The new feature of legacies seems to be special chaining. Everyone is running some combo of Aayla, Poe, and Yoda with Force focus, and then using that to resolve all of their dice for massive shields and massive damage. As a villain player (who therefore cannot use of you can’t beat them join them) I’m wanting to know what people’s strategies are for dealing with special chaining. Is there a killer card I’m missing? Do you mitigate all of the specials you can? Do you mitigate their hardest hitting dice no matter what it’s showing? What is your personal strategy for dealing with special chaining?

I think Best Defensing there strongest dice is a good choice as well as Twin Shadows. Anything that removes multiple dice works or disrupts multiple dice like overconfidence.

Focus on ways to remove dice, not damage dice. The Best Defense is a great way to do this, but Vandalize will work as well, as this lets you get rid of the upgrades or supports they are using to deal damage.

Cable launcher resolved from fast hands or take flight could be good.

A few disruption cards like Diversion could be good as well. Keeping upgrades off the table seems like a decent play to me. It can at least slow the pace down enough to make things manageable.

These obviously don’t pertain to villains, but Rebel Assault is a good one for using red + ranged damage. Daring escape is also another good one with ambush after potential removal.

Theres also the new yellow card "Easy Pickings" - which would be more useful once they play several things that have specials than stopping the single-die chain Aayla/Poe/Yoda are prone to do.
If they have more than just the character dice with specials odds are theres going to be 2 specials rolled before they special-chain. Remove both with this card.

Not the best solution but its probably one of the few multi-die removals that doesnt specifically call out damage.

Entangle could also be used to remove 2 dice combined value of 3 or less (specials are 0 so...). My only issue with this card is its a 2cost with the stipulation that it cant remove heavy damage so it feels a bit expensive.

Also i agree with Piscettios, keeping upgrades off is big. Aayla, Yoda and Poe themselves dont do anything, they just enable getting the specials on upgrades like Lightbow, Lightsaber, or Poe's blaster much more likely. Force Rend is pretty potent if you can feed it enough resources.

On the hunt both counters and enables Special chaining at the same time

Thanks guys! This is really helpful. Though it seems like most often the best option is to run a yellow deck since that is where most of the counters are.

Might be even better to keep digging into yellow with a jango deck

Jango interrupts with salvage stand and on the hunt are just nasty, and they're a good way to counter the relative speed that special chaining provides

It's hasn't even reached its potential yet. Once Yoda, Chewbacca gets perfected it will become truly sick.

They will probably make some change saying that you can only chain face of die showing so new special wouldn't be resolved until later turns. Giving time for removal. Still it's not as powerful as action cheating yet. When Yoda turns a Chewbacca die to it's special. Chewbacca turns an AT-ST die doing 5 damage then Yoda force throws it for another 5 will people truly weep.

I've tried making chewie work and he doesn't. He's great against Darth Maul's lightsaber, maybe Kallus Bo-Rifle but that's about it.

11 hours ago, ozmodon said:

It's hasn't even reached its potential yet. Once Yoda, Chewbacca gets perfected it will become truly sick.

They will probably make some change saying that you can only chain face of die showing so new special wouldn't be resolved until later turns. Giving time for removal. Still it's not as powerful as action cheating yet. When Yoda turns a Chewbacca die to it's special. Chewbacca turns an AT-ST die doing 5 damage then Yoda force throws it for another 5 will people truly weep.

I agree they’ll likely change the “resolve dice” action such that you cannot resolve dice which were not facing the right symbol at the start of the action. But if my opponent pulled off a Yoda-Chewie-Force Throw special chain against my AT-ST die, I wouldn’t weep. I’d applaud them for pulling it off!

7 minutes ago, GooeyChewie said:

I agree they’ll likely change the “resolve dice” action such that you cannot resolve dice which were not facing the right symbol at the start of the action. But if my opponent pulled off a Yoda-Chewie-Force Throw special chain against my AT-ST die, I wouldn’t weep. I’d applaud them for pulling it off!

Would only make every special chaining deck run Force Speed, and then we'd be in the exact same boat. So I doubt that this is going to go away. We might see a point increase to Hondo to make him difficult to give you 4 dice teams with him, but with Yoda and Aayla also being on the cheaper side, that's going to prove fairly difficult.

