Hello readers, It’s actually so nice to be writing a Star Wars Destiny related article again. I’m also really glad to be looking over and reviewing the fabulous idea from SwagDean from Dice Commando of a new draft kit that is designed to fit with the fan made cards from A Renewed Hope(ARH). SwagDean has put a lot of thought into the design of these cards and it really shows as you can immediately see how they will interact well with ARH cards and form a solid foundation to build a draft deck with. Before we dive into all the spoilers released so far and reveal a couple more in the process, I’d like to bring your attention to the dilemma I was having in what picture should this article have. I racked my brains trying to come up with a Star Wars related image that would be relevant. In the end, I googled Star Wars Draft and got a link to a website where I can purchase this fantabulous draught excluder. Now I can’t decide if I should be amazed that Google knew exactly what I would like as an image or that it thinks I don’t know the difference between draft and draught. Dang, I guess I now need to prove that I actually do know the difference. One relates to a planning stage generally of a written document such as this, which is why I guess we use the term in the first place when playing in this way. The other relates to the flow of something mainly air but also liquid (although no one has ever said draught water as far as I’m aware, draught beer however is very familiar to me though). Couldn’t we use draught as well here to represent the flow of cards around the table as we choose. Either way, it’s still a great way to play Star Wars Destiny.

We’ll look at the cards in number order of the set and then maybe we can go back and fill in the gaps later.

Card No 1. – We covered this card in our On The Sensors spoiler video so I won’t go into it more here. Watch the video here. I will mention that all the dice cards in the set are parallel dice of an older FFG card so if you have your old collection then you could simple print these out and use those dice for your drafting needs. This dice is a parallel of the first iteration of DJ from Way of the Force.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

No 2. – I think the red characters in draft kits have never been my favourites and have tended to avoid them in the past and would more likely play other colours. I think this Poe Dameron may break that trend as this card is fabulous in an ARH setting. Poe has very relevant sub types especially the Leader portion with that featuring on many ARH cards. Piloting will give your deck some speed if you can get a vehicle on the table. He also comes with 3 damage sides which will give your deck an element of consistency thanks to the Covert Missions parallel die. I personally like how those damage sides are backed up by a discard side which is much more devastating in draft play. The Power Action is pretty good here allowing you to discard “filler” cards to find something more useful. There are a few handy cards that let you reveal the top card of your deck as well so you could even know what you were going to draw before discarding a card. You’ll probably see me play this a lot. Great draft option.                             

No 4. – We skip card number 3 which undoubtedly will be the blue character and move to this little guy which we spoiled in our On The Sensors spoiler video (see link in DJ Entry above). A parallel die of BB9-E from Legacies.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

***SPOILER ALERT***
No. 5 – I’m not 100% on who in the Star Wars universe uses the SE-14R Blaster. I feel we more commonly see it in black with a Storm Trooper but I could be wrong and clearly a stolen weapon in this picture if I’m right. This is however an amazing weapon and I could see this featuring in standard play very easily. Unblockable damage is always welcome as some cards can generate a lot of shields in ARH standard and bypassing them is very strong and I don’t see why that would be any different in a draft setting. The other sides of this die are very good in draft. Focus on a weapon is quite rare so this is a great side to have for consistency. The 2 discard side for 1 resource could be devastating in draft as any deck is only likely to have one of each card and hitting two cards is always impactful but more so in draft, even if you simply limit the re-rolls available to your opponent. Then the special is something else and has a lot of game. Your opponent won’t want to resolve resource sides while you have the special in your pool. You might force the opponent into a sub-optimal play spending resources before they really wanted to. Resources for ramp are very important in Destiny and you can probably double that in draft. A very good card making use of one of my favourite old weapons all the way back from Spirit of Rebellion – The Ascension Gun.

Card No.10 – We jump ahead from card 5 to card 10 here with a very useful draft card in theory. The first half of the card allows you to be able to play and draft with any card that references a sub-type should you have drawn this card and played it to the board. You 100% should not base what you draft on it though, as you can’t rely on drawing it early to activate other cards that spot sub-types. There may be the odd card that makes it into your deck but is only playable when this is on the board which I guess is ok but I would try to avoid this. This will more likely be used for the second half of the card that let’s you overwrite it as if it costs 1 giving you the potential to play a 3 cost upgrade with just your base resources for the round and ARH has some amazing upgrades at 3 cost.
A-a-a-ataru Mastery. Excuse me.
This card still makes it into every draft deck. It’s great to be able to give a second or third character the sub-types of a defeated character should you still need it for other cards.     

Card No 15. – We jump again a few cards in the set to card 15 but from now on we already know all the remaining cards. I prefer this card for granting sub-types when needed over the Stolen Uniform above. However, it may not have a huge amount of use as you can only grant a sub-type you already have on one of your characters but could make some cards way more impactful. I can only think of four cards that benefit from this. They are Lekku Warning, Command, Military Prowess and Trooper’s Advance. I’m sure there are more, do let me know if you think of them. If it was subtype or colour then it would be so much more useful. Will have to see how this one pans out for draft. but definitely feels like a plot you just throw in there because your team adds up to 29 points. It would certainly give a lot more interesting options if it was available in standard.                                                           

