Lightspeed Insights: MJ Cutts

Just a few more weeks until the release of Jump to Lightspeed, the fourth set of the Star Wars™: Unlimited trading card game! As we count down the days, we sat down for some Q&A with MJ Cutts (one of the set's designers) to see what sort of insights they could provide about the set's creation. Let's see what they have to say!

Can you share some insights about how the game's fourth set, Jump to Lightspeed, came to be? What led to the set's theme being focused on piloting and epic space battles?

While I wasn't around for the beginning of Set 4's development, I know from Danny's stories that the team knew, from the outset, they wanted to define how pilots exist in our game fairly quickly. I imagine that the rest of the theme—that heavier weight on space—was a natural result of the initial piloting focus. A fun fact from me is that our package of “Capital Ship-matters” cards—Admiral Piett (Jump to Lightspeed, 5), Planetary Bombardment (Jump to Lightspeed, 181), and more—weren't in the set when I joined, but I insisted to add some as a callout to the large part of the fanbase that wants to play with the biggest starships they can collect.

The big new mechanic of Jump to Lightspeed is the Piloting keyword. How did your team go about designing this keyword and how it works in-game? What were some of the unique challenges that came up while designing it? 

Piloting went through many, many wild iterations throughout the design process; at one point, the keyword gave the pilot's traits to their ship! We also tried making Piloting this strange thing where you'd treat both the vehicle and pilot as a single, mashed together card. Ultimately, Danny wanted our solution to use as little new design concepts as possible because, since Piloting doubles the number of ways a card can be played, it's also a lot more for players to comfortably keep in mind.

Jump to Lightspeed largely shifts the focus from the ground arena to the space arena. How do you think that will affect the metagame and how people build decks for the Premier format?

I expect to see a greater variety of space aggro decks, as well as some big inevitable threats from our new Capital Ship units and their supporting leader, Admiral Piett. More broadly, I like to tell folks that Jump to Lightspeed is our first set to “dimensionalize” players' sideboards. That means that, in addition to including sideboard cards for fighting certain leaders and matchups, strong decks will need some amount of counterplay to upgrades or space units across their deck and sideboard.

What's your favorite Vehicle unit in Jump to Lightspeed? What's your favorite Pilot card?

For favorite Vehicle unit, I'm torn. Blue Leader (Jump to Lightspeed, 96) is an exciting, powerful card exploring the still-novel world of arena-switching effects. However, I did not design Blue Leader, so in the name of self-interest I'll call out the Raddus (Jump to Lightspeed, 104): an exciting card to design both as a new Capital Ship for hero decks and as a thematic, simple typal design with an aggressive stat-line.

For my favorite Pilot card, I'll stick with my Resistance trait theme and spotlight BB-8 (Jump to Lightspeed, 145). BB-8 rewards Resistance cards just like the Raddus, but, where the Raddus is a late-game threat, BB-8 is much more explosive. I love readying effects, even if they scare the rest of the design team!

Now that we've officially entered Year 2 of the game, what sort of high-level changes to the game can players expect? What are you most looking forward to?

The highest-level change of Year 2, to get granular, is a much more solid foundation of standards and tests for card power levels and “vanilla tests.” Year 2 greatly tightens our power band, reducing the number of cards that overshoot the mark or don't stand out from the crowd. This tightening brings us even more deck diversity, midrange-y gameplay, and confident designs, and I'm thrilled for folks to see that unfold.

Can you provide some deckbuilding tips and tricks for the new set? 

As you're updating your deck for the release of Jump to Lightspeed, or building a new deck from scratch, I'd recommend keeping a few things in mind. First, upgrade removal cards like Bamboozle and Disabling Fang Fighter become much more important to have in your main deck or sideboard; these cards counter Pilots well! Secondly, remember to balance space and ground units; having all units in one arena renders you vulnerable to Outmaneuvers and Bombing Runs, but stretching yourself too thin across arenas can make it hard to build a critical mass of units. Lastly, keep in mind that Pilots are upgrades for your own upgrade synergies! Leaders from earlier sets like Gar Saxon and The Mandalorian love upgrades and benefit significantly from the powerful new options this set brings to the table.

Are there any additional thoughts about Jump to Lightspeed that you would like to share?

I dreamed of getting to work on a game like Star Wars: Unlimited for so many years. As my first set to co-lead—both in development then and in marketing now—it's been an incredible milestone in my life. We put a lot of late hours, hard-fought debates, and fond memories into these cards, you know? I hope players keep that human element in mind with every spoiler they see and every game they play.