2 hours ago, kingbobb said:

Would only make every special chaining deck run Force Speed, and then we'd be in the exact same boat.

Not really. Sure, Force Speed is still a massive blight, but it's another die that needs to be combo'ed in to make it all invincible. It will also need to hit (which it does well, admittedly) or take one of the special chains to change it then trigger it.

Force Speed is already part of the special chains. Saw it plenty often in Portland.

But I agree with most of the previous sentiment - the best way to handle special chaining is to put your dice in a box for a while and wait (hope) for FFG to realize how badly they've screwed it all up. Again.

26 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

Not really. Sure, Force Speed is still a massive blight, but it's another die that needs to be combo'ed in to make it all invincible. It will also need to hit (which it does well, admittedly) or take one of the special chains to change it then trigger it.

Force Speed is already part of the special chains. Saw it plenty often in Portland.

But I agree with most of the previous sentiment - the best way to handle special chaining is to put your dice in a box for a while and wait (hope) for FFG to realize how badly they've screwed it all up. Again.

Poe2 maybe gets a pass because it was a Force Friday card and maybe outside the regular playtest chain. Although even that's a weak argument, because they could test the card with no set designation so as to not violate the FF NDA...

But Aayla and Yoda are in the same set as Hondo, so either we're all missing something that seemed balanced to FFG about this, or FFG really is as bad as we think they are when it comes to designing and testing cards.

2 minutes ago, kingbobb said:

so either we're all missing something that seemed balanced to FFG about this, or FFG really is as bad as we think they are when it comes to designing and testing cards.

FFG's testing and balance abilities have long since passed the point of deserving any benefit of the doubt, and not just for Destiny.

I have encountered 2 decks that use Special Chaining, with three characters driving the process. In some regards Poe and Yoda suffer from having a limited choice of action. Poe is just gain a shield and turn a dice, so unless you have a dice in play that deals damage via a special he just adds shields. Yoda has a few more choices, however, if you use Yoda to turn dice then he only has one other choice shields or money. Neither Yoda or Poe do much until you plan an upgrade on them. The third character is Hondo and out of the gate he has his 3 damage or pay 1 special that just makes it harder to counter.

In general I think how you play can be the key here rather than what you play.

Because Poe or Yodo aren't heavy hitters without that upgrade attacking their resources and cards in hand can slow them down, and vandalise and disarm can be used to remove the upgrades they have. Attacking their shields also means Yoda has to make a choice of getting a Resource or Shield with his turn of the dice. You may also have to swap targets, if you just attack Yoda each and every turn your opponent will ramp up Poe and shield Yoda, be prepared to make him spread out what he is doing. Hondo on the other hand is a bigger problem, he starts with a special that can deal damage and because you need to pay a resource to prevent it can earn money very fast, he'll also add Second Chance, Lone Operative and Cunning to the mix which will make him serious trouble if he ramps up.

The problem these decks have is, they don't have many dice that deal damage, perhaps they start the game with 2 dice on Hondo or Poe that can do anything, where as you start with 4 dice that can do something. So assuming you can ramp up at about the same rate you always have an advantage of having more dice that can deal damage. Keep in mind too, if you have 4 usable dice for damage and they only have 2 the targets of your dice removal are much easier to pick, your opponent is going to use the Lightbow to deal damage as soon as he can. Removing a Yoda dice just makes him re-roll into a start of a special chain, remove the Lightbow and you remove a good chunk of damage.

Ashoka seems interesting because of her ability to ready again, that gives you 6 dice on turn 1 to their 2-3 that can be used to deal damage.

Yoda isn't broken. Neither is action chaining to speak of. The real problem is that in order to compete with the beast you have to become the beast. Most of use fell in love with this game. Where you take an action then I take an action. Where Darth Vader was to be feared. Now 5 droids are more powerful. Many of us are holding out and still collecting in the hopes that they can fix it. It will take time and maybe after the first set drops off it will be better. There is no right answere, come back in a year or ride out the storm. All we can really do is hope.

At what point have we ever played you go and then I go, even in my first game of hero starter versus villain starter there was a Rey in there and ambush cards making you wait for your turn. Jango was janky as and Bala Tik was annoying as. However, the meta changed and adapted and move past the various decks that did well.

