Han/Rey Deck Analysis

Dice manipulation is not the only form of defensive play in Destiny, aside from manipulating dice, various cards can heal, add additional shields, or otherwise delay a character death long enough for a single character to last more turns in an effort to do more damage or generate value. 

Dice manipulation is a proactive form of defense, while healing is generally reactive.  Adding shields is technically proactive, since shields do not remove damage, and have a hard cap of 3 shields.

When it comes to adding shields and general healing, heroes tend to be better than villains.  Villains tend to feature a lot of dice removal, with heroes having a playstyle centered around adding shields and healing for defense.  This week, I'm going to feature a particular deck that I believe stacks shields most efficiently, and is, in my opinion, one of the top contenders for the best hero deck right now.

The decklist can be found at the following link: http://swdestinydb.com/decklist/view/7888/hanreyblogdeckprofile-1.0

Basic Strategy and card choices: Mulligan for Infamous/Holdout Blaster, keep a yellow upgrade if you have Infamous, but otherwise try to find Infamous or Holdout Blaster.  Continously attach ambush upgrades to Rey through recycling holdout blasters with starship graveyard, or by combining infamous with any yellow upgrades.  As Rey gets upgrades and more ambush cards are played, Han stacks shields, fueling cards like riposte or just making him extremely difficult to kill.  Due to Han's effect and threat of second chance, and the fact that most upgrades go on Rey for action  economy, he becomes a very undesirable target, making Rey the general target.  As Rey is going down, start replacing her upgrades with redeploy upgrades and  one with the force to set up Han to win the game from there.  Every single event card serves the purpose of disruption, burst damage, or healing/shields, making all of them very impactful, especially when combined with Infamous.

A sample opening turn could be the following:
1. Holdout Blaster/Infamous + Yellow Upgrade (Jetpack or Hunker Down) on Rey, taking 2 additional actions (1 from Ambush, 1 from Rey's ability), and giving Han a shield
2. Activate Han
3. Resolve Han's dice, or roll Rey out, if Han rolls his 2 disrupt side, that is ideal at the start of a turn, as disrupting your opponent immediately following the 2 free actions will slow them down and limit the amount of events/upgrades they can play on their turn.

Consistency (8/10): This deck really takes off with an opening hand of either a Holdout Blaster or an Infamous + Yellow upgrade.  This deck is not like Red/Yellow variants of Villains, which are very consistent and can work off of many different hands and different upgrades, but are more akin to blue decks which also perform much better off an early It Binds All Things/Sith Holocrons.  Some hands with this deck are much better than others, so consistency could be better, but is still very good.  This deck also suffers from potentially inconsistent rolls, and as every event is impactful and playable, and you gain a lot from replacing upgrades on Rey, rerolling is not ideal, as all of the cards in this deck are important and impactful, and there are no ways to otherwise manipulate poor rolls.

Defense (10/10): This deck can last a very long time, due to a combination of shield-generation, dice manipulation, and Second Chance.  With a lot of economy, Second Chance can be looped with starship graveyard on Han, which, when combined with additional shields, makes it very difficult for anyone to take down Han.  Every event in this deck is impactful and presents a lot of action economy when combined with infamous, and have their uses to keep characters in the game longer than usual.  The ability to be reactive with dice manipulation and still be able to generate a lot of shields creates a deck with a lot of staying power.  DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol is also a very strong card that not only generates ambush actions through Rey, but can remove strong dice rolls early on during a turn, where only a few dice are in the pool.

Action-Efficiency (9/10): This deck not only has two characters, but Rey's ability combined with ambush upgrades generates an insane amount of action efficiency that very few decks can match.  Ambush upgrades on Rey creates a situation in which you can activate characters and resolve dice without any chance of being manipulated, which is a big reason Jango is such a meta defining character right now.  Unfortunately, the dependance on other cards makes the score go down compared to decks that can run Jango, as Jango standalone has the ability to roll and resolve dice without interaction and does not rely on additional cards.  Through a combination of Rey's ability and ambush cards, this deck has few issues claiming the battlefield.

Burst Damage (7/10): This deck has poor burst damage from events, with Riposte being the  only real source.  This means that most of the damage this deck does will be from dice, and thus, quite predictable.  Willpower is also a good source of out of hand damage, but is not on the choices that villains have.  Of all the blue hero decks, this deck probably makes the best use of Riposte due to Han's free shields.

Potential card changes: Unpredictable and Draw attention are the least impactful events in the deck, unpredictable is a very unreliable way to manipulate dice and draw attention is a very poor event as it doesn't actually remove damage, but is good when combined with infamous.  Potential card swap that could be made are Heroism, Scramble, and Reversal.  Scramble can be very strong when combined with infamous, and blank a potentially powerful roll from your opponent.  Unfortunately, Scramble is very unreliable without infamous.

I hope this deck analysis has been helpful, and provided information on the strengths and weaknesses of one of the top hero decks in the awakenings meta!