Seems to me that it's about time to post a deck idea. I'm torn on strategy for the DS: the nature of the game gives them the option to try to stall/board control for the win, or be agressive to end the game quick before the LS can threaten. For this deck, I'm thinking more board control. Cards like Force Choke and Force Lightning are great for keeping the LS from threatening. For units, unit damage and tactics are more important than objective damage. Here's what I've come up with:

Afiliation: Sith

Objective Deck (10):

Counsel of the Sith x1

Fall of the Jedi x2

Shadows of Dathomir x2

The Emperor's Web x2

The Heart of the Empire x2

Reconnaissance Mission x1

Thoughts?

I think its really cool that decklists for this game are only going to be 5-10 lines long.

The downside, of course, is having to remember what is in every objective set. Hopefully cardgamedb eventually provides the option to export the whole deck list on a per-card basis.

Its a real shame FFG's forums don't use BBcode, or you could paste decks directly in here with the hyperlinks to cardgameDB already set up.

Yeah, I was going to post individual links to all of the cards, but the objective set links also show which cards come with the objectives so I figured that was good enough.

I'm really curious about which cards you were particularly iinterested in when choosing objective sets. I can see why you chose The Emperor's Web because it gives you Force Choke and Force Lightning which can do board control, as you say. I've never really considered There is no Escape before, but in light of your desire for board control, I can see it as a very useful tactic. If you are short on units, you can wipe the board and start all over. If you are dominating, it's two force icons make it a strong addition to an edge battle. I love how cards aren't wasted in this game!

Shadows of Dathomir seems like it's really focused on swaying the Force to the Dark Side and winning Force Struggles. Was that a significant part of your decision to include this set, or was it more about just needing more Sith objective sets and trying to avoid the vehicles which tend to focus on objective damage?

Shadows of Dathomir made the cut for a few reasons. A Disturbance in the Force is a great card to lock down multiple LS units. The Nightsisters are passable in battle but are probably mainly going to be used to commit to the force or in edge battles. The Hand's Blessing helps protect an important unit from enemy tactics at least a little. The big draw though is the Rancor. It can pretty much one-hit kill any LS unit in battle and its ability takes out low cost units that aren't worth hitting with it. Throw in the 2 resource generation and it's a pretty good objective set.

That said, it's probably near the chopping block for this deck when more sets come out. It has some synergy with the deck goals, but there definitely could be better options (may even already be better options… I am building decks with no experience or testing after all). Winning the force battle is definitely useful for a stalling deck though as it cuts down the number of turns you have to stall so maybe it will keep its spot. I appreciate the feedback.

Argh! The game isn't out yet! Give me 3 weeks or so and I'll tell you!

dbmeboy said:

I sure do love speculating. And it's fun to hear others' thoughts as well.

I think the Heart of the Empire will be a great card as long as its not in your opening 3. If you can draw it after your 1st/2nd objective, then at point its not any easier to destroy than the last 1/2 objectives the LS player needs. I don't think I'd want it in my opening 3 though.

As requested above, here's a bit more of a breakdown for why I included each set:

Fall of the Jedi - This one is an auto-include. Darth Vader, Force Choke, and Heat of Battle are all key cards for keeping the opponent behind in board position. The Dark Side Apprentice is a decent filler card and Vader's saber makes the already excellent Vader into an absolute beast. Most of the time, Vader will be commited to the force and play defense (and hand out lots of damage with his ability and event cards).

Shadows of Dathomir - Mostly covered above, but basically included for the Rancor for killing LS units and the Nightsisters for commiting to the force. A Disturbance in the Force is also a nice to win the force battle, lock down important LS units, and trigger Vader's ability.

The Emperor's Web - What's not to like here? Two more copies of Force Choke (4 total? Sweet!). Two copies of Force Lightning. The Emperor is sweet. Unlike Vader, he'll probably be put on the offensive, to keep LS units from even attacking in the first place. While this deck isn't focused on destroying LS objectives, if you do happen to take one out the ability to grab one of your event cards back is great. The set is rounded out with the royal guard and some resource generation, always solid options.