In 4-6 weeks someone will post a new deck that pushes Yodo off his perch as "King of the Hill" and the process starts over. Then players will flock to that deck and complaints will start about the new broken thing.

I am not too sure this problem sits with FFG, but rather with us as players, not because to compete with the beast you have to be the beast but rather no one wants to experiment and play with new ideas in order to beat the beast. We'll all wait until someone comes along and shows us the next best deck to play.

the only time such decks are a problem and need a nerf is when they win 90% of the time or more regardless of what they face.

Special chaining is nasty but its not THAT nasty. Nothing will match the cheese of FN or Thrawnkar

Played against a couple of Hondo decks last night. I was playing ePoe2 and eAayla, so I was also relying on special chaining.

When it works, it works well, and can't be countered once you start. You have to remove the dice before they can start their chain, which is not something people are used to needing to do. Normally you save your removal for something that's showing a dangerous face...with Hondo, if you want to avoid his ability, remove his dice ASAP. Poe can't deal much damage on his own early, and Yoda can't deal any damage without an upgrade.

But that's true of any deck's "thing." When the deck hits it's sweet spot, it's deadly. Knowing how to counter that is the key to beating any deck. And Hondo decks do give you a chance to deal with them, unlike PoeMaz in the past.

I think I'm still torn on Hondo....his place in the Star Wars franchise does not seem to warrant the ability to deal 3/6/9/12 damage as easily as he does. I think that's the thing that bothers me the most. Mechanically, I think his design is fine, although I do lean toward him being undercosted because of his damage potential. But he's beatable, and in fact pretty easily so. I think most burst damage decks will beat Hondo overall, because he's only 10hp and even with Yoda or Poe throwing shields on him, he's not going to last more than 2 turns. And if you have enough removal to reliable pull in those two turns, he's not going to be hitting you with more than 1, maybe 2 of his dice.

5 hours ago, kingbobb said:

You have to remove the dice before they can start their chain, which is not something people are used to needing to do.

...

And Hondo decks do give you a chance to deal with them, unlike PoeMaz in the past.

This is super ironic, because the advice here is exactly what people said about Poe/Maz. Remove Poe's dice, and Poe/Maz does nothing.

16 hours ago, ozmodon said:

Yoda isn't broken. Neither is action chaining to speak of. The real problem is that in order to compete with the beast you have to become the beast.

"The only way to beat it is to play it yourself" is pretty much the basic definition of a broken mechanic.

Special chaining is definitely good, but unless you have a crazy strong die to change to (Hondo, lightbow, etc) you end up only getting a 'small' benefit from it as far as winning goes. Yoda and Poe's specials don't do damage on their own, and you can pay to stop Hondo. Hondo is going to be strong, but he's just a new mechanic to learn to beat. Save money or pay?

Remove their die sounds like a copout, but that's the idea behind removal anyway. You get rid of the die that has the most damage or damage potential out there.

Hokey force specials are no match for a good blaster by your side.

21 hours ago, LHyoda said:

Special chaining is definitely good, but unless you have a crazy strong die to change to (Hondo, lightbow, etc) you end up only getting a 'small' benefit from it as far as winning goes. Yoda and Poe's specials don't do damage on their own, and you can pay to stop Hondo. Hondo is going to be strong, but he's just a new mechanic to learn to beat. Save money or pay?

Remove their die sounds like a copout, but that's the idea behind removal anyway. You get rid of the die that has the most damage or damage potential out there.

Hokey force specials are no match for a good blaster by your side.

The problem with Hondo isn't that he costs you resources: It's that he makes you give over a resource. So you lose the ability to play upgrades and gain dice, while your opponent gets more. It's a choice of a 3 damage or 2 resource swing per die, and on a sub 18 or 20 point character, that's a pretty huge game impact. You need a lot of blasters, and having some shields isn't a bad idea, either. But if he gets Cunning out turn 1, you're looking at maybe 9 damage from him? That's just way too much.

Isolation if you're running villain blue; almost all the special chain dice are on characters, so you can nip that first special in the bud.

Other than that, you're looking to either soft-mitigate the specials that would start a chain, or hard-mitigate the dice you're scared of before they get chained to. That will mean taking re-roll cards and cards that are a little less efficient than damage-only cards, but it's still very doable for villains.