QUOTE (Hags888 @ November 03, 2007 01:35 am)
I've always seen Vader's deck as a two-pronged path to victory. First, is the All Too Easy Path. *If* you can land this card, you win the game, and his red deck and YSANC can help achieve it. If you can stack your hand full of offense, then theoretically you can attack for 5 turns in a row with the last attack being All Too Easy to win the game.

The second path to victory is a direct damage path. He has ample DD to take down minors, and then 14DD against the major. If he can last long enough to cycle his deck, he can take down any character with DD alone (after 14DD, just pick up another Throw Debris and it seals the win against everyone but Mace).

Outside of those two paths, there really isn't anything else. It is possible to get lucky and land a couple of ST shots or maybe a 5/1 or something and have that support the DD path, but that still means the main path is DD.

So, I suppose the next issue is, how well supported are those two paths? Well, the first one isn't supported at all, really. I mean YSANC wastes an action to see a player's hand to gauge their defense, but then they can just keep drawing and you'll never really know what they have. In an all-out attack-attack-attack scenario, sneaking a peak at their hand for 1 action, actually slows you down more than it helps you. And since it only pulls special cards, it accomplishes nothing to help you land All Too Easy. In addition, without any movement cards, you are completely shackled to the die roll. Most characters have at least 1 movement card, and if they play it, it basically can shut down your attack-attack-attack path entirely. The point is to overwhelm the opponent with attacks to pull defense and land ATE, but if you can't even stay adjacent, then that idea doesn't work so well. Also, with only two real defense cards, Vader leaves himself wide open with a strategy like this. While he's trying to chip away at an opponent's defense to land ATE, they can just retaliate right back and Vader's helpless to stop them. This path to victory doesn't work...but then again, if he had any *real* help, would anyone ever want to play against Vader? He'd just win all the time.

The second direct damage path is likewise not very well supported. With only 14DD, he's only going to be able to take down 2 (maybe 3) major characters with DD alone. And doing so will require him to basically go through his entire deck. With no real resources to help him get through his deck faster, or to help him sustain a long game that requires him to go through the whole deck, this path to victory will hardly ever work. He doesn't even have sufficient minors to help block. Pretty much any kind of resources (card draws, movement, power defense, strong minors) would help with this path to victory, but his deck has none of it. He does have some healing cards, and my guess is that these were intended to provide support and give him some added staying power, but it never works out that way.

Vader is the quintessential "works against himself" kind of deck. Consider the following:

1. Choke kills of minors characters...but Wrath also affects minors characters, this is wasted DD effects and the work against each other. If Wrath kills off the minors, then you're left with useless Chokes taking up valuable talent card slots...Choke can be reduced to the worst kind of Sponge imaginable.

2. Dark Side Drain typically works well against weak, generic minors, but the above cards kill them off.

3. As was mentioned, YSANC can help guage defense to help ATE, but more often than not it ends up stealing a valuable action where you could have attacked. YSANC actually works against ATE more than it helps.

4. A path to victory that includes ATE and requires round after round of attacks, runs counter to a path to victory where you sit back and fire off DD. These two paths are opposite and incongruent. They work against each other.

There is so much wrong with this deck that I am firm believer it needs to be scrapped and redone completely. I do not believe you can re-arrange the existing cards into a different distribution and create a deck that works (although I'm sure that's where this is going to head...I'll be curious to see what solutions people can offer). The solution for me though, is to decide on one path to victory and support it properly...and this would require dropping at least 1 or more cards and inserting at least 1 or more new cards.

This is a excellent analysis. You pointed out every weakness to a T. Good job.

So here's my adjusted vader after considering Scott's comments:

Darth Vader
Health 20
Deck Red

Generic Minors: Stormtroopers
Health 4
Deck Weak ranged

Talent Cards

Wrath x3
Choose an opponent major character. That character receive 2 damage.

Choke x3
Choose an opponent character. The character can't move on their next turn. Draw a card.

Dark Side Drain x2
A3: If Vader does damage to a character with this card, Vader recovers the amount of damage done to the character.

Throw Debris x2
Choose any character. That character receives 4 damage.

Your Skills Are Not Complete x1
Choose any opponent. That opponent must reveal his/her hand and discard all Special cards OR any card with a defend value.

All Too Easy x1
A3*: *If this card is not blocked, the attacked character receives 20 damage instead of 3.

This is still very much Vaderesque...He still has the same card distribution. But, notice none of the cards work against each other. Just a subtle change to YSANC and Wrath. Then a change in Choke was unavoidable.

Whadaya think guys? Could this be considered something to test as the new Vader deck?