My efforts to write more about Star Wars: Unlimited and my time playing have failed. This was due largely to major projects at work (boo!) and the fact that I’ve been able to spend more time actually playing SWU at one of my local stores (yay!). Next weekend is Seattle’s Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX, and I’ll be playing a TON of SWU at the Summit Convention Center Building right next door to me, so I thought I’d share a bit about the deck(s) I’m preparing and some new accessories I picked up.
PAX is going to feature an absolute smorgasbord of formats to play. I have a very bad deck ready for Twin Suns, the 1-vs-1-vs-1-vs-1 multiplayer format. It’s focused on playing big ship units cheaply, getting value from card with a “When Defeated” ability by getting to use them twice, and losing. It’s a more casual format so I’ll throw this deck in my bag for some “pickup” games between other events. My main focus will be Premier and Trilogy, two more competitive formats.
Premier is the traditional 1-vs-1, best of 3 match with a 50 card deck and 10 card sideboard. At my local store before the Galactic Championships in July, I tried a control-style deck I really liked using the new Kylo Ren leader and the Data Vault base which gives you 3 more health points before game over, but forces you to include 10 more cards in your deck. In constructed card games, this is usually bad. You want your deck size as close to the rules’ minimum as possible to increase the odds of seeing your best cards consistently. Kylo makes up for this by allowing you to cycle through your deck by discarding and drawing more cards, then playing discarded upgrades on Kylo when you deploy him. It’s a cool idea and I want to revisit it later either in this format or with a different base and more aggressive gameplan, a deck archetype that was popularized at Galactics. I ran it for two weeks at my local store and just got blown out by other control-style decks the control-heavy metagame. So I’ve changed tactics with my main deck.
My new approach has been to move away from control (trying to dictate what units can stay on the board, removing my opponent’s threats, and playing to deal big damage in the late game) to a style known as “mid-range” that blends control with aggressively trying to kill your opponent outright. After trying this with a 25 health base and losing just before I could get lethal damage on my opponent in a number of games, I’m back to using the 33 health Data Vault base with a space-based Luke Skywalker pilot leader. I’ve included a few more ground units that other lists like this include but I want the flexibility to compete in the ground or space arenas. I’m excited to try this tweaked approach out this week at locals before playing this deck mainly at PAX.
Pax will also feature the Trilogy format. Trilogy is also 1-vs-1 with 50 card decks in a best of three match, but no sideboarding. The sideboard are 10 cards not included in your main deck, but between games of a best of 3 match you can swap cards between your main deck and sideboard. You do this to counter plays or strategies you’ve seen or expect from your opponent. In Trilogy, each player brings three different 50 card decks and wins a match by winning 2 games with a different deck each. At the start of a match, each player chooses one of their opponent’s decks to ban, meaning it won’t be played in this match. Then each player chooses a starting deck, and you play one game. The winner then has to play their third, remaining deck and try to get their second win. The loser of game 1 can stick with the deck that just lost or move to their third deck for game 2, but still has to win one game with each deck.
In Trilogy, there are two additional twists around deck building. First, leaders and rare bases can’t be repeated in your three decks (i.e. I couldn’t bring two decks using the same Kylo leader but different bases, or Luke and Kylo each using that 33 health Data Vault base). Secondly, the “no more than 3 of one card per deck” rule applies across all three of your decks. For example: the yellow aspect of Cunning has a card named Bamboozle that is incredibly powerful against pilot leaders. If I’m running two decks that use the Cunning aspect, I can have three Bamboozles in one of my decks or the other, or two in one and one in the other.
I ran into this in building my Trilogy decks. I’m going run my red/green Luke Data Vault deck plus a yellow/red deck with the leader Cad Bane, and my third deck will be blue/green Obi Wan. As you might have noticed, red/Aggression is shared between the Luke and Cad decks, and green/Command is shared between Luke and Obi Wan. Fortunately there were no red cards I considered for both the Luke and Cad decks. For both Luke and Obi Wan, however, I had to cut a few cards from my first draft of Obi Wan so I could include three copies in the Luke deck where I have a larger card pool. I’m still considering if I want to move 1 or 2 back to Obi Wan and cut something else since I think the Luke deck is more likely to be banned in a given match. I’m looking forward to seeing what decision I make and how it plays it out!
Finally, I have some new toys to help with tracking damage in games. Damage on base or units is usually tracked by dice or my preferred method, tokens. These can be fiddly and I ended up spending more time looking for the right token and counting damage than focusing just on my play. So I grabbed a “LifePuck,” an accessory someone at my local store brought back from the Galactic Championships that is essentially just a small touchscreen you can tap up on to increase your damage, down to decrease, and I don’t have to add up or futz with different 1, 3, 5, or 10 token denominations on my base. For units, I’m still using tokens for damage and other reminders, but I ordered a set of custom metal tokens and some organizers for tokens I already had that fit in my deck boxes and make finding the right damage amount or reminder token for abilities like Hidden or Sentinel super easy. In using the LifePuck and organized tokens for just one week I’m already kicking myself for not grabbing them earlier.
I’ll end by promising a PAX recap, but not a timeframe for when it will be done.