In todays article I wanted to revisit the king! No not elvis, but king Starscream! With wave 3 now available I wanted to see if there were any new cards or character that would take this to the next level. The answer is simple but very complex once you dive in, so lets dive in! We are changing one character card and a good amount of battlecards. (If you want to see the list head over to the decks page and click on King Starscream) I will only be addressing the changes and new cards here. I made a few minor changes such as taking Forcefield out and adding in another Sparring gear , another Reinforced Plating, changed Ramming Speed for Vaporize and such. The Big changes was taking out Rollout, Pep talk, Universal Network Access and Dragstrip. That's right even Dragstrip got hit! I will start with
that seeing is how it is a massive change. The thought behind it was the fact that while Dragstrip was good, if he didn't proc he was very bad and the draw 3 card took away an action and sometimes when pressured it was to slow. Now with adding Hot rod we get a solid body, and when its KOed we get to ping for one damage. However we did lose the potential to draw a lot of cards, so how is that fixed?? Answer is complex because we now play the deck completely different, what if I told you we now use Starscream more often, and even more reliable. Before we would use our support characters to help stall the game and set up the King to KO anything we wanted, but when the opponent had disruption our plan became very difficult. Now (with the introduction of new cards) we use Starscream to pressure our opponent. Picture this turn 1 flip Flamewar and attack with Hot Rod. Now Hot Rod has tough 2. Next turn we can flip Starscream and depending on what we have we can attack with the big guy. Wait attack with Starscream?!?!
Yup! the cards that allow us to get away with this is Battlefield Report, it is a secret action that lets you draw 2 and put one on top of your deck while defending. Well that allows us to draw 2 and put a crown on top so now our Starscream has 4 armor and still has to flip 4 more cards, so he will be taking little damage. After your opponent spends a bunch of time trying to poke him to death, you play Callus Leadership to HEAL 5! Now you have to move that damage over to another character but they have a lot of health so it doesn't really affect them. These cards allow you to pressure your opponent and doesn't give them the time to set up against you. Playing this list it still swings for massive damage (15+), blocks a lot of damage because now we have 6 ways to plan on defense (3 battlefield report, and 3 security console). I love this deck and always find myself coming back to it over and over because of its power level, and just plain fun. The sideboard is an easy conversation as we have Hiding Spot to allow us give stealth when we need to protect our king, Infiltrate to block any of those pesky Press the Advantages...Also add more pierce if needed with Laser Cutlass (amazing card). All in all this deck is quite amazing and really rewards deck practice. It takes a little to learn how to manage your crowns but once you do, your opponent will have to bend the knee. I hope you enjoyed this breakdown and be sure to try the deck out yourself.
-Jamie
