Have Your Cake and Eat it Too

So let's recap: What are the two things that I don't dig about most Falcon/Jedi decks?

1) Aside from May the Force Be With You, the rest of your Jedi objectives are garbage.
2) Any deck that has two copies of the Falcon is going to have a very high cost curve.

The No Questions Asked affiliation is able to fix both of these problems but I also found myself asking, "How can I solve this using the Desperate Allies affiliation?" "What if I'm able to start with 5 resources every game but also have the additional refresh to give me another boost?"

I knew I needed to create an elevated resource base to compensate for the Falcon and I've done this through objective rigging. In order to start with 5 resources every game I need to have at least four 2 resource objectives in the deck as this will give me about a 90% chance of finding one of those on the flop. Luckily the final cycle has provided two solid pods that can help with this.

The Broken Horn is a pretty damn good pod. Although the objective's 4 health is kind of a sore spot, the ridiculous boost you'll get from it is worth the downside. Vizago himself also becomes a monster with refresh and he becomes arguably as good as Yoda on T1. I think the big advantage with him is that his shield can prevent him from dying to an attacking Bane on T2. The Droids are pretty solid as well and since they replenish themselves I don't have an issue with running 4 of them in a deck. I haven't gotten any real use from Payback yet though and Allies needs no explanation.

Danger in the Wastes solves the first issue I mentioned because it gives me another Jedi objective besides May the Force Be With You that I want to see. It obviously doesn't have the ramping potential of the Broken Horn but if it gives me 5 resources on the flop I'm not going to balk at it. I find that Obi's text often doesn't have much effect (there's not too many additional Jedi units that can give him another health and he's often too high value of a unit to soak up damage using protect) but he's still a great unit based on his icon spread and pip count alone. I'm usually pretty harsh on the Steadfast Settler (who is really just a slightly better version of the Sulon Sympathizer) but she's utilized in this deck really well; the Influence is important in a split deck, the refresh prevents her from being overlocked easily and having 5 resources on T1 means I can play her and 4 resources worth of units without any issue. Although the Steadfast Settler essentially makes Danger in the Wastes a 1-unit pod, I'm able to counteract this with the fact that the Broken Horn is a 3-unit pod. I haven't had many games where I get a lot of usage out of the Robes or the Dragon Howl but the former has a very high ceiling and the latter is a two-pipper. Did I mention that this deck has 4 Allies now? That's a huge amenity and being able to buff your units in key engagements goes a really long way.

So although the usage of Vizago and the newest Obi has remedied the two problems that I've struggled with, I'm presented with a new set of problems as a result:

3) Aside from the Falcon, I don't have any offensive mains. I do have 4 Allies to bolster my offensive presence but that's still situational.
4) I already have two copies of Obi so there isn't any room for Watchers.
5) Although my resource curve is satisfied, it's still not great having to rely on the Steadfast Settlers as essential pieces. I really could use another 1/1.

The fourth and fifth issues can just be accepted as flaws of the deck but the third is one that needed to be solved by cramming as much offensive power that I could into the final 2 pods of the deck. This made the Freeholders an obvious inclusion on the Smuggler side since those dudes can do everything but hold the force. The dream is to get them out for a minimal cost but I have the resource base available to get them out for 5 if needed. On the negative side, Clearing House continues to be terrible and the False Report is a situational objective that I don't want to see on the flop. While I like the Freeholders (and honestly I think if you're running a Smuggler affiliation it's a major disservice to not include them), I don't have any room left for Gamor and it's something that I do miss.

The Last Jedi (hah) pod was a bit of a tossup. Ideally, I'd have a pod that came with a strong offensive unit, a 1/1 and a good objective. The closest pod I found was Core Luke; he's great with refresh and the Dagobah Training Grounds is highly appreciated. I'm not running him though because I really do not want to have three 4-health objectives in my deck. There are a few different options I can still chose from though such as Chirrut (big hitter and not a bad objective but no resource) and BTS Luke (the biggest hitter but no resource and a bad objective).

I ended up going with T'ra Saa though. Like Vizago, she becomes an absolute monster with refresh and is a major board presence at any state of the game. The pod also comes with two double-strike opportunities with the event and fate card if MTF is out. The Lost Masters aren't bad either; they're 2 brown units that can give Obi another health and refresh helps them out significantly. The big downside with this pod though are the lack of a resource and the fact that Forgotten Masters is a massive double-edged sword. I want to make sure that all of my out-of-faction objectives are ones that I want to see and this is one that I dread seeing all of the time.

With all of this, I've created another Falcon/Jedi deck that remedies the two original issues I had and checks off all of the boxes I'm looking for. In addition to having an elevated resource base via objective rigging (having my cake), I'm also able to use the refresh affiliation to give me access to great non-elite units/be a nuisance for DS (eating it too). Don't forget that there are 4 copies of Allies either! That being said, using Vizago and Obi though has pigeonholed me into some odd deckbuilding situations and there's still some room for experimenting in this deck (i.e. is it worth running Core Luke/Gamor). Regardless, I really enjoy playing this deck and I'm happy that it's definitely a product of my own creation that's going against the grain of the meta and still performing well.