Tactics" allow for incredibly explosive turns by allowing you to take what is essentially four actions while only using one. If you play "Squad Tactics" as your first action on a turn, you can immediately roll 4 dice and hopefully play an "Award Ceremony" as your second action, granting you 4 extra cards. This is incredibly powerful, as it means you'll have 7 cards in hand and 4 rolled dice by the time your opponent has taken two actions, putting you in the driver's seat for controlling what happens during the rest of the turn. All 3 stormtrooper dice and tusken raider have resource sides, meaning you'll probably get at least one resource from them a turn if you need to. In addition, drudge work and underworld connections give you the ability to actually play cards like First Order TIE Fighter or AT-ST ahead of schedule, which gives you a solid late-game backbone. Supports that bring dice are especially important in this deck as opposed to upgrades, because it's harder for your opponents to remove them. AT-ST sits in play and continues to rain fire on your opponent until the game finishes, meaning they can't remove it by simply taking out one of your low hp characters as they could with an expensive upgrade. Most of the equipment upgrades in this deck are either cheap or have redeploy, which is beneficial when your characters do not have much hp as ours do. The event card "All In" is one I would not recommend playing in most decks, but it is so incredibly powerful after squad tactics that it merits an include of one copy. Sometimes you activate all of your characters and roll a bunch of damage and your opponent can only remove one die before you get to do anywhere between 9-11 damage to them, and that's too good of a deal to pass up. Finally, the dice control that you have over an opponent with this setup is excellent, boasting 2 copies each of "Flank", "He doesn't like you", and "The best defense". Trading any of your lackluster dice for one of an opponent's is fine in any deck, but it really shines here.

This deck allows you to do most of what you want to be doing in a game of Destiny. It provides you with a lot of consistent damage, resource generation, dice control, and a way to gain tempo within the game by taking lots of actions at once. In addition it's relatively cheap to build, even with the two legendaries and is something different than what most people will turn towards as an opening deck choice. Thank you for taking the time to read about my deck and may you never roll blanks!