As with all things in Star Wars™: Unlimited, there are many ways to play with this game of unlimited possibilities. In addition to constructed play, which we talked about back in November, two of the most common formats are draft play and sealed play. We’ve mentioned before how Star Wars: Unlimited booster packs were designed with draft and sealed in mind from the very start, and today we’re finally going to talk about exactly what that entails.   

What is Draft Play?

A popular format for weekly in-store events, draft play involves you selecting (“drafting”) individual cards out of a limited pool of booster packs and then building your deck as you go. The nice thing about draft play is that everyone starts off on equal footing and must build their decks using whatever they can get!

To draft in Star Wars: Unlimited, each player sits around a large table and opens three booster packs apiece. First, everyone takes out the leader cards from those packs while keeping the remaining cards in their separate stacks (without looking at them).  

Once everyone’s ready, each player simultaneously chooses one of their three leaders to keep and passes the other two to the right. Then, each player chooses one of the two leaders that were just passed to them and passes the other to the right. After this point, everyone should have three leader cards: one that they started with, and two that were passed to them.

Next, each player chooses one of the booster packs that they opened. The common base/token card from that pack is placed in a pile at the center of the table, and then each player simultaneously chooses one card to keep from the pack before passing the other cards to the player on their left. They then draft their next card from the cards that were just passed to them. This continues until all cards from the first booster pack have been drafted. 

You can probably see where this is going. After the first booster pack is done, everyone repeats the process with their second pack, except this time everybody passes their cards to the right. Once the second pack has been completely drafted, the process repeats one more time, this time passing everything to the left again.  

At the end of this process, each player should have drafted 45 cards (three leaders plus 42 other cards). These are the cards that they can now use to build their deck. The deckbuilding rules for draft (and sealed) play are slightly different from the normal rules:

For starters, a draw deck must have a minimum of 30 cards instead of the usual 50. In addition, there’s no limit to how many copies of the same card a player can include in their deck. If someone drafts five copies of Cell Block Guard and wants to include all five in their deck, they can do so!

A player can use any of the three leaders that they drafted. Their base can be any common base from the set (regardless of the bases in the packs they opened), or it can be a rare base that they picked during the draft itself. Finally, a player is free to change up their deck between rounds, so long as they stick to the cards they drafted.

That’s all there is to it! These events feel fresh and exciting each time you play, since the pool of available cards will be completely random. We highly recommend giving draft play a try at your local game store! 

What is Sealed Play?

The format of Prerelease events, sealed play combines the limited card pool aspect of draft play with the more open-ended deckbuilding approach of constructed play. Like draft play, everyone starts the event off on equal footing, and like constructed play, this format gives you the opportunity to let your deckbuilding skills shine.  

At the beginning of a sealed play event, you open six booster packs. You must use the cards within those packs to build a deck. Just like in draft play, your minimum draw deck size is 30 cards, and you can include any number of copies of a card as you want (so long as they were all acquired within those six booster packs). Also like with draft, you can use any common base you want, regardless of what was in your packs. However, if you want to use a rare base, it must have been one of the cards from those six packs.  

For leader cards, you typically will only be able to use the ones from your packs, just like with everything else. However, for prerelease events in which you utilize a Prerelease Box, the promo leader cards that come in that box are also available as options for your sealed deck.  

Like with draft, you can change up the contents of your sealed play deck in between rounds as much as you like, so long as you only utilize the cards that were in your six booster packs.  

There you have it. Sealed play is fantastic for testing your deckbuilding skills while also growing your collection. And since prerelease events for each set feature this format, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to try out sealed play for yourself each time a new set comes along! 

Many Different Ways to Play

As of today, we’ve covered constructed, draft, and sealed play; three of the four primary formats for Star Wars: Unlimited. Keep an eye out over the next few weeks for a preview of the fourth and final format, multiplayer!