Meta Update from Danny

Hello Star Wars™: Unlimited players! Game Design Lead Danny Schaefer here with a metagame update. I’ll answer everyone’s biggest question right off the bat: 

There are no changes to the suspended list with this update.

Prior to the release of Twilight of the Republic, we suspended Boba Fett (Collecting the Bounty) with the goal of increasing metagame diversity. Looking at Planetary Qualifiers for this set, we’re largely happy with the results. We’ve seen more than 30 different leaders make the Top 8 of PQs this season! More importantly, the top of the metagame is diverse, with 9 different leaders showing up in 40 or more PQ Top 8s. Among those leaders are a variety of strategies including aggro, tempo, midrange, and control. It’s also been fun to see leaders from across all three sets showing up at the top tables, with those nine most-used leaders including 3 leaders each from Spark of Rebellion (Han Solo, Sabine Wren, Emperor Palpatine), Shadows of the Galaxy (Bossk, Cad Bane, Qi’ra), and Twilight of the Republic (Jango Fett, Quinlan Vos, Anakin Skywalker).

With that said, no metagame is perfect, and there are certainly areas that didn’t pan out as we’d hoped. While the leaders from Twilight of the Republic are performing well, the rest of the set didn’t have the competitive impact we might have hoped. Most decks are still primarily composed of cards from Spark of Rebellion and Shadows of the Galaxy, with only a handful of new cards showing up regularly. This is exemplified by the top archetypes in the metagame—Han Solo (Audacious Smuggler) and Sabine Wren (Galvanized Revolutionary)—both of which are very powerful decks built almost entirely around cards from the first two sets. Ideally we’d like to see each new set have a larger presence in competitive play (and we’re optimistic that Jump to Lightspeed will have that).

In terms of deck representation, the top of the metagame looks pretty good. Han Solo is at the top with just over 20% of Top 8 PQ decks, followed by Sabine Wren at about 15%, then a few leaders hovering around 10% or so. This feels very reasonable for a relatively balanced, diverse metagame. Han Solo decks did win tournaments at a higher rate than their Top 8 percentage, amounting to just shy of 35% of PQ winners overall. This is higher than we’d like, but it is spread across a few different deck lists, with the one with the most wins being double-Cunning at about 24%. Given that spread and the Top 8 numbers, Han Solo seems clearly strong but isn’t setting off alarm bells like Boba Fett did.

The design and development team did discuss whether to adjust the suspended list at all prior to Jump to Lightspeed. Primarily these discussions centered around the double-Cunning Han Solo decks, both because of their win rate and because of the unpleasant play pattern created by the interaction between Han Solo, DJ, and Tech. This combination can permanently defeat an enemy resource, potentially as early as round 3 with the right draw. This isn’t the type of interaction we want to show up too frequently in the metagame, so we discussed the possibility of suspending DJ to break up the combo while still allowing Han Solo to exist. Ultimately, our analysis of the current metagame along with our internal testing suggest a strong possibility of a major Premier format shakeup with the release of Jump to Lightspeed—a shakeup that could very well reduce the prominence of Han Solo/DJ decks. With that in mind, we want to err on the side of not interfering in the metagame until we’ve seen what happens when Jump to Lightspeed comes out.

No other suspended list changes were discussed very deeply. In the last update, we mentioned we were keeping an eye on Energy Conversion Lab, but that’s less of a concern now with Tarkintown showing up more often and 5 new rare bases coming in Jump to Lightspeed. We did have the (brief) conversation of whether there was any possibility that Boba Fett could come off the Premier suspended list, but very quickly came to a consensus that he should stay on the list given how fresh his suspension is and the current state of Premier. We expect to be able to discuss that option more seriously after we’ve seen how Jump to Lightspeed and Legends of the Force affect the metagame. And of course, we’ll keep an eye on how the format is shaping up and be ready to step in if anything unexpected arises in the early days of Jump to Lightspeed.

That’s all for now! There are a ton of exciting cards coming in March, and we can’t wait to see what you all come up with. Thanks for reading!

Written by Danny Schaefer