Let's talk about Sith Holocrons, shall we?

Let's consider what this thing does:

- Zero cost

- 1/3 side specials

- Special swaps any blue upgrade in for free

- Allows activation of the new upgrade immediately (for a cost)

- Bypasses play restrictions

- Not discarded, back to hand, so...

- Can be used multiple times per turn

Someone was very, very high when they designed this card. HALF that would still be insanely good, but the ability to chain a free cost deployment for anywhere from 4-8 resources worth of abilities in a single turn... Wow.

Given that even if they decide to do so an errata for this miscarriage of game design is undoubtedly a long way off, how do you deal with it?

Unless I'm forgetting something, there are only two options: Disarm and Confiscation. Confiscation can mess with it as long as you time it well, and bounce the Holocron to their hand after they roll the special. Of course, they're just going to deploy it on their other character(s) then. Disarm is by far the best choice, assuming you can get the damage die out there fast enough. I actually did this against a Vader/Raider in a tourney today, he rolled the special, I rolled Jango and then Disarmed. He then dropped the second one he had in his opening hand.

So barring devoting your dice removal/reroll to it, how do you stop this thing? Is there anything to do? Or is your only hope, to paraphrase Han, "Lock the door, and hope they don't draw their Holocrons"?

- Special swaps any blue upgrade in for free

Ability. Blue Ability upgrade.

But yeah, it's a pretty damned powerful card, I've used it to great effect. I've not actually played against it yet and honestly I don't know how I'd go about it - try to time killing an opponents character whilst it's got holocron attached, so he doesn't have it in hand to play on another character?

Second Chance is another one that (when combined with Jakku battlefield) is bloody awful to play against as well, particularly if your opponent is getting to the claim faster than you (likely in an ambush laden Han Solo deck).

If I recall correctly, there's a die face that forces your opponent to discard...

If I recall correctly, there's a die face that forces your opponent to discard...

Not sure if serious?

For one, there's not a lot of it. There are a total of 18 sides out of 432 that have discard faces. Those are scattered all over the grid - yellow gets the most at 5 for either hero or villain. Red villain decks can run a whopping one side. They also tend to be expensive (6 of the 9 upgrade/support die options are >2 resources) or limited to characters.

They're also random. And slow. So your only real hope of using discard is to let it do its thing, then trigger your discard and hope you hit the Holocron after it bounces back to their hand. And that's assuming that they don't do anything to shut down the discard, because you've almost certainly only got the one and blue has a lot of good control options.

So is your counterplay suggestion seriously to run a character with one discard side and take the 7% chance that you can both roll a discard and hit the Holocron?

Scout is probably the best option for dealing with it. It's cheap, you've got a 1 in 3 of getting the special, and are guaranteed to hit the Holocron if it goes off. But while that can slow it down, it won't really stop it - they can just leave it on the table for a round. And, of course, it's Red Hero only...

I think Holocron will get nerfed to be discarded after its "swapped" instead of "exchanged." The simple fact (yes even off great die rolls) you could manage to get 2 Mind Probes or Force Throws for free into play in one turn, is too powerful. And that it will still be in your hand to do it some more.

~D

A blue/yellow deck with Cunning would let you potentially turn their Holocron against them. That said I don't think there is any cards I'm super afraid of. Holocron can be nasty but I just try and think of a counter rather than worry about the direct effect of the card itself. Don't let certain cards get in your head, just counter and get in your opponents head.

Countering is great and all, but the strength of that card affects the meta so much that decks are now required to include these counters in valuable deck slots on the off-chance your opponent is running Holocron. That's what makes a bad card design. Even if each faction/color combo has a counter, that's a minimum of 2 auto-includes in a deck of 30. So basically this card is making it such that decks need to either have 2 Holocrons, or 2 of these specific counters? That meta seems pretty broken.

Yeah there are plenty of control options in the game. It stinks to have to spend your control cards/effects to control the Holocron die but it can keep blue villain from ramping up quickly. As for a nerf I'm not screaming for the card text to change but perhaps it will be the first card to be limited to only one copy in your deck.

I also have no idea how cards like this ever make it past playtesting. The only thing keeping this card in check is that the character and card pool for blue is not that amazing outside of force throw. As it is, Holocron is "merely" a tier 1 card.

Another expansion with more, and more focused, blue abilities, and it will be as broken as it so obviously is. So I think they have some time to fix it before it becomes a real problem. It is still demoralising as all hell to play vs a Holocron into a couple of upgrades, though.

For now, I like to Disarm it. There aren't really any other solutions except to be faster or more efficient.

Holocron is an upgrade, so it attaches to your character, so don't you only roll it's die when your character activates? You can't just activate it separately? So one character couldn't activate Holocron twice per turn, right? I guess two separate characters could each activate it once per turn.

