I Like to Hear Myself Talk

This is what happens when you give me a soapbox.

This is hopefully the final interaction of this deck; I'm tired of messing with it and it's become a dead horse that I've beaten to a pulp.

The good news about Falcon/Jedi is that there's a community consensus on what the bulk of the deck should be and it's an easy template to follow; two copies of Yoda and Falcon, a couple of limit 1 per objective deck pods in Watchers and Gamor and a couple of pods that contain Luke Skywalker. All of the usual suspects are here and a majority (or all, depending on how you build it) of the resource curve is covered. That being said, I see two big issues:

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.

Luckily, I can remedy both of these issues with the No Questions Asked affiliation. By making Jedi my affiliation, I'm placing more of a priority on seeing my great Smuggler objectives over my mediocre Jedi ones. Now, that being said, there's going to be about a 25% chance where I draw into 3 Jedi objectives on the flop and unfortunately that's the price you have to pay when you run a split deck.

It's important to note that I'm not choosing to run a 2-resource affiliation so I can push the Falcon out T1 because that's just a terrible idea if you can't redeploy it on the following turn. As I mentioned earlier, Asteroid Sanctuary is the most expensive pod in the LS arsenal. One thing I've noticed from Falcon/Jedi is that this style of deck wins games by making huge power plays. It's one thing to start cycling the Falcon and it's another thing entirely to do a combo such as Falcon->Bamboozle/double-strike Luke. Those plays are what turn the tides in your favor but they also require 6-7 resources and thus are restricted to late-game. Starting out with 5 resources gets me 1-step closer to the resource base I need to make those plays happen. As I see it right now, the Smug/Jedi refresh affiliation doesn't offer anything to Falcon/Jedi because it offers no remedy to the 2 problems that I mentioned earlier.

As an aside, I do believe that you should be able to start cycling the Falcon on T2. The DS meta right now is incredibly fast and is often ready to rip through your board on their second turn so why should it take you any longer? Traditionally, getting the Falcon out on T2 has been contingent on getting a resource such as the Training Grounds out on T1 and No Questions Asked doesn't change that. But what I do enjoy about that affiliation is that it allows me to play a Guest Quarters and 4 resources worth on units on T1 and still allows me to start the cycling of the Falcon from T2 onward. As someone who hates the Guest Quarters (I really don't think LS needs Control Rooms), that's huge to me.

With the two problems remedied, the rest of the deck just checks off the essential boxes I'm looking for; 6 resources, 2 Twists, 85+ pips, a solid amount of tactics and a good mix of T1 mains and big hitters. The rest of this write-up will be devoted to explaining some of the idiosyncrasies that I've decided to go with in building this deck.

Why double BTS Luke? I'm simply more comfortable running him as a two-of and I think double of him has a higher ceiling than splitting the Lukes (although I do see the benefit of running one Core Luke for the additional Training Grounds and the fact that there's a lot of great enhancement synergy). My only concession that I want to make when running double BTS Luke is that I want four 1-cost enhancements to help turn him into a consistent double-striking machine and this has already been accomplished in this deck. I'm not a fan of having double Hero's Trial in my objective deck but as I mentioned earlier, I'm not reliant on getting two brown objectives out for resource matching because I'm running Jedi affiliation.

I've always enjoyed No Match as a pod and I think it's a great 1-of in a lot of decks. Han is the real draw for me because I believe he's a great T1 main (i.e. Elite with two guns and a tactic). Chewie is mediocre but at least he's a two pips and if you want to count No Match as a 1-unit pod then at least it's balanced out with Watchers. The enhancement and event can be below par but the Blaster is important for Luke and Don't Get Cocky, while highly situational, can be part of a massive power play that clenches a game. I also like having more than 2 Heats in a deck.

Spirit of the Rebellion is probably the biggest wild card but I was looking for a Smuggler pod with an elite big hitter and a resource and this was the only answer. Like No Match, it's got both a high pip count and solid objective that I want to see. Jyn gives me a two black-bomb unit that won't get locked out and the Crafty Smuggler can either be an annoying force-hound or great in an edge-stack. Necessary Alliances helps flesh out the resource curve and the Influence works with the Deneba Refueling Station to help prevent me from getting locked out of my out-of-faction resources. Although Necessary Alliances is a tempo killer, having 5-resources on T1 means I can play it on T1 with 4-resources worth of units without any issues. Finally, Well-Laid Ambush is great in edge when I don't want to play it and I'm not going to complain about an Allies.

I'm a little bit mad that I didn't find any new Smuggler pods to include in this deck. No Match is a definitive include for me because I really wanted another T1 main to compliment Yoda and Obi (granted, Obi isn't ideal on T1 since he's a 5-drop but at least No Questions Asked gives me the option to play him then). I'd still keep Jyn even if I split the Lukes to cover the resource curve because I sincerely feel that the deck needs another big hitter. The only pod I'd consider swapping Jyn for is Dune Sea Hero but I don't know if that's worth the loss in offensive power without playing a few games with it. On the Jedi side, all of the pods are staples and unfortunately nothing has come along to challenge that (although I do think you could run one BTS Luke and one Chirrut but that isn't really giving you any true advantage).

As a final aside, you may have noticed that sans the Falcon (which doesn't stay in play for too long) and the Marauder (which is just a 3-pip edge card anyways) that all of the mains in this deck are Elite. That gives me another reason to not run the refresh affiliation because I really don't have any fears of my big units getting locked out (especially when the current DS meta is more focused on killing your units outright than overlocking them). It's also a nice personal victory to see that I could make a Tier-1 Falcon/Jedi without having to resort to using non-elite mains.

As far as downsides go, the big two are a lack of shielding (which is more or less a given with Falcon/Jedi) and the fact that I'll draw 3 Jedi objectives on the flop in about 25% of the games I play with this deck and unfortunately there's nothing I can do about that. But, the upsides are drastically superior to the downsides and in the end I have a great deck that has checked off all of the essential requirements that I'm looking for.

So, can I say that I've -finally- solved Falcon/Jedi? I think so.

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If you made it to the end, thanks for reading. This may end up being the final decklist that I post for the game. That's a sad thing to say, but I know we've all had a lot of fun in the wild ride that has been SWLCG. See you all at GenCon.

-Justin