The Heart of the Empire - Two more useful event card options. Due to the clock in the game, a board wipe like There Is No Escape favors the DS player. Force Stasis is nice to delay a big attacker like Luke or a buffed Yoda. The Coruscant Defense Fleet is great for sitting and defending. It takes lots of hits, has shielding on top of that and can protect the objective. Added bonus, if you win the edge battle, it will kill one of the attackers. Throw in 3 resources generated and it's a pretty useful objective set.

Reconnaissance Mission - Extra card drawing (by increasing your hand size to 7), some fate cards, and a fun surprise for your opponent when you win an edge battle. Included mostly because the extra card drawing is so useful, though the fate cards are always nice.

Counsel of the Sith - With Reconnaissance Mission included, something had to be dropped to one copy. Card draw (and Vader trigger) in the free event Dark Precognition, another copy of Twist of Fate, a couple of resource generating cards, and a filler character. Not a bad set, but not as tightly adherant to the deck's goals, so it gets dropped down to 1 copy.

Wow, I didn't realize there were so many event cards available to the Sith. That makes Vader even more powerful than I originally thought. Loooks like you have some nice synergies!

The one thing that worries me about deck building for this game is that seems like its going to be more prone to everyone playing the same deck. In a normal card game, even if there is a dominant deck design, you are going to see lots of variations on that design with a few cards switched in our out depending on the player. With SW, you can't make those fine tweaks. I just think you'll see a lot of decks that share 9 objective sets, with only maybe the last objective set switched out. I look forward to being proven wrong though.

I had built a Sith deck, and unfortunately, ended up with the sxact same objective sets listed for pretty much the same reasons… Hopefully they expand Sith/Jedi/Rebellion/Navy through Hoth before they dive into the other two factions. While I can't wait to run a smugglers galore deck, I'd rather run it against a bunch of different decks, not the same 6-8 over and over again

Eruletho said:

They are expanding all 6 affiliations in Hoth Cycle. It says so in the article.

Eruletho said:

While it's unfortunate that decks overlap so much right now, I can't help but be a little happy that somebody else thought this would be a good deck. Similar to identical decks are bound to happen when you're building a 10 card deck out of a pool of 18 options…

So, has anyone tried to calculate the number of 10 set combinations possible from the 18 possible card sets?

10 items out of 18, but each of the 18 numbers could be used twice EXCEPT for two of them (only once), and two others are mutually exclusive. Is there an easy formula for that?

If anyone's interested, I've posted a more in-depth breakdown of this deck's design on my teamcovenant blog here. Enjoy.

DrNate said:

It's in the range of 120 milliion. Each x2 objective can be treated as a seperate entity and add 1 of the mutally exclusive objectives. So that is 33C10. For the second mutally exclusive objective you calculate all the combinations it will be a part of, so reduce the set to 9 and the entities to 32. 32C9. Add them together and it comes up to a little over 120 million.

dbmeboy said:

Oh, that's right. You have to use the formula that allows repetitions, but you have to eliminate all results that have 1-16 more than twice and 17 more than once. Lets just call it a lot and move on.

houjix1138 said:

Agreed, though like most games that total number of possible decks isn't really a good way to represent the total diversity available as some number of those decks will be so laughably silly that nobody would ever build it. So yes, the total number of decks possible is rather large (though not as high as something like SWCCG or MtG at their release), but the total number of viable decks will probably be limited to 2-3 per side. Granted, this happens all of the time in MtG (the same handful of basic deck designs played by multiple players). The difference is that no longer will those decks differ by a couple of cards between players because you can only change at least 10% of the deck at a time. That is a legitimate downside to the objective set deck building: the loss of ability to have decks that are almost, but not quite, the same.