With all the new Legacies cards bouncing around, I thought it would be a good idea to do a basic deckbuilding article. Have a read and see what you think.

https://tabletoptimesinks.com/2018/01/14/building-your-own-deck-some-tips-tricks/

Solid advice.

When I am deck building I tend to fire up SWDestinyDB or grab my folders of cards and choose the Characters, I will then just go through and add cards to my deck based on how they work with my deck idea. So now I can easily have a 50 card draw deck after that first pass. We have about 50 Characters for Villains and 50 for Heroes, and about 450-500 unique cards for each side. So this builds up at least a shorter list in that first pass.

For my second pass I now try and rank the function of the cards and rank them, slowly removing cards that at first looked good but didn't quite do what I wanted as efficiently as the others.

If I get myself to 30 cards at this point I'll playtest, otherwise if I get to 32-34 cards I'll try and leave 2-4 individual copies of those cards that maybe too tough to call. I'll then playtest with those singletons and see how they get used over a few games.

Once I have my deck I like to see if anyone else had a similar idea on SWDestinyDB and see if there are any cards they too that I may have missed. Sometimes you just miss the obvious.

Then it is play games and make small modifications. Perhaps I misread a card and have to swap it out or perhaps it just ends up being a re-roll because of its cost or play limitations. As an idea here, borrowed from Team Covenant, put a slip of paper behind the doubtful cards and make notes as you play them or discard. That way you won't rely on memory for what you did with the card. At worst here an electronic notebook or even a good old fashioned paper one can be worthwhile.

Sometimes too you reconsider what you took out and why and find that you took the card out for the wrong reason and swap it back into the deck. I removed this due to the damage effect, but after several games I was finding that Rose was rolling specials that were not removing damage from cards, and I didn't have that many Vehicles for Wedge to play with.

Solid article aside from including one of the most wanted legendaries in the set in the begginers deck article

I would also add that type of damage a character and your upgrade cards produce should be complimentary. So a melee Luke will want a melee partner and melee upgrades.

Mixing damage is fine if you have characters with more than one damage type but be careful with having too many modifed dice sides of a particular daamge type as it will be very easy for your opponent to mitigate the few base damage dice.

Mixed damage also tends to slow your turn down as each different damage requires a separate action, unless you use cards like 'All In'.

While some decks revolve around supports, all decks should have at least one or 2 supports. This allows for passive benefits to either generate resources, do damage or add shields. Linked to this, many players do not have room in their decks for support removal so they are generally safe.

I find upgrades that cost more than 3 to be an issue. In my experience these cards look good and can make a big impact but more often are discarded for rerolls or can actually hurt you if your opponent plays characters like original Kylo or Unkar. Focus on 0-2 cost upgrades with a few 3 cost thrown in if your deck can generate resources easily.

As a general theme, yellow decks can afford more expensive cards, red are in the middle and blue are the poor force priests who are always broke.

For character combos, two dice is hardcore, 3 dice is risky, 4 dice is the most common and can make a deck of either two elites or an elite and two supports. More than 4 dice are generally a swarm deck. These can work but will hardly ever claim the battlefield and are weak to grenade type cards.

Number of character dice is a big deal. More dice equals more opportunity to generate resources, damage or affect your opponent. Having less dice also hurts more when your opponent mitigates one or two of them per turn.

In the early rounds (1-2) I would concentrate on upgrades, claiming resources and playing a support instead of damage. Once I am set then the pain can start and I have more dice to re-roll, even if some are discarded.

A growing number of unique characters have special passive abilities. These can be taken as 1 dice as the ability is just as effective and leaves more room for either more support characters or a big hitter.

@Amanal Yep, developing a deck is a whole process as well (which I will probably write an article on). Your method of deck development is pretty much what I do as well.

As for HWK-290, I think it has a lot of potential. Definitely going to build a deck with Rose in and cards like that.

@Vitalis I presume you are talking about Obi-Wan Kenobi's Lightsaber? Yeah, it's quite sought-after, but you probably only need one copy per deck thanks to cards like Lightsaber Pull (unless you are consistently playing against mill though).

@Alphastealer You bring up lots of good points! Having similar damage types definitely makes things smoother, but we have to be careful not to disregard options that might be good just because they have dissimilar damage types (don't get me wrong though, I agree with what you're saying).

After writing this basic deckbuilding article, and reading the detailed comments that people have posted, I think that I could probably write an entire series of articles looking at the various minutiae involved. Mixed damage sides could definitely be one such article!

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

We're seeing a lot more mixed damage on characters, and with the addition of indirectly, a lot of otherwise attractive pairings are going to be mixed. I think having two damage types in a deck will become much more common, which mitigates the downside of mixing your own if a lot of the decks you face will also be slower.