Defensive Waiting

New spoilers mean new off the wall deck ideas from me! This time a got an itch to build a deck around two characters that are both masters of their craft. The inspiration came from seeing the new Yoda, and how much his special sides allow you to do. Also, I have always wanted to build around the Patience card. So let’s take a look at the deck!

Defensive Waiting

BATTLEFIELD
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War-Torn Streets (Spirit of Rebellion #160)

CHARACTER
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 2x General Rieekan, Defensive Mastermind (Empire at War #24)
 2x Yoda, Wizened Master (Empire at War #33)
PLOT 
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1x Espionage (Legacies #168)
UPGRADE
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 2x Force Heal (Spirit of Rebellion #40)
 2x Ancient Lightsaber (Empire at War #49)
 2x Force Meditation (Legacies #36)

SUPPORT
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 2x Spy Net (Spirit of Rebellion #98)
 2x Yoda's Quarters (Empire at War #105)
 2x Honor Guard (Two-Player Game #33)
 2x Defensive Teaching (Legacies #106)

EVENT
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 2x Field Medic (Awakenings #105)
 2x Patience (Awakenings #119)
 2x Caution (Spirit of Rebellion #100)
 2x Krayt Dragon Howl (Spirit of Rebellion #104)
 2x Rejuvenate (Spirit of Rebellion #132)
 2x Strike Briefing (Empire at War #94)
 2x Secret Mission (Empire at War #102)
 2x Lightsaber Pull (Empire at War #130)

There it is folks I hope like it. I will explain it next time! Just kidding see how I made a joke about waiting, see the title if you don’t get the joke. But in reality, the reason I called it Defensive Waiting is because I tried to put every card in there I can get that would heal and mill, thus drawing out the game and causing your opponent to wait to lose!

First off the characters. I chose Rieekan because I still haven’t seen him used that much. His sides are amazing for what this deck is trying to do and he mills! He also allows access to some other really good red cards like Honor Guard, Field Medic, and Spynet! Then we have Yoda alongside our defensive tactician. Yoda special side is a toolbox and that is really what we are counting to roll on him. We can choose two of four things to happen when we resolve Yoda’s special. Typically at least one of those will be to mill a card but getting a resource, a shield, or changing a die face can be good too!

Next, let’s look at the mill suite. The main mechanics come from character and the battlefield but we also have Spynet, Force Meditation, Espionage, and a slew of events doing more of it! Force Meditation is really nice as it goes on any of the two characters as long as Yoda is alive. Its sides are more of the same stuff we have been seeing but that is okay because the more focus symbols we have the more likely we are to trigger Spynet! If we are not able to get either of these out we can hope to pull Howl, Secret Mission, Strike Briefing, and (my favorite) Patience. All of them have a nice little bit of extra kick to them that will help out the decks main theme.

Finally, let’s talk about how don’t lose the game in two turns. One way is generating shields from the character or upgrade dice and optimizing them with Defensive Teaching. The other is to heal damage off your character. Red and Blue are perfect for this as they have the two events that allow it to happen. we also have access to Force Heal, Yoda’s Quarters, and Ancient Lightsaber, which are great for getting damage from our characters. Hopefully, this will be a big deal when it comes to mitigating out characters mortality.

So I think when it comes to ideal opening hands I would want something like this:

• Force Heal
• Spynet
• Caution
• Kyrat Dragon Howl
• Secret Mission

With this hand a thing we have a powerful start for getting some money, some mill and some healing all in one nice starting package. Thank you for reading this week and I hope you see where I was going with this deck! What would you change or add/remove? Let me know in the comments. Time to jump…

-Kyle