Star Wars: Destiny – Jyn/ePadme – The Full Starter Deck List

Luke October 6, 2017 Leave a Comment

As regular readers of this blog know, I have recently got into Star Wars: Destiny. A few friends of mine entered in, and did quite well in, the UK Nationals last month, and this has only spurred on an urge to build a decklist.

Once again, as regular readers of this blog know, I also have a thing for the underdog. I don’t really know why this is, but I played Night Goblins in Warhammer before Age of Sigmar kicked into full effect. In the Game of Thrones card game, I am a Baratheon player – an underutilised house but one which I have a natural affiliation for. In Star Wars: X-Wing I tend to play X-Wing and B-Wing swarms rather than any big ships, and in Magic the Gathering (I really need to write about that again) I am looking at a basic Ob Nilixis starter deck.

This means, for Star Wars: Destiny I have decided to try another type of play that will be fairly difficult to win with. Yes, I’m trying a mill deck.

Why Try a Mill Deck?

I’ve never played a mill deck before. They are such an interesting concept, by trying to win by not winning per say but by making the other person lose. This means they are the most non-aggressive deck, from a damage perspective, and I suppose that is where the appeal lies. Rather than just throwing what you can at one another, it feels more like a dance. I don’t know why.

That was a weird thing to say.

I suppose the ultimate answer is “why not?”. I have put together a mill deck, because I want to see if it will work. So, without much ado, this is the starting list. Undoubtedly it will shift over time, but this is the basic concept I am starting with.

Characters

I’ve explored this in a lot of detail in my mathematical blog about Jyn Erso and ePadme. Essentially, the idea is to use Padme to do the majority of the milling, using her as an elite to get two dice, with Jyn as support. Jyn also has some pretty decent milling, but she can also do damage if needs be. So – to start the list –

Padme Amidala – Elite (14pts)
Jyn Erso – Standard (15pts)

Battlefield

There was only one obvious option for the Battlefield, and that was:

War Torn Streets (Jedha) – Which allows you to, when claimed, discard a random card from an opponent’s hand.

Upgrades

This deck is not an upgrades heavy deck, and as we speak I have made a few changes and swapped out a few cards. In the middle of writing this I have taken to eBay to get a couple more. So here’s how it stands currently –

Diplomatic Immunity x 2 – Lots of shields, distributed at will. It’s a really neat little card actually – expensive, but worth it. Why two? I want to make it likely to come up. Most importantly though – no blanks. There are no blank sides at all.
Infiltrate x 2 – A small amount of discarding off removing resources with the ability to reroll two of your opponent’s dice.
Con Artist x 2 – This is a superb milling card as, leaving aside one blank, there are two discard resources, one discard from hand, and two specials which are just brutal. The earlier this is played the better it is.
Second Chance x 2 – When your character dies, bring them back with five health. It’s not the cheapest card, but it turns an 11 health and a 10 health character into 16 health and 15 health characters. That is so worth three resources a piece.

Support

Like with the Upgrades, there aren’t all that many Support cards in this deck either; however, there are some little treasures in here that do augment other rolls enough that it can make the deck interesting. I have no idea how these will work in practice, but they are worth trying.

R2D2 x 2 – Although it is only possible to have one R2D2 in play at any one time, having two cards is a way of ensuring he comes out. Not to mention, it is useful having a card you can discard if needs be for rerolls. R2D2’s dice have some combat, some milling, and two specials. The specials allow for any dice to have its value increased by one. Suddenly, those Mill 2 are Mill 3.
BB-8 – BB-8 is cheap and has some mill. He allows for rerolls and can gather resources. He’s a bit of a non-Support, but there is no harm in adding him in.
Smuggling Freighter – Although this has two blanks, it also acts as a resource and mill machine. Once it has a side with a 2 resolved it goes back on top of your deck, also giving you a card you know will keep coming out.
Street Informant – This card doesn’t help with milling, but it does help know when to act. It allows you to look at an opponent’s hand.

Events

Those are all the dice cards now, the rest are events. These are mainly focused around staying alive, so they tend to be fairly basic.

Daring Escape – Reroll opponent’s dice and remove blanks.
Flank – The ability to remove an opponent’s dice (well, one at least) so long as you have more ready characters.
Confidence x 2 – This is a bit of a ballsy card. Choose to resolve an opponent’s dice. The way I see it – this can be used to remove blank dice from the table before they can be refocused.
Take Cover – Give a single shield to a character (as if this deck needs more shield power!).
Block – Remove all dice, belonging to an opponent, that show melee damage.
Parry – Like block, but only remove one dice. It’s cheaper. Block costs two, Parry costs one.
Evade x 2 – Parry, but for ranged damage.
Garbage’ll Do – This is a fairly cool card. It’s Ambush, which is nice, but it also turns ships into shields. This deck only has one ship, but it’s a nice card nonetheless.
Loth-cat and Mouse x 2 – I’m torn about this card. Your opponent removes one of your dice and then you remove one of their cards. They can be great – but I’m still not a fan.
Friends in Low Places x 2 – This is a milling card. It allows you to look at your opponent’s hand and discard a low cost event. It’s limited, but it’s also free. Even if you can’t discard a card, you get to see your opponent’s hand.
Bolt Hole x 2 – Another shield generator, but it does spend a die. A great way of using blanks.
Draw Attention – So, I thought this was an interesting card. One way for the opponent to destroy a milling technique is to focus on a character. This essentially makes it possible for damage to be shared across characters.
Let The Wookie Win – This forces the opponent to choose between damage or depleting dice. It’s another reducer – something this deck is surprisingly good at.

So, the idea behind this deck is essentially to keep Jyn and Padme alive whilst having them scrape away at the opponent’s deck. Bar a couple of cards, which may well be replaced at a later date, this could do some serious damage to the opponent’s deck, hand, and morale – so, fingers crossed it actually works.

So, Star Wars: Destiny fans, what do you think? Will this deck work? What’s missing from it? Teach me in the comments below.