Those of you that joined in our on September 19, 2021 Twitch live stream already know, but effective immediately, Mean Streets has been added to the banned card list for Star Wars Destiny. The Official Holocron will be updated to reflect this.
Like we discussed on the live stream, this card was becoming far too prevalent and problematic – it is a battlefield that offers an extremely powerful claim effect that provides both tempo and value generation. Beyond that, it offered an archetype that would be very strong even without the tempo and value provided by Mean Streets to play very powerful removal events at unfairly efficient prices – not to enabling some devastating combos.
For example, cards with powerful effects like Reversal, which allows you to not only remove an opponent’s die showing damage but use it against them, have always been balanced by their cost; Reversal costs 3 resources under normal circumstances, which is a hefty price to play. However, Mean Streets allowed that to be played for free. Likewise, Flee the Scene is an extremely powerful card that allows you to remove two dice for one resource, but comes with the drawback of having to pass two actions, often allowing your opponent to take control of the battlefield and gain the tempo advantage. Mean Streets made Flee the Scene free and prevented your opponent from taking advantage of the forced passes to claim.
Finally, perhaps nothing feels more “unfair” than Mean Streets enabling a game warping card like Jump to Lightspeed, normally costed at 3 resources, for free, allowing you end the round before your opponent could take most of his or her actions AND ensuring you will go first next round by claiming the battlefield to do so.
When Mean Streets was first introduced in Convergence, it was somewhat balanced in its power level by a smaller pool of scoundrels to spot, as well as competitors in other strong battlefields such as Outer Rim Outpost and Theed Palace. However, Mean Streets had grown far more powerful than is good for the game, and has created design constraints around what kind of events can be implemented going forward and which scoundrel characters can be added to the game.
As such, the card has been added to the ban list and will no longer be legal for competitive play.
