What is up Star Wars: Unlimited fans!? By the time you are seeing this article, (hopefully) Shadows of the Galaxy is officially two months old! Time flies; they grow up so fast.
With spoiler season kicked off, and Twilight of the Republic on the horizon, I thought I would take a look at my favorite pet deck of the set, with a leader that nobody is playing: Finn Command (ECL).
When Finn, This Is A Rescue (SHD 3) was revealed, the community was left scratching their heads. Where does he belong? Is this ability even good? Why would I play Finn when I can just play Rey, More Than A Scavenger (SHD 4) or Luke Skywalker, Faithful Friend (SOR 5)?
Well, I am here to answer that question.
King Finn
Behold, the unofficial King of Mandalore!
View this deck on SWUDB.comAs you can see, I leaned heavily into a Mandalorian synergy with this deck, going as far as to center the deck almost entirely around The Darksaber (SHD 126).
Before we get into that, let’s start with a typical night at locals.
Every single game I start without fail begins with the other person sitting down, taking a look at my leader, and chuckling.
“You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought!” - Princess Leia
After the initial amusement, the opponent always asks “Uh, can I read him? I don’t know what he does.”
This leads directly into many of my victories, as I always catch people off guard.
So let’s start with our leader, Finn, This Is A Rescue (SHD 3). What does he do?
On his leader side, he is able to exhaust and convert any friendly upgrade into a shield token. Enemy bounties do not count!
You may or may not be able to take advantage of his leader ability once or twice before the flip turn, but it really depends. Upgrades are tricky – and you need to time them correctly – this but can be seriously impactful if you play your cards right!
In my typical opening hand, what I want is a combination of Turn 1 play (Battlefield Marine [SOR 95] ideally), Echo Base Defender (SOR 98), Entrenched (SOR 72), Legal Authority (SHD 124), or a Darksaber.
The early game is all about controlling your opponent’s board. Let’s take a look at our ideal gameplan.
To start, you can do any number of combinations to control the board, but typically it looks like this:
Turn 1: play a unit (Marine) and claim
Turn 2: play Entrenched on Marine, play Moisture Farmer (SHD 55) or Clone Deserter (SHD 95), and clear your opponent’s unit with the Entrenched unit.
Turn 3: At the four resource play, your opponent typically plays something that is less than 6 Power, which is what our Entrenched Marine currently has. Now we can play a Legal Authority on our Marine, convert the Legal Authority to a shield using Fin's ability, and keep holding on.
Turn 4: The next turn is the one that matters. Now we will have 5 resources available to us which will allow us to deploy the (unofficial) King of the Mandalorians.
“This is where the fun begins” -Anakin Skywalker
Remember that Darksaber you kept in your hand Turn 1? Here is the ideal time to use it. Clear out any threats you can with your (hopefully) shielded Turn 1 play, or – if you had Entrenched your Echo Base Defender and done the previous actions with this instead – we can go right to flipping Finn.
Attach a Darksaber to Finn and start swinging!
Now your leader is an 8/9 and your opponent has no idea what to do about it. (Cries in Rival's Fall [SHD 79])
From here there are a few other ideal plays we can make happen. If you managed to get any other units out and about that are still alive, we can do some really sneaky things here.
Enter the Survivor’s Gauntlet (SHD 64). After you swing with Finn, drop a Survivor’s Gauntlet to swap the Darksaber over to another willing participant to swing for +4 damage (This also gives your Survivor’s Gauntlet and hopefully Sundari Peacekeeper an XP thanks to the 'saber's On Attack ability).
So – at minimum – Resource Turn 6 is bringing in a whopping potential 12+ damage!
Closing out the game here should be a breeze…maybe, sort of. If you get found out early, there’s always the standard Blue and Green heroism staples in Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight (SOR 51), Home One, Alliance Flagship (SOR 102), and Redemption, Medical Frigate (SOR 52).
Reinforcements for Finn
Let’s talk about some other cards in the deck though, because – as fun as this combo is – it isn’t the most consistent in the game.
Some other excellent synergy comes in the form of cycling through Rose’s shields and ability in conjunction with Finn’s ability. Utilizing ECL (Energy Conversion Lab [SOR 22]) allows Rose Tico, Dedicated to the Cause (SHD 45) to immediately come in as a 4/X.
We can cycle the shield and experience tokens to massively take advantage of her ability. There have been a few games where she became a monster, and my opponents had a hard time dealing with the endless onslaught of shields and XP.
Moving up the resource cost, we see a relatively unfamiliar and underutilized unit in Fenn Rau, Protector of Concord Dawn (SHD 67). Once your leader with the Darksaber goes down, it may be a bit trickier to close out the game, but Fenn Rau allows you to take back a little tempo, especially if you use the wicked combo of Fenn Rau’s When Played ability.
My personal favorite upgrade to attach is Legal Authority since it’s free to play on Fenn when he's played. This gets even better since you can assign an enemy unit -2/-2 for the phase.
Use Finn to convert that Legal Authority to a shield, and – voila – that unit is staying put for quite some time.
Now for some other notable inclusions:
- The Force Is With Me (SOR 55), which can create XP tokens and sometimes an additional shield, which turns on Finn’s ability.
- A singleton The Armorer, Survival Is Strength (SHD 47) to occasionally shield up some of your Mandalorian units.
- And Strike True (SOR 127), since your units are being upgraded and you build up some serious power.
Be Prepared (aka Sideboarding)
In the sideboard, we have a few obvious choices, such as Vigilance (SOR 58) to heal and shield/defeat, Fell the Dragon (SHD 78) for big threats, and Redemption and Home One in case you need a little more reach during those grindy control games.
Other situation cards include U-Wing Reinforcement (SOR 104) to flood the board with (hopefully) some sentinels or a Sundari Peacekeeper (SHD 98), and Make an Opening (SOR 76) to possibly help with the early game.
A more interesting choice is the Evidence of the Crime (SHD 77), just in case your opponent has any spicy (but cheap) upgrades you can just steal and shield with.
I'm a big deal in the Resistance
Is this deck a potential Meta sleeper? No, absolutely not.
Is it going to steal some games at your local? Yeah, probably, and you’ll have a ton of fun doing it. I have made a ton of changes to this deck, and I hope you were at least entertained at the thought of it. Try it for yourself and see!
Until next time,
Brian (ScuttlebuttGDP)
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