This Friday, The Coruscant Initiative released their first Destiny set, Eternal Conflict. We believe this group and set deserves attention from the Destiny community, so we thought we’d do an article to introduce them, and have a look at some of our favourite cards from this release.

First off though, by way of introduction, we fired off some questions to the team, and they were kind enough to respond:

“Could you introduce The Coruscant Initiative?  Who’s on the team?”

The root of the admin group is composed of four members: Strog, Leddon, Lanoix, and Eizig. Three of us met each other because we’re part of the same playgroup, in Paris, France. Lanoix was always a good friend of ours, being a Community Leader over in the French speaking part of Belgium. We’ve always been passionate about the game, and the state of the game being what it was back in September in our communities, we decided that we needed to do something. These past few months have been very, very intense, but we believe it was worth it.

“Your first set is called Eternal Conflict and includes 90 cards.  How long has this been under development and testing?”

The first cards were designed on September 27th! It was a Sunday, it was raining… Eh, I’m kidding. The bulk of the set was designed in approximately 3 weeks. The first games of playtest happened on TTS on October 20th. In two and a half months, there were approximately 300 games played by our team of playtesters. We obviously couldn’t have done it without them, and it was very important for us to have the support of our community for this, because, well, we were doing this for them.

“What card or cards are you most excited about?”

Lanoix – Technical Leader
Emergency Powers. Because it’s impossible for me to choose only one character. I like this card because it’s like having two events in your hand in one single card, pretty much like when MTG did their double cards. A free removal you can play when you are lucky, and a more powerful one if you have kept two resources. And it represents a cult scene of the Star Wars movies.

Strog – Lead Designer
I really love Lando and how he is pictured in the Solo movie. To me, he is what Yellow represents: sneaky moves and tricks. In our set, this is what he’s all about, being able to make profit from any opportunity. That’s my kind of play.

Leddon – Balancing
Grand Inquisitor! Because he’s a technical character to play, and he lets you punish your opponents, which is what I’m all about. And I love the artwork as well!

Eizig – Communication
What a difficult question to answer… I’m hesitating between like 8 different cards! As if I was in a state of, dare I say, Eternal Conflict with myself? So let’s go with that one I guess! Eternal Conflict sums up what Star Wars: Destiny is for me. Decision making, finding the right balance… That card gives you options, and this is what I like about it.

Fresck – Designer
The Awakenings Millennium Falcon is the first Legendary I ever had, with Poe Dameron… This is one of my favourite dice in the game: a special, no blank and a pure 4 ranged damage side is so incredible! Most big dice like Planetary Bombardment are plain simple to roll and resolve, but hard to put on the table. This time, it’s the opposite! Easier to play, but more technical to resolve. And this is what I’m all about: putting stuff on the table easily, but having a lot of options with them!

“Are you implementing a new Holocron to go with this set and are you triggering rotation?”

Our Standard Format is triggering rotation and starts with a fresh rework. We do not think that a Restricted List is a good idea to manage a game correctly. Errata and introducing a Banned List are, for us, the way to go. Errata are here to balance cards that were not in fact balanced, while the Banned List’s job is to erase cards that should not have been created as they could always be problematic when designing future sets.

Our Balance of the Force goal is to give some more playability to characters not seen because of their costs being too high. We are also fixing some issues with characters too cheap for their power: Han Solo (TR), United/We Stand, and Trandoshan Hunter felt way too powerful to us. Now that Han is 14, you will more likely play the other 13 points characters.

Finally, we errata’d droids to what we think they should have been. Abuse from mod overwriting from Chopper was just not making any sense to us, and C-3PO needed more randomness by not knowing which die side you’ll be able to bump before you roll it in. We also tweaked Anakin Skywalker (TR) as the combination of his die and his ability felt too powerful. Now he is more tricky to play, while still remaining playable at 15 points which was very important to us.

The Coruscant Initiative Holocron can be viewed in full by clicking here.

“Where can I get my hands on these cards?  Will I be able to get physical copies, or is it download only?”

Our cards can be found on the SWDestinyDB website, if you want to build your decks with them. You can also download a PDF file on our website, as well as a ZIP file with the full bleed versions of our set.

Physical copies of the set can be obtained thanks to our partner, Aegis Creative Company. Go check their website!

“You have a release event this Sunday.  Can you tell me more?”

Even though our community aren’t really TTS players, we wanted to celebrate and throw an online tournament because we obviously can’t really have any physical events right now.

We decided that the format would be Swiss rounds only. We really just want everyone to have fun while discovering the cards of our set. We are also going to send each and every participant a set of two promo cards! Even if you lose every game, you are guaranteed to receive those two promos at home, so don’t pass up!

