Does anyone have good advice on building some very simple decks that are good to teach new players? I have all the cards, and I want to introduce more people I know but I feel like the decks I build use too many tricks to teach the basics. I want two decks that can be good, consistent, and yet simple to use.
Decks for Teaching New Players
Core set starter decks.
any suggestions that have 10 objectives and make use of some of the more interesting cards from later cycles?
I think I actually agree that the core decks are your best bet since they don't add newer more advanced mechanics. Additionally, they are also smaller decks so the games play faster. Not only that, the Core Set decks use a variety that are easy to have just ready to go at a moment's notice...
Jedi Deck Objective sets: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 18
Rebel Alliance Deck Objective sets: 8, 9,10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18
Sith Deck Objective sets: 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 36
Imperial Navy Deck Objective sets: 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 36
I just think it makes sense to just keep these decks sleeved and ready to play so you can teach a new player... once they "get it" then you can maybe build more advanced decks for them to try.
However, since you seem to really want to use newer cards, you can also build "Highlander" (one-of) type decks from these decks by adding two more objective sets from more recent sets... I guess I haven't thought what those might be, but I guess it's an idea you could consider.
Try this thread!
It's still kind of a work in progress, but I think you'll find some good ideas there.
My go-to Dark Side deck is Scum affiliation, 2x Palpatine, 2x Vader, 2x Counsel, 2x Sariss, 2x Zekka Thyne. Really good, really easy to play. I can see how a beginner might have trouble wrapping their mind around proper use of Zekka though, in which case swap him out for Mara Jade (and the affiliation for Sith of course).
As for Light Side, I'd recommend a Hoth Speeder build. It might not be competitive with that Sith deck, but it's really straightforward and has some fun combos.
I can't get on board with the core starter decks. It was not fun to play them when I started out.
As a newbie myself (playing solo variant) im finding core starter decks lots of fun.
If you also consider the scum/smuggler deluxe as a "core" then this not only adds scum and smugglers at 10 objective sets but also includes enough other new objectives to bump up the original core starters to 10 OS's so you have six decks all at 10os as starters.