Since people were discussing this deck in someone else's thread, I figured I'd go ahead and post this so that discussion would have a home.

Affiliation: Imperial Navy
Objectives (10):
2 Lord Vader's Command
1 Corporate Exploitation
1 Death and Despayre
2 Imperial Command
2 Take them Prisoner
2 The Ultimate Power

(For reference, since cardgamedb doesn't have the set up yet)

Lord Vader's Command
- Darth Vader
- Communications Officer
- Probe Droid
- Probe Droid
- Imperial Suppression

The deck itself is pretty simple, a Trooper focused swarm deck that uses Darth Vader, Orbital Bombardment, and Trooper Assault to turn your army of cheap-yet-mediocre units into a credible threat.

One point I saw brought up in the other thread that I'd like to address is "Why use a second copy of The Ultimate Power over the second Death and Despayre?" Personally, I think it's the right call. Not only does Tarkin make your army more lethal, a major plus in this deck, The Ultimate Power also contains another Trooper in Stormtrooper Elite, and more importantly, Superlaser Engineer. The Engineer's comes-into-play Reaction lets you fish for not only Superlaser Blast, but Orbital Bombardment - and finding the Bombardment is pretty critical to this deck.

If you draw Tear this ship apart and you know they play heavy blaster encampment are you going to hold it or play it in an edge battle if the encampment hasnt shown up yet?

TGO said:

I'd probably hold it if I could, but toss it in the edge battle if I thought I needed it to win. This looks to be an incredibly aggressive deck, and you should probably worry more about getting the advantage now instead of what might be helpful later.

I have the exact same deck as in the article but I do not have Death and Despayre in mine, I have Reconnaissance mission instead. My D&D is in my vehicle deck anyway but also Reconnaissance mission gives you the Human Replica droids. Hoping the force pack is in today so I can sleeve up Vader's Command with the rest of the deck.

I did some test draws last night with it and was not getting good setups. The units are very poor without Vader or Bombardment and the one health on a lot of stuff stinks. I can see a LS deck with direct damage being a problem.

I really wanted this deck to be good but I have not had any luck with it.

Game 1, I had a fast start, new Vader + 4 Espo troopers but after that the deck lost steam.

Game 2, I had another fast start, Tarkin, Control room, Espo, two resource chuds, Probe Droid. Turn 2 Vader. Turn 3 I had a 2nd Tarkin and Bombardment. The problem is that my opponent had a more explosive start and I was unable to slow him down. I was able to get the dial to 11 but lost on his 3rd turn when he blew up the 3rd objective.

I compare this deck to red deck wins in magic. It can explode, but as long as the opponent weathers the storm they can come back. Oh yeah, I also hear that Yoda with 4 enhancements (2 Trust Your Feelings, Jedi Lightsaber, Shi Cho Training)is pretty good.

This could sound blasphemous, but maybe cut the Corporate Exploitation in favour of another Ultimate Power or Death and Despayre. It reduces Vader's strength a bit, but the larger units should give the deck some more lasting power than a bunch of piddling troopers. I can also see aggressively discarding to get the pieces of a brutal Trooper Assault too.

@TGO

Yeah, I had the nut draw…

I wouldn't say it plays like RDW - no direct damage. I think it plays more like a bad green ramp/chode deck that hopes for the best.

@GongShowHost

Don't like that as much. The Espo Troops are free and offer huge advantages to a deck like this - or any deck for that matter. Just being able to attack with a bunch of stuff and hold back for force/cheap blockers is amazing, and really puts you on an advantage. Not to mention when you are set up for destroying objectives, they are awesome.

I think vader will be better with vehicles. They have blast damage, usually, and would be better than the troopers.

I played four straw games (where I played both LS/DS) and it won 50% of the time. I played against a standard Jedi & smugs deck and it split games. In the game it lost, it was because it lost a critical edge battle, getting no unit damage icons with the Espo troopers (or the second on the heavys) really made the difference.

In the other two games I played against an experimental Hoth rebel deck. I was please with how each of the decks played. The game it won was a short one. In that game, early resource capabilities brought out a turn 2 Devastator and a turn 3 Orbital Bombardment.

In all four games, Darth Vader (without any tricks) was underwhelming, though he saw play in three of four games. More information to come if the verdict changes, but for now, Vader isn't the real contribution. In actuality, it was Imperial Supression that made the biggest impact on play.