SW Destiny Smash Phase II Spoilers!

Happy Destiny Smash Phase II spoiler week!

If you are unfamiliar with Destiny Smash, it is a variant of Star Wars Destiny, a collectible cards and dice game. I have been playing Destiny since around the beginning of 2018. In this variant, players take pre-built half-decks and smash them together to create a randomized pairing of Star Wars characters to battle against an opponent who has done the same.

In the process of the development and roll-out of Destiny Smash Phase II, I’ve been working on building my physical set of Phase I to trim down my Destiny collection – excited to have a bit more to round it out. I picked up some of the 15-card boxes from the Burger Tokens website to hold each deck (stored in my ReyLo longbox from the Mr. Bones Organized Play Kit in… was it late 2019? Has it been that long already?) and I have the dice arranged in a box I procured from Etsy ages ago. All of Phase 1 + 2 (with the exception of one unspoiled deck I don’t expect to build) fits in the ReyLo Box.

Speaking of Reylo, I am excited to share with you today some new spoilers for Phase II.

You may have already seen Padmé, Boba Fett, Hera/Ghost and Val, Aayla Secura, Special-chain Yoda, Captain Rex and more (maybe?)

As a long-time player of ReyLo (basically from around a month after Spark of Hope dropped to… well, it’s the only deck I have still built) I would first like to introduce the Rey: Bound by the Force Smash deck! This deck features the Snoke’s Throne Room battlefield.

Of course first up, we have our upgrades and supports, starting with Niman Training – this has long been an include in my ReyLo deck for cost efficacy. The Smash dev team chose this over Niman Mastery because of the strength curve on Mastery and the desire to keep the quantity of Mastery’s down in Smash overall.

Rey’s Lightsaber and Shoto Lightsaber are included to give Rey not just some melee sides, but also drop in a few shields. Untamed Power is a good flexible card that can go on any apprentice and has some flexible use cases that support Rey – not to mention that special chain with Untamed Power and Rey3’s special sides. And our one support is Luke’s Protection – that recurring one shield can be a massive lifesaver if played at the right time! It can also swing a whole game if you get it out early and often.

Now that we’ve covered the strong support and upgrade package that prioritizes the shields Rey3 wants, we move on to events, where we see a few removal options – Deflect, Guard, Mislead, The Force is With Me  and Overconfidence.

Ambush cards are always valuable, and in a deck that usually wants to go slow, it can be particularly useful to catch your opponent off guard with something like On Guard or Polarity. Especially in the Smash format, Polarity can be particularly powerful at the right time. Likewise, Steadfast and Riposte can rip some unexpected damage to your opponent.

And in that iconic lightsaber fight, what would Rey be without Kylo Ren: Bound By The Force.

Kylo also comes in on Snoke’s Throne room (of course!) and right off the bat we see the more aggressive side of this would-be pairing with the Crossguard Lightsaber and Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber, which both have damage pings in a manner that synchronizes with Kylo’s dice/text. Niman Training rounds out the dice part of Kylo’s upgrade package (again, the same reasons for Trainings over Mastery). Of course the addition of Torment and Kylo Ren’s Starfighter keeps the theme train rolling on.

When we get into the events what I think is really notable is his focus on damage pings with cards like Pushing Slash that can help you roll out a bit faster, Polarity which can get you at least a damage, Fluid Riposte and Conflicted can also get you some pretty quick damage.

On the defensive side we see a pretty strong mitigation classic – Isolation (I prefer the more thematic Convergence set art on this one) right out there with Deflect, Anger, and Forsaken.

While it’s been ages since I’ve played Destiny in person, and I tend to avoid Tabletop Simulator because it causes me a high level of undue stress, I can say that I am pretty hype to have a new way to have some pre-built characters and I hope these hit the table sometime soon.

What do you think? What Smash Phase II pairings are you looking forward to? I look forward to hearing from ya’ll in the comments.