Right now my local scene is in love with Old Ben's Spirit / Guardian of Peace supporting some combination of Han/Luke/Yoda/Ben. I have to admit, I like it too. I run the Han/Luke/Yoda incarnation of that deck at the moment. Tons of direct damage and a royal pain to get rid of those big dangerous characters. That being said, how do you get around it? The Capture mechanic seems to be what's needed, but there is so little out there, that to focus on capturing requires three colors with no significant synergy. Maybe the staple of Vader/Emperor and hope the Force Lightening can destroy those pesky jedi? Guardian of Peace can't take the fall from a targeted "destroy," so maybe? The Old Ben/Guardian deck is light on characters. Maybe that direct damage from Sith will be enough to pop that Guardian the round before Luke comes out, or vise versa… Hope they can't drop Han and Old Ben on the same turn?

I don't usually like aiming to take down specific decks, but all the targeted strike from Luke/Han just shreds Navy trooper / TIE spam decks. Any thoughts?

SIde note: is it just me, or is Navy Trooper rush not ready yet?

Sith Control beats it. It plays more characters, and has damage events. If they don't want to be crushed by Vader ping to their characters, they have to make him a focus, which is why the guards work so well with him. If you need to add some more pain to it, you could try the new Hoth objective with the Icetrompers and the Wampas. With 3 damage, they will take a targeted strike from either Luke or Han (unenhanced), survive a Rebel Assault, and take out Luke/Yoda/Han.

MasterJediAdam said:

This is not my experience at all. In my opinion Sith struggles mightily with the Jedi deck these days. The problem is the Spirit is very hard to deal with multiple times in one turn, and if you can't (either because of counter-stroke or otherwise) you are likely going to get run over by Yoda or a combination of other characters. Icetrompers do not solve the problem at all, because that usually goes like this:

I attack with stacked Yoda/Luke/Han alone.

Defend with Icetromper and whatever.

LS loses edge (best case, otherwise aformentioned character pain train you prior to Tromper effect, especially Yoda/shi-cho with or without weaponmaster event)

Icetromper tries to sendhome/kill a guy, kills obis spirit instead.

Attack again with beating character now that there is no defense and he doesnt have a token for striking.

The only way I have seen Sith beat Jedi so far is by getting Vader/Stick by turn two and using targeted strike to supplement the damage. Even there it was a fight, because the LS will attempt to stack tactics on him to keep this from happening with Mind Trick, Obi, Yoda, Hand, Twi'leks.

I have not yet found a way to consistently beat Jedi yet in the current environment. Navy does better, since they can wbeat you with a massive attack if the LS overcommits. The deck I am currently trying is:

Affiliation: Scum

2xBespin Exchange

2xImperial Command

2xTake them prisoner

2xEndor Gambit

2xDeath and Despayre

So far this has worked somewhat well at slowing them down, since they have to constantly worry about Boba/Detained/Tear this ship apart and the Vehicles can keep the pressure on offensively. I do not think the deck can compete in general though, so not sure its going to work out.

In my experience, you really just need to win the edge battle and tactic out the units with the emperor and interrogation droids on the defense. That way you do not have to worry about calm. Too many DS players are too aggressive in this game. Also, a lot of players are dropping obi-wan set so you have to worry about Jedi Mind Trick even less.

I've honestly had little problems against this deck with my Sith deck. If you're controlling the force, and winning the edge battles, and playing a deck with hand advantage, you should win the game easily against a deck that can barely stick a unit out (16-18 units).

JMCB said:

Winning the edge is frequently easier said than done, especially since you need to do it each turn to keep it locked up. Tactic Icons only work if they dont pro you with Calm or Trust in your Feelings.

I'd be interested in what your sith build is. Mine is currently:

Sith Affiliation

2xFall

2xWeb

2xHeart

2xCouncil

1xCruel

1xCorporate Exploit

I am currently something like 2-15 against the new Jedi with this deck and 0-5 with Killing Cold/Shadows on the Ice in place of some combination of Council/Crule/Exploit. I currently consider the few wins I have gotten as anomolies in how the cards came up or some play mistake on my opponent's part.

