Blue Hero Analysis and Guide
Throughout the short history of Star Wars: Destiny, villains have had an edge over heroes (you can read my pre-EaW article on that here). Post EaW, however, blue heroes have been able to hold their own against many of the top villain decks. In this article, we’ll talk about how blue heroes made that jump to greatness and we’ll also go over a universal blue hero deck template.
In the past, heroes have struggled to hold their own for a number of reasons. Blue hero in particular had trouble because their main mechanic was shield generation. With cards like Vibroknife and Intimidate, shields were made useless. Overall, the shield hate pre-EaW ripped blue heroes apart. On top of that, the best pairings for blue hero were eLuke/Rey and eQui Gon/eRey. Both of these lists rely heavily on Rey who has a weak die and can rarely hold her own to complete a game.
Post EaW and the 2 player set, blue heroes are much more competitive. This is due, in large part, to the myriad of good new cards they received. Cards like Lightsaber Pull allow blue hero to saturate the board with dice quickly. Ancient Lightsaber allows them to heal their character and provides a +3 side for powerful Guard plays. Shoto Lightsaber and Fearless as well as Luke’s Protection give frequent and ongoing shields to play into abilities such as Qui Gon’s.
During Awakenings and SoR, blue hero relied solely on shields as their main mechanic. Post EaW, however, they have new tricks. One of their most important abilities is to get lots of blue weapons on the board quickly for cheap. Old cards such as Padawan and It Binds All Things do this job well but Lightsaber Pull and Reaping the Crystal also do a great job with this. Rend allows you to remove Imperial Inspection which hurts decks that spam out upgrades.
Quite possibly the most important new card for blue hero is Kanan Jarrus. Kanan gives blue hero a cheap character that fills the Rey slot with much better dice. His dice are fantastic with no modified damage sides and a bonus focus. In addition to all that, his ability is great at resolving his mixed damage. It can also be used to focus one of your dice to any side and immediately resolve it. Kanan’s diverse sides also allow for great plays with Force Misdirection. Overall, Kanan is one of the best tools at the disposal of blue hero.
In addition to new cards, many old cards are finally seeing competitive play. It Binds All Things, a card that wasn’t used very much in SoR, is being used again as an attempt to pump out more weapons onto blue characters. Cards like The Force Is Strong are seeing play thanks to Lightsaber Pull which lets you get two of the same weapon in your hand. Old favorites like Synchronicity and Deflect are still staples and really pull their weight.
Blue hero has many great mitigation options at their disposal. Although many of them require dice to be in the pool, they are powerful regardless. Guard and Force Misdirection are fantastic and should be in any hero blue deck. Deflect is great against range decks like eCad/ePhasma2. Clash serves as both mitigation and focus. In the current meta, Vibroknife is considerably less common than it used to be. This means that caution and Force Illusion are also fantastic cards that can literally give a character 3 or more extra health. Makashi Training is great melee removal and Ancient Lightsaber can also be used as “mitigation” in a pinch if you need to heal to keep a character alive.
Blue heroes have good matchups against a lot of the top tier decks right now. eCad/ePhasma is a great deck but blue heroes can usually win this matchup because their shield generation can usually block most of the damage put out by Cad. ePhasma/eVader(SoR) is a pretty easy matchup for blue hero because most of the damage is blocked by shields and Deflect is really good against it. eKylo/eFN and eKylo/ePhasma2 are tough matchups for blue hero because they are usually mono. This provides the perfect target for Kylo’s ability. If you can kill Kylo quickly, however, or you can avoid his ability, blue hero does alright here too. Mill causes blue hero a bit of trouble because they need to discard cards frequently to get max damage. If you can kill a character by turn 2, however, the mill decks generally take too long to reach their win condition.
Kylo2 is the ultimate mono blue killer. Many people say they won’t even bring mono blue to a tournament because Kylo will kill them too fast with his ability. I believe that Kylo’s ability can be worked around even in mono colored decks. By including gray cards in your deck, you significantly decrease your chances of being hit by a Kylo activation ability. Your opponent, seeing that you are playing mono blue, will guess blue every time. If you play your cards right and keep gray cards in your hand such as Vibroknife, Rend, or Sound the Alarm, you can avoid Kylo’s ability. When his ability does strike, your shields, which are being bypassed by Vibroknife, will soak the damage.
I’ve seen many people claim that Mace Windu is a fantastic card because they have a great win rate with him. I am under the impression that this is not because of Mace but because of a great mono blue hero deck. In fact, replacing Mace or Luke with Qui Gon and Kanan may increase the productivity of that deck. Below I’ve compiled a general mono blue deck template. Of course, this is just a guide and should not literally be followed. In addition, the list should be conformed to a specific character and their skill set as I will outline below.
Upgrades:
x2 Vibroknife
Supports:
Events:
x2 Caution
x2 Deflect
x2 Guard
x2 Lightsaber Pull
x2 Rend
This is just a basic idea of what a blue hero deck could look like. If you decide to play with Ahsoka, you may choose to include fewer upgrades to pay for her ability and drop It Binds All Things as well. Qui Gon may want Do Or Do Not because his dice have 5 good sides. If you play a beatstick character like Luke or Mace you may want to include Yoda’s Quarters or Force Heal to keep them alive. Either way, you should look at your character combination, decide what you want to do, and build a deck around that.
I have conformed the template to eQui Gon/eKanan and I’ll post the decklist below. The goal of the deck is to get as many upgrades as possible out on the character the opponent isn’t focusing as cheaply as possible. Favoring quantity over quality, I included lots of cheap 2 cost weapons and strayed away from 3 cost (except Rey’s Lightsaber which is awesome). With almost no 3 cost weapons, it made no sense to include Reaping The Crystal. In addition, I had so many upgrades in the deck that I had no need for Lightsaber Pull to find them. The rest of the deck (aside from Riposte and Synchronicity) is packed with removal and shield generation. Shoto Saber as well as Luke’s Protection and Fearless are surprisingly effective for keeping characters alive or dealing ping damage from Qui Gon.
Link to Decklist on SWDestinyDB.com: http://swdestinydb.com/decklist/view/14700/nicksroguejediwblueheroanalysisandguide-1.0
Character:
Battlefield:
Upgrades:
x2 Ancient Lightsaber
x2 Fearless
x1 Force Speed
x2 Shoto Lightsaber
x2 Vibroknife
Supports:
Events:
x2 Caution
x2 Deflect
x2 Guard
x2 Rend
x1 Riposte
That concludes our analysis of blue hero. This archetype is on the rise and has favorable matchups against much of the field. I hope you try one of these decks for yourself and let me know how it goes!
I hope you enjoyed this article! If you did, please consider subscribing on our home page to be notified when we post new material. You can also contact us at MandalorianHQDestiny@gmail.com.
Thanks for reading!
-NickTheBug; Mandalorian HQ