If you copy it with Cunning, that would switch Cunning with whatever you play from your hand, right? It doesn't send Holocron back to he opponent's hand and put your card into play, right?

Good thing I like to bring Disarm, Scout, Infiltrate, Daring Escape, Electroshock and unpredictable in my Han and Leia team; Those all works wonderfully against an Holocron.

The Holocron certainly is powerful, but I think it is overestimated. There is plenty of way to deal with it that is also useful against anything else. It's not like you have to build against it, you should always bring some way to remove or modify your opponent's dice, or force discard. If there is no Blue ability in your opponent's hand, the Holocron is useless. If he doesn't roll his special, the Holocron is almost useless. If he has no ressource, the new ability will come in play only next turn.

If you copy it with Cunning, that would switch Cunning with whatever you play from your hand, right? It doesn't send Holocron back to he opponent's hand and put your card into play, right?

It's being answered in the RRG FAQ that Cunning doesn't work with the Sith Holocron:

RRG page 21:

Can I use Cunning (r65) to switch an opponent’s Sith Holocron (r16) with a card in my hand?

• No. You cannot have an opponent’s card in your hand or deck. The end result is that the Sith Holocron has no effect.

I think trying to play against Holocron is a mistake. If you want, bring cards like Disarm. Better yet, just use the dice control you're already including in your deck to remove/force a reroll when the special comes up. The best option is just to kill the character with Holocron equipped before it can trigger, imo. The card is very very good, and basically auto-include in Villain Blue. But it's not forcing all Villain decks to run Blue, which means it isn't so strong that it's completely distorting deck-building. It's also worth pointing out that Holocron will sometimes prevent your opponent from playing upgrade cards he normally could, because he's relying on the Holocron special to avoid spending resources. Careful management of your opponent's Holocron can keep his stronger upgrades like Mind Probe or Force Throw out of the game.

There are a number of potential changes to be made to the card -- make it so that it discards after use, instead of returning to hand. Remove the ability to roll the new upgrade die into the pool, forcing your opponent to sacrifice some tempo. Or make it a Blue character only, so that Holocron can't be used to circumvent normal character restrictions for Blue upgrades (by giving General Grievous or Jabba the Hutt Mind Probes).

A blue/yellow deck with Cunning would let you potentially turn their Holocron against them. That said I don't think there is any cards I'm super afraid of. Holocron can be nasty but I just try and think of a counter rather than worry about the direct effect of the card itself. Don't let certain cards get in your head, just counter and get in your opponents head.

If you copy it with Cunning, that would switch Cunning with whatever you play from your hand, right? It doesn't send Holocron back to he opponent's hand and put your card into play, right?

Negative.

Cunning does nothing with Sith Holocron. Confirmed in FAQ.

Regarding the card itself... the game is very fresh. A few people have gotten smacked with the Holocron and feel bad about it. It's not going to win you the game by itself any more than a tricky use of Cunning will.

Yes, it's a good card. It can be countered numerous ways using die removal, re-rolls, or Disarm.

Claiming the sky is falling because powerful Blue upgrades are on the horizon completely ignores that there is likely a Jedi Holocron among many other forms of die/upgrade removal on that same horizon.

Regarding the card itself... the game is very fresh. A few people have gotten smacked with the Holocron and feel bad about it. It's not going to win you the game by itself any more than a tricky use of Cunning will.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not jumping to say Holocron is broken... yet.

But the fact I can tool my red and yellow characters up like Sith lords, for free, is pretty damned powerful, and I honestly think it has the possibility of ending up broken without errata.

Simply saying 'yeah but you can counter it with dice control/discards' doesn't change the fact that it stacks 3-4 very useful abilities, for free.

Being able to get an upgrade out for free? Useful.

Being able to ignore play restrictions on Mind Probe and Force Throw? Useful.

Being able to roll an upgrade in the same action you play it? Useful.

Doing all of the above multiple times a turn? Damned useful.

And all for free (except rolling the dice... that costs you).

Again, it's not invincible- you gotta draw the right cards, you gotta get your actions on and roll the right results, all without getting your dice binned offor cards discarded by your opponent.

But it's action efficiency incarnate. A good turn with Sith Holocron and a couple of high value blue abilities in your hand and you're laughing.

I feel this might get broken over time, so buy it up now!

Regarding the card itself... the game is very fresh. A few people have gotten smacked with the Holocron and feel bad about it. It's not going to win you the game by itself any more than a tricky use of Cunning will.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not jumping to say Holocron is broken... yet.

But the fact I can tool my red and yellow characters up like Sith lords, for free, is pretty damned powerful, and I honestly think it has the possibility of ending up broken without errata.

Simply saying 'yeah but you can counter it with dice control/discards' doesn't change the fact that it stacks 3-4 very useful abilities, for free.

