In the UK we were extremely fortunate to receive a preview wave of Legacies on the 15th December.  Eager to make a Battle Droid deck as quickly as possible, I prioritised acquiring five of them.  I’ve gone through several changes since my initial build, and this is where I am currently.

Cards That I Didn’t Include

You may be wondering where Separatist Landing Craft and Endless Ranks are.  They were in my initial build, but after several games I’d only got the landing craft into play a couple of times (neither time using the special), and never played Endless Ranks.  Games were over before I was able to use them (one way or the other).

Obviously, this was a small sample size, but I wanted to take the deck in a different direction.  I think that an Endless Ranks strategy is much more suited to a deck like my double MagnaGuard and Gamorrean Guard team that I used a couple of months ago, rather than a team consisting of the lowest health character in the game.

Another omission from the deck are upgrades.  I think that due to the Battle Droids having only six health each, any upgrades that don’t have redeploy are probably not worth considering, with the possible exception of zero-cost upgrades (such as Wingman or Plastoid Armor).  Initially, I thought about including ones like Holdout Blaster or the new E-11 Blaster, but this deck doesn’t generate resources very well and any card that costs two resources had better be very good.

Cards That I Did Include

This idea behind this battlefield is that due to the frequent simultaneous activations that Battle Droids often do, being able to use the guardian ability to spread your opponent’s damage around could come in handy.  So far, this has been of limited usefulness.  I’m considering swapping this out for Ewok Village, since removing all of my opponent’s shields could come in handy, and it’s also not an ability that is going to hurt my deck.

As your droids start being dismantled (and they will be!), you may as well cash in on it.  Although I’m not building up towards an Endless Ranks/Separatist Landing Craft goal, the extra resources come in handy playing other shenanigans, such as Locked and Loaded or No Survivors.  Overall, Aftermath isn’t integral to the deck, but it is useful.

I think that this is a criminally underplayed card.  Rerolling a dice every round without having to discard a card isn’t anything to crow about, but inflicting a point of damage when the rerolled dice lands of damage is pretty good, particularly in a deck like this where all of the characters have four damage sides.  Being able to actually direct some damage is also useful, since you’ve got so much indirect damage flying about.  I like this card in general, but in this deck it’s nice as it increases the consistency of your dice and also contributes damage itself.

For one resource, this is going to contribute up to four points of directed damage (since it is an after effect, rather than before) over the course of a game.  Once you have one or more of these in play, your opponent has to be careful with timing when defeating your droids, which may result in them committing some suboptimal plays in order to put off Attrition triggers.  I like this card, and definitely think that it is a worthwhile addition to this deck.

This has got to be one of my favourite cards from Legacies!  With three decent modified sides, the droids can easily make use of this thanks to them having two unmodified indirect sides each.  This support will really help you ramp up the damage!  The only real drawback is the stipulation that you must control the battlefield to be able to play it.  Well, if you have it in your opening hand, choose your battlefield if possible.  Otherwise, red villains have Lockdown for situations just like this.

This is exactly the kind of mitigation card that Battle Droids like; it costs nothing and it spreads the damage around.  Back when we were doing our spoiler reviews I was excited for this card, and after having used it a fair amount now, I can confirm that it’s good!

I think this card has been a staple in villain decks since it was released back in Spirit of Rebellion.  I’m fairly certain that I’ve been putting it into EVERY villain deck that I’ve built anyway.  It’s a useful emergency button and great against dice with lots of modifiers (Overkill is very vulnerable to it, and Electrostaff also gets hit pretty hard too).

This is not a great card, but Lookout Post is.  For that reason alone, this is worth playing.  I’ve been toying with the idea of including We Have Them Now or Scorched Earth, but I need to play more games (I have played over twenty games with the Battle Droids so far, but more is always better).

With as much indirect damage as this deck has, this is a nice way to help it achieve more of its potential damage total.  Similar to Lightsaber Training, this is great in the right deck, and for now at least, I think that its doing a good job here.

This is a very recent addition to the deck (and definitely needs more testing), but it seems like it could be useful in the later stages of the game once the droids’ numbers are a bit low.  Towards the end of the game, your opponent is quite likely to have damage on all of their characters due to the large amount of indirect damage that you do, turning this card into basically one damage to everything.  Also, it’s another grey card to help you reduce the potency of Kylo Ren’s ability, and his new starfighter.

This card almost seems as if it was made for Battle Droids!  While Flank may seem a tempting choice, Battle Droids can often all be activated quite quickly.  Also, due to their fragility, that is something that you want.  So, Outnumber only caring about the number of characters you have in play, rather than their current state, is much better.  This is one of this deck’s premium removal cards, and should be used against potential silver bullets (but don’t wait too long, as you may no longer outnumber them!).

Just this card on its own makes the two-player decks worth buying.  I’ve personally had this card save me from lots of damage in many games.  It’s particularly great if your opponent has just resolved one or more focus sides, or used a card like Concentrate.  This is a great emergency button, sometimes just worth it for the rage it can induce from your opponent.

I put off including this card for a while, as I was messing around with Command Bridge instead.  I think I was a getting a little bit carried away with the excitement of seeing how many extra activations that you can get from each Battle Droid, when really I should just play this instead.  Also, this is cheaper!

In this deck this card is going to do the most damage it is ever likely to, and that’s a lot of damage!  Best played in the early stages of the games, doing five damage for two resources is great.  Even doing three or four damage later on in the game once you’re a bit lower on numbers is still good.  I think that this is an essential card!

This is not going to be great in every deck, but I think it’s a useful one here.  It gives you an extra reroll and saves you a card and an action to do it.  I like it, plus the artwork is cool!

A staple of every red villain deck pretty much since Star Wars Destiny was released.  Three damage is half the health of a Battle Droid, but there are some dice that can potentially do much more than three damage (Thermal Detonator’s special springs to mind).  Great card, save it for the most dire of situations.

What To Watch Out For When Using This Deck

As mentioned just above, Thermal Detonators will definitely ruin your day.  Thankfully, you can usually see them coming from a mile away, with the exceptions being against Sabine Wren and Cad Bane (although luckily for this deck, Cad Bane has fallen out of favour somewhat, since Captain Phasma’s point increase).  You will have to keep your copies of Outnumber and The Best Defense to deal with this.

Other cards that are capable of some decent area-of-effect (AoE) damage are U-Wing and Relby-V10 Mortar Gun.  Again, you’d probably want to save your Outnumber and The Best Defense for these, but Doubt and Crash Landing can be good against the Relby.

Obviously, the new Kylo Ren is going to give this deck a hard time (even with eight grey cards), but that’s not exactly a revelation for any mono-colour deck.  You’ll just have to try and keep your grey cards in hand for as long as reasonably possible.

Summary

Battle Droids have been a lot of fun to play, and while they may be one of the most sought-after rares in Legacies, they are still going to end up being a competent budget deck.

I’ve had some favourable results with the team so far, but it’s worth remembering that we’ve only had a limited release in the UK, so not everyone has access to everything they want, and also that we’re all playtesting new stuff, so not all teams have been optimal ones.

Anyway, I hope that you have found my initial thoughts on the Battle Droid deck interesting at least.

Cheers,

Tim