June 18, 2025 | Written by Peter Schumacher, with contributions from Ryan Serrano

As a trading card game, Star Wars™: Unlimited naturally is host to multiple ways to play. In just the game's first year, we've had the limited formats of draft play and sealed play, the multiplayer format of Twin Suns, and—of course—the primary Premier format for both the Casual and Competitive scene. Starting next year, we'll also have the Eternal format, in which players can enjoy Premier-style games with the entire card pool. But what if we told you that we had another format cooking up behind the scenes?

Welcome to the Trilogy format, a brand-new way to play Star Wars: Unlimited! This is a head-to-head constructed format geared toward players who are eager to test their deckbuilding prowess and matchup knowledge. We've got a good amount to share for this one, so let's dive right in and see what this new format has to offer!

A Trio of Decks

The foremost feature of the Trilogy format comes from its namesake: in order to play a Trilogy match, you must build three different decks. At their core, these decks have the same structure as the Premier format: each deck consists of exactly 1 leader, exactly 1 base, and a minimum of 50 cards in the draw deck itself. However, where the Premier format restricts you to a maximum of 3 copies of any given card in your deck, the Trilogy format restricts you to a maximum of 3 copies of any given card across all three decks. This means that, if you wanted to include 3 copies of Open Fire (Spark of Rebellion, 172) in one of your decks, you couldn't include any copies of it in either of your other two decks. You could put 2 copies in one deck and 1 in another, or you could put a single copy in all three decks; whatever combination you want, so long as you don't have more than three across the board.

In similar fashion, each deck has to have a different leader and a different base than the other two. For example, you won't be able to build three different Sabine Wren (Spark of Rebellion, 14) plus Energy Conversion Lab (Spark of Rebellion, 22) decks, but you could build three different Aggression-Command-Heroism decks, if you really wanted to (and your collection has enough different cards to support it). Aside from that and the maximum copies rule explained above, there's no restriction on which leaders, bases, or cards you include in your decks—similar to the Eternal format, the game's entire card pool is legal in Trilogy, so go wild and build the three decks of your dreams!

The Best of Three

Once you have your three Trilogy decks built, it's time to take them to a match! When you sit down to play a Trilogy match, before any games take place, you and your opponent begin with a “Ban Phase.” In the Ban Phase, each player presents their three leader-base pairings to their opponent, and their opponent secretly chooses one of those decks to ban from the match. The two of you then simultaneously reveal your choices, and the chosen decks are set aside and are unavailable for the rest of the match. After that, each player secretly chooses one of their two remaining decks to begin the match with. These are then also revealed simultaneously, and each player uses the chosen deck for game one.

Whenever a game in the Trilogy format is finished, the winning deck for that game is set aside and can no longer be used for that match. Since this is a best-of-three format, this means that you will need to win with both of your unbanned decks in order to claim the match. If you lose the first game, you can choose which of your two available decks to use for the second game, but once you've won a game, you'll have to use the other deck until you win again. So, not only does this format test your deckbuilding skills, but it also tests your ability to pilot each of the decks you built, adding new strategic layers to every match!

A Word from Ryan Serrano

To provide a bit of insights into the development of the Trilogy format, we asked the design team's “Rules Admiral” Ryan Serrano to share some thoughts. Here's what he had to say:

“Trilogy was created to appeal to dedicated Star Wars: Unlimited players who are looking to show off their deckbuilding talents and matchup knowledge. In Trilogy, it's not enough to be an excellent pilot of just one deck, since that deck might be the one your opponent decides to ban! Instead of committing to one deck, players will need to be flexible and know how to play each of their decks into different matchups to claim victory. In addition, it allows seasoned players who might be interested in exploring new matchups the opportunity to ban their least favorite deck from their opponent so they aren't forced to play games against it over and over again. Trilogy is a format in which you never have to play against the Sabine leader with Energy Conversion Lab if you don't want to!

“As for the card limits, we implemented those primarily for three reasons: First, we wanted to create more interesting deckbuilding decisions. If players want to include three copies of a particularly powerful card, they have to decide which deck needs those copies the most; maybe it's better to run one in each deck, but maybe it's better to put them all in one deck. Second, we wanted to encourage deck variety; it's hard to build three decks around the Underworld trait, for instance, if you can't put the best Underworld cards in every deck!

“Finally, it was important to us that this format didn't demand additional collecting from players. We wanted this to be an exciting new way to play a match of StarWars: Unlimited, not a requirement that players go out and seek out more copies of hard-to-find cards that they already spent the time and effort collecting a playset of. This way, players can fully experience all the fun of the Trilogy format with just a normal playset of cards!”

We also asked Ryan to provide some handy tips and tricks for building Trilogy decks, and here's what he had to offer:

• Try to build decks that have access to different card pools. You'll have a harder time building three competitive Vigilance-Aggression-Villainy decks, for example, when you aren't able to use more than three copies of any given card!
• Think about what deck you're likely to ban when deciding what decks to build. You might bring three decks with the same weakness, planning to ban the deck that is favored into them. Or you might want to target a specific deck you expect many of your opponents to bring, bringing three decks with favorable matchups into that archetype and forcing your opponent to try to win with it.
• Try new things. With three decks, you could play mind games with your opponent by bringing two decks they'll recognize and something out of left field; if they ban the familiar, you can surprise them with your more unexpected deck. If they ban the wild one out of fear of the unknown, you get to play two solid decks against them.
• Most importantly, have fun! Part of the joy of Trilogy is you can create fun thematic synergies between your stable of decks. Will you be the player who brings three different Han Solo decks? Or maybe you'll bring Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and Emperor Palpatine for a throne room-themed showdown? Mix and match to your heart's content!

Ryan's already hard at work on finalizing the official rules for Trilogy, which you can look forward to reading as part of a Comprehensive Rules document update in the coming months!

Future Formats

Trilogy isn't the only new format that the designers have been working on. They're already pursuing ideas for even more ways to play Star Wars: Unlimited, including formats that prioritize more casual players. You'll have to wait a while before we have any additional information to share on those, but for now, just know that there's a lot to look forward to for this game in the future!