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Something Something Something Dark Side... A Star Wars Destiny Strategy Series
Feb 03 2017 12:00 AM |
Etaywah
in Articles
Star War Destiny Strategy
Queue Imperial MarchGreetings Admirals. My name is Etaywah and like you - I have a penchant for gaming, strategy and (of course) Star Wars. I came from MTG as a child, Game of Thrones as a fledgling FFG LCG card-player, made it to the top-tables in a few Warhammer Conquest national events and am now in what I hope will be the next and longest gaming experience of my card-gaming career – Star Wars Destiny. I am a strategy-nerd, like my father before me. He raised me up right on Chess, Checkers, Othello, Backgammon, and Poker, and now after all this time I’m enthralled with our luck-but-mostly-skill card/dice game here, this is the first of a series of beginner and advanced strategies for Star Wars Destiny. Join me, together we can rule the rule the galaxy…
Destiny. It's not just a stripper in Vegas anymore.
Instead of prattling on about my background, lets just jump right in to some sweet, sweet stratagems!
Action-Economy
Some of the most impactful plays in this game are only so impactful because they were 100% right-on-time. One action earlier or one action later and the damage they would have done is mitigated; but when executed on time they become keynote plays of the game. This is especially true for killing characters, playing events, and playing upgrades. I see a lot of my counterparts playing actions when they do not need to (at least not yet), or waiting too long to kill a character, or even (unbelievably) killing my characters too early!
For example: One of the best times to kill a character is immediately after they have rolled their dice into the dice pool so they cannot use the action they just spent (with exceptions, like redeploy for example). When an opponent uses a turn to activate a character whom you can kill, they have spent a turn on an action they will not reap any benefits from. Their useless dice are in the pool, but the moment you cut them down those dice go away and that action was essentially a pass, allowing you to control the effectiveness of the turn or claim a battlefield. That being said, if you have the kill available with dice or with card effects then take the kill immediately. Do not wait for a tricky play or a future "more ideal" situation. If you see a kill, take it, unless another, better kill is available on the board.
Another great example of a wasted action is playing a card early in a turn, like It Binds All Things, when it cannot be used yet (or at all that turn). There’s nothing wrong with getting the card out a turn before you can use it, but action economy is so important that spending a single action can have detrimental effects. For instance:
Turn 1, Action 1
Player 1 - It Binds All Things
Player 2 – Activates Han Solo
Player 1 – Activates Darth Vader, rolling a 3 Melee Damage and a blank
Player 2 – Uses He Doesn’t Like You on Darth Vader’s 3-Melee
Had Player 1 identified his advantage as Player 1 instead of squandering it on It Binds All Things, he would have been able to use that damage, but now He Doesn’t Like You and I don’t like you either.
Another example
Turn 1, Action 1
Player 1 – Plays Thermal Detonator on Tuscan Raider
Player 2 – Activates Han Solo
Player 1 – Activates Darth Vader
Why would Player 1 use a detonator until exactly when he needs to? What if Han Solo kills the Raider? Use actions exactly when you need them and not a moment sooner. So many little intricacies of the game only rear their heads after certain effects are triggered, dice are rolled, people are killed, etc.
Here’s a great example of how to completely screw over someone else’s turn:
Player 1 has a Darth Vader with 1 HP remaining, but he has 3 shields. There is no more damage-dealing abilities or die showing, so he is feeling pretty confident about Vader living through to next turn. Player 2 has an infamous in play, 1 resource, and a Backup Muscle in hand.
Player 1 – Exhausts Darth Vader, rolling a blank.
Player 2 – Activates Bala Tik, the die does not matter in this example.
Player 1 – Plays Use the Force, Changing his die from a blank to a 3 Melee
Player 2 – Exhausts Infamous and plays Backup Muscle.
Player 2 (Ambush Action) – Player 2 Exhausts Backup Muscle and moves damage to Vader, killing him.
In this example, Player 2 has netted 3 turns in overall efficiency-of-play.
Vader activated, played a card for 1 resource, then died before he could take advantage of any of it. Sure, Player 2 could have just done this before Vader ever activated, but because of his play he 1) killed Vader 2) Cost the opponent 1 card and 1 resource and 3) Saved himself the actions it would have cost him to play Backup Muscle either earlier this turn, later in this turn, or at the beginning of the next turn.
This game is littered with little efficiency plays like this one, it just takes some imagination and some patience to pull them off.
Hand Cycling
Another common misplay I see is people holding on to their hands for dear life, trying to activate a powerful combo, play a powerful upgrade, or just not pitching cards for re-rolls when the odds are hugely in their favor. Sure, I want to play an AT-ST, roll a 5 damage die and shoot Han Solo in his perfect, smirking scoundrel face and broad shoulders…. Wait what were we talking about? Doesn’t matter. Anyways. I want to shoot and kill Solo with 1 die roll, too. Is it going to happen? Probably not. The chances of you roll a hit strong enough to pull the ears off a gondark are low, the chances you can pay for the damn thing are even lower. Pitch it. Re-roll those cards and keep going.
Not impressed with my lack of faith? I have gotten a AT-ST out turn 2 before (2 resources, rolled a resource, played logistics on the resource, waited a turn, played a AT-ST first action) but this is a rare case. Unless you’re playing Poe or running 2 data pads and 2 comm-links, you’re probably going to be just like me in college: broke all the time with no vehicle.
Also: Play the cards in hand. Don’t wait for the perfect situation. If you NEED to risk it for a perfect situation, go ahead, but stalling your play actions is a recipe for a loss. Here’s an example!
