Choosing Your Battlefield - Star Wars Destiny (Awakenings)

We recently discussed some broad strategies for how to set the tempo for you Destiny games. This week we’re going to get into some more specifics about deck building by looking at the Battlefields. Particularly, when you might want to take each of the different battlefields included in the Awaenings set.

Command Center

Each opponent discards the top 2 cards of their deck.

Character Combos

Padme Amidala
Admiral Ackbar
Count Dooku
Jabba the Hutt

Strategies

This battlefield is great for a mill deck. Burn your opponent’s hand during the round and then this battlefield also burns some of their deck.

Echo Base

Give a character 1 shield

Character Combos

Qui-Gon Jinn
Padme Amidala
Jabba the Hutt

Strategies

Gaining shields is never a bad thing so this battlefield can be useful to any character. Qui-Gon loves it because it combos very nicely with his ability. It also stands out as useful to Padme and Jabba in particular because their strategies usually do not resolve around dealing direct damage to your opponent. Therefore, if your opponent claims the battlefield it doesn’t really help them much.

Emperor’s Throne Room

Turn one of your dice to a side showing a special ability (Special). Then you may resolve that die.

Character Combos

Padme Amidala
Kylo Ren
Poe Dameron

Strategies

In Awakenings there are only three characters with a special so this battlefield combos more with upgrades than particular characters. Many Blue deck Force ability upgrades have very nice specials. This battlefield is good for maintaining a quick tempo as you can turn a potentially useless die to its special, resolve it and get the battlefield all with one action.

Frozen Wastes

Remove a character die.

Character Combos

None

Strategies

This is another battlefield that can help you maintain a quick tempo. It allows you to claim while your opponent still has valuable dice in the pool and eliminate one of them. This means sometimes it is worth claiming before even your dice are all used in order to eliminate a big threat.

Imperial Armory

Play an upgrade from your hand, decreasing its cost by 1.

Character Combos

First Order Stormtrooper
Nightsister
Tusken Raider
Rebel Trooper
Padawan
Hired Gun

Strategies

This battlefield helps a lot with reducing the cost of your upgrades. This is very useful when you have multiple non-unique characters. Equipping them all with upgrades takes time and a lot of resources and the Imperial Armory makes that cheaper.

Jedi Temple

Look at an opponents hand and discard up to two events.

Character Combos

Padme Amidala
Admiral Ackbar
Count Dooku
Jabba the Hutt

Strategies

This is another battlefield that goes well with mill decks. Unlike Command Center this eliminates cards from an opponent’s hand instead of their deck. Ackbar in particular likes this as it has the potential to trigger his ability. It is limited to events but those are likely to be the majority of the cards in someone’s deck.

Mos Eisley Spaceport

Return an upgrade to your hand to gain 1 resource.

Character Combos

Rey
Qui-Gon Jinn

Strategies

Rey is particularly suited to this card if you have some cheap upgrades. You can play a 1 point upgrade during the round, trigger Rey’s extra action and then at the end of the round return the upgrade to your hand and recover the resource cost so you can do it again next round. It is also useful on Qui-Gon with Jedi Robes. You won’t recover the resource cost but when you play the robes he gets a shield, potentially triggering his ability.

Rebel War Room

Resolve one of your dice. If it has a resource cost, you do not have to pay it.

Character Combos

Hired Gun
Leia Organa
General Grievous
Count Dooku
Kylo Ren
Tusken Raider

Strategies

Any character or upgrade with a resource cost on one of its sides goes well with this battlefield. It can save you many resources over the course of the game and let you trigger those powerful abilities far more frequently.

Separatist Base

Each opponent chooses and deals 1 unblockable damage to one of their characters.

Character Combos

Jango Fett
Rey
Tusken Raider

Strategies

This is a simple damage dealing battlefield. It can go well with any damage dealing character but it pairs best with those that allow you to maintain a good tempo. You don’t want your opponent claiming this battlefield.

Starship Graveyard

Choose a support or upgrade in your discard pile and place it on top of your deck.

Character Combos

Poe Dameron

Strategies

Poe likes discarding upgrades and this helps him get them back. This is not a battlefield you want to pair with a mill deck or Darth Vader and it can undo their effects.