Ever since I first watched the epic saga depicted in the Star Wars trilogy, my fascination with the idea of using and manipulating the force has grown. The young Skywalker's growing under the instruction on the aging Jedi Master, Yoda, stuck with me during afternoon childhood playtimes. This would probably explain why the episode on Dagobah in Empire has captivated me so much. There is something mystifying about the process of growing strong in the force, a difficult yet worth while task. So you can understand my severe disappointment when the Dagobah Expansion was released and I could not make a tourney worthy deck based on Jedi testing. There were no rewards for such a deck. I was disgusted. (Instead of a strong testing unit, we got inserts and a broken asteroid sanctuary not that I'm bitter.) :-)
Perhaps Decipher did feel the same way because Special Edition brought new cards to make Jedi testing more powerful and worthwhile including the new Training Objective Mind What You Have Learned/ Save You It Can. With Operatives receiving errata, the Dagobah unit might finally have it's chance to hit the tournament scene. So in anticipation of that lets look at Dagobah again. Let's examine the different ways to use the deck and the new cards in Special Edition that make it work more efficiently. Lets go back to Dagobah and imagine what Luke felt as he landed on that slimy mud hole, his ship half sunken in a swamp. Imagine the sounds of critters scurrying through the jungles, and the sight of the quaint hut where Yoda lived. Smell Yoda's Stew, and listen to the jagged elfin voice of the aging jedi master as he tells you to feel the luminous force flow through you, and the tree, and the rock.
The Real Test - Special Edition
Decipher promised early that Special Edition would enhance such strategies as Jedi Testing. But the real test was whether they would improve its competitiveness. This meant making the deck faster and adding incentive to complete jedi tests beyond test one. Special Edition brought cards that made jedi testing not only easier, but also competitive. The objective Mind What You Have Learned/ Save You It Can is primarily responsible for the increased strength of this deck, while such cards as Wise Advice and The Planet Its Farthest From have strengthened its knees.
Decipher has, for-the-most-part, lived up to its promise. There are now incentives to not only use Skywalker as the trainee (you can deploy him from the reserve deck with MWYHL) but also fully train him through test five. Force retrieval and a mechanism to get the newly trained Skywalker off Dagobah are the main reasons for training, and with the possibility to pull off test 1 by the second or third turn, jedi testing can now work efficiently as a supplemental strategy.
There are still flaws in testing, however. The mechanism of the objective, which generally helps keep the tests on the table, also means you have to survive a round of force drains until skywalker is back on the table. And of course there is the ease to which the Dark Side can either hinder, or halt jedi testing altogether. The slew of cards, both old and new, that hurt Dagobah training make testing possibly (still) too difficult to pull off. Because of this, we must look at what we learned about jedi training from when the Dagobah expansion was first released to see how it has evolved to where it is now.
Mind What You Have Learned:
I'm sure there are others like me who slaved to make Jedi Testing work when the Dagobah expansion was first released. One thing was certain, it was too slow and difficult to claim the minimal rewards. But the power of "A Great Warrior," was soon realized with the popularization of strategies like Walker Garrison and Dark Deal. It became a popular defensive unit in many decks.
With the new objective making training more competitive, counters like Failure at the Cave and Broken Concentration will reappear. Secret Plans also hurts the retrieval mechanism because there isn't a whole lot of room for anything outside of testing. If not properly handled, such cards can be devastating and even fatal to this decks success. You must be prepared for many contingencies.
One of the best counters for these to cards is alter. But this can be tricky in itself. First off I would recommend 4 - 5 alters, depending on how worried you are about Failure and Broken Concentration. The Objective adds 4 to your draw, but you should have electro-binoculars in your deck anyway. These can help set up a low enough destiny draw to make the alter successful. And with a few exception, most cards will have lower destinies anyway.
Sense isn't a real threat with Wise Advice and the objective on the table (your cards cancelled by sense and alter are instead sent to the used pile), but Control can be problematic. But the use of Control has diminished with the release of such powerful Special Edition cards as the Objectives that reduce force drains and The Planet It's Farthest From (and its DS counterpart). Grimtaash (lost) comes in handy here by taking out any multiples of controls, but the Objectives such as ISB that reduce drains by 1 can really hurt. If you play smart, you should be able to work around these cards.
