Why Villains are Better Than Heroes
It’s a well known fact that, in the Star Wars: Destiny universe, villains are simply more powerful than heroes. We’ve had several aggressive characters spoiled for Empire at War which may shift things around, but at least for the first 2 sets of Destiny, villains had superior cards and characters.
Better All Around
Overall villains are just better than heroes. This is a point that we don’t need to argue because everyone already knows it to be true (at a recent online tournament, heroes were given an extra 3 points to build decks with, and villains still won). The biggest reason for this is that villains have better cards all around.
An easy example is the comparison of Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber and Luke Skywalker’s Lightsaber. Both sabers have a 3 melee for one and a +3 melee along with a special. Kylo’s saber, however, has an extra +2 melee side that Luke’s doesn’t have. In addition, Kylo’s saber has an arguably better special. The only drawback to Kylo’s saber is that it has a 1 shield instead of a 2 shield like Luke’s (but shields are almost always useless in a meta that includes Vibroknife).
Villains seem to always have better cards. They have FN, New (and old) Phasma, Vader (both), Palpatine, and Jango Fett. They also have amazing cards like He Doesn’t Like You, Bait and Switch, and Isolation. Comparing He Doesn’t Like You to Loth Cat and Mouse (the hero equivalent) illustrates the disparity. While hero’s need to rely on crazy combos that are hard to pull off, villains get all around good cards that do their job quickly and efficiently.
Combos and Shields
Heroes love combos. In Star Wars: Destiny the villains get cards like Force Strike (1 cost) to change their Vader dice into threes. Heroes, on the other hand, need to roll a focus to play My Ally Is the Force (cost 2!) for the same result. Villains get fantastic dice and characters, like new Phasma, that just roll crazy damage. Heroes get characters like Baze that almost require a blowout It’s a Trap to win.
Heroes (especially hero blue) have a strange affection for shields. It seems as if the thinking behind hero blue was to have them shield up, live forever, and slowly chip away at their opponents with their weak dice. The issue with this, is that shields are a very weak mechanic in the game right now. Cards like Vibroknife (neutral), Intimidate (villain), Jedi Rival (villain) and many more remove or ignore shields entirely and destroy heroes whole mantra.
Point Cost
This is the most frequently cited reason for the disparity of quality between heroes and villains. Looking at a hero character versus a villain character, the villains will almost always be costed lower. Let’s look at some examples.
Lets first take a look at new Phasma and new Poe (two characters that should be evenly matched due to appearing in the same set). Phasma and Poe each have a 1 range, 2 range, 1 resource, and special sides on their die. They also each have a focus side, Phasma’s is a 1 focus while Poe’s is a 2 focus. Despite the difference in focuses and one less health, I think Phasma is still a better card with a special that allows you to do 2 or three damage while Poe gets Datapad on a stick. Despite Phasma being a better card she still costs 9/13 while Poe costs 11/15. A better card has a lower point cost.
This trend is continued throughout all of Star Wars: Destiny. Luminara Unduli is a very interesting character but is costed equally with new Kylo. Chirrut Imwe is also an interesting character but is costed higher than Count Dooku with an arguably worse ability and die.
Star Wars: Destiny is a great game that I (and I’m sure many of you) truly love. It does, however, have several issues including hero and villain disparity. Hopefully by talking about these issues we can entice FFG to respond and buff heroes ability to compete with the currently superior villains.
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Thanks for reading!
-NickTheBug; Mandalorian HQ