No Disintegrations - Jedi Evolution...?

Welcome one and all to another week of No Disintegrations. My original plan this week was to continue my line of articles showing the progressive changes to each archetype, and this week the Jedi are up to bat. But when I started going over things I realized that they really have only had a few very minor tweaks to their game plan. There have been a few attempts to run the new Self Preservation objective with varying success, but for the most part Jedi have stayed very true to the “big 3” concept using some combination of Luke, Han, Obi-Wan, and Yoda. So every deck I came up with seemed like I was writing about the exact same deck with one minor tweak; mainly Echo Caverns vs. Old Ben’s Spirit. So instead of carrying along those lines I decided to go back to one of the original decks I had put together when all I had access to was two core sets to see if it could withstand the test of time.

Afflilation:
Rebel Alliance (Core Rebel Alliance)

Total Objective Sets: 10

2x A Hero's Journey (1-1)

Luke Skywalker (1-2)
Twi'lek Loyalist (1-3)
Jedi Lightsaber (1-4)
Trust Your Feelings (1-5)
Dagobah Training Grounds (1-6)

2x In You Must Go (2-1)

Yoda (2-2)
Believer in the Old Ways (2-3)
Shii-Cho-Training (2-4)
Dagobah Training Grounds (2-5)
Counter-stroke (2-6)

2x Forgotten Heroes (3-1)

Obi-Wan Kenobi (3-2)
Jedi in Hiding (3-3)
Jedi Mind Trick (3-4)
Our Most Desperate Hour (3-5)
Heat of Battle (3-6)

2x The Secret of Yavin 4 (5-1)

C-3PO (5-2)
Guardian of Peace (5-3)
Guardian of Peace (5-4)
Lightsaber Deflection (5-5)
Twist of Fate (5-6)

2x Mission Briefing (9-1)

Mon Mothma (9-2)
Battlefield Engineers (9-3)
A-Wing (9-4)
Heavy Blaster Emplacement (9-5)
Heat of Battle (9-6)

I envisioned this deck getting Obi-Wan out with two Trust Your Feelings along side two Battlefield Engineers and my opponent just weeping because of all the tactics icons coming their direction. What I ended up finding was that while in an ideal world that setup sounds good it isn’t actually the ideal solution for the deck because of how powerful Obi-Wan is on defense and just how dominant Luke Skywalker is as the main administer of pain and suffering; wait those aren’t Jedi traits... o well. When you get Luke going with some Guardians at his side he becomes a wrecking ball that is hard to deal with, add in the possibility of Heavy Blaster Emplacements and there isn’t much that can stand the constant barrage of damage. Sadly the one weak point of the deck is actually Yoda’s objective set as it doesn’t add a whole lot to the party other than In You Must Go. Counter-stroke isn’t bad but you usually don’t have the open resources for it or you have C-3P0 filling the same role. The extra set of Dagobah Training Grounds are very handy as the deck doesn’t have an overabundance of resources, and coupled with the ability of In You Must Go it can generate some very good first turn plays. Then we get to the green guy himself; Yoda, and by far he is the “worst” card in the deck. The majority of the time you will play him for the sole purpose of winning/keeping the Force or in order to win an Edge battle. As there are very few character enhancements in the deck he just doesn’t shine as much as you would want him to and thus he becomes somewhat less useful than you would think. The pure resource swing of In You Must Go is what keeps me playing this objective set over the other contenders for its spot in the deck. Possibly down the road there may be something that could take its place but for now this seems like the best of the options.

Testing the deck against some of the current Sith powerhouse decks revealed mixed results and I feel like this version of a Jedi deck plays very similar to some of the current Rebel decks. The main reason for this is that you have some key cards that can hands down win you the game and if you don’t see them the deck doesn’t offer much else in the way of outs. When the deck is running on all cylinders though it is pretty tough to beat as you can keep the board clean of opposing units with Luke and Heavy Blaster Emplacements. The one upside that I see to this deck over your standard Smuggler’s Cavern deck is the added card draw from Mission Briefing which helps fill your hand during your opponents turn to win defensive Edge battles. Add in the extra draw from A-Wing and I noticed that I was able to keep a decent amount of cards in my hand most of the time. Overall I like the decks premise, but I think it falls just one step short of something I would feel confident playing outside of a casual environment.

Strengths:
- Unit Damage
- Objective Damage
- Survivability
- Synergy

Weaknesses:
- Tactics icons
- Consistency
- Slow initial setup

That wraps things up for this installment of No Disintegrations, hopefully everyone out there gets a chance to mess around with various version of Jedi decks in the coming weeks as they offer a very unique and fun play style. Also check out Episode 4 of Table Flip in a few weeks where we will discuss this deck a bit more to get Bazeleel’s take on it as well. Next week I am planning to conclude the series of evolution articles by going over the steps that the Imperial decks have taken to control the galaxy with an iron fist. 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!