With Planetary Qualifier season coming to an end, now we look forward to the release of Twilight of the Republic. This weekend will be pre-release at your local game stores, with the product release right on its heels. Spoiler season has already come to an end, and with the full suite of cards available for deck teching, the community is running wild with new ideas. But there's a single Leader standing out from the rest that seems easiest to abuse - like how Boba Fett dominates now.

Count Dooku - Face of the Confederacy utilizes the newest Villainy mechanic, Exploit. This allows you to defeat your own units to play higher cost units cheaper. Between the other meta Leaders that see play (particularly Boba1 and Han2) there's a trend in wanting to play cards for cheap. Exploit does exactly that, although Count Dooku limits the cards we can utilize this way: they must be Separatist cards. Thankfully Dooku doesn't require these Separatists to be units, so we can get away with some shenanigans. This means we're looking for two key components when making our deck. First are cards that feed into our engine. Units that have efficient "When Defeated" effects or cards that produce more than one unit (like Battle Droid tokens) that keep our coffers full of fodder. The second component are Separatist cards that will sway board advantage in our favor, or explosive Separatist cards that would be much stronger played early.

Our first pool of cards are Command and Villainy which already gives us access to plenty of great options. Superlaser Technician is an early drop unit that wants to be defeated to give us even more ramp. It also gives us the new card Kraken which creates 3 units when played for only 5 resources, which is great when we play him as early as turn two after Exploiting our turn one unit. Confederate Courier replaces itself, at least as a body, when defeated to help us keep our board presence alive while exploiting. Battle Droid Escort does the same while also creating a little friend when they come into play. Finally, we also get access to the ultimate victory Separatist; Gor. With Dooku we can reduce this cost from 12 to a measly 4 and get this high stat line, keyword-filled beast on the board by turn three.

Maybe the strangest but most interesting pairing for Count Dooku is another Command base. This allows us to play Command, which is always great even if it doesn't directly further our two components. It also gives us access to the new Legendary out of Twilight of the Republic, Pyrrhic Assault, which makes all our units Shocks when they die. Loading our deck with other Exploit cards means that we can sacrifice our little droids, clearing our opponent's board with the Pyrrhic Assault, and then play our bigger, shinier units to get ready for another turn of beatdown!

There are some efficient choices in Cunning, particularly good units with decent stat lines that we get to play for free. Infiltrating Demolisher for free is great any time in the game, but if you thread the right needles you can do this on turn one. And while you can't cheat Geonosis Patrol Fighter out on turn one, you can play it for free and bounce an enemy unit away. At the top of our curve with anywhere between 1 and 7 resources is Tri-Droid Suppressor, which will shut down an enemy combatant when playing this massive unit. Cunning also speaks to our Separatist need with cards like Tactical Droid Commander and Separatist Commando.

Pairing Dooku with Vigilance allows us access to Count Dooku - Darth Tyranus from Spark of Rebellion with built-in Takedown. Vigilance also gives us access to a potentially free Separatist Capital Ship, Malevolence - Grievous's Secret Weapon, which allows you to protect your base with its ability. The Malevolence isn't the best space unit, but it's got a big stat line and Restore, so why ask for more when it could be free? The best part of choosing Vigilance, though, is the new Legendary General Grievous - Trophy Collector. And I'm not talking about his strange lightsaber ability that takes a lot of work to pull off. Strictly as a Separatist with a good stat line that can be played as early as turn one with the help of any 1-cost unit. Exploit that other unit to get your discount and lay down a 4/4 Grievous on turn one, ready to go to war with the enemy base.

Aggression might be the leading choice in building this deck. It gives you access to several units you can already play for free like Asajj Ventress and Squadron of Vultures, but you also gain access to OOM-Series Officer who wants to be Exploited for the good of the team! Speaking of direct damage to the enemy base, Vanguard Droid Bomber relies on Separatists to deal an additional 2 damage when played and just hangs out in space afterward, waiting to be Exploited. For heavy hitters we get Heavy Persuader Tank which we can play for as little as 1 resource and then poke a bothersome ground unit. More importantly we get the man himself, Count Dooku, who can clear boards with his When Played ability - and when combined with himself for an additional Exploit makes that power even better.

All-in-all the new Count Dooku will be a great deck that plenty of people gravitate toward. He provides the same efficiency that Boba1 utilizes, which means the deck is difficult to screw up. And while Count Dooku doesn't have an explosive turn five like his set 1 counterpart, he provides more consistent efficiency throughout the game.