Slimy... Mudhole... My Home This Is!
How and when you deploy your Dagobah locations is crucial to this decks success. Since you start with a minimum of three force, I would recommend deploying Yoda and his Hut on turn one. (Don't forget to pull out Yoda's Hope while your at it.) This will give you at least 6 force on turn two. Beyond that, the actual tests are the best way to determine site order. I will tell you what I find works best for me, but don't hesitate to experiment. What's in your reserve often dictates this order anyway and I often experiment with new deployment order as well.
Deployment restrictions for the tests are as follows:
Test One: deploy to same site as mentor (on Dagobah).
Test Two: deploys to an unoccupied site.
Test Three: deploys to Jungle or the Cave.
Test Four: deploys to the swamp or Bog Clearing
Test Five: on any Dagobah site.
I would recommend the following order: Jungle, Swamp, Hut, Bog Clearing, Training Area. You want to have test 1 completed before you deploy the swamp so that you can deploy test 2 on the jungle and then the next turn deploy the swamp between the Jungle and the Hut. Ideally, test deployment should look like this:
Many people like to move Yoda to his hut for test 5 since no destiny number is needed to accomplish it. But unless it is essential to get Yoda to his hut, do not leave Luke unattended by the Jedi Master. Roaming Vine snakes could make lunch out of a power 0 skywalker (read QJ's review of Vine Snake).
Save You It Can:
The next question becomes what to include in the other part of the deck. There are two big choices, ground or space. Ground allows for a bit more card efficiency. You don't need starships and pilots, just powerful characters and maybe a couple sabers. The EPP's really aid such a offensive unit. Revolution has returned to tournament play as has Lightsaber Proficiency. These cards can help inflict force damage on your opponent.
Space has the nice advantage of having two places to drain for three a turn. Coruscant has a bonus of adding +2 to the deploy of all your opponents starships and pilots if you control it. And such effects as S-Foils and the new power of weapons can make this a strong unit as well. Let's not forget the retrieval possible with such cards as Kessel Run and Our Most Desperate Hour either. Of course be ready for the fury of the new power in space, the Tie deck.
You can check out my Dagobah Training deck to see how I handled this unit.
Lone Yoda and the Small Test 1 Unit
With the objectives came a trend to cannibalize their advantages with no intention of flipping the objective. Before Special Edition a fairly large unit was needed to just pull off test 1. That is not so any more. A small unit consisting of about 11 or 12 cards, including Mind What You Have Learned, can accomplish test 1 by the third and forth turn. Failure becomes a smaller factor while Broken Concentration creates even more devastating effects.
The skeleton of the unit consists of seven cards as follows:
I would also recommend the following cards to enhance your strategy on and off Dagobah:
You get a base of +8 towards accomplishing test 1. This means a destiny of 5 would be needed to accomplish the first test. Broken concentration drops the base to +4 meaning you'd need a nine to pull of test 1, an impossible feat. In order to counter this or just quicken the deck, I would recommend adding Luke's Backpack, Yoda's Hope, and 1 more location, preferably the swamp or the Bog Clearing. The swamp, the pack and Yoda's Hope each add +1 to training destiny raising the base from +8 to +11. This means a destiny draw of two is needed to complete test 1. In the case of Broken Concentration, the base would now be +7, changing the magic number to a destiny of six. This isn't great, but is an improvement. To increase this base, add At Peace. This practically guarantees quick success for test one.
If this seems too large, you can forget testing altogether and use MWYHL to get Yoda down to his hut by turn one. Such a deck would be more geared for battling, such as mains and toys. Not only does this give you a quick 5 force by turn two, but Yoda also reduces attrition by 2 when at the Hut, and MWYHL makes sense and alter more difficult to use by adding 4 to such destiny draws. It also allows you to start with the powerful effect The Planet Its Farthest From.
So now that Special Edition has arrived there are several flavors of Dagobah out there. Special Edition has allowed us to return to complete our training.
Beakman