***SPOILER ALERT***
Card No 16. – The yellow plot in the set and our second spoiler. I’m assuming I got this spoiler as it has my real name in the title but I’m not sure SwagDean knows that. The first part of the card is handy giving bounty hunter to any yellow characters you might have which allows you to use a lot of the bounties you could draft without actually needing a bounty hunter. I personally look forward to playing Garsa Fwip – Bounty Hunter. It gives DJ from this kit a third useful subtype too. The second part of this card though means you are not likely to keep the bounty hunter sub-type forever as you need to set the card aside when you use the action. You need to remove dice showing damage to place damage on the plot and when it has 3 or more you can trade in the plot to play a card decreasing it’s cost by two. That is very good, maybe too good. I think I would have preferred it if you simply gained two resources giving your opponent a chance to respond to the resource gain before you get chance to spend it maybe with their SE-14R Blaster Special for example. You instead get to sort of bank it on the plot to play something later. This will allow you to play a 4 cost card with your base resources for the round. That could be something like an Outrider, General or Force Sense. I think most Destiny players would trade three damage and 2 team building points for 2 resources. I’m desperate to try this card out as that effect is fantastic. I just really want to know how easy it is to pull off and how often you can pull it off early in a draft format. Definitely makes going yellow very enticing.

Card No. 17 – The red plot in a similar vein to the above gives all our red characters the trooper sub-type which is so awesome and hugely relevant. I love some of the options that this will bring. Leia Organa with a Medal of Bravery maybe making those discard sides super scary. A Bothan Spy or Dr Pershing riding in on a 125-Z Treadspeeder Bike. All your red characters getting full value from Riot Shield. I’m sure there are many other fabulous combinations that you can come up with. Poe above gets a third sub-type much like DJ but this time you don’t have to set the plot aside when you use the second part of the plot. You can just take 2 indirect to the plot to keep it for as long as you need or want it. It’s essentially a Bubble Shield on the table from the beginning of the game. The rise in recent ARH sets of having indirect cost sides on dice make this a really good option that could pull you away from the yellow plot above and have an effect three extra health which could be all the difference in a draft game. I know one card that definitely loves this plot, Droideka.

Card No. 18 – Of course this was going to be the blue plot. You all saw that coming. This time our blue force sensitive characters get the sub-type witch and get to keep it for the whole game as long as they are not defeated of course. Seems a bit harsh calling Beru Lars a witch but at least she’ll get to play Magical Ichor for 0 cost now. We don’t know if it gives a third sub-type to our blue character of the set as we are yet to see that card. My guess is they have Jedi and Sith as sub-types so have a think who that might be. The second part of this plot is a nice bonus and could add up if you go all in on blue with your characters which would be difficult in draft to stay as a mono colour but this plot at least gives you a pay off for doing that. Probably the weakest of the three 2 cost plots overall but certainly has it’s uses with those powerful witch cards.                                                                               

Card No. 19 – We approach the last few cards and of course we need some battlefields just in case we don’t actually draft any which happens a lot. I know that this was mentioned in the Scum and Destiny spoiler video that in all this time Destiny has existed we have had numerous Tattooine Battlefields but we have never had the iconic Cantina become a battlefield. Well done SwagDean for making that happen. Check out the Scum and Destiny You Tube Channel and Video – here. The battlefield replicates the effect of the old Cantina Brawl card. You get to do 1 damage instantly but open up the opportunity for your opponent to discard a card to then do a damage back to you and this can continue until someone runs out of cards. If you have managed to run your opponent out of cards in that round then you get a damage with no come back. It opens up the claim to win immediately as your first action of a round if a player only has 1 health left and no shields which is never a great feeling but I don’t think it’s too terrible for a draft format and probably helps shorten the game length a little. I’d love to see this activated earlier in a round with maybe a Grand Moff, K-3PO and DC-15a Blaster and see how many cards people might be willing to throw away for damage.

Card No. 20 – The second battlefield of the set so you have a choice of at least two when playing draft. I really like the ability on this card. Very well thought out that you can never take the last card in a player’s hand to force a mill win (possibly). Again, I like the fact that this can be activated earlier in the round with certain cards as above to force your opponent into dwindling their options a little. This was also an On the Sensors spoiler that I go through with DJClero and RogueFive in the video. Link to that is in the DJ commentary above.

Card No. 21 – What a great card to finish the set on. I really love this design. Replace a useless card with something useful. There are drafts where you get a good solid 20-25 cards that you are happy to play in your deck and fit your strategy, and then you fill out the remainder with all sorts of bits that you are never going to play. They essentially have the text, discard this card to re-roll any number of dice. Well this card can do that but can also be a little better than that if you only have 1 die you want to re-roll as you then get to re-roll it a second time if you didn’t like the first re-roll. I’m calling this Designer Gold. Echo3ofClubs would give it a Chef’s Kiss I’m sure. The only issue with the card is draft sets in the past have all come with just one of each card. Of course this is free to print and play but if you want a more professional set printed then it ups the number of cards you need to print. There is a very easy solution to this which I’m not sure has been mentioned yet. When getting a set printed, you should have this card be the back of all the other cards giving you plenty of copies of this card to fill out your draft deck instead of getting a whole extra bundle of cards printed just in case.

Well, there you have it, all the cards we have seen so far all in one place with a few thoughts on each. I hope, like me, you are looking forward to the remaining 9 cards (I think) being spoiled and how we can bring some ARH draft to our Destiny tables be they online or at home.

Happy Drafting all or should you be in the pub, Happy Draughting.

LandoWonka