Last year, a new Collectible Card Game named Star Wars: Unlimited launched. I found about this the week before launch and almost by accident, but was immediately taken by the game’s theme and mechanics. Since I have this website and blog space I never use, I thought I’d start writing about my time with the game. As a first post, here’s an introduction to Star Wars: Unlimited (aka SWU) and Collectible Card Games in general.
What are we talking about?
Collective Card Games (CCGs) or Trading Card Games (TCGs) are games played by 2 or more players using a pool of cards they have bought in order to build a deck of individual cards that impact the game state in some way when played. The granddaddy of all TCGs (and the terms CCG and TCG are interchangeable) is Magic: The Gathering, which has been around for over 30 years. Pokémon is also a TCG with a long history; Lorcana was released just before SWU and is based on Disney properties from Mickey and Donald to Ariel to Stitch.
How Do You Play?
That’s a loaded question. Every game has their own rules, play patterns, and mechanics. Since Magic is kind of the dominant, market-setting force in TCGs, I’m going borrow some terminology from them and talk about how I have played SWU this past year and how I will be playing over the next two weeks.
Format Breakdown
There are two broad formats in CCGs like Magic and SWU: Constructed and Limited. Most of what I have played has been Constructed; this is a format where you acquire cards on your own prior to the event, build a deck to the event’s rules ahead of time, and bring that deck to play against others who have done the same. SWU has two general Constructed formats: Premier and Twin Suns. Premier is played head-to-head, one player vs another and in the format I’ve played in three tournaments. Twin Suns is “multiplayer,” designed to be played by four players, one-on-one-on-one-on-one.
I mentioned I played in three tournaments, one for each of the “sets” of cards released this year. CCGs are built on the concept of releasing a set of cards that plays well together, and then augmenting those cards with another set at a later date. SWU has set the cadence of releasing one set of approximately 250 cards every 4 months, or three sets a year. After a set has been available for a period of time, local stores will host “Store Showdown” tournaments.
When set two was released, all cards from sets 1 and 2 were legal in these tournaments. All cards from sets 1-3 were legal in the next. This will continue through set 6; after that, sets 1-3 will “rotate out” and not be legal in the Premier format. They’ll still be playable in other formats, but not this main competitive format. This is common for CCGs and serves a few purposes. Obviously, these games make money by selling cards. Saying that players can’t use certain cards means they’ll need to find replacements from among the other, newer, legal cards. There’s also a game design factor: when developing cards that can be played together, the designers have to take into account what else exists and how cards interact. Rotation allows the designers to have new and different interactions that could otherwise be oppressive or “game breaking” if older cards were still available. I’ll probably write about rotation more in a future post.
Again, I played in three Premier tournaments over the past year. In the week before and the week of the release of the new set, I’m registered to play in FIVE Limited events. Let’s start with the basics: what’s a Limited event?
Like with Constructed, there are different flavors of Limited, with the general split being between “Draft” and “Sealed.” I don’t play draft, for reasons I’ll get into in a future post (spoilers: I’m bad at it and I don’t improve because I don’t play it.) In contrast to Constructed events, you do not bring cards you own to Limited events, you’re given a pool of cards with which to build your deck. As you might guess from the term “sealed,” these come from sealed packs of cards you’re given as part of your entry fee for the event, and only rise card are what you can use to build your deck for that event. when it’s done, you’re feee to take all those cards you opened and add them to your collection to use in Constructed as you see fit.
Why So Many Sealed Events?
The easy answer is: there’s a lot of them scheduled, but that might lead someone to ask “why?” There’s a new set releasing, and a popular way for the game to build excitement is via “pre-release” events. Up to a week before the official release of the cards to retail, players can enter these events and get to okay with the new cards (remember: and keep them!) early. Things have worked out so that pre-release weekend coincides with Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, and a local store that supports the game is running a TON of events. I’ll be competing in one traditional prerelease event at ECCC, two “Carbonite Prerelease” events, and one more traditional prerelease event at a different game store I like to patronize. The following week - release week - I’m paying in a “Carbonite Challenge” sealed event at a third store I support, the one where I’ve played in my Premier events before.
So What Exactly Are All of These?
In traditional sealed events, players are given 6 packs of cards and build a 30 card deck. Each pack will have 14 cards that you can use to build your deck (plus one Leader and one Base card - we’ll explain that in a future post), meaning you’ll whittle 84 cards down to 30. You’ll then compete with your deck in some number of best of 3 matches, and receive prizes based on how well you perform. That’s also essentially what prerelease sealed is, except the game’s publisher supports this with special kits that bundle your 6 packs with some paper tokens for tracking damage dealt to your base and units, a paper deck box to store your cards, and two special versions of Leader cards that the game is highlighting for the given set. This guarantees you’ll have them available to use in building your deck - this is yet another topic I’ll discuss in a future post. Two of the events I’m playing in are these traditional prerelease events. I’ve played in these before and truly enjoy them. It’s exciting to get your hands on new cards we’ve been waiting for for some time and try out new game mechanics and strategies. These are also more welcoming to new players since you’re not expected to have anything to bring with you in order to play.
You may have noticed two of the events I listed are “Carbonite Prereleases” and the third have talked about is a “Carbonite Challenge.” In Star Wars, carbonite is the super-cold substance Han Solo is frozen in at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. (I’d say “spoiler” but it’s been FORTY-FIVE GODDAM YEARS so I think the “spoiler” boat has sailed.) For this new set, Jump to Lightspeed, SWU is introducing a second kind of card pack known as “Carbonite Boosters.” The other packs I’ve talked about until now are traditional “Play Boosters.” I’ll expand on this is - say it with me - a future post, but these new Carbonite boosters will have 1 Leader card and 15 cards to go into decks, but all 16 cards will be some kind of special art treatment. These packs are meant for collectors and are more expensive than a traditional Play booster - MSRPs for these are $5 (Play) and $30 (Carbonite) respectively.
So I still haven’t answered what these events are, but that’s context was important. Carbonite Prereleases are traditional prerelease events, except you’ll be given one. Carbonite booster pack in addition to your regular prerelease kit to use in building your deck. Prizes for wins are also Carbonite booster packs. The Carbonite Challenge I’ve entered during release week also gives Carbonite boosters as prizes, but the sealed pool will be different. Instead of 6 Play boosters, each entrant will be given a box of Play boosters to open and use in building their deck. That’s twenty-four packs: 24 leaders and 336 cards to use in your deck. I’ve never seen a Sealed event like this, and the Carbonite Booster prizes pushed me to sign up.
So that’s my next few weeks in SWU: playing sealed and building my Jump To Lightspeed collection so I can build new Premier decks. I’ve listed a lot of future blog topics above, feel free to let me know what you’re most interested in seeing me write about next. I don’t have a planned schedule, but I think my next two topics will be, broadly speaking, “game basics” and how I prepare for and approach prerelease events. If something else caught your eye, let me know.