Here is encouragement for players who feel it is a necessity to include vibroknife in any melee deck. Vibroknife is good, don't get me wrong, but I also think FFG knew what they were doing with SOR.

Vibroknifes primary purpose is a slight damage boost coupled with ignoring shields. Folks cried afoul that it would entirely push out Han, Dooku, and Qui-gonn and while shields are a primary factor to their strategies, I think they're still good.

Vibroknife is a trap in terms of opportunity cost. Most people will commit to the two resource upgrade first round, which leaves your opponent unchecked in most cases, you unable to mitigate without your starting resources. The other thing about vibroknife is that if you can remove it from the pool, you will get the chance to soak up some damage with shields and force illusion. The only way vibroknife can be overpowered is if your ten health Dooku receives ten damage and was never able to block damage with his ability. It is up to you to stop that from occuring and luckily, just within SOR they released solutions to their problems.

Imperial Inspection- You can use it as a control card against vibroknife to bounce the upgrade while its die is in the pool by rolling a Disrupt.

Doubt- The simplest way to remove a die from a pool and an essential card for Dooku decks. The vibroknife does have a 1 in 3 chance of not being resolvable so by all means go for it.

Confidence-The hero answer to a pesky vibroknife. Let your opponent get 1 resource or 1 unblockable damage and speed up a little in return for your shields to trigger

Overconfidence-The best card for breaking up chunks of damage. Is Vader showing 3 melee next to a vibroknife showing +2? You will be taking less damage no matter what, and I'm sure there'll be no complaints if a Vader/Rey/Anakin die is removed.

Makashi Training- Amazing and underutilized ability to remove your opponents melee. Its mitigation that works every round and can remove a vibroknife 50% of the time.

And these 5 are just in SOR. Vibroknife can be countered by a multitude of cards. Disarm, Electroshock, Guardian, are also important counters and means that every deck archetype has atleast one factor that assists them in the matchup.

EDIT: Just want to point out that this is leading to some good discussion about a card that really shakes up the game. I think the general consensus is that the card leads to a more exclusionary meta, which no one wants.

Do you think that without vibroknife more decks would be competitive or less?

In the same way Fast Hands was errata'd because it became auto include for decks running yellow, I feel Vibroknife is essentially the same power level. I don't know a melee focused damage deck that does not run Vibroknife. So while you can argue that it isn't as powerful as it seems at first glance, it's hard to argue that it isn't powerful when literally every melee deck runs it.

But basically what you're saying is that Vibroknife isn't that strong because you can mitigate it in some way. And while that's true, you don't have unlimited mitigation. You have to use that Confidence on the Vibroknife instead of making Vader resolve his resource, after which he uses Bait and Switch. You still come out ahead because he hit 2 shields on your Han, but the choice of what to mitigate is only obvious because of the power level of the card (Vibroknife).

I think the other point of it not being as strong as some think is it doesnt provide a lot of damage if your deck DOESNT revolve around shields for survival then it usually only adds 1 damage or a discard and not much else while other upgrades at that price point provide a lot more. Like Makashi training, or most of the ranged weapons, the thing is I dont see much in terms of melee weapons on hero side or at 2 or under cost, and I think that is why it sees as much play as it does more then anything else, it is a good 2 cost melee weapon its the same reason gaffi stick still sees play and Rey's staff still sees play. Its ability isnt "broken" it's good, but most of the time it might as well be blank, sure against certain characters it counters, but shouldnt some strategies HAVE a counter. Like 4 character decks are countered by Thermal yet we arent still complaining about thermals.

Vibroknife into force speed into force speed on Rey round one, roll in Rey get 4 more actions, roll in Luke, reroll until 10 damage (which is possible) kill Dooku turn one.

Round 2- vibroknife over vibroknife, roll in Rey get 4 more actions, roll in Luke now you have 2 resources for my ally is the force plus 2 free actions to reroll. Kill another character.

Tell me vibroknife isn't broken.

yes for this great of a scenario a lot has to go right, but it has happened to me and is most definitely possible.

Riposte works very well if your opponent uses Vibroknife and you want to have shields.

42 minutes ago, Krazed said:

In the same way Fast Hands was errata'd because it became auto include for decks running yellow, I feel Vibroknife is essentially the same power level. I don't know a melee focused damage deck that does not run Vibroknife. So while you can argue that it isn't as powerful as it seems at first glance, it's hard to argue that it isn't powerful when literally every melee deck runs it.