The event will take place on Tabletop Simulator and starts at 4PM CET | 10AM EST. You will need to join our Discord server, and sign-up here: https://tabletop.to/TCI

If you can’t make it this Sunday and you still want to get yourself some promos, fear not! What you’re seeing on this picture is just the tip of the iceberg. We have plenty of promo cards ready to go to the printer. If you are interested in us supporting your local community, please get in touch with us today (via our discord or website) so we can send you some cool promos!

Thank you to the team for answering our questions. Now, on to some of our top picks from the set:

“Lando System?” – Leia Organa

I love a bit of synergy, and Lando brings it in spades, with a large number of new cards revolving around the new iteration of this character. Removing one of your own dice is not a common mechanic, much like dealing yourself indirect damage until Aphra turned it into a deck archetype in its own right. Lando allows you to leverage this ability for speed and efficiency, and he is gifted two new events (Double Dare and Trading Goods), a reprinted event (Negotiate), his own gun (Lando’s Blaster) and his own ship (The Falcon) to trigger this effect. Let’s not forget that We’re Home is a card in standard, which is going to look pretty amazing with this guy, though cards like Stand Firm, Measure For Measure and Hull Breach could be handy in the right build.

Given that he brings piloting, it seemed only fair to include the highly thematic tutor plot in this Lando smorgasbord. It’s going to be pretty easy to drop the Falcon with this almost straight away. Sure, you have to remove your own die in order to resolve it, but with Lando around, you can remove his die, resolve the Falcon and then resolve another die for +1. You can even roll in the Falcon, then choose to remove it instead of resolving it just to trigger Lando‘s ability, then roll it in again when you activate Lando. Or you can use the newly balanced 11/14 Torra Doza to pilot the Falcon, resolve its die immediately (thanks to Torra) by removing a pilot die, then resolve another die for +1 (thanks to Lando) all in one action. I love this kind of synergy and can’t wait to try it out.

“I Have Died Before” – Palpatine

The big bad blue of the set, extra-elite Palpatine is a pretty formidable beast. This character represents raw power and lacks the sneak synergies of Lando, but is the epitome of what I think big blue should be. The 5 points leaves room for either a Snoke plot or 2 minions. Rolling in 5 character dice will feel good, and provides Palpatine with some much needed focus.

Alternatively, the Cultists provide him with effectively 6 extra health, or more in reality. To explain why, here’s a couple of examples: If Palpatine has just 1 health remaining, and he gets killed by a 3 ranged, only one damage gets put on (as you can’t actually overkill in Destiny), then the Cultist takes the fall, and Palpatine heals up to 3 health remaining. Same situation, but if 3 indirect is dealt, you can put 1 on Palpatine and 2 on a minion, then that same minion steps in and heals Palpatine back up again. This additional longevity is going to create some really interesting choices for the opponent.

This Palpatine will thrive in a high removal deck, and will suffer against the same. The event I Am All The Sith is clearly going to be very strong with this character, and Sith Throne is going to set up for some pretty major plays. However, I love the irony that this character would get absolutely demolished against an Order 66 deck.

“Sometimes I Amaze Even Myself” – Han Solo

Modelled after the Rescue Han Solo plot, we get a Rescue A Princess plot. Coming in at 4/5 instead of 2/3, it similarly includes Team Up for those involved in the rescue (again, like the Han plot, completely ignoring the role the droids, or at least R2-D2 played in the rescue), but this time being grey and much easier to achieve (unless you’re playing against Ewoks). All you have to do is remove 4 character dice, and it flips. And you can remove 2 at once to stack two resources on this plot, as each die triggers the effect.

Flip this plot and you get a decent if low health Leia, which I think is fair for the ease of flipping, plus you get the excellent Motivate from WotF and the new Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi in your deck. This card is supported by a couple of handy hero removal reprints, such as what would be a highly thematic Into the Garbage Chute or the long popular Pacify. And this card also works beautifully with Transformations Han, balanced by TCI to 11/14, but back to 10/13 with this plot. When you flip, you can move the 4 resources from this plot to him and generate an extra resource when you activate him. I’m intrigued to try out eHan(Tr)/eChewie/eRAP, for 25 health increasing to 32, guardian right off the bat to help work towards the plot, Han to gift me those free resources when he flips and gun synergy.

Mostly though, I just want to play this card because this was my favourite light side objective from SWCCG.

Overall, we’ve been impressed with this first set from The Coruscant Initiative. Time will tell if some of their more ambitious cards turn out to be overpowered, but as with any player’s committee, they should be able to move quickly to address any issues that crop up.

Hope you all have fun playing these new additions to the Star Wars Destiny universe, and hope lots of you can make it for the event tomorrow.

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