I have heard some complaints about Darth Vader and wanted to take a moment to say how much I enjoy him. I personally think that Vader needs to be the strongest and in no way do I feel that he is overpowered. The store where I play has about three Vader players. We tend to bring 3 decks each and switch it up during an evening of play. All of us tend to get great joy out of defeating him. If we win two in a row with him we switch it up and pull out another deck. We are getting to a point where Vader is just another build. Poe, Han and Yoda, Qui-Gon seem to do very well against him. I think a new set with rotation will make all the difference.

Ya I have done well against Vader with Luke/ Fisto. I just do not know about trilogy but so far in Standard it is just 1 more deck that I know I have to work for.

Gees, I thought the original post was going to be a rant saying Vader needs a nerf....haha. Glad it's not. It's nice seeing that Vader decks are competitive but not overly dominant in the current meta. I'm really keen to see how rotation impacts the current meta moving forward.

Vader/Greedo seems to be dominating the meta at our Wednesday night tournaments. Multiple people playing the deck over the last 9 weeks. Seems the deck only loses when Vader's dice roll poorly.

Mad props to John @ The Gaming Goat - Eagan, MN for keeping track of the weekly data!

Top 10 decks (out of 70 different decks played):

On ‎1‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 1:24 AM, tunewalker said:

Ya I have done well against Vader with Luke/ Fisto. I just do not know about trilogy but so far in Standard it is just 1 more deck that I know I have to work for.

Which Luke is this? eLuke3 with Bitter Rivalry or Solidarity or eLuke2 (from the starters)?

Thanks,
~D

Here's the thing with Vader.... He's in a good spot.
But he makes resources a bit too easily, which puts him that little bit above the curve.
You can certainly build against him. You can counter Vader pretty easily. But he'll wreck most regular aggro decks.

The problem isn't actually Vader... it's Theed.
Vader has a pretty solid chance to win the battlefield roll against most decks. Which means he is nearly guaranteed to drop a 3 cost lightsaber first turn.
If he retains the battlefield, he's likely got enough resources to Rise Again at the start of turn 3 which will give him another lightsaber or a darksaber.

So if you're just trying to race him on damage, you're going to have a tough time.
If you can stop the resource generation or hit those key cards out of his hand... it becomes a lot more manageable.

I think Vader is strong but he can be beaten and he does have some weaknesses. But a free extra resources every turn is what pushes him over the edge.
Theed should limit the extra resource to Neutral characters only just like the extra action. That would be enough to level the meta again.

I enjoyed playing Vader at a Regionals on the weekend. It's fun rolling huge numbers and there's just enough tricky stuff (his saber, maul's saber etc...) to make the deck interesting.
But various data shows he's a tad too strong right now.
The main thing is, he's no where near as annoying and oppressive as Thrawn/Snoke was or some mill decks (I like mill BTW).

1 hour ago, HoodieDM said:

Which Luke is this? eLuke3 with Bitter Rivalry or Solidarity or eLuke2 (from the starters)? 

Thanks,
~D

Luke3. I used bitter Rivalry and having 2 Steadfast in the deck. Battlefield is theed palace, and I made sure to put in AT LEAST 1 Makashi training as it can do wonders against vader making it much easier to remove his dice multiple times a round and with it's ability to bounce I can use it to remove a die bounce and still get damage with it and remove a die with typical card removal.