Holdout Blaster is pretty much an auto include in ranged decks, does that mean it needs errata? I don't think fast hands was errata'd because it was auto include, it was errata'd because in too many decks it let you resolve dice without a chance to control them (and do it every round) and at 0 cost.

Vibroknife is fine.

2 minutes ago, Double Blanks Gaming said:

Vibroknife into force speed into force speed on Rey round one, roll in Rey get 4 more actions, roll in Luke, reroll until 10 damage (which is possible) kill Dooku turn one.

Round 2- vibroknife over vibroknife, roll in Rey get 4 more actions, roll in Luke now you have 2 resources for my ally is the force plus 2 free actions to reroll. Kill another character.

Tell me vibroknife isn't broken.

yes for this great of a scenario a lot has to go right, but it has happened to me and is most definitely possible.

This isn't a problem with vibroknife, it's a problem with Rey and/or force speed.

So you play 3 cards to get all that action cheating, so you get 3 cards to reroll with (with the extra draw from Luke), but can only reroll twice in order to resolve before your opponent. You also had to hit the force speed special the first time to make this happen as well (50% to hit it on just one of them, so you have about a 25% chance of that happening on both). Then we have to account for the odds on the perfect card draw and rolling the nuts on 4 of those dice with 2 chances before your opponent can act.... This is a scenario where everything goes perfectly your way how often will it really go like that? It is possible, but most of the time it won't happen that way.

Vibroknife isn't broken.

Holdout Blaster WAS an auto-include in Ranged damage decks in Awakenings, but primarily due to the lack of good Ranged upgrades. Now I hardly ever run it.

Remember when it took an event to resolve a single damage die to bypass shields? Yeah, those were the good old days.

Vibroknife is an idiotic design choice, plain and simple. It shuts down every defensive option in the game just by existing. Yes, there are ways to deal with it, because there are cards that affect dice. Are they uniquely good against Vibroknife? No, they're general options that you'd be forced to put Vibroknife at the top of the target list for. That right there tells you that it's broken.

Vibroknife isn't broken, but it is a silver bullet against specific deck types. Add in that it's die isn't that much worse than other two cost upgrades and that it compounds the Rey issue then you've got a card that is not healthy for the game. Silver bullets should be a hard choice, only to include if your meta is dominated by what it stops. If Vibro had two blanks, two +1 melee and a resource/shield side without ambush, then it would be a healthy anti-shield card. Basically making you make a choice to include the silver bullet at the cost of resource efficiency.

Thermal Detonator is another example. It is a silver bullet against three and four character deck styles. But, it was designed way better. It costs more, the bullet portion is a 33% chance, not a passive ability, and it discards itself. If it weren't for Poe, that would be an example of a balanced silver bullet.

3 hours ago, Double Blanks Gaming said:

Vibroknife into force speed into force speed on Rey round one, roll in Rey get 4 more actions, roll in Luke, reroll until 10 damage (which is possible) kill Dooku turn one.

Round 2- vibroknife over vibroknife, roll in Rey get 4 more actions, roll in Luke now you have 2 resources for my ally is the force plus 2 free actions to reroll. Kill another character.

Tell me vibroknife isn't broken.

yes for this great of a scenario a lot has to go right, but it has happened to me and is most definitely possible.

Who else can you do this with? It's just Rey, and she's been a consistent problem since day one

5 hours ago, Double Blanks Gaming said:

Vibroknife into force speed into force speed on Rey round one, roll in Rey get 4 more actions, roll in Luke, reroll until 10 damage (which is possible) kill Dooku turn one.

Round 2- vibroknife over vibroknife, roll in Rey get 4 more actions, roll in Luke now you have 2 resources for my ally is the force plus 2 free actions to reroll. Kill another character.

Tell me vibroknife isn't broken.

yes for this great of a scenario a lot has to go right, but it has happened to me and is most definitely possible.

Sounds like a double force speed on one character issue, not a vibroknife issue.

Vibroknife is a simple fix. It needs to be changed to unblockable damage on the attack the die is included on. So if you use the 1 dmg sides, you can chain modifier on it to make it more or vice versa if its included as the modifier, but the fact it just has to be out in the dice pool, whether its showing melee or a blank, and all melee dmg is unblockable is stupid. It is a NPE and hurts the meta. I feel itll get changed eventually to be more limited.

~D

18 hours ago, Double Blanks Gaming said:

Vibroknife into force speed into force speed on Rey round one, roll in Rey get 4 more actions, roll in Luke, reroll until 10 damage (which is possible) kill Dooku turn one.

