No Disintegrations - Edge of Darkness Deck Outlook

Welcome one and all to another installment of No Disintegrations! First of all I wanted to give a special shout out to America who won the Assault on Echo Base giveaway, hopefully you have gotten your pack in the mail by now. I decided to make this weeks article a quick overview of some initial deck themes and ideas that came into my head after first seeing the spoilers. Some of these ideas may be totally off the wall crazy with no actual play-ability but hopefully a few of them spark your imagination and set you down the road of making the next amazing deck to wreck your friends with. Let’s start with one of the “better” deck ideas that already has a pretty solid standing...

Smuggler’s Den v3.0

2x Questionable Contacts (15-1)
2x A Hero's Journey (1-1)
2x Wookiee Life Debt (69-1)
2x Trust Me (71-1)
2x Asteroid Sanctuary (72-1)

Now that we have the ability to run Character Protectors outside of The Secrets of Yavin 4 a pure smuggler deck based around the big three smugglers is viable. The insane offensive capability of Han and Luke is joined by Chewbacca and add to that the shenanigans that Lando and the Millennium Falcon provide and you can quickly see things getting out of hand fast. The only downside to this deck is that it forces you to keep Wookiee Life Debt in play, pretty much at all cost otherwise you lose protect and much of the sturdiness of the deck goes away. There will probably be most consistent builds of this deck but everyone knows full well that they are going to want to build and run this exact deck.

Sniper Elite

2x Raise the Stakes (70-1)
2x The Defense of Cloud City (73-1)
2x Across the Anoat Sector (74-1)
2x Escape from Ord Mantell (75-1)
2x ????

I really want this deck to succeed because of the amount of weird things that come from how it interacts with other decks. So the main idea behind the deck is to get out either Blockade Runner or Slueth Scout to lock out the big baddies from defending (I’m looking at you Palpatine), then if you have Cloud City Wing Guards in play you can strike with them to effectively snipe away any smaller defenders your opponent puts in the way and if you win edge you can also snipe at objectives. The other fun unit is the Covert Sniper which acts as a deterrent from your opponent committing units to the force in fear of them being picked off one by one. The best part is, the Covert Sniper doesn't have to focus to use this ability so the only real option your opponent has to get around him is to not commit anything or to use damage (Force Choke, Targeted Strike, ie...) to take him off the field. As nifty as the deck looks on paper I honestly think it needs some tweaking to actually make it anywhere close to something other than a gimmick deck, but at least we have a start to something that could be fun.

Now it’s time to switch gears and take a look at a couple of Dark Side deck ideas, and while they not be as crazy as the insanity driven sniper idea they are not any less wacky in their own rights.

Capture This!

2x Carbonite Transport (84-1)
2x The Tatooine Crash (82-1)
2x Hive of Scum and Villainy (80-1)
2x The Hunt for Han Solo (52-1)
2x Trandoshan Terror (85-1)

I actually think I am stretching to make this deck work, sadly I don’t think a deck based entirely around capture is truly viable yet even with some of the amazing tools we received in Edge of Darkness. There are so many diverse ways to capture something, the problem comes down to the fact that nothing really harmonizes well together when you add all the capture cards together. There is an odd split of characters and vehicles, enhancement capture, unit capture, and just all around oddness. That being said there are a few standout cards that if and when capture starts to be more cohesive will form its backbone; these are Bounty, Capture, Carbonite Transport, and The Tatooine Crash. Also Feeding the Pit seems like it could be a neat trick, but without consistency and no help with capture synergy it just doesn't seem like a good fit currently. To be honest the deck may work better with splashing Imperials to gain access to Take Them Prisoner, but even that doesn't feel like the right solution. As much as it pains me to say this, I think Scum is going to still be relegated to a more support role inside most decks for a bit longer until we see more from them.

Focused to Death

2x Emperor’s Web (23-1)
2x Council of the Sith (20-1)
2x The Ghosts of the Dark Side (87-1)
2x Cruel Interrogations (24-1)
2x Lucrative Contract (57-1)

As soon as I saw Dark Memories I knew I wanted to find some way to abuse it and what better way than with everyone’s favorite oppressive dictator Emperor Palpatine. Add the tactics you gain from Advisers and Interrogation Droids and you have multiple ways to not only lock down your opponents board, but also kill their characters in the process. I also really like the Force Wraiths as they give you a very good unit to win the force struggle with two icons that will always be active because of their ability. So let’s see if we have all the check marks to win as dark side:

1) lots of resources; check
2) lots of tactics icons; check
3) ways to kill characters; check
4) objective damage; sadly no

And that answer to number four is about the only shortcoming of the deck; however, with the amount of control it offers you should be able to set yourself up decently well to have very few objectives destroyed. That is unless you run into a vehicle deck in which case Dark Memories doesn't work and you are left with only massive amounts of tactics icons, it is truly a sad day for the dark side (end sarcasm).

So there you have it, a few quick first take deck ideas. Once I am able to put more time into testing the set I will go in depth a bit more on a few other deck ideas I have brewing around in this brain of mine, until then live long and prosper all!! Thanks again for tuning in for No Disintegrations if you have a particular deck you would like to see discussed in the coming weeks please leave a comment. As always without each and every one of the valued members here at CardgameDB.com I would be writing to no one so I thank you for your time and may the top deck always be with you!