Explore Deckbuilding with a New Force Pack in STAR WARS (TM): The Card Game

Every Star Wars™: The Card Game player loves to receive new objective sets, and building new decks after the release of a new Force Pack can be a fun and rewarding activity. But is it better to modify your existing decks, or build completely new ones with every new Force Pack?

Today, guest writer Nathanael Tripp offers some deckbuilding advice, focused on a specific objective set from Heroes and Legends, the first Force Pack in the new Echoes of the Force cycle. For Nate’s thoughts on deckbuilding and altering existing decks, read below.

Guest Writer Nathanael Tripp on Deckbuilding with The False Report

The long awaited release of the first Force Pack in the Echoes of the Force cycle is upon us! With this release, we face some important decisions regarding deck creation. With five new objective sets in each Force Pack, it’s important to know where to start altering or creating decks. Some people jump in headfirst and throw every new set into a deck, but is this the most efficient way to do things?  

Not really. In most cases, it’s better to start where you’re familiar. This means taking a deck you’ve played extensively and modifying it around newly released cards. Let’s take a look at an example of how to do this with a new Force Pack by taking The False Report (Heroes and Legends, 505) objective set and seeing how it changes a well-known deck.

Character decks have some of the most iconic Star Wars characters of all time in them. For that reason, most new players tend to gravitate towards decks that include these characters. A great example of a Character-based deck runs the following objectives, or some slight variation:

Jedi Affiliation
2x A Hero’s Journey
2x The Secret of Yavin 4
2x Questionable Contacts
2x Wookiee Life Debt
2x Asteroid Sanctuary

This is a very solid deck, based around Characters, such as Luke Skywalker (Core Set, 92), Han Solo (Core Set, 64), and Chewbacca (Edge of Darkness, 319), along with the Millennium Falcon (Edge of Darkness, 332) and protector units. Quite a few people played this deck at the 2013 Star Wars: The Card Game World Championship to great success. This deck forms a solid foundation, but what changes can we make to the deck to use some of the new objective sets from Heroes and Legends?

Changing the Core

The first question is what affiliation do we want the deck to focus on: Smugglers and Spies or Jedi? If we want to add The False Report to our deck, we need to keep in mind that it is Smugglers and Spies affiliation only. Thus, focusing on Smugglers and Spies objective sets seems like the logical way to go with the deck. By doing this, we lose some of the protection offered by the Jedi objective sets, but we gain the extra punch of being able to run some heavy-hitting Smuggler sets. At this point, the core of our deck looks like this:

Smuggler Affiliation
2x The False Report
2x Questionable Contacts
2x Wookiee Life Debt
2x Asteroid Sanctuary

Choosing the final two objective sets is tricky, because there are a multitude of ways we could take the deck, vastly changing how the deck will play. We have a few criteria we want our last two objectives to meet. They need to contain Characters to interact with the Millennium Falcon and Wookiee Life Debt. They should have extra resource cards. Lastly, if possible, they should get additional cards into your opponent’s hand to reduce the cost of the Aquaris Freeholders (Heroes and Legends, 506).

Filling Out the Edges

Our first option is the tried and true Renegade Squadron Mobilization (The Search for Skywalker, 208). Echo Caverns (The Search for Skywalker, 212) comes in this set, bringing you all kinds of tricks and traps. Echo Caverns alone may make this objective set good enough to be a one-of in our deck. The rest of the cards in this objective set are decent to boot. This is a good set to keep as a forerunner for now, but we might find something even better.

Trust Me (Edge of Darkness, 327) is a front runner as it meets quite a few criteria for this deck.  First and foremost, you get an objective with a great ability and two resources. You get a strong Character in Lando Calrissian (Edge of Darkness, 328) who can help you make the most of Han Solo’s ability and protect you from bad combat situations. You receive another resource to help pay for tricks. The other cards in this objective set give you more ways to control the board, but they’re situational. This set might seem like a natural fit, but our deck must run differently to make these cards function effectively. With Lando, we need to keep an open resource to use his ability, which can limit our options. Overall this set is good, but maybe not exactly what we’re looking for.

Rendar’s Wrath (Balance of the Force, 425) is an objective I’ve found myself using a lot recently. The objective itself is good, as it often forces your opponent into suboptimal blocks to avoid taking extra damage. Dash Rendar (Balance of the Force, 426) is a great attacker since you can leave resources open to give him the unit damage to take out defenders. Arcona Rumor Mongers (Balance of the Force, 427) are nasty little units too. They often sneak in for unopposed damage, since your opponent rarely wants to commit two blockers to stopping them. Smuggling Shipment (Balance of the Force, 428) also acts as pseudo resource as it can be used at any time to free up a single resource. Overall, this set, although limited to one per objective deck, seems to be a sure fit for how the deck is being shaped.

After considering our options my final decklist is:

Smuggler Affiliation
2x The False Report
2x Questionable Contact
2x Wookiee Life Debt
2x Asteroid Sanctuary
1x Rendar’s Wrath
1x Renegade Squadron Mobilization

We gain all the benefits of the Millennium Falcon and the protection of Wookiee Life Debt as well as a slew of combat tricks to keep the opponent guessing. The Arcona Rumor Mongers give us lots of openings for free attacks, where we can use Echo Cavern to grab extra objective damage or tactics icons. You even have the Aquaris Freeholders waiting to pounce on the unwary opponent who loads up their hand for edge battles, giving you a monster unit for cheap.

Hopefully this brief overview of how to go about tweaking a deck once a new Force Pack comes out has shown that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time. Stick with what you know and your deck will emerge much stronger. Until next time, thanks for reading and may the Force be with you!

Thanks, Nathanael!

Nathanael Tripp is an avid player of Star Wars: The Card Game, who enjoys playing the game casually and competitively. Look for more Star Wars guest articles from Nathanael and other writers in coming months! 

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