Portmanteaus are wildly overused, but, in this case, it lets me use the word ‘jive’, which is great fun. Jyn + Fives = Jive!
It’s been a while, but I haven’t stopped brewing decks. I’ve just been hella busy behind the scenes with bidness and such. If you’ve followed my packs-of-the-day week month season on Facebook, you’ll recognize that it’s been difficult for me to consistently put out content lately. Whatever, you don’t care, just get to the deck writing, cleverman. Fine, I will do that.
While Standard is the format most people play, the Infinite community is a strong voice with good stewardship. The guys at Dice Commando maintain a lovely Holocron document to keep these older characters relevant while the good folks over at the Infinite Playground have a Balance of the Force that attempts to spice things up with some nice errata and points adjustment. After Justin from IP posted these to the Destiny Facebook group last week, our weekly dice-slinging shindig in Houston gave them a stab.
We had an excellent time and pulled several more people than we normally do. Some of our regulars who hadn’t been out since COVID started made the trip to roll some jank with us. It was great seeing nearly everyone again. While the were a number of interesting decks (Captain Phasma – Elite Trooper with Old Daka made me swoon), I was pretty happy with my own concoction.
Originally, that plot was supposed to be Fateful Companions, but the good folk at Dice Commando added a pairings-ban list that made FC a no-no with Fives. While I have my own opinions about why that’s a bad idea (it rhymes with, “Don’t ban stuff until it’s proven an actual problem”), I moved on ahead with deck building rather than pissing and moaning about it.
Jyn Erso – Reckless Operative has always been one of my favorite characters. Way back in the very first World Championships in 2017 I had a Jyn/Rebel Commando deck sleeved up for casual games while everyone else was rocking Poe/Maz. She’s just so damn elegant and fits with what I like to do. I love big, swingy yellow events that break the game wide open, (Reversal is my all-time favorite card) and she fits that to perfection. Her only issue for so long has been that staggering point cost. Look at that thing, Sabine Wren – Explosives Expert and Bo-Katan Kryze – Deathwatch Lieutenant are the only other Yellow hero characters that have ever been printed at the same cost as her, and no characters have been printed higher. DC took care of me with their Holocron, though, dropping her down to 18 points. IP took that a step further and gave me that sweet, sweet free resource for 16 points. Now, I can actually play her with someone else who can fight!
For the second character, I was enamored with the idea of abusing Five’s ‘after’ ability to roll many, many Clone Trooper dice into the pool, and, while they kept my abuse-on-a-stick of Fives/FC off the table, they couldn’t do anything about Feint and Through the Pass. Through the Pass is an especially tasty way to get those extra dice because Jyn lets you play it for free!
The plot came at the last minute when I realized I couldn’t play what I had originally sleeved up. A quick perusal of the available 3-point-and-under plots lead me to choose the old standby of Long-Term Plan. It actually ended up being crucial in multiple matches.
The rest of the deck fills out like a standard Red/Yellow aggro deck with a skew towards playing big events for cheap. This skewing manifests itself in a large and powerful removal suite that focused on doing enormous, game-changing things alongside my guns. None of that namby-pamby one-for-one dice removal here, nosir. When I fire off one of these bad boys, it’s going to hurt.
For the upgrades I tried to focus on 2-drop and under weapons that would come out fast and hit pretty hard. Blue (modified) sides were ok because my plan was to throw so many dice at you that I’d always have a black to resolve it with. When it came to paring the list of all possible guns down to what I actually ran, I focused on redeploy and/or biggest possible sides.
After picking the Redeploy guns, the 1-cost on the DH-17, the defensive sides on the Jetpack, and the Jyn-ness of Jyn Erso’s Blaster sold me on the rest.
The final two slots went to some general utility cards. Truce almost always seems to make the cut, because who doesn’t need a resource with Ambush at some point in the game. The last card was Rebel. This one doesn’t get played all that often, but it pairs insanely well with Jyn1. She has two discard sides on her dice, which puts it at a solid 55% that you will have at least one every time you roll her dice. Then, while holding Rebel, you get to play ANY card in your discard pile for a discount. So much value!
The least exciting part of the deck is the battlefield. I couldn’t find anything especially spicy, so I decided to go with one that basically gave me shields in every game. Fives doesn’t any actual dice, so you will win approximately 0.082% of your game roll offs. When you’re an aggressive deck, no one wants you to have even more resources in Round 1, so choosing Theed is a safe way to guarantee getting the two-health bump.
That leaves us with the final deck list of the following:
Playing the Deck
Mulligan decisions center around the opening round. Your deck is very play-or-pitch-to-reroll-all-the-cards, so you should be drawing nearly a full grip every round. For round 1, you want a 1 or 2-cost gun to drop on the table as well as a cheap (free with Jyn) piece of removal, like Easy Pickings or Flee the Scene. Feel free to stick with an Entangle or Double-Cross if you drew the DH-17. The goal here is to get some solid dice on the table to start pecking away at their health while backing it up with some vicious removal.
Round 2 plays out as a hybrid between the first round and the rest of the game. If you didn’t build up enough in the first round, feel free to go for the gun-drop-plus-free-with-Jyn-removal-backup plan to get the pew-pews started. If you got some solid dice on the table, go with the plan of sitting back on those bomb-ass game changing cards like Reversal and Double-Cross while chucking all your gun-enabled dice at their face.
Rounds 3 and on (honestly, there shouldn’t be many more ‘and on’s with this deck), you’re going with the back half of the round 2 plan. Chuck dice at their face while you smugly wait for them to roll something useful that you can helpfully resolve for them.
Repeat until dead.
- Through the Pass is one you play whenever you get value out of it. Often, they will go for Fives first, so get use out of it while you can. If you draw it, play it immediately for free, don’t hold onto it.
- Feint is a shittier TtP that costs one resource (stupid Red). Play it soon, but don’t leave yourself exposed to do it.
- NEVER PLAY TRUCE AS YOUR FIRST YELLOW EVENT OF THE ROUND! Jyn only cares about the first event, not the first event that costs something. If you play a Truce, you’ve burned the Jyn-source (<- more portmanteaus!)
- All guns go on Jyn.
- Don’t be afraid to overwrite a gun with Jyn’s blaster. That thing is lethal enough that you can sacrifice a crappier die to get it on the table cheaply.
- Don’t forget to tick up your Long-Term Plan in the early rounds. Usually, I try to do it early in the round so that I’m not faced with a difficult decision of claiming or adding to it. Rounds do not progress linearly with a set amount of actions in each one. They are branching decision trees that extend or shorten the number of actions in each round based on what happens in the round. By ticking up LTP early, you stand a good chance of that ‘wasted’ action not biting you in the ass later in the round. At least more so than having to make a tough choice at the end of the round.
I’m going to try and get these out more often. I have a back-log of decks that I want to tell you all about.