Under Construction

As we have stated many times before, Star Wars™: Unlimited is a trading card game of unlimited possibilities, and nothing demonstrates those possibilities more than building your very own deck. However, this is often easier said than done; after all, if there are so many possible decks to build, how do you determine the best one for you?

Fear not! Today, we’re going to talk about the process of building a deck for the constructed format (the primary format for the game), as well as share some tips and tricks from game designers Danny Schaefer, Tyler Parrot, and Jeremy Zwirn!

From a basic standpoint, all your deck needs is 1 leader, 1 base, and at least 50 cards for your draw deck (consisting of units, events, and upgrades). You can’t include more than 3 copies of any card in your deck, but aside from that, there are no restrictions on what you include. When building a deck for a tournament, you can also include a “sideboard” of up to 10 cards; these are extra cards that can be added to or swapped with cards in your draw deck in between the games of a tournament round. Keep in mind that you can’t sideboard a leader or base, but beyond that, any other card is fair game!

Since deckbuilding is so open-ended, the aspects exist to help give your deck focus. We’ve talked about this before, but to recap, your leader provides 2 aspect icons while your base provides 1, giving you 3 total aspect icons to work with. For example, if your leader is Leia Organa (Spark of Rebellion, 9) and your base is the Administrator's Tower (Spark of Rebellion, 29), then your deck has access to the Command (green), Heroism (white), and Cunning (yellow) aspect icons. Remember, if you try to play a card that has aspect icons that aren’t provided by your leader or base, you must pay 2 extra resources for each missing icon (this is known as the “aspect penalty”). This means that in the Leia deck example from above, if you wanted to play Sabine Wren (Spark of Rebellion, 142), it would cost you 2 extra resources since your deck has access to the Heroism (white) aspect but not Aggression (red). That said, some leaders, such as Hera Syndulla (Spark of Rebellion, 8), have abilities that let you ignore aspect penalties on certain cards, which could change how you shape your deck.

All this brings us to our first big deckbuilding question: where do we start? There are lots of answers to this question, so let’s take a look at how our designers approach their deckbuilding:

Danny: “Start by choosing your deck’s gameplan. Sometimes this means building to maximize a powerful leader ability, other times it can be a more general goal, such as ‘be aggressive and attack as fast as possible’ or ‘accelerate my resources to get to my leader and expensive units quickly.’ Once you’ve decided on a direction, pick the aspects and leader that best suit that gameplan."

Tyler: “The obvious starting place is to pick a character I like as a leader and build around them. Alternatively, when you find two cards whose abilities complement each other, they can form the foundation of your deck—find other cards that work with them and choose a leader that maximizes their combined strengths. Finally, if you have a playstyle that you enjoy, whether it’s ‘win fast’ or ‘survive for a long time,’ look for cards that help you accomplish that playstyle’s goals."

Jeremy: “Leaders are an integral part of Star Wars: Unlimited, so choosing a leader is a good starting point. They often give you a direction on how to build you deck; for example, Leia Organa works best with lots of Rebel units in your deck."

It sounds like our designers have all at least considered choosing your leader to be the first step of deckbuilding. That does help us narrow our deck’s focus, but there are still lots of leaders to choose from. How do the designers pick the best leader for their deck?  

Tyler: “This is Star Wars—play your favorite character! Otherwise, if you’re building around a particular playstyle or card combination, I’d suggest looking for a leader that synergizes with the cards you’ve already selected. Leaders with low-deploy costs are meant to join the fight early, either to apply pressure right away or to clean up the opponent’s cheap ground units. But beware: those leaders also tend to have a much smaller impact on the game than the leaders you have to wait for!"

Jeremy: “Sometimes you have a favorite character that you want to play, and sometimes you want to build a deck around a leader’s ability. For example, Director Krennic (Spark of Rebellion, 1) has an interesting ability: each friendly damaged unit gets +1 power. This ability may inspire you to build a deck with many units that have the Sentinel keyword to make your opponent damage them, and units that have the Grit keyword to give additional power to your damaged units."

Okay, so we’ve picked a leader and we know what kind of playstyle we want the deck to be. Moving on to the draw deck, how do we strike a proper balance between units, events, and upgrades?

Danny: “Unit count depends hugely on the deck archetype, but you should generally skew toward having more units to be successful. I’ve personally built aggressive decks with 45+ units, but I have also built more control-heavy decks with around 20 units or so."

