Imagine a board full of huge units that defy you to attack them. Imagine the slow march towards inevitable demise, an Imperial march perhaps, and your opponent waltzing right along to it with you holding the conductor’s baton.

Playing Krennic is about having the ambition to realize these board states, and in that way, he’s a huge thematic win. His ceiling is really very high, and he can routinely outvalue opponents with the right setup. He’s also a ton of fun.

Check out our current list after several test games with the team and in the wild.

We’ll try and keep this deck updated as it evolves on our SWUDB account.

Krennic’s gameplan is all about using inflated life totals to get as much leverage out of his attack buff as he can. That buff gives him a math advantage against other units that he uses to aggressively control the enemy board, build up a wall, and finally, close out the game. Let’s talk about how we make that happen!

Playstyle

The first well-known Krennic deck was Gandork’s super cool “Krennic Likes Big Butts And He Cannot Lie”, and that deck name is actually our first lesson.

Krennic does like big butts.

He can directly leverage large health pools in a unique way, and learning how to maximize that is key to playing him well. Your endgame is a board full of units with crazy stats and your opponent having no way to stop the avalanche.

The buff ability is in kind of a weird sweet spot- turning it on is definitely not a gimme, but it’s also not really that hard. The biggest thing to understand is that the kind of playstyle that leads to a lot of damaged units can definitely be used as an asset and a strong overarching gameplan. Basically, Krennic loves to be in control and to beat up on enemy units with bigger ones. These trades can cause him to snowball, since his units that traded well can then trade again with their freshly buffed attack power. Experience tokens, self-damaging effects, and large HP values are always going to be worth a strong look in Krennic. 

Because we get so much advantage out of these big butts, cheap ways to get health like Regional Governor and Entrenched are usually must plays. Krennic wants to use those Regional Governors surgically- call a strong on-curve option that you know will appear in the opposing deck, and you potentially force your opponent to start fighting in the trenches, and that’s where you’re strongest. Entrenched is an all-star here, fitting right into our gameplan. Don’t hesitate to put it on Krennic either, since more staying power for that clutch Restore 2 is always welcome.

Entrenched also gives us a little insurance against big space units, which are a weak point for us at the moment. Disabling Fang Fighter would be a great sideboard option for us, but in general, these colors aren’t going to make a strong showing in space for now.

We have several damage and removal effects, and it’s important to make mental note of how they add up.

1. 2 life unit? Death Trooper.
2. 3 life unit in space? Interceptor.
3. 4 life unit? Open Fire or Dooku.
4. 5 life unit? Force Choke, Takedown OR Death Trooper + Tarkintown
5. 6 life unit? Palpatine, or Interceptor + Tarkintown
6. 7 life unit? Open Fire + Tarkintown.

As you can see, we have a lot of flexibility for taking down enemy units swiftly, even if we don’t account for what’s likely to be an expansive board presence on our side. If these options aren’t available in a given board state, it’s often more than okay to tackle an enemy unit with multiple units of your own. Take your chance to get them dead, as it’s crucial for this deck to keep trading.

1 life units, on the other hand, are a huge efficiency issue for us, and we need to keep on the lookout for ways to either ignore them or minimize them. Holding out to clear them all at once with Palpatine is cute, but probably not going to work. Our best option by a mile is Lil’ Bro, who really is just an all-star all around. There’s a reason we didn’t publish anything about Krennic Red until he dropped. He fits in here like a got dern LEGO set, and you should play him every chance you get.

Things We Want

• Premier removal – Force Choke is great. We’d like another card or two that’s as good as that. Takedown and Open Fire are both flawed options that are here out of necessity for the moment. We expect them to be replaced in short order.
• Good enough spaceships to cover our butt – We really don’t have enough tools to fully stop a space onslaught, nor to put gas on in space if ground proves thorny. These colors just don’t have it right now, and we’re hoping that changes.
• More sources of ping – We’re really good at dealing with big stuff, better than most decks. We can run out of gas FAST against a ton of little efficient units though. Fingers crossed for more AOE options and ping.
• Compelling cheap Sentinels – Childsen just ain’t it, and we’ve got too much red for him anyway. Sentinel is a really great keyword for Krennic and we’d love to see some choice.

Chopping Block

• First Legion Snowtrooper – This card is perfectly fine, it just doesn’t fully gel with what we’re doing or have a super strong identity outside of Daddy Vader.
• TIE Advanced – Krennic loves experience tokens, we just wish we got them as cheap as the Rebels do.
• Resilient – This 1 cost Brazilian Butt Lift is obviously pretty good with what we’ve got going down, but we’re much happier to play either of the other upgrades most of the time to buff our attack at the same time. We’ve played around with Infiltrator’s Skill and TIE in this spot and ended up back here, but eventually this gets kicked.
• Takedown + Open Fire – As previously mentioned, these are mathematically compromised removal options that don’t often trade up, and we’re interested in finding their replacements.

Additional Flavor Options

Normally, we put a big pile of cards here, but for the moment, there’s not much we’ve left on the chopping block! A big part of that is just that we’ve seen relatively little of Villainy/Vigilance, and those cards are gonna have a lot of internal synergy that we’ll want to work in. This deck will flesh out a lot as that color combo sees more tools.

That’s all for today! What do you think of Director Krennic, Cruel But Goober? What’s your favorite aspect pairing with him? Check out some gameplay below from last week and keep an eye on our YouTube in the coming weeks for more games with this emerging control staple!