July 3, 2025 | Written by Tyler Fultz

What's the easiest thing in a trading card game like Star Wars™: Unlimited? Building a new deck! What's the hardest thing in a trading card game like Star Wars: Unlimited? Also building a new deck! Deckbuilding is a skill that is easy to learn, but hard to master. With Legends of the Force right around the corner and the Galactic Championship fast approaching, you'll want to brush up on your deckbuilding skills! Today, I'm going to talk through Premier-format deckbuilding tips and tricks, as well as walk through the process with a deck inspired by the new set. Let's get going!

Step 1: Get Inspired

Any new deck starts with you, the builder, getting inspired by the cards. Maybe your opponent played a spicy new combo at a local tournament that you want to emulate? Maybe you're super excited by a new leader and their possibilities? Maybe, like me, you're juiced to try the new “Use the Force” mechanic in Legends of the Force? However you do it, start with something new and powerful. The trick is to ensure that the new plays you're making add up to more than the sum of their parts. There are many simple, powerful plays in Star Wars: Unlimited that you can use for comparison. Say your new two-card combo takes 5 resources; is it more powerful than just playing Poe Dameron (Shadows of the Galaxy, 153)? Make comparisons like these often to properly benchmark your new build.

For today's build, I'm inspired by the new leader from Legends of the Force, Avar Kriss (Legends of the Force, 7). Her ability to generate your Force token for free each turn is loads of value that can powerfully combine with cards like Jedi Consular (Legends of the Force, 94) and Eeth Koth (Legends of the Force, 97) to ramp into powerful plays early. So, she's our starting point!

Step 2: Know your Archetype and Win Condition

It's critical with a new build that you understand what archetype you're building. “Archetype” is a fancy way of saying “your deck's game plan.” You also need to know how that deck will win the game; this is your “win condition.” To put it another way, your deck archetype is the vehicle that gets you to your win condition. So, much like you wouldn't choose a boat to get you across the desert, you don't want to put your deck inspiration into an archetype that it's not suited for. Let's examine the potential options:

• Aggro (short for “aggressive”) decks attempt to blitz their opponent's base to 0 health as quickly as possible, rather than emphasize a long-term game plan. Aggro decks focus on converting their cards into damage; they prefer to engage in a race rather than a war of attrition. They are all about swarming the board and finishing the game before their opponent can turn the tide. These decks typically use leaders that deploy early (4-5 resources) and try to win early (at 5-6 resources.)
• Midrange decks are about playing high-value and efficient cards. These decks play a more attrition-based game against aggro decks, before turning the tide (aka “stabilizing”) and closing the game. Against control decks, midrange looks to be more proactive and aggressive, knowing that the game cannot go on too long. These decks typically use leaders that deploy on resources 5 to 7 and seek to win the game in the 6 to 9 resource range.
• Control decks are the weakest and slowest early game decks and the strongest in the late game. They're looking to use lots of unit-removal cards and survive to the late game where they can overwhelm their opponent after taking advantage in resources, hand size, and/or the board state. They often use cards that increase their resources like Resupply (Spark of Rebellion, 126) to gain additional advantage in the late game. They generally use leaders that deploy on resource 7 or more and seek to win on 10+ resources.

For today's Avar Kriss deck, Midrange seems like our best option. The aforementioned combo with Jedi Consular will allow us to play powerful units in the mid-game, and Kriss herself, if we leverage the Force mechanic well, should come out at 7 resources. We'll also stock up on effective mid-game units like Poe Dameron (Shadows of the Galaxy, 153), Blue Leader (Jump to Lightspeed, 96), and Mace Windu (Legends of the Force, 149). Our win condition will be to have two or more of these powerful units on the board when Kriss deploys to close the game. And, by pairing with an Aggression base, we not only get Mace, but other powerful Force trait-enabled cards like Force Throw (Spark of Rebellion, 167)!

Step 3: Know Your Personal Playstyle

Now that we've got a solid plan to build around, it's time to be honest about the human factors involved. Do you actually want to do what your deck is asking of you? For example, there are plenty of people in the world who aren't comfortable playing a control deck; they require long games and lots of decision-making. To a card game glutton like me, that sounds like a good time, but for a lot of people, that's a painful way to spend a tournament! Be honest with yourself. The earlier in the deckbuilding process you admit your own limitations and recognize your strengths, the happier you'll be.

Luckily, I have a lot of practice with the kind of midrange deck we're building today for Avar Kriss. I played multiple tournaments with Anakin Skywalker (Twilight of the Republic, 12) in the Twilight of the Republic metagame, and he occupied much of the same upper-midrange zone. I'm mentally prepared to leverage Kriss' value in the midgame!

Step 4: Plan Your Lines

To build out a full list, it's often best to think of the game in linear plays. After all, Star Wars: Unlimited gameplay doesn't happen suddenly or in a vacuum, it's the result of sequential turns by each player. That means that often the best way to fill out a deck is by layering different lines of play on top of each other. Imagine your deck's absolute dream draw: What cards would you play? Those are the cards you for sure want three copies of in the deck. From there, see what your secondary path is and add two or three of those. Only after you've done this a few times should you begin looking at adding the one-off combo pieces and removal cards you'll need for improvisation during a tournament.

