So, as I read all the cards in the Skywalker deck and try to play against it, it appears to be very difficult to beat. I wonder if I am doing something wrong? Do other people feel this way? That deck is strong. So, I wanted to start a conversation about good stand alone pods against Skywalker, pods that would combo with other pods you are using, or combo with your pods your partner is using, and simply pods that have no business searching for Skywalker (please give reasons you feel the pods are good or bad). I feel some planning needs to be done to beat this deck being used by an experienced player. My thoughts, and pardon me I have not tested much this is all hypothetical in my head, minimum play testing.

Good stand alone pods IMHO...

Fallen Jedi,

A resource card is even more important than usual, if your partner gets resourced screwed you can pass them resources through common, Vader has blasts on him and can gain targeted strike for Luke, seems kinda important. Most of all though, the objective lets you reconcile a card without throwing one away (i.e. the light sides win condition of decking you). Plus the other unit has a blast as well.

Vader's Fist

Cut his reserve, enough said. And if your partner is playing the new imperial pod and passes you the logisticals officer you can keep healing it to keep his reserve down.

Tarkin's Pod

Tarkin lowers the life of objectives, since I have to kill so many of them, this seems good. Superlaser kills a site, also seems good. Flip it, its not the Luke site, blow it up. Also has a resource.

The Shadow of Nar Shadda (I know it's bad normally)

Aguilish Thugs. Ok, the way I see it, the beginning of the game has two vulnerable sites and doing damage to these sites early might be good, two auto damage seems good, but I'm also nervous about giving them abilities to trigger right away. So, thoughts on this, I don't know. But, massive damage to sights is needed and this takes no effort but to play a guy, which has a blast. Spice visions which mixed with Vader or palpantine can win a game. Don't know, thoughts. Plus you can stop Red five from attacking, he seems vicious.

Imperial Command (Motti)

Imperial Bombardment, all guys get a blast, seems like a thing we want. Plenty of resources, also good.

Good pods to help partner or go with other pods

Repair and Refurbish

Anything with support fire in it appears to be good, altering the edge battle after is done appears good. Logistic officers to fix your partners Vader's fist or General's Imperative both seem like things to do. Also if he is resource screwed passing him the guy will help with that as well. Thunderflare, fixing my objectives to destroy his sounds worth it.

Looking for Droids (hear me out)

The objective lets you resource fix. Say you are running imperials and your partner is running sith. You have plenty of resources and your partner has palpantine in his hand but only has four resources. He can just put him in the common reserve and you can play him, if you have the objective out, or a dark times in your hand from the same pod. I think it gets even better on a three person team. You can put a dark times into common reserve, and your other two team mates can play each other's common reserve cards by playing your dark times first. Second, the droids that play from your discard pile, playing guys from my discard and not using my hand seems good since the light side HAS to deck you. And they have a blast and you can hold no regard for them, they die, so what. The last card, it's worse, cancels Run, Luke, Run, which cancels any action, reaction or interrupt your team tries (anybody play the decipher game years ago, sense/alter wars amongst us).

That's all I got for now, any thoughts would be appreciated. And, if you have actual decks you've found to be effective, fire them out there.

Played against it a couple of times, seemed to me that a Sith/Navy deck like the nationals/worlds winners combined with a heavy aggro Navy deck beat it relatively easily. The Sith deck brings the control elements and you just pound his objectives with the navy elements. In the games we played with this setup we were pretty consistently able to find Luke and kill him pretty quickly by using his objective damage overflow. You need to be able to kill/otherwise handle the Operatives and other mill characters and then be really aggressive on the objective damage.

I've heard that Scum are actually really good in this since they can slow their draws with Jawas and have enough control elements to push through a Navy deck, but haven't tried that myself.

Let me begin by saying I have not lost with Hunt for Skywalker against two players. This is part of the reason in my article on the challenge decks, I rank it the easiest for the challenge deck player. I do have some ideas based on what I have seen that can be effective tools against the deck.