Tyler: “I’d also say that most decks want to be made up of mostly units. I usually try to have roughly 35 units and 15 non-unit cards as a general guideline, but I’ve gone as low as 25 units in a grindy control deck and as high as 44 units in a proactive, ‘bodies on the board’ deck. It also can depend on your chosen aspects—Command decks will generally want to include more units, while Cunning decks will generally want more events, for example. Just remember, if you have fewer units, you want to make sure the events and upgrades you include are capable of defeating or disabling your opponent’s units, since leaving an arena unguarded is an easy way to lose!"

It sounds like a healthy average for building a deck is around 35 unit cards, with the remaining 15 being taken up by events and upgrades. Obviously, you’ll want to make adjustments based on your deck’s playstyle, but shooting for those numbers as a starting point seems like a solid way to go!

Now that we’ve covered the basics of deckbuilding, let’s take a look at some more in-depth insights. In a game like Star Wars: Unlimited, it’s easy to be enamored with all the awesome cards in your collection and want to include all of your favorites at once. Let’s see what the designers have to say about some common deckbuilding “traps” to avoid when deciding what to include in your deck:

Danny: “Prioritize early plays. Having nothing to do on round 1 can sometimes put you very far behind, so I like to include at least 12-15 cards that cost 1 or 2 resources in my deck. In aggressive decks I go much higher than that, since starting the game with two 1-cost units can help you get ahead and stay ahead."

Tyler: “Don’t ignore space! A lot of aggressive decks can steal games by taking advantage of an undefended space arena. I generally don’t leave home without at least 10 spaceships in my deck. Also, while events and upgrades can be exciting, this is a game that revolves around units. Treat your non-unit cards as the “spice” that you’ll use to capitalize on unique game situations, not the foundation of your deck’s strategy."

Jeremy: “Overall, don’t include too many high-cost cards in your deck. Make sure you have enough 2- and 3-cost units, typically at least 12 and 8, respectively."

With that, you should have anything you’d need to know in order to approach deckbuilding in Star Wars: Unlimited. However, if you’re still looking for some inspiration, we asked the designers what their favorite types of decks were to play:

Danny: “I like a variety of decks. While it’s easiest to play decks that always take the same role (i.e. an aggressive deck that always wants to attack the base or a control-heavy deck that always wants to hit enemy units), I often prefer more flexible builds. I like being able to assess a matchup and take on different roles depending on the opponent’s deck and draw. Even in my more linear decks, I want a good mix of ground and space units and interactive events so I have options of how to play."

Tyler: “One of my favorite decks in Spark of Rebellion is an aggressive Trooper deck that closes out the game with Darth Vader (Spark of Rebellion, 10). At first, it looks like it’s trying to win the game quickly with cheap units—and it often does—but it still resources to 7 so it can deploy Darth Vader. If the opponent manages to survive the rush of early Stormtroopers, Vader can usually finish them off.

“Beyond that, I tend to gravitate towards ‘midrange’ decks in every game I play. This means I like early threats with plenty of ways to disrupt my opponent’s plans, which means Jyn Erso (Spark of Rebellion, 18) is exactly the kind of leader I like to pilot. The more I can catch my opponent off guard with Spark of Rebellion (Spark of Rebellion, 200) and control the board with Jyn’s protective debuff, the more I can get my opponent just off-balance enough to find a weakness and exploit it.

“Also, I think a lot of people are going to underestimate how strong Chewbacca (Spark of Rebellion, 3) can be as the leader of a control deck. I’ve had huge success with him, as he turns all my cheap units into roadblocks and all but guarantees I reach the late game where my expensive powerhouses like Luke Skywalker (Spark of Rebellion, 51) can take over a game."

Jeremy: “I’ll build and play anything, though I prefer decks that can play the long game. You could say I’m more of a control-focused player."

There you have it! You should be fully equipped to start building your own Star Wars: Unlimited decks. Before we go, Danny and Tyler both have a few more considerations that they’d like to put forth:

Danny: “Your game plan will greatly inform your cost curve. Some decks want to stop at 5 resources and play nothing that costs more than that. Others can go up to 8 or 9 resources or more, and will want a selection of powerful, high-cost cards that can win the game on their own. On that note, don’t be afraid to include some narrower-focused but powerful cards in your deck. If a card is game-winning in its best matchups, it may be worth including a couple copies even if it’s weak in other matchups, since you always have the option to resource it when it isn’t useful."

Tyler: “Star Wars: Unlimited is a game of experimentation. If you have an idea that doesn’t work out the first time, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea! Pay attention to how you lose and think of ways to adjust your deck to improve its odds. One of the reasons we designed this game to play quickly was so that players could get through several games in an afternoon, giving them time to adjust their decks along the way."

What kind of deck will you build? We can’t wait for all of you to start exploring the endless possibilities when Star Wars: Unlimited arrives on March 8, 2024!