This weekend we did a couple of drafts. The format was two of each AWK, SOR and EAW. Here are my takeaways from the draft. If you have the time check out BobbySapphire’s opus on drafting that we published yesterday.

#1. Rainbow is great but hard to get

Rainbow requires you to either open or get passed a 10 point yellow character or any red or blue character under 10. Most of the time people won’t pass them since they want to be able to play all the colors. If you are only two colors you might be scrambling for playable cards and end up playing cards that almost always will do nothing. Thankfully you can always pitch them for rerolls.

#2. Few incentives to go mono color

I will admit that I played a Dooku, Anakin and Jawa deck and ended up with a Deflect, 2 Overconfidence, a Master of the Council and a Force Protection but in my first draft I also had two blue characters and had fewer blue spot or play restriction cards. I think you will end up on the later side of things but if you are heavy in a color some cards get way better. I do believe that the incentive is higher for 3 color compared to one. Playing two characters of a single color and one of a second color is also good since it lets you have a larger card pool to draw from, but that also requires you to open or get passed a character. If you do get the nuts then more power to you. This is obviously based on the 3 set format we played in and not a heavy Legacies one.

#3. Pay sides and modifiers are pretty bad

You’ll most likely be mixed damage and with that in mind your modifiers will be harder to pair. I found the math was tough on deciding whether or not to reroll certain dice. Pay sides are better as the game goes late but I found myself starved for money- the ones on Jawa and even Anakin present a tough choice. The upgrades that you get from the starter all cost 2 or 3 and many of them have pay sides making them very money intensive.

#4. Cheap characters are good and expensive ones are terrible

Characters that cost under 10 give you so much flexibility. Being able to decide to either go rainbow or play two characters with the same color that will let you draft spot and color restrictive cards opens you up to many possibilities. I got myself into corners with my draft strategy and it didn’t pay off that well. On the flip side characters that cost more that 14 make it hard to play a 3 die start. At 14 you can play a 14, Jawa and a 10 point character but once you get to 15 and up you can only play 2 characters with that 15+ character (though you can draft a 9 pointer or less to play 15/9/jawa). You can take that character and hope to draft a cheap character in the next pack but you might want to consider a different card if there is anything else worth it.

#5. Mill is very real

I was shocked by how many times people were getting milled in just our first two drafts. There is a chance that in a heavy Legacies draft format this won’t be the case but in our wacky three set format it happened around one in every four games. Bespin Wing Guard is a card that comes to mind as something that looks completely unplayable but was actually doing work. The thing I didn’t realize is if the game is going the way of mill this card helps that but if you think you’ll be going for damage you can just use it to reroll. If your deck has some solid shield producing cards and other defensive measures then you might want to include that card and others like them. Even if a game isn’t decided by mill the win condition is still very much a consideration during gameplay and it will influence your re-rolls and end of turn discard decisions.

#6. Good die removal is at a premium

Be it in an aggressive or mill/defensive deck good die removal is hard to come by. Even cards like Block or Dodge are great although that piece of information might be irrelevant in future formats. Having die removal also makes sure to punish anyone who is trying to pair modifiers and in a lot of scenarios if you’re able to get rid of the base your opponent might not have another die to pair it with.

#7. Some non die cards are unbelievable

BobbySapphire had both Detention Center and Imperial Inspection in one of his draft decks and he dispatched opponents easily. Detention Center might easily be the best non die card in limited since characters are going to be rarely elite which makes having two character dice in the pool almost impossible unless you have an action cheating card like Hit and Run. It basically says eat the first character die rolled in every turn. The nerf of Imperial Inspection currently does not apply to limited which is honestly silly. Granted getting disrupt sides is much harder than in constructed but it still will make people rage out if it ever gets activated more than once per game (BSaph note: I was able to snag cards with disrupt: Immobilize, Jedi Robes, and Outpost were all great for me. Ketsu and T-21 both have Disrupt sides).

#8. Draft is very fun but it’s also very hard

This is definitely the hardest destiny has ever been for me. The mixed damage, re-roll decisions, play sequencing and If you’re playing with three sets your opponents could have anything. All of that adds to what I think is the most challenging format we’ve had. I think getting used to the stock cards that everyone brings will be priority one but if you play a wacky three set format sometimes you’re going to get blown out by something like Feel Your Anger. If you didn’t know they had it how could you have played around it? Once the draft format becomes normalized things will be easier but right now its like a freaking pod race.

I hope you get a chance to draft soon. Thanks for reading and as always…

May You Only Roll Bases in Limited Cuz Damn If You’ll be Resolving Modifiers.

-NJCuenca

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