note: this is a repost of a deck I originally wrote for the Outer Rim Smugglers in May 2019. It doesn’t seem to have made the transition to Entourage Gaming, so I’m putting it up here.
Peter Mayhew’s life ended this week, but the mark he left on this world will remain for a very long time. Both as our beloved Chewbacca and himself, Peter was a positive impact on everyone around him. While I never met the man personally, as a person of height I always admired him from afar. Living in you people’s stumpy world takes a lot of bending and contorting, and Peter pulled it off with grace and aplomb. It’s with Peter in mind that I give to you not one, but two decks centered around our great, shaggy hero, Chewbacca.
The first deck is built around Peter’s Chewbacca. A character from Spirit of Rebellion, the original Chewbacca never found much of a home. In a world of blisteringly fast Poe specials and infinite weapon overwrites, the Loyal Friend never a place at the competitive tables. It was only the kitchen table where his loyal devotees sleeved up their beloved walking carpet to chuck some dice and slay some baddies. This deck probably won’t take down many Infinite tournaments either, but if you’re looking to do some damage with our dearly departed Chewie, you might have a good time with this one.
Chewbacca has a couple of unique and interesting bits to build around. First, his health. At the time, 12 health was shockingly high life total, only rivaled by OG Vader and Palpatine themselves. Even now, 12 health gives you 20% more health than a “normal” character and you have time to set up some more intricate situations than you would otherwise. The second interesting part of Chewie is his special. Like nothing we’ve seen before or since, it’s a clever tool to play with if you’re willing to work at it. The more powerful dice an opponent has, the more damage Chewbacca can do to them.
With those in mind, our teammate for this little experiment has become the venerable Yoda. The staple hero support character, Yoda is even more necessary in a deck that revolves around specials. Kanan and Aayla both have die turning abilities, but they simply don’t measure up to what our little green friend can pull off. Yoda leads us to blue which gives us the other piece of the puzzle to maximizing Chewbacca’s special, Force Throw. Why hit them for just their largest die side when you can hit the TWICE with their largest die side? Also, now that Chewie has had his points reduced, we can squeeze in another goodie to help us pull this off, Double Down.
Team Yobacca Down
Stuff to Go on Yoda
- Force Throw – After Chewie spins the die and punches them, this is going to throw that die at them.
- Force Focus – Another die spinner. This one lets you muck up one of their damage dice, too.
- Force Jump – Yoda hopping around and dodging damage is the height of comedy. It’s good in Destiny as well.
Stuff to Go on Chewbacca
- Chewbacca’s Blaster Rifle – C’mon, I need to explain this? Two of these, please.
- Cunning – More access to any special you need. We’re going really redundant on this combo. Only one of these in the deck, however. It’s Yellow character only, and it’s only a backup plan.
- Handcrafted Light Bow – Just real solid damage that can be special chained into.
- Holdout Blaster – A good gun that can Redeploy if everything else on the team stumbles.
Stay Alive Juice
Omg, there is so much to love about the Stay Alive Juice in Blue and Yellow Hero Infinite. So good. Just so, so good.
Just look at that lineup. A who’s whom of the most spectacular removal across all of Destiny. It’s cheap, it usually nabs multiple dice, and well, no, that’s pretty much it. Are you really asking for more than cheap and multiple dice? Shame. Oh, and Easy Pickings is our second 3-of from Double Down. Why? Because you haven’t lived that griefer life until you’ve savored the dejection of flopping down an illegal number of Easy Pickings on your opponent. Mmmm, that tastes like the deliciously sweet tears of defeat.
Sexiness
It can’t all be humdrum removal and damage, right? I mean you have to have some spicy plays up your sleeve to wow your opponent with. Here are a few tasty treats to spice things up on the kitchen table.
Double-Cross and My Ally is the Force are a pair of one-ofs that will get the juices running, while Impulsive is just so good that I made it a pair. So may things spin dice here that getting double duty out of one of them just HAS to be good.
Battlefield
This deck is about specials, right?
Finally, the deck
Our second deck of the day is a more competitive take on Chewbacca. This couldn’t be my only deck for the article because this iteration of Chewie is given life by Peter Mayhew’s protégé, Joonas Suotamo. With his health failing, Peter passed on reprising Chewie for the new films, content to teach Joonas what it meant to bring our hairy pal to life. It is, however, still Chewbacca, and a more on-power-curve one at that. This time around we’re going to go lie, cheat, and angle shoot everything we can. In other words, we’re going Full Scoundrel.
