Rebel Affiliation
x2 Haunting the Empire
x2 Planning the Attack*
x2 Pushing Back the Empire
x2 May the Force Be With You
x2 Danger in the Wastes
*Full disclaimer, I'm using K2 as a replacement card because this pod is only validated as a two-of if you can cut the number of Rebel Tacticians in half.
I like playing with Rebel characters a lot and I'm glad we got the tools in the final stages of the game for them to really shine. I'm just going to list everything in bullet points.
-Hot take: Haunting the Empire is the Rebel equivalent to MTFBWY. There's literally no downsides to the pod. The worst card is still 2-pips in edge. The whole 3 uniques argument doesn't hold weight either since two of them are great in edge and the one with 1-pip is something worth doubling up on. Solid pods with resources end up becoming part of the meta and this is no exception.
-Cassian and Dodonna pair excellently together. Four Yavin 4 objectives means Dodonna becomes a consistent source of pre-edge card draw (huge deal). Cassian's also an excellent two-of, not a single bad card in the pod. The Tacticians are the best source of shielding in the game.
-Four 2-resource objectives means I'll start 90% of my games with 5 resources and that's really important to me. I want to be able to play the War Room into a 4-drop or Obi on T1.
-Danger in the Wastes is pretty underrated. Obi gets edge-1 easily in this deck and the Robes are nuts. The Steadfast Settler should be counted as a resource but I have plenty of 3-unit Rebel pods to offset it.
-Why am I not running Jedi affiliation? I don't want to be in a position where I need to play MTF (a given) and Danger in the Wastes (to get my 5 resources, especially when Haunting isn't available on the flop) with a Jedi affiliation. This deck needs at least 2 Rebel resources at any given time as well. The good news is I'll consistently flop into at least 1 Jedi objective on the flop and the only time I'll ever play 2 Jedi cards in one turn is a main + Obi's Robes which is a rare occurrence.
-Overall this is just a solid fundamentals deck that checks off all of the boxes that I'm looking for. But, it's not without it's faults. The big fault I see in this deck is that I only have 4 units with 2 bombs so waging big offensive strikes can be difficult. But, the deck is crammed with solid units (a lot of which have tactics) and the deck also has 4 Allies of Necessity to augment my strikes. But, Allies require a developed board state and if I get them T1 they just become edge fodder.
I like Heats a lot more; they're good at any time and work pre-edge.