Hi Everybody!

With a new set, and a new emerging meta, all of the focus is on Spirit of Rebellion and the exciting new things that it brings to the game. So today we thought we'd take a look at which popular cards from Awakenings gain or lose the most in the new world.

The Losers

3. Jetpack

In Awakenings, Jetpack was one of those cards you hated to see; those big 2s and 3s on an upgrade that only cost two resources were the downfall of many characters during the Awakenings meta. But Jetpack was not without its problems; it lacked unmodified damage faces (and it was often played with characters that themselves had modified or costing faces, so it opened you up to a lot of control), and its dual offensive/defensive nature was often problematic when you just wanted to close out a game. Cue Sprit of Rebellion with its plethora of great 2-cost upgrades such as Ascension Gun or the easy-to-dip-into-for-villains red upgrades like the DT-29 and Boba's personal flying machine has some often-more-consistent competition. It will no doubt still see plenty of play, but its days of auto-inclusion are at an end.

2. Force Training

Force Training is a pretty innocuous card, but it was a pretty solid staple in blue decks both hero and villain, including the ubiquitous VaderRaider, my own Younglings deck and other variations, QuiGon decks, Kylo/Dooku decks, basically anything involving blue and melee. With SoR bringing us a similar but mostly-better version in Makashi Training, a similar-but-probably-better version in Lure of Power and a whole host of new blue upgrades (albeit in a different cost-slot) such as Force Speed, Handcrafted Light Bow, Lightsaber Pike, and more, poor Force Training has a huge amount of competition for its slots and it isn't quite as capable of justifying its deck slot as something like Force Throw or Mind Probe is. That is not to say it won't see play at all, but it certainly isn't going to be the solid space-filler it used to be and I think most decks will drop it in favour of Makashi Training or a better upgrade or weapon.

1. Mos Eisley Spaceport

I was an early champion of Mos Eisley as the best "default" battlefield to play if you didn't have any particular plans for your battlefield and didn't want your opponent to get too much out of it either. With the rise of Force Speed, playing this is more likely than ever to be giving opponents an engine to generate resources (even if you can do the same). Combine this with the fact that there are lots of really great battlefield choices in SoR (whereas there really weren't for a lot of decks in Awakenings) and the hive of scum and villainy is going to become much more of a considered gamble than a default pick, meaning that it'll probably see a lot less play.

The Winners

3. Poe Dameron

It will come as a surprise to approximately no-one that a card based around critical mass of good upgrades being in your deck got better as decks are able to approach critical mass of good upgrades. Poe was already a great card in Awakenings (although his deck, like many, didn't really have the time or the playerbase to really establish it as a top tier deck with lots of results) and now with new vehicles and guns to pitch he's going to be even better. Additionally, Heroes were somewhat handicapped in Awakenings with their only real good low-cost character being Rey and that's also no longer the case - Maz Kanata is now Poe (and everyone else's) best friend so he has a double-whammy of stuff that makes him better!

2. Padme Amidala

Mill was OK in Awakenings but it wasn't quite there; it was almost always a turn or two too slow and often died with the opponent having no deck but cards in hand. And Padme's inclusion in Awakenings also had a knock-on effect on Heroes; the slot in the set that she took up meant they had very few options in character lineups and unless they wanted to run a Hired Gun for access to Yellow, it was pretty much Han or nothing. Awakenings was a bad time to be a hero player if you weren't using Rey, pretty much.

Anyway, onto the now and Hero Mill is REAL. I stress real because if you havent played against it you're missing out on a brutal beating. Ascension Gun on Command Centre, Jyn Erso or Maz to pair Padme with, more ways to keep your guys alive and more yellow control (that's before we even consider dipping in to other colous) mean that Padme is going to be a fixture on the top tables a lot more often.

1. Second Chance

Between Ammo Belt, Cheat, Rebel and various other cards, Second Chance probably should have been named "nth chance". If you've played against it you probably hate it, and if you've recurred it you probably really enjoyed it. I welcome the fact that the existence of this line of play means we should move away a bit from the hyper-aggro meta of Awakenings; that meta was a shame because a game with such rich interactions should not be reduced to "who rolls the best damage dice" (in a largely best-of-1 tournament format to boot).

The issue with Second Chance though, is that a good chunk of ALL decks lose to it once you start looping it. There are very few ways to actually deal with it right now; Cargo Hold'ing it to another character can get round an Ammo Belt, Confiscating it can put it back in hand, but access to those things is situational and limited. As powerful as this card has gotten in SoR I do think that it's going to be complained about and argued over a lot online, and one of two things will happen; it'll either be errata'd to remove itself from the game when it resolves (now that we have a removed-from-game area thanks to the recent Hyperspace Jump ruling) or we'll see more cards in the next set to deal with upgrades (or healing).

Honourable Mention: Sith Holocron

Yep, it can now cheat in more, better cards like Force Lightning. No, I still don't know how this card passed playtesting. What.

That's all for us from today! We hope you enjoyed our roundup, and yes we did notice that the three cards that we think gained the most are all hero cards; when you're mostly at the bottom of the pile the only way is up, right? What are your views on the biggest winners and losers from Awakenings? Let us know on Twitter or on Facebook!

Don't forget to check out our Destiny Singles Store hich is fully stocked with SoR and will soon be refilled with Awakenings.

If you're in the UK, you can come and play Destiny with us at our monthly grand Tournaments, the next of which is on 13th May (that's tomorrow at the time of writing this!) and also at our weekly Thusday Night Destiny tournaments!

Cheers

Team JustPlay