Our team here is as iconic as Star Wars gets:
And where does Han come from?
Fortunately for us, FFG has made this iconic setup actually competitive. Han has seen a number of top tables, and Mean Streets lets us cheat on resources. Chewie himself is actually the weakest in terms of raw power, but I think you will find that we can supercharge that power level with just a little bit of creativity.
To turn on Chewie’s Awesomesauce, we need to do some creative health management. Everyone knows he done get real mad when he has six damage on him, so they’re going to try and off Han before they start on the big guy. That’s where we get them. Chewie will start hoovering up damage via his built-in Guardian ability, and we also have a pair of Dangerous Maneuvers if they manage to drop a few shots on Han. After we’ve successfully enraged the giant wookiee, we really don’t want him to die, so we’re going to use Dex’s Diner to carefully manage his health total. We want him right at 6 damage. That’s enough to get him hopping mad, but not enough to get him killed. Even though it’s a unique card, there are two Diners in here because it’s so important to get out early. Pitch the second one for an opportune reroll later.
Now that we’re successfully managing the anger of our brute, Black Widow-style, we can pay some attention to cheating. A staple mechanic of Destiny is to offset the power of a card with a drawback. This lets players get more than the expected value out of a single card if they’re willing to deal with the drawback. Refit gets you a cheaper support at the cost of placing a damage token on it. The Best Defense… removes two dice if you are willing to eat three damage on one of your red guys. In the case of Yellow events, we have two cheat lines. First, we’re going to run some cards with massive upside and simply escape their drawbacks. Both Closing the Deal and Flee the Scene have huge payoffs at the expense of the rest of your turn. If they’re the last thing you do during your turn, however…
In addition to these EOR drawback cheats, we’re just going to straight-up cheat on money for everything at the end of the round. Yellow has some sock-knocking events if you can afford to pay for them, and with Mean Streets, we can pay for anything. Our focus is on ruining our opponent’s life dice.
I’m very sad that Jeremy has decided that resolving your opponent’s dice for them is a villain ability because I would sure love some Convergence action in here. Alas, we will make do with mass removal. The final few pieces of our event suite fill out a few nooks and crannies where we are short.
- Instigate helps us Go Real Fast
- Hasty Exit is there because we don’t always want to wait until the end of the round to remove a die.
- Vandalize is a big panic button if some upgrade or support is about to do you in.
- Across the Galaxy helps get you back on Plan Big Cheats if you lose the roll.
With Big Cheats down pat we turn our attention to the other part of being a Scoundrel. The muscle required to pull this off. If everything is going to plan, we’re going to have some extra resources to play with. That means we can pull out the big sledgehammas for our salty boys to play with.
- Millennium Falcon (LEG) – The fellas have to rock out in style, and they are going to need a special ride if they’re going Across the Galaxy. Of the two Falcons in Standard, this one is far and away the best for this pair.
- Hidden Blaster – It’s the pocket-sized addition to any gun-based arsenal. Also, MOAR GO FAST!
- Chewbacca’s Blaster Rifle – A sneaky way to make the Walking Carpet angry, and a big ole roundhouse punch at that. Getting it twice in the first round you play it is so sweet.
- Ordnance Launcher – If you’re going Full Scoundrel, you need the Full Scoundrel weapon. Free die resolutions are loved by all Go Fast plans.
- Vibrocutlass – GIVE CHEWBACCA A BIG SWORD! THWACK MFER!
That leaves us with a final list
There are several ways to build a Scoundrel list. Enfys opens some crazy shenanigans with tons of health and mix-and-match hero and villain. Entourage is super explosive if you’re willing to go slowly enough to play it. Even Jabba can be a solid choice when he’s out there Lording his Crimes over opponents. This deck is all about using an angry, half-dead wookiee to go as recklessly press forward aggressive damage. As much as it is the set of subtypes, Convergence is actually the set of Scoundrels. With more Yellow dice and powerful Scoundrel-caring cards than any other subtype, it’s clear that Jeremy and Co were really looking to push the lovable rapscallions harder than anyone else.
Even though he’s been fairly maligned so far over the life of Destiny, both iterations of Chewbacca offer some interesting and different play choices whether you’re slinging Competitive Standard or Kitchen Table Infinite. I hope you will take some time this week to commemorate yet another fallen icon in our Star Wars universe. Sleeve our pal up, practice your best wookiee roars, and smash some face.