The first suggestion is a play strategy - tactics is King in this format. The challenge player has an extremely hard time winning if their units are not striking. They are already disadvantaged by only having one hand and one set of resources, further constricting their gameplay by burying units is vital to success. I need to say here that the Emperor IS NOT the solution. He is actually not that great in this format because there are plenty of ways to deal with a single unit, and his cost is a little high. There are plenty of other units that would be great in deckbuilding against HFS. May I suggest three sets for your consideration:

- Tatooine Crash

- Across the Jundland Wastes

- Cruel Interrogations

The first two should be apparent given the current point: tactics. There are lots of them in these sets, spread across a bunch of 2 and 0 cost units. The 2 costed units are not affiliation specific, making them easily spread between players. There are currently no cards in the game that increase the deploy cost of DS units, so the Jawas are safe, and their (jawa) Forced Reaction only triggers for the player who controls them. Tat Crash also has Utinni!, which is vital to keeping enhancements off the table. All of the enhancements in the deck are nasty, and if the LS player is like me, they are packing the Message from Beyond command deck cards. Seeing Old Ben's Spirit can be bad, so having some enhancement hate is good. They also only have 1 command deck, so Tat Crash is also pretty detrimental. The Sandcrawler is a liability, so just don't play it. The Twist is also important (discussed later).

Across the Jundland Wastes is all about tactics and edge. The objective can be situationally okay, but their best strikers are vehicles. But with 3 units that are not unique and cannot be tactic'd into oblivion and are "colorless," so either player can use them.

Cruel Interrogations has a lot of hand control and tactics, and Dark Interrogation can be pivotal on a big turn. I really like the set overall, and even though the droids are a bit pricey, they tax the LS player a card at random, which utility I do not think I could overstate.

The second suggestion is also play strategy - hand size limitations. Both challenge decks have reserve modification objectives, but the LS challenge deck is better at defending its reserve modification. It also gets 10 cards from outside the deck that can be played as cards in hand WITHOUT counting toward hand limit. That means that without ways to deal with hand size, the LS player will win more edge battles and play more cards.

There are a number of ways to deal with this, the two I will talk about reserve limitations and Twist of Fate. Vader's Fist (discussed by the OP) is really difficult for the LS player to handle, especially if more than on is on the table (or Killing Cold is around). I also do not think that there is much I can contribute to the conversation on the importance of Twist of Fate. There are only 2 Fate cards either challenge deck, which is why my second Command deck selection of choice is Hit and Run because it introduces 3 more Fate cards for the LS including another ToF. This is a long way of saying that if you can get the LS player to play more edge battles you are going to likely force them to play more cards.

So here is the list so far:

Tatooine Crash (Tactics, ToF)

Across the Jundland Wastes (Tactics, edge)

Cruel Interrogations (Tactics, hand control)

Vader's Fist (hand control)

And I would like to add one last set, The Ultimate Power. As fliptheforce has mentioned to me multiple times, Superlaser Blast is the ultimate "cheaty-face" card. While the target should NEVER be Return to Tatooine or a facedown objective, taking out the enduring effect of some of the objectives is important. This OSet also includes Tarkin, which makes every objective easier to kill. He has a black tactic icon and the OSet has a resource icon. The Objective is not really anything special to want to attack, and unless the LS player has chosen to use a set with Rebel assault, the elite stormtrooper is pretty decent.

The last suggestion is also strategic. It is understanding that there is a fundamental change in the win condition of the Dark Side. You now are trying to kill objectives. If you and your teammate do not have a plan on how to deal damage (and lots of it) you will eventually lose. The LS player, if left alone, will deck you. If you do not access and flip objectives, then Secret Hideout will wreck you.

The final list of suggestions:

Tatooine Crash (Tactics, ToF)

Across the Jundland Wastes (Tactics, edge)

Cruel Interrogations (Tactics, hand control)

Vader's Fist (hand control)

The Ultimate Power (Tarkin, Superlaser Blast)