Covert Missions Deck Predictions

Now that we finally have Covert Missions, we thought we’d look at which cards are most in demand and use that to have a guess of what decks we expect to see in the first weekend of CM Primes.

We’ve recorded all the cards that are out of stock on Watto’s Card Yard and Rebel Base Gaming. As both these stores charge prices that are pretty even across cards of the same rarity (rather than charging a lot for cards which they expect to be popular and vice versa), high sales are a good proxy for card popularity.

Here’s the list as of Saturday night (1.5 days since they appeared on WCY, 12 hours for RBG). Cards in bold are out of stock on both sites.

Darth Bane, Death Field, Shien Mastery, Boba Fett, Face the Enemy, Vibro-Arbir Blades, Imperial Death Trooper, Trandoshan Hunter, Legacy of the Sith, Rule of Two, Director Krennic, Death Star Plans, Destroy the Death Star, Viper Probe Droid, Jedi Trials, Spectre Cell, Sneak Attack, Skillful Deterrence

Darth Bane, Death Field, Shien Mastery, Boba Fett, Face the Enemy, Trandoshan Hunter, Imperial Death Trooper, Vibro-Arbir Blades, Anakin Skywalker, Repurposing

It’s no surprise that Bane, Death Field and Shien Mastery are the most popular legendaries. I don’t know exactly how quickly these sold out, but I was online very soon after these were listed, so I’m guessing they sold out in just a few minutes.

Does this mean we’ll see lots of Bane? We think so. There will be plenty people out there who just want to have a Bane deck to play for fun (and he is really fun to play) but we also expect Bane to be popular in the competitive scene.

Boba Fett has also sold out on both sites (though it took the full 12 hours on RBG). Therefore, we expect Boba/Jango (or other Boba builds) to make some appearances.

Trandoshan Hunter was the first rare to completely sell out, and in a matter of minutes on both sites. We wrote an article about how strong double Trandoshan is likely to be, and any card you need four copies of is always going to be hard to come by (TIE Fighters and Battle Droids have previously changed hands for >£10 each).

Given that double Trandoshan-IDT also won the Artificery League (piloted by World’s runner-up Vika) I think we have plenty reason to expect to face this deck in the coming weeks.

Expect to become familiar with this line-up

IDT and Vibro-Arbir also necessitate multiple copies, so are naturally popular cards to buy as singles. They sold out more slowly than Trandoshans on both these sites, suggesting they’re going to be less popular in decks than the Trandoshans.

Face the Enemy is the only uncommon to have sold out on both sites. This card is brutally powerful, and made our list of cards we were most excited about in CM. If you’re playing against red villain, expect this card. Viper Probe Droid also sold out on Watto’s Card Yard, which I think suggests this is going to be popular too.

What can we learn from the rest? It’s dangerous to infer too much from cards that have only sold out on one site, as maybe that one store owner didn’t pull many of those particular cards.

However, the presence of Krennic, Death Star Plans and Construct the Death Star on WCY’s sold-out list is probably not a coincidence and suggests pretty strongly that you should expect there to be some Death Star building going on. I’ve not tried this deck myself yet as I was skeptical, but Oli has, and managed to pull it off Round 4. He reckons this deck poses a genuine threat.

What other decks might be popular? One limitation of this method of prediction is it only works for decks with a few essential cards that everyone building it needs. You can’t build the best Bane deck without at least one Death Field. You can’t build the Death Star without Krennic, the plot and the plans.

But some CM decks have a lot more freedom about what cards you might put in. It’s not clear-cut exactly what cards are going to go in the best Wookiee deck, so these decks may be popular even though no Wookiee specific uncommons or rares have sold out. The same goes for Pirate decks or Spectre decks (except the plot, which has sold out on WCY).

Also, we might see people bringing tried and tested Spark of Hope decks with some added Covert Missions spice, such as Palp3 with Ancient Sith Armour, or ReyLo with Nullify, Bloodletting, Pincer Movement or On Guard.

But I’m going to stick my neck out and say: if you’re going to a Prime next weekend, expect Bane, Trandoshans and a smattering of Kragan, Boba Fett and Death Stars.