Twilight of the Republic brings two new keywords into the game - divided by the hero and villain line in the sand. We recently talked about ranking the Hero Leaders from the new set. Many of those leaders were lackluster, and even the ones that are competitively viable have shortcomings compared to the sets villain leaders. Largely this comes from the gap in quality between the two new mechanics; Coordinate gives cards benefits when you have 3 or more units on the board, while Exploit allows you to pay less for bigger cards. This strategy has proved useful in the past, especially with Han2.

At the bottom of our rankings is the Vigilance common Nute Gunray - Vindictive Viceroy. Battle Droids are simple 1/1 Villainy units - they're fodder for a deck filled with Exploit. Unfortunately, Nute's ability to make these simple units is heavily restricted behind an Action that requires exhausting and for two other units to have already died. This becomes much better on his flip side, but even producing a single Battle Droid isn't enough to keep him exciting.

Wat Tambor has some weird promise. His ability boosts a unit for a whole phase, allowing them to take advantage of cards like Overwhelming Barrage and Strike True. However, this ability is again gated behind having a unit die. Admittedly, Command has better options to Exploit so that sacrificing units is more under your control. Wat also deploys earlier in the game - the same turn you could play Overwhelming Barrage, allowing you to stack his front and back side buffs for +4/+4. However, in the current meta this isn't quite consistent enough.

Of the leaders here Nala Se might be one of the most interesting possible decks. Playing a slew of heroic Clones with a suite of Villainy events and upgrades creates unexpected combos. This idea is like the original Hera Spectre deck turned up to 11. Unfortunately, we don't have reliable enough Clones to make the deck work in a competitive way. Clones on their own are likely better played in a Heroic deck with the Jedi and Republic support they need.

Our villainous starter deck leader, General Grievous, explores interesting space that IG-88 explored in Spark of Rebellion. 3 sets in and we have plenty more droids, and massive droid spawning machines thanks to the Battle Droids. Handing out Sentinel to a single droid (and +1/+0 on the deployed side) isn't enough to warrant a deck focused around other droids. While others might slam Grievous as unplayable - the truth is there are enough decent droids that you might want to die. It might not be competitive, but he's far from the worst leader in the set.

Returning to an interesting mechanic, let's talk about everyone's favorite Mandalorian turned bad guy. Pre Vizsla wants something strange for an Aggression aspect deck. Draw more cards: deal more damage. Villainy gained some card draw in Shadows of the Galaxy with No Bargain, and there are other options when thinking about what base to pair with him. Given the turn structure in this game, drawing at the end of the turn works against Pre Vizsla - Pursuing the Throne. You'll need to make a steady engine to make his ability worth using. I've seen a few attempts at making a competitive Pre Vizsla deck - but each one seems to fall short of consistency. Hopefully Aggression or Villainy will get a good draw engine soon to bring this one up a notch.

One of the greatest questions our community asked this set. Is Asajj Ventress good? The truth is that I love this leader. I want the Cunning events suite and the Aggression discard suite to come together in a happy marriage for Asajj to tear my opponent's hand apart while giving her first strike for more removal. She deploys so early, it feels like a shoe-in for aggro players. The unfortunate truth is that deploying so early means she's susceptible to so much removal. There's so many interesting combat shenanigans here, and she has so much potential. Unfortunately, she can't live up to it in the current meta.

Maul. This one should be no surprise. Dealing damage to the enemy base is pretty good. Maul - A Rival in Darkness wants to hit the enemy base a lot. You get access to Aggression cards that have high attack, meaning your overwhelm damage will always be useful. Deploying any earlier than 6 resources would've made this leader a monster, but giving all your units overwhelm is game changing if you can keep him on the board long enough to get a few hits in. Maul's weakness is in his own fragility.

At the beginning of this season of spoilers, I expected Count Dooku to come out swinging as the best leader in the set by a wide margin. Since then I've come around, realizing the Separatist suite isn't exactly up to snuff. Dooku is still a good deck that accelerates larger units out faster than any this side of Han 2 - but that's not quite enough given the pool of units to play is mediocre. Landing an early General Grievous or Gor is a power move that lands Dooku up so high, but not quite number one.

That's all thanks to Jango Fett. In the wake of Boba's ban, many players rallied together to create the shell of that deck with a new leader. A leader that doesn't have the high value burst of playing more cards, but instead a leader that consistent locks down enemy units. And with the same shell of great cards (Firespray, Cad Bane, etc.) it was easy for players who had put so much time into learning the Boba Fett deck to come over. Jango Fett isn't nearly as much of a meta hog as his clone son - but it's hard to ignore the consistency of this deck.

That's all for ranking the leaders in Twilight of the Republic. Here's to finding time to get reps in with your deck in the holidays to prepare for PQ season early next year!