I am just curious to see what everyone is including/running to counter this deck. I have yet to play it but it seems very difficult to play against in theory.

I do well with mine, but I've lost to straight agro decks. Some counters are cards that remove shields, and decks that can take their time. In my deck I can manage to get 3 or 4 actions in a row, so I very well may exhaust all my characters very quickly.... so if you pass once or twice, you may have me completely spent, and then you have all the time to slowly activate your cards and pick me apart after I've done what I need to do.

But I'm still relatively new to playing Han Rey. I don't know what the BEST counter is.

I wasn't all that inspired by Han/Rey, honestly.

I know it's getting a lot of fluffing around these parts, but Rey's damage is abysmal, and blue cards don't really help Han in any meaningful way.

As for the best counter? Basically anything aggro. Sure, Han/Rey get a lot of actions in a row, but short of letting them pop off a bit of damage and claim early it doesn't really seem to help them all that much against a slower deck with high potential damage in my experience. They don't do enough damage to make their speed helpful.

I know it's been said before, but Han/Leia are a significantly more dangerous team with all the Ambush that Hero Red brings.

As for actual combos that counter Han/Rey? Blue villains, mostly. High direct damage, Intimidate to open up the shields, Force Choke, Isolation to remove key dice and deny modified damage, and melee damage in general to keep Hunker Down from being a problem.

I think Han/Rey is more about having fun than being the "best". It's still viable though and I could totally see bringing it to a tournament... I just don't know if it's top tier.

I wasn't all that inspired by Han/Rey, honestly.

I know it's getting a lot of fluffing around these parts, but Rey's damage is abysmal, and blue cards don't really help Han in any meaningful way.

As for the best counter? Basically anything aggro. Sure, Han/Rey get a lot of actions in a row, but short of letting them pop off a bit of damage and claim early it doesn't really seem to help them all that much against a slower deck with high potential damage in my experience. They don't do enough damage to make their speed helpful.

I know it's been said before, but Han/Leia are a significantly more dangerous team with all the Ambush that Hero Red brings.

As for actual combos that counter Han/Rey? Blue villains, mostly. High direct damage, Intimidate to open up the shields, Force Choke, Isolation to remove key dice and deny modified damage, and melee damage in general to keep Hunker Down from being a problem.

I agree generally. I wasn't as impressed as I expected to be.

Straight Aggro decks (like Grievous) are probably the best counter to Han/Rey. They don't give a crap and will just kill you, and then take your redeploy stuff.

Yeah, Han/Rey is an interesting deck due to it "going off" quickly, but at the same time the damage just doesn't seem to be there.

Right now it seems like there is very little incentive to take a bunch of actions before your opponent. It just means they get to do everything they want to do right afterwards. This will be an interesting aspect of the game to watch as new expansions come out. I can see people wanting to play fast decks that take lots of actions that lead to a kill. But I can also see people complaining about that sort of thing, especially since there is no "instant speed" type spells like in Magic, which allow you to interrupt your opponent's plan. So you either have a fast deck that you can't respond to and kills out of nowhere, OR decks full of "take extra actions" cards, that don't lead to anything in the end. Both sound unfun to play with or against. Wonder how they will address this in future releases.

eJango/eVeers

~D

Plenty of things can beat it. Of the top of my head I always have trouble with Jango, jedi shields, Vader and Grevious builds.

This is how you beat Han/Rey, you need to either be even more aggressive than they are, which can backfire, because the deck can recover from a lot of hurt, OR you need to control their dice. Han/Rey relies on a lot of + sides of their dice, so remove the trigger dice and they can't deal any damage. The desk is strong, one of the strongest I've seen, but it all depends on the pilot and his/her ability to play it into those tough matchups. Also the Han/Rey deck is tricky, because you need to balance it between aggro, defensive tech and yellow control, and you're playing two damage types and a lot of costly sides on the dice. It can seem invincible when the pilot does his turn 1 holdout, get shield roll Han and deal 4 damage or remove all your resources before you can even react, but the deck needs some good die rolls and it's almost always strapped for cash.

Disrupt

Dice control (remove the enablers)

Things that bypass shields or deal obscene amounts of damage.

Things that can consistantly soak up damage (Dooku or Qui-Gon)

These are the answers to that deck.

A properly built eHan/eRey deck in the hands of someone who knows how to play it is the real deal. I've only played against it. This weekend I'll be trying it for the first time. My deck has 9 blue cards, 2 gray, and 19 yellow.

The meta is still forming but I expect it to be one of the early tier 1 decks. Of course there is still a lot of time before worlds for decks to rise and fall.