Round 2- vibroknife over vibroknife, roll in Rey get 4 more actions, roll in Luke now you have 2 resources for my ally is the force plus 2 free actions to reroll. Kill another character.

Tell me vibroknife isn't broken.

yes for this great of a scenario a lot has to go right, but it has happened to me and is most definitely possible.

If you draw 2 x force speed and a vibroknife turn 1.

Then roll double specials on force speed.

Yeah Rey Luke can do big damage, but aside from niche cases, its not reliable.

Vibroknife isn't broken. Rey might be.

I am confident that some king of either errata or rule change will change that in the future:

-Vibro: must show melee in order to work

-Rey, she adds ambush to stuff played on her (So if you play an ambush weapon, it does do more actions)

Chak

3 hours ago, Chakan99939 said:

I am confident that some king of either errata or rule change will change that in the future:

-Vibro: must show melee in order to work

-Rey, she adds ambush to stuff played on her (So if you play an ambush weapon, it does do more actions)

Chak

Both sound reasonable if they were to errata them.

I know this sounds dumb, but I'd actually prefer a flat-out ban list.

Coming from X-Wing, one or two well-placed errata are easy to remember, but once you get to the point where even just thirty or forty cards have been errata'ed, it's highly annoying and cumbersome to remember all the current rules (especially if cards get errata'ed multiple times) and you end up having to keep track of the current FAQ, print it out, and bring it with you any time you play the game. Which is very frustrating in a game like X-Wing, where a new FAQ is released every month or two.

So, yeah, maybe errata is coming whether or not I like it, but I'd actually prefer it if they just banned Rey, Maz, and FN from tournament play altogether. Just knowing from experience, once you get five years down the road into a game with aggressive errata, understanding the rules of the game becomes unmanageable unless you're willing to read a new rulebook every few months.

And before you say that rotation will change this all in a couple of years, I'd like to point out that it took quite a while before MTG incorporated rotation, and I've talked to a few friends who play other CCGs (I don't play CCGs other than this one) and I've heard that MTG had enough cards in its initial rotation that for this game to catch up would take about five years (since we only get 500 or so cards a year). I'm just not sure how viable this seat-of-the-pants "here's the current meta, let's nerf it" method of errata will be in five years.

7 hours ago, Kieransi said:

I know this sounds dumb, but I'd actually prefer a flat-out ban list.

Coming from X-Wing, one or two well-placed errata are easy to remember, but once you get to the point where even just thirty or forty cards have been errata'ed, it's highly annoying and cumbersome to remember all the current rules (especially if cards get errata'ed multiple times) and you end up having to keep track of the current FAQ, print it out, and bring it with you any time you play the game. Which is very frustrating in a game like X-Wing, where a new FAQ is released every month or two.

So, yeah, maybe errata is coming whether or not I like it, but I'd actually prefer it if they just banned Rey, Maz, and FN from tournament play altogether. Just knowing from experience, once you get five years down the road into a game with aggressive errata, understanding the rules of the game becomes unmanageable unless you're willing to read a new rulebook every few months.

And before you say that rotation will change this all in a couple of years, I'd like to point out that it took quite a while before MTG incorporated rotation, and I've talked to a few friends who play other CCGs (I don't play CCGs other than this one) and I've heard that MTG had enough cards in its initial rotation that for this game to catch up would take about five years (since we only get 500 or so cards a year). I'm just not sure how viable this seat-of-the-pants "here's the current meta, let's nerf it" method of errata will be in five years.

I don’t wish to detract from Destiny but that’s not actually true, the X-Wing community has be desperately asking for an updated FAQ and with FFG not forthcoming there is actually the beginnings of a community generated FAQ, if anything FFG aren't releasing FAQ updates often enough, or at the very least soon enough after the release of a new wave of product.

And in terms of Errata there are in fact only 23 cards that have errata text, and of those only 6 have functional altered text with the remaining 17 technical tweaks of text that remain functionally identical. Hardly a significant amount of memory required to keep up to date with the actual relevant changes.

And the only reason that all of these are even considered a problem, particularly the latter changes to Manaroo etc. is because X-wing does not have a rotation policy. The game has bloated to such an extent of game pieces that inevitable unseen OP combos get created with exponential upgrade combos with every new product release.

