The release of our new set, Jump to Lightspeed, comes with several additions and adjustments to the Comprehensive Rules for the Star Wars™: Unlimited trading card game. As such, we've once again asked Rules Admiral Ryan Serrano to guide you through the changes you can find in that document, as well as discuss some of the rationale behind those changes. Read on to learn more about what you can expect with the release of Jump to Lightspeed!

Hi everyone! I'm excited to be back and introducing you to the latest version of the Comprehensive Rules. We've done some work to account for the plethora of new abilities and card interactions coming as a part of Jump to Lightspeed's release, as well as to address a few errors and inconsistencies we've discovered over the course of the last year. So, as usual, there are three different kinds of updates you can expect to find in version 4.0: New Rules Additions, Quality of Life Improvements, and Rules Adjustments. Let's talk about each of them!

New Rules Additions

Many of the changes to the Comprehensive Rules involve covering the nuances of Set 4's new mechanics: Piloting and Indirect Damage. Piloting as a mechanic affects a lot of different aspects of the game, so you'll notice improvements to the sections covering card anatomy, leaders, playing cards, and searching, as well as the addition of the Piloting keyword to the list of keyword abilities. An important note is that while Pilots are the first cards that can be played as units or upgrades, they're only considered units when not in play, so cards that tell you to search your deck for an upgrade can't draw Pilots. Indirect damage introduces the concept of “unpreventable” damage, which can't be prevented by effects like Shields. Notably, the rules consider “can't be damaged” to be a prevention effect, so indirect damage is potentially a way to deal with any pesky TIE Phantoms lurking about.

Jump to Lightspeed also introduces a new ability templating, which you can find on Barrel Roll (Jump to Lightspeed, 228): any abilities that specifies an effect occurs “after completing” an attack means that that effect occurs after an attack is fully completed, including resolving any abilities that triggered as part of or as a result of that attack. We're still committed to the general principle that “triggered abilities don't interrupt currently resolving abilities,” but on rare occasions, we'll use this templating to make exceptions for certain abilities that we wouldn't be able to make work easily otherwise.

Quality of Life Improvements

We're always listening to feedback we hear from our players and Judges on ways to improve clarity with each update to the Comprehensive Rules. This time, we've once again made many textual improvements to how certain entries are worded to continue to make the document more approachable. In particular, there are a couple formerly repetitive entries that are now consolidated into a single entry, something we hope to continue to do in small batches in future updates in order to streamline the document as a whole. Any entry numbers that changed as a result of no-longer-existing entries have been marked in red.

Rules Adjustments

We are instituting one new change to how the former rules worked for 8.15 Lose, Loses. Up to now, a unit could lose an ability but then regain that ability later in the phase from a new source. This led to a lot of questions and rulings some found unintuitive, particularly with regard to conditional abilities. Given that Jump to Lightspeed leader Kazuda Xiono (Jump to Lightspeed, 18) makes losing abilities a core part of his deck, we decided now was the right time to change how losing abilities works. As of the release of Jump to Lightspeed, a unit losing an ability for some amount of time also means that unit can't gain that ability for that time. Basically, losing an ability always trumps gaining that ability. We've found in internal testing that this makes the play pattern of certain interactions much simpler and more intuitive. Given how far in advance we're working behind-the-scenes, you'll notice some templating inconsistency for a set or two, where some abilities use “lose” and some use “lose and can't gain,” but the Comprehensive Rules considers both versions to be the same.

And that's all I have to share with you right now! I wanted to add a brief parting note: I've spoken to some folks at conventions who didn't realize that our website's Card Database includes Rules Clarifications for individual cards. If you ever have a question about a card, try checking there first to see if it's been clarified, since that will often save you a deep dive into the rules documents. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the release of Jump to Lightspeed!

Written by Ryan Serrano