Just last night I lost a game I could have won if I would have just ignored the other cards in my hand and played an early No Mercy for the 7-available damage on turn 1. I’m staring at a Force Throw, a Force Choke, a Kylo Ren Light-saber, and an Immobilize - and I really want all those things on my Vader, so I choose to forgo the early No Mercy and start stacking on the upgrades instead. It takes me 3 turns to get them all out because of bad rolls and resource mitigation from disrupts. It wound up being a close game, but by the time I got all three upgrades on Vader he was at 12 damage out of 13. Not exactly an ideal situation.
The reason I lost the game is simple: All those upgrades were doubles in my deck except Ren’s lightsaber. More than that, my opponent was not playing a mill deck so ditching a whole hand was a viable option. In other words: I would have gotten most of those cards back eventually. Basically, I made a mistake that many of us have made both in this game and in middle school: I fell in love with my hand.
Had I just identified that dealing 7 damage on turn 1 was a major play, and Vader could probably win that game even without any upgrades on him at all. So what happened? I kept a No Mercy in my hand for 3 turns too long and lost Vader and my raider a few turns later. No Mercy became a dead card instead of dealing 7 damage to an enemy and dealing a massive blow to my opponent’s confidence.
Calculating the Odds
Never tell me the odds…. Actually - DO tell me the odds because ignoring statistics is dumb.
Holy crap this is a huge one. I’m watching an opponent ditch their entire hand trying to re-roll 1 or 2 dice, and they don’t realize they literally have a 1 in 12 chance to land the roll they need. I’ve watched opponents ditch 3 cards before they realized they couldn’t afford the die-side they are rolling for. I’ve seen opponents re-rolling a Jet-pack not realizing there are no natural damage sides on the Jet-pack. I’ve seen people re-roll 3 times just to accept the exact same die-roll they had the first time.
Look at the die-sides.
Identify what you want to see.
Decide if the card you’re about to ditch is truly worth the risk.
Calculate the odds you will actually roll the result you want.
Then if everything else is a go, re-roll your dice.
If you have a 1 in 12 chance of getting your result, you won’t get your result. Sometimes re-rolling just to try to get some resources is an awesome choice. Sometimes re-rolling dice is a disaster, especially vs mill decks. What’s so cool about this game is the fact that mill is an effective strategy, in so many games mill is ineffective and terrible. In this game mill is devastating and game-ending. Don’t believe me? Wait until Jyn Erso comes into the meta and starts ruining your whole life. Jyn/Padme and Jyn/Ackbar WILL be a thing, and vs those decks, all of your cards are way more valuable.
Calc those die-sides and choose wisely. Every time I see someone ditch a He Doesn’t Like You or an Isolation or a Use the Force or a Deflect or a Scramble or a Reversal or a Force Strike I’m like “Uh. Thanks bro!â€
Discard to re-roll is an extremely effective strategy under a lot of circumstances, take a breath and make sure you happen to be in one of those circumstances before ditching your hand to do nothing.
Watch Your Opponent’s Discard Pile
If someone picks a card, that means they probably picked it twice. Not always of course; Scramble makes it into my decks as a 1-of very often, but if they have a Light-saber, that means they have 2. Same goes for He Doesn’t Like You, Isolation, Use the Force, Deflect, Feel Your Anger, Tactical Mastery and a few dozen others. If they have 5 cards in hand, 8 cards left in their deck, and you’re afraid they have a Feel Your Anger… well guess what? They have it, and they’ve been saving it for this exact moment. Always assume they have it unless the odds or their discard pile says otherwise. The discard pile is a lot like that picture your mom gave me of her when she was 30, I check it out every chance I get – Heyoooo!
Odds
This game is all about odds. Dice odds, card odds, and the odds that your opponent knows what he (or she) is doing. The dice have so much manipulability and malleable that complaining about die rolls is not really warranted. Sure, we have all gotten beat by some crazy good rolls, but coming from a game (Warhammer Conquest) with a 60-card deck, I would say there is just as much variance and chance in this game as there was in that one because in this game you have a VERY good chance of seeing every card you picked for your deck. In this game, someone rolls really well, in that game, someone draws an opening hand that could steam-roll them into a win. It’s all relative.
If you find yourself complaining about “bad handsâ€, well then you need to revisit your deck. I do not settle for a deck unless I draw 15-20 sample hands and I am generally satisfied with every hand. Do some practice hands, discard the cards you don’t want to see, draw back. If you’re finding a bunch of crappy hands, well then guess what? That’s a crappy deck!
My general rule of thumb is: Don’t blame your hand, blame your deck. You chose the cards, whittle your cards down ‘til you are satisfied with almost every draw.
On my next article, I’ll be writing on how to build a deck that maximizes your effective players per turn, or EPPT©, a term I just coined that will not catch on but I’ll use to self-promote my Star Wars Destiny Interned-Fame (Or SWDIF©)
Thanks for reading ya nerf-herders!
- Etaywah
P.S. - The prequels are terrible.
- steinerp likes this
2 Comments
Re: killing a ready character, I personally think that while you lose out on an action being used by the opponent, this is more than compensated for by the fact that you're doing so before they get a chance to take measures to save that character, like, for example, using events to put shields on them, or playing dice removal effects to screw with your damage dice.
My own personal philosophy here is that if the kill is available, you should take it. It's too big a game advantage to risk for the sake of one action worth of tempo.
I didn't intend to imply that waiting for a character kill to gain an action is a better play than taking the kill. I figured my later example with the infamous>backup muscle>kill covered that, but it does (on second read) feel a bit implied. I added an extra caveat in the summary to that paragraph to clear it up. Thank you.