For our Avar Kriss deck, the most effective line of play revolves around Jedi Consular. His four health will make it very likely he sticks around until we can use his ability to play a 5-cost unit on our three-resource turn. The best 5-cost unit we have access to in our Heroism/Command/Aggression suite is Poe Dameron, so he'll be our prospective round 2 play. By the time we reach the third round, either our opponent will have had to dedicate resources to defeating our Consular (which is great, because Poe can punish them), or we'll get to play a 6-cost unit. Assuming the Jedi Consular is no longer on the table, we could play Eeth Koth, who has solid stats and a resource ramp ability we'll want to leverage. We're now potentially on 6 resources and can play the powerful new Mace Windu unit before using multiple “Use the Force” cards on our 7-resource turn, allowing us to deploy the massive 4/10 Avar Kriss while our opponent is still at 6 resources. Our plan B and plan C also have powerful resource cheating abilities in either General's Blade (Twilight of the Republic, 121) or the reliable Resupply. The important part is that all three of these paths feature multiple cards that could be used interchangeably to support a powerful overall build.

Step 5: Check Your Ratios

Now that we know our key lines, it's time to check that we have the right blend of tools to form a functional deck. Check to make sure you've got the following:

• Enough round 1 plays. You will want a minimum of eleven or twelve 1-2 cost units to ensure you can reliably draw an opener. Missing that initial play can massively set back your game plan. For our Avar Kriss deck, we're going with three copies each of the four 2-cost units from our lines plan: Jedi Consular, Adi Gallia (Legends of the Force, 142), Infused Brawler (Legends of the Force, 156), and Phoenix Squadron A-Wing (Jump to Lightspeed, 95). The initial three have powerful synergies with our leader, base, and upgrades, while the A-Wing gives us a reliably-statted space unit.
• Late game bombs to close the game. A “bomb” is a unit so big and powerful that if your opponent doesn't deal with it quickly, it will win you the game. Typically, for a midrange deck you'll want 4-6 of these (aggro decks will want less, control decks more.) For our Avar Kriss deck, we're taking the powerful Kelleran Beq (Legends of the Force, 100), the new Yoda (Legends of the Force, 101), and the always reliable Home One (Spark of Rebellion, 102). Note that all these cards have a powerful impact on the game when they're played. This is important for choosing effective bombs. The chance they will be removed by your opponent is high, so make sure you get immediate value!
• Enough removal cards to disrupt your opponent. Removal cards can take many forms. They might be events that damage or defeat your opponent's units, such as Takedown (Spark of Rebellion, 77); they could be “bounce” effects from your own units, such as Enfys Nest (Twilight of the Republic, 198); or it could even be an Ambush unit like Blue Leader, which we mentioned earlier. Whatever form your removal takes, you'll need to make sure you have enough of it to match your archetype. Aggro decks typically have the least removal and control the most, with midrange somewhere in the middle. For our Avar Kriss deck, we're taking the powerful Force trait tool, Force Throw, the new and synergistic Sorcerous Blast (Legends of the Force, 172), and the reliable Open Fire (Spark of Rebellion, 172).

Without further ado, here's our final Avar Kriss main deck:

Step 6: Add a Sideboard

Your sideboard is a group of 10 cards that you bring to the game alongside your main deck. Between games in a best-of-three match, you can add these cards to your deck and remove cards from your main deck. Typically, players use their sideboard to hold “toolbox” cards that might be powerful, but very narrow in their use; for example, including Disabling Fang Fighter (Spark of Rebellion, 162) for use against decks running lots of upgrades. A sideboard can also be a way to shore up your game against other archetypes. In the case of our Avar Kriss deck, we will want cards that help us effectively control aggro decks that might be trying to blitz past us, as well as tools to slip under the iron curtain control decks are lowering. For the aggro matchup, let's try three copies of Sundari Peacekeeper (Shadows of the Galaxy, 98) for some Restore, and two copies of Yoda's Lightsaber (Legends of the Force, 102) for additional healing. For the control matchup, we're going to double down on the hand discard effects that we already have in the main deck thanks to Poe and Force Throw. To that end, we're going to use three Jedi In Hiding (Legends of the Force, 159) and two copies of Pillage (Shadows of the Galaxy, 181) to supercharge our discard potential in longer matchups.

Time to Put it On the Table

With these 6 steps complete, your deck should be ready to play! Once you begin testing it out, keep a mental log of which cards you resource and which ones you don't, as well as what play lines you pursue and what lines you don't. In the beginning, try as many options as you can. Even the best-crafted first draft will reveal lines of play that turn out to be more or less powerful than you thought. Just don't stop practicing with and tweaking the build!

Hopefully today you've learned a technique or two to improve your deckbuilding skills. No one will ever be perfect at it, and even the best players will argue about what cards belong in the most well-known decks. It's part art, part science. There will never be a “perfect” build, and that's the beauty of deckbuilding in Star Wars: Unlimited!