As far as beating it goes, what you do will depend on what you are playing. One thing that will always help out will be controlling the ranged attack symbols. The other important tactic is to kill Rey first. Rey is the engine that drives the deck and Han is the gun that does the damage. Rey's melee damage is just a bonus and having 2 types of damage in this deck is inconsequential. By killing Rey first you disable the decks ability to chain multiple action by recycling Holdout Blaster. That's not to say the deck doesn't have other tricks for stacking actions, but that is the most important.

Kill Rey first, every time all the time. Han is a slow burn with shields and Second Chance. Get Rey out of the way and Han becomes a lot less effective. That and dice control, like someone already pointed out Han/Rey rely on plus sides to stack damage, manipulate or outright remove the enabling dice and their 8 damage quickly becomes 0.

Killing Rey first is a good strategy, but I wouldn't call it an 'all the time' strategy. I won against Han-Rey last week by fragging Han first. My opponent was stacking ranged weapon upgrades on Rey, once I fragged Han, all those +RNG dice were worthless to him and I quickly mopped her up. Admittedly, denying him Starship Graveyard in the priority roll helped a lot.

I was playing a Dooku-Ren Holocron deck FWIW.

I think Han/Rey is more about having fun than being the "best". It's still viable though and I could totally see bringing it to a tournament... I just don't know if it's top tier.

I personally wont have fun loosing with this overhyped team.

Killing Rey first is a good strategy, but I wouldn't call it an 'all the time' strategy. I won against Han-Rey last week by fragging Han first. My opponent was stacking ranged weapon upgrades on Rey, once I fragged Han, all those +RNG dice were worthless to him and I quickly mopped her up. Admittedly, denying him Starship Graveyard in the priority roll helped a lot.

I was playing a Dooku-Ren Holocron deck FWIW.

Dooku/ren is surprisingly good huh?

eHan/eRey was one of the first decks I played against. It was played by a guy who had been in the game since the prerelease event (I didn't attend) who had at least twice the number of games under his belt that I had. I was smashing him.

At first I thought he was trying some new version with a twist, then I thought the deck was all hype and no substance. As he started to become frustrated I realized that despite playing more games than me he hadn't studied the game as much as I had and was actually less versed in it than I. We finished what was probably our 6th game, all wins for me, and I asked to see his deck. I had an idea of what was in it but didn't know just how bad it was. It had some of the obvious cards, but the focus and synergy wasn't there.

Fortunately he was one the few of us that received some of our preordered booster boxes. We went through his cards and swapped out about a dozen cards for better ones. He still didn't have all the cards I thought he needed to optimize the deck, but it was way better and actually qualified as a functional eHan/eRey deck.

The first game we played after rebuilding his deck I coached him on the card interaciions, the proper character to play each upgrade on, ordering his plays, and prioritizing his targets. We played 3 more games that day and he won all of them. The middle game was my worst defeat to date. To my everlasting shame (it was still cool to see though) I lost Luke on turn 2 and the game on turn 4, although you could argue it was already lost on turn 2. It took less than 10 minutes to finish. Yes my opponent got a lucky start on turn 1 dealing 7 damage to Luke. But here's the thing, that kind of damage burst is more likely to occur with this deck than most others. It's built for bursts of damage.

The deck is not difficult to play. Still, it has a learning curve that requires you to learn how to order your actions, which character gets which upgrade, and finding the right time to grab the battlefield. Once you get a feel for these. the deck, if built well, is fairly easy to play. Poorly built eHan/eRey decks will underperform most other decks. All of this leads to what is probably the decks biggest weakness, it's predictable. It's path to victory is obvious and both you and your opponent know what the eHan/eRey player needs to do to be successful.

I think Han/Rey is more about having fun than being the "best". It's still viable though and I could totally see bringing it to a tournament... I just don't know if it's top tier.

I personally wont have fun loosing with this overhyped team.

Hahahaha you crack me up dude

It is top tier. No doubt.

It is top tier. No doubt.

Some doubt.

It is top tier. No doubt.

Some doubt.

Much doubt

Lets say that there is going to be 4 top tier decks. Which four would that be, if not Han/Rey?

Lets say that there is going to be 4 top tier decks. Which four would that be, if not Han/Rey?

eHan/eRey

Vader/Raider (aggro version)

eJango/eVeers

Blue villian control (final version to be determined)

That's my prediction for top decks, but I think there are a lot of others out there that can make a good showing and would be worth taking to a tournament.

If you are looking to counter Han/rey and Jango/veers, I think Mono Hero red had a good shot, thanks to It's a Trap. With Han or Jango decks, you are looking to get god rolls and resolve them. Taking it's a trap against that makes your roll guaranteed. You just need to get your dice in the pool. After they roll out, you can Hit and run into It's a Trap, and turn enough to blow a character up, with four dice or so. Two dice Leah with a couple guns can deal 8 or 9. Even better if you Poe out there with another gun on him too.