I honestly don't see how you're losing so badly to this deck, what with my experience it's the complete opposite as I've won way more than I've lose with this deck against Jedi Mains in the current meta. I have a couple of builds right now, but one I'm playing with for one of the regionals I'm going to go to in the next couple of weeks looks like your deck -1 Corporate Exploit and +1 Recon. Mission, and I feel like that is one of the better decks against Luke/Han Mains. You have 3 objectives that provide a card draw (making 5 that filter cards with Fall of the Jedi included in the list).

Part of the problem I can see already is you're running the Espo Troopers in here - no point in this deck as you can't win the game with them like you can if you were running Motti set with Orbital Bombardment, or Imperial Vader. Playing these in a deck like this means you're not only lowering your potential force icons, but dropping them in play means you're down a card that you need for the edge (which is very important against the Jedi). If the Jedi lose an edge battle, not only do you strike first, but more importantly you lower the damage their units do to your objectives (Luke attacks for 1 objective damage instead of 2, for example - Han goes from one to zero as does Obi-Wan). This may not seem like much of a win, but Jedi are slow at doing objective damage. If you prevent what little they can do, you're going to be winning more games.

Calm shouldn't be an issue if you're not going aggressive, otherwise it is a card that can really sweep you. I've done it a few times while trying to finish out the game, and it was very regrettable. Luckily, its an easy tell to avoid as if there's a character with 2 enhancments, don't go tactic crazy and wait to do it when you're defending on their turn. Are you making good use of There is No Escape? Don't toss those in edge battles at all against this deck - you need it badly when they play guardians/old bens and have Luke/Han/Yoda out. The rest of the game should be focusing on defending and controlling the force (you should always be focusing on winning the force in this deck, otherwise games drag out too long and that's bad for the Sith). If you want to go for a bit of objective destruction, do it over turns not actually destroying any objectives but just damaging them for another turn to destroy them, that way you're not over-extending. Use your Security Teams, Dark Side Apprentices, and Spy Droids for these. Focus on the objectives with 4 damage, or anything they've already damaged with their card effects.

I think as far as playstyle we are very much on the same page. I frequently defend and camp force struggle and rarely attack unless I already have control of the board or if it would grant me further board position.

I think my biggest issue is the Yoda-star, which I think is near impossible to kill without sweeping the board whole sale. Once Yoda gets rolling he can easily kill objectives by himself and be extremely dangerous if you lose the edge. The other heroes, such as han, luke, obi, compound the problem by being annoying in their own right. Obviously, if it were just Han/Luke. etc I could handle it (I considered Sith to be very challenging to beat prior to Desolation), but the spirits really do make your life difficult. Luke turn 1 from core was relatively easy to deal with, even if followed up by Han/Obi or whatever. Luke plus Spirit, then another hero guy (particularly Yoda) is not nearly as easy to handle, since the amount of resources you have to expend to kill them is problematic, and can be unexpectantly thrown off by Counterstroke or Lightsaber Deflection.

The edge battle can be really dicey. LS has Twist in most of their builds and their values tend to be relatively close to Sith's depending on the draw. So it can be very difficult to go into an edge feeling comfortable of a win, even with an extra 1-2 cards. I have seen edges where light side won 10-9 or somesuch, which while a little lucky is also the hard reality of the matchup. If they get a little more lucky than you on the draw, they can throw out a massive amount of icons, just like you can. Thats why when I see people cutting Forgotten Heroes I think thats a bad idea. The extra card you get early on can really help with those close edge battles.

As far as There is no Escape, most people around here will save C-3PO or Counterstroke for that. Since it is pretty difficult to kill their important characters with Choke/Lightning anyway due to Spirit and Guardians, the only real threat left is the reset.

The Espos in mine are really for Rebel vehicles. Dropping the extra spuds early on really roadblocks that deck, since most of their most dangerous stuff has only a couple of hitpoints. They help avoid the double rebel Assualt pain train, but I can probably do without them.. I originally had Recon in instead of Exploitation, but found the Replicas kinda meh and the extra fate cards not really necessary in Sith so I cut it.

As far as Calm goes, the problem becomes if you try to lock out their characters with Emperor or Droids by attacking, they will hold it until the force phase then refresh their guys. Again, the worst is Yoda, since hes frequently who you really want to lock down and also frequently has 2+ enhancements, but it can be equally bad with Luke or Obi given the situation.