Heroism and Villainy

Greetings, Star Wars™ fans! As we’ve said several times before, Star Wars: Unlimited is a card game of unlimited possibilities, and today we’re going to talk about how that applies to deckbuilding.

In this game, there are six different “aspects,” which help decide the direction and function of each card. The aspects are Vigilance (blue), Command (green), Aggression (red), Cunning (yellow), Heroism (white), and Villainy (black). Whenever you build a deck, you must choose a leader and a base; your leader provides two aspect icons while your base provides one, and the combined three icons help to shape what the rest of your deck looks like.

Most of the non-leader cards in the game have one or two aspects, the icons of which you can find near their cost in the top-left corner. No matter what leader or base you pick, you can include any card in any deck—the game is called “Unlimited,” after all! However, there is a catch: when you play a card, for each aspect icon on that card that isn’t provided by your leader or base, you must pay 2 extra resources to play the card. This additional cost is referred to as the “aspect penalty,” and is something you’ll generally want to avoid while building your deck. (Some specific cards can ignore aspect penalties under certain conditions, but we’ll go over those at a later date.)

For example, if your leader is Luke Skywalker (Spark of Rebellion, 5) and you want to play a Cell Block Guard (Spark of Rebellion, 229), it would cost you 5 resources instead of 3, since Luke provides the Heroism aspect while the Cell Block Guard has the Villainy aspect. Meanwhile, a Fleet Lieutenant (Spark of Rebellion, 240) would cost you the normal 3 resources, since it only has the Heroism aspect.

Heroism and Villainy are special in that they are the aspects that are most commonly paired with other aspects on a card. For example, Leia Organa (Spark of Rebellion, 189) has both the Cunning and Heroism aspects. If your leader is Luke, who provides Vigilance and Heroism, then you would need a base that provides the Cunning aspect—such as Administrator's Tower (Spark of Rebellion, 29)—in order to play Leia without any aspect penalty. Meanwhile, if you wanted to play Grand Moff Tarkin (Spark of Rebellion, 84) in that same deck, he would cost 4 additional resources, since neither Luke nor your base provides the Command or Villainy aspects.

With all this in mind, at the end of the day, the exact contents of your deck are up to you. Perhaps you’ll want to stick with Heroism and bank on gambits like You're My Only Hope (Spark of Rebellion, 246); it’s possible you’ll choose to embrace Villainy and realize your Galactic Ambition (Spark of Rebellion, 235); or maybe you just want to swarm your opponent with both TIE/ln Fighters (Spark of Rebellion, 225) and Alliance X-Wings (Spark of Rebellion, 237) at the same time. The possibilities are, as always, unlimited!

We’ll go over each of the remaining four aspects in their own respective articles in the coming months. Be sure to stay tuned to learn what each of the aspects of Star Wars: Unlimited has to offer, and find out what playstyle is best for you!