The Dodge and Block Inclusion

Something I don't see as often in decks these days is the inclusion of Dodge and Block. It is a trend I love to see because I don't have to play around them nearly as much as in Awakenings. That said I do think it is a mistake to write these cards off when building decks. Today I want to talk briefly about why these cards are important, and why they should be included in almost every deck. 

The Big Swing

Dodge and Block probably feel like dead cards most of the time. It is rare to have an extra 2 resources. We've all played games where your opponent plays around them the entire round. Cards like Deflect can create just as much of a damage swing. 

So why do I include them in my deck? Because of what they really do.

What Dodge and Block do, is so much more than what their text box says. They waste your opponent's resources, cards, and time. This really means that you can gain momentum, if only for a single turn, but that can very easily be the difference between winning and losing. These cards are also luck protection, we all have that game where our opponent rolls out Big Papa Palpatine to 3 ranged damage on both character dice, and 4 ranged damage from Lightning for their first action.

If we change the way we examine the effect of Dodge and Block to what the outcome is, we would get a card that reads like the following:

• Heal a character for 3-10 damage, discard 0-3 cards from your opponents hand, remove 0-2 resources from your opponents pool, and increase the chance your opponent claims the battlefield as their next action by 25-100%. 

-- OR --

• Lose 2 resources, stop your opponent from winning by luck.

While the variance on the benefits may be big, either your opponent wastes resources and cards to get dice showing ranged or melee, only to have you remove it, or they rolled well above odds and you just happened to remove it all anyway. Part of the effectiveness of these cards is their timing, making sure to wait until they've wasted resources, but not so long you miss the window. Either way these cards smooth out your game, can get you the win, and keeps your deck doing what it was built to do longer, increasing your chances at winning. 

While sometimes they are dead draws in games, and they really don't do much against Poe/Maz, these cards prove themselves to me every time they are used. Additionally, as we get more valuable events and upgrades, it is getting more difficult to justify tossing a larger percentage of cards to rerolls. If I'm playing against Vader/Raider, I'll happily toss a Dodge to reroll.

I will be including 1 Dodge and 1 Block in most of my decks for the foreseeable future, and I highly recommend including them yourself.