Being able to get an upgrade out for free? Useful.

Being able to ignore play restrictions on Mind Probe and Force Throw? Useful.

Being able to roll an upgrade in the same action you play it? Useful.

Doing all of the above multiple times a turn? Damned useful.

And all for free (except rolling the dice... that costs you).

Again, it's not invincible- you gotta draw the right cards, you gotta get your actions on and roll the right results, all without getting your dice binned offor cards discarded by your opponent.

But it's action efficiency incarnate. A good turn with Sith Holocron and a couple of high value blue abilities in your hand and you're laughing.

Have you tried it?

Really tried it? Running a Blue Villain just so you can bring Sith Holocron and then using it to give force powers to yellow or red characters?

It's not very efficient. I'd much rather have a Holdout Blaster, Jetpack, Flamethrower, Cunning, or even a Datapad. I genuinely can't think of any non-blue villains I want to put force abilities on, anyway. *maybe* Jabba, or a Tusken, but not many (and in those cases, I can think of yellow upgrades I'd rather have). And at this point you have a Sith Holocron AND a bunch of force powers cluttering up your deck, competing for space with a slew of other upgrades/events/supports in colors that don't require a two-card combo to play.

Hell, Datapad can be every bit as good as Sith Holocron without ever having to roll a special result, for the purposes of cheapening clinch upgrades like Jetpack or Holdout Blaster. In this case the best thing the Holocron legitimately brings is the ability to roll the upgrade die right into the pool, but the RNG renders that just "pretty good" and still a risk.

Sith Holocronning force powers onto non-blue characters doesn't seem particularly viable, to me, having spent the last few weeks playing both a double-holocron Vader deck and a speed-based Jango deck regularly.

A neat trick? Sure. A game-winning strategy? I doubt it. If someone cranks out some Sith Holocron combo that just facerolls, cool, but until then I'm not getting the hubbub.

Personlly I have been underwhelmed by Holocron.

When I have tried them they have just felt to slow and to unreliable. Sure if everything goes perfectly they are great but stuff does not always go well.

You are counting on a 1/3 chance to make it work assuming you even gave an ability card in your hand, or using one of your focuses to force it, but what have you lost by using your focus on it instead of damage or another special?

I ran a Sith Holocron today. It was good, but I found Kylo's special ability much more daunting.

disarm works pretty well

Holocron seems to take a lot of effort to play, 3+ actions before it all pays off. Tvayumat pretty much addresses the issues that comes from that.

Now the problem he may have missed is that you are going to telegraph your cards a bit, if you play Holocron, and spend some effort in re-rolling for a special, you may well have a 2-4 cost blue card in hand. Potentially, your hand size diminishing with each re-roll. So Kylo can really take advantage of your letting him know you have something worth looking at, and more trouble for you if he gets you down to one card in hand.

There could be a meme in there: "The pleasure of discarding down to one card and rolling a special for your Holocron" followed by "Then having your opponent discard a card. Priceless!".

The Sith Holocron is an interesting card. It may have the dubious honor of being most likely the best card in the game, most likely the most overrated card in the game and most likely the most misunderstood card in the game. A whole lot of mosts in one sentence.

The most common misunderstanding of the card is that it is free. What it does is let you cheat blue ability cards onto characters, even ones who normally can't have them, for zero resources. The thing is, resources aren't the currency of the game. Resources are an additional cost to the real currency of the game, actions. Sith Holocron cost one action to play, one action to roll into your dice pool, and if you roll a special (if it doesn't get controlled) one action to resolve its special die. So Sith Holocron cost 3 actions. If you want to beat the Sith Holocron, ask yourself, how are you going to put your 3 actions to better use?

I'm not trying to down play resource management. Quite the contrary, it is a huge part of the game. However, those players that truly end up mastering Destiny will be the ones who manage their action economy to get the most out of it.

It's not a game breaker to me. Just need to try different tactics if it hits the table. I imagine my strategy would be to just pump everything I have in to attacking the character that this upgrade goes to while they are burning actions trying to save a little bit on resources but possibly burning their cards on re-rolls.

Sure, when everything lines up perfectly the card can be an powerhouse and be wicked, no doubt. The same thing can basically be said about every card though.

If it ever works as perfectly as the description originally given I'll battle it out, take my likely loss and move on. I'd probably be as excited as the person playing it out this way, amazed that I actually got to see it work so smoothly. It's a game and sometimes the cards/dice will go my way and sometimes they'll go super heavy in my opponents favor. Ooh well.

Sure, when everything lines up perfectly the card can be an powerhouse and be wicked, no doubt. The same thing can basically be said about every card though.

Really? What other card can even potentially generate 8 resources on the first turn at zero cost? What sort of wicked powerhouse use can you get out of Promotion?