Destiny will need a rotation policy eventually, it’s the only way for any CCG to stay alive and healthy. This alleviates the need for banning's and it allows power creep to be kept in check. Considering we currently only have 2 very minor Errata to clarify intended use, I don’t see the need for mass banning's. The real problem that Destiny has is that Awakenings is all but OOP so the length of time that format legal product remains OOP correlated directly with stunted growth in the game and eventual decline in the player base if allowed to continue for a significant length of time.

Add to this that should banning's become the norm, you will almost kill the game as well, Yugioh is the only game I am aware of that somehow survives despite not having a rotation policy and an ever expanding ban list, not to mention reprinting rares and legendries as commons tanking the value of the cards from a collectors perspective.

TL:DR: X-Wings problems are not the cards that need errata it’s the bloated amount of legal tournament product & Banning cards in Destiny is a bad idea for collectors and players alike and there are better options.

Banning is bad. If it comes to it, FFG would almost certainly use a Restricted List just as they have in LCGs; though implementing a Restricted List this early in the game's life would now look very good in terms of game design.

Anyway, Vibroknife...It's not broken. It is however bad for the game. It's too good a silver bullet for something that is meant to be a fundamental part of the game. Would people be okay with a card that said 'While this dice is in your pool, your opponent can't gain resources'? 'Can't discard cards from your hand'? 'Can't deal X kind of damage'? Vibroknife single handily makes shields look like a bad idea, as any melee deck can completely nullify their effectiveness for two resources.

Yes, it's controllable. That's like saying Holocron or Force Speed are perfectly balanced because people can use removal on a 0 cost upgrade dice. It still doesn't remove the fact that it's too good a counter for something that really didn't need a counter to begin with. It's not like the meta was ever a stall fest with characters buried in mountains of shields.

Yea, there are easily 604 ways to deal with vibroknife

Vibroknife is about as close as a card can get to auto-include for melee heavy decks. It has two nifty tricks (ambush and ignores shields) and only costs 2. It can also go in both villain and hero decks and is neutral.

I agree with the OP, this card is no where near broken, but is the melee equivalent (and might be better than) Holdout Blaster.

The other issue is that FFG isn't releasing cards that can handle all the situations for every deck.

Disarm, Sabotage, Surgical Strike, etc. should have all been Neutral/Neutral.

I get flavor and such for each side along with each color, but basic removal cards should be accessible to ALL players.

Half the problem, is that cards released now, may not have it's proper counter until later. In the meantime, it becomes a NPE in the community and just becomes a flavor meta include. EaW is going to have supports/vehicles running around everywhere and I feel we have some good anti-support already, so that's okay. But all colors/sides should have access to some sort of decent 0 and 1 cost count/removals. That should have been automatic in the 1st two sets.

I mean blue hero doesn't even have a basic 0 cost die removal that just removes an opponents die w/o forcing you to remove your own dice. Every other color/side has it already.

~D

19 minutes ago, HoodieDM said:

mean blue hero doesn't even have a basic 0 cost die removal that just removes an opponents die w/o forcing you to remove your own dice. Every other color/side has it already.

What magical cards do you have access to that i don't?

Every piece of removal in the game either costs at least 1 resource or requires a price be paid - either remove or blank ones own dice for instance, or give the enemy an opportunity to resolve a dice.

Blue Hero has access to overconfidence, which is 0 cost guaranteed 1 die removal...

1 hour ago, Stu35 said:

Blue Hero has access to overconfidence, which is 0 cost guaranteed 1 die removal...

I think you mean Confidence. Which still lets your opponent resolve his die. So it's pure removal, but on the same level as Doubt.

41 minutes ago, Krazed said:

I think you mean Confidence. Which still lets your opponent resolve his die. So it's pure removal, but on the same level as Doubt.

No i meant overconfidence. Blue neutral, reroll 2 dice then remove the lowest result.

In other words zero cost guaranteed one dice gone.

But yes. Confidence too, also available to hero blue.

Point is that every removal card in the game has some sort of cost. Theres not a zero cost card which lets you just remove a dice. Certainly not one such card for every colour except hero blue.

9 minutes ago, Stu35 said:

No i meant overconfidence. Blue neutral, reroll 2 dice then remove the lowest result.

In other words zero cost guaranteed one dice gone.

But yes. Confidence too, also available to hero blue.

Point is that every removal card in the game has some sort of cost. Theres not a zero cost card which lets you just remove a dice. Certainly not one such card for every colour except hero blue.

Overconfidence costs 1 resource.