Welcome back to The Fifth Trooper’s coverage of Star Wars: Unlimited TCG! Today I’m going to be discussing sideboarding, a key element of competitive tournament gameplay.
In Star Wars Unlimited, sideboarding can be an important part of competitive play. The sideboard allows you options to change your deck in between games of a best two out of three match, and using your sideboard correctly can make the difference between winning and losing!
The basic rules for deck construction and sideboarding in Star Wars Unlimited competitive play are simple: you pick one leader and one base and build a deck with fifty minimum cards (this is often referred to as a “maindeck”). You then also get to pick up to ten cards as a sideboard, and cannot have more than three copies of the same card in both sideboard and maindeck combined. Leaders and bases cannot be sideboarded either.
In between games in a best of three match, players are allowed to swap cards from their main deck with cards from their sideboard (as long as both maindeck and sideboard are a legal size afterwards). This gives players an opportunity to customize their deck in order to better address the matchup they just played; the act of making these changes is often referred to as “sideboarding”.
For example, if I am playing an aggro deck and find myself struggling with an opponent who is playing a lot of healing cards, I might find it useful to bring in Wolffe, Suspicious Veteran from my sideboard, as his ability can be used to block my opponent’s healing effects. However, since Wolffe is a somewhat “narrow” card and only useful in some matchups, he probably wouldn’t be something I’d want in my maindeck.
It’s important to note that sideboarding only occurs between games in a match — you cannot sideboard for the first game of a match and must return to your original maindeck configuration after the match ends and before you face your next opponent! In essence, this means that every match (assuming you finish on time, neither player is DQed, etc.) will have one “maindeck vs. maindeck” game and then up to two games with both players sideboarding.
One other relevant rules note is that prewritten “sideboard guides” are not allowed. While some other games allow players to write out their sideboard plan for different matchups on a note card or similar and consult that to assist in sideboarding, this is not the case in Star Wars Unlimited!
If you want more detail, the tournament deck construction and sideboarding rules can be found in Star Wars Unlimited’s tournament regulations (I am linking to the Organized Play page here rather than the tournament regulations directly because the URL may change as they update the document), since this isn’t necessarily something that comes up in ordinary play. (That said, practicing best two out of three matches with sideboarding may be a prudent idea even outside a tournament!)
So, that’s how a Star Wars Unlimited sideboard works — but how should you actually use one to increase your chances of winning in a tournament? There are multiple different approaches to sideboarding and I don’t have detailed statistics proving one strategy as definitely better than another, so here are some that you might want to consider:
Perhaps the most classic sideboard tactic is to bring in cards that will help your deck to do better in bad matchups. For example, Aneil S. (aka MindsDesire) won the October 2024 Planetary Qualifier in Dallas using a Boba Green (30 HP base) build. His maindeck strategy — a powerful midrange composition — was notably weak to control, so Aneil spent seven of his ten sideboard slots on cards that he could bring in to improve his odds in those matchups! (For more on Aneil’s deck and strategy, you can check out my interview with him over on YouTube!)
In general, this requires knowing what matchups you most struggle with and what cards might improve your odds in those matchups. Sometimes, these cards can be too narrow to be worth playing in your main deck — but they can still be worth including via the sideboard.
Sometimes, cards exist that might not be easy to counter by “normal means” but don’t see play in all builds. For example, many decks in Star Wars Unlimited do not maindeck upgrade removal, since not all decks play upgrades and many of the ones they do play can be dealt with by killing the unit that carries them. Similarly, not all decks play removal that works on Lurking Tie Phantom.
However, it might be prudent to include some counters for these cards if they’re causing you problems. You might not want to commit to playing upgrade removal maindeck, but having some copies of Confiscate or Disabling Fang Fighter in the sideboard might be quite reasonable. If that Lurking Tie Phantom is too hard for your build to deal with, perhaps you should bring in Make an Opening?
The sideboard offers opportunities to run these sorts of narrower, more situational counters without having to commit to play them in all matchups.
Another useful sideboard tactic is to sideboard away cards that your opponent can easily counter. Perhaps you’ve seen an opponent run lots of upgrade removal and you decide the time is not ripe to play Traitorous — well, instead of just resourcing those cards when you draw them, you can pull something in from your sideboard to replace those cards and deny the counter to your opponent!
This can be especially relevant with cards that are extremely vulnerable to specific counters (like Traitorous and upgrade removal). Yes, you could just resource the card instead of playing it — but you could also resource the replacement card if need be, and having a less risky effect might offer you some good options!
One often-neglected area of practice is what’s known as “mirror matches” — matches in which you are paired against an opponent who is either using the same deck as you or a very similar one. In the most extreme case, the opponent might have the literal same exact same deck that you’re playing — but you may also encounter people talking about “aggro mirrors” or “hard control mirrors”, where the exact deck might not be the same but both players are using builds with similar overall archetypes.
While some players don’t like practicing mirrors, they can be very important. When I was actively playing and competing in another TCG prior to Star Wars Unlimited’s release, I once had a season where I felt very prepared — I was practicing with good players, I had what I thought was a great plan and deck to take on the popular “meta’ decks of the time, and I was even regularly winning against the perceived best deck in the format!
However, my preparations had one major flaw — I hadn’t spent much time at all practicing the mirror match, and it came back to bite me! In several Road to Nationals events, I found myself doing well overall but losing mirror matches that prevented me from making the cut — mirrors matter!
If you identify mirrors as a weak point, your side board is there to help! There are sometimes cards known as “mirrorbreakers” that are exceptionally good in mirror matches but perhaps not as good in other scenarios. For example, Rebel Assault is so good in the Sabine mirror (and aggro mirrors in general) that it is in my view worth including as a “mirrorbreaker” even in double red Sabine where it is out of aspect — you might not want the card in other matchups, but it makes a great sideboard option!
Another sideboard tactic involves dedicating sideboard slots to matchups that are common regardless of whether they are good or bad. For example, if you know that aggro decks are going to be very popular at your store, it might be worth including a few sideboard picks against aggro even if you think your main deck has a decent shot against these compositions! After all, if aggro is indeed going to be a bunch of your matchups you may as well bring some backup to tip the odds further in your favor!
This can also be relevant as an approach if there is a matchup you have identified as incredibly bad for your deck — sometimes the best move is to acknowledge “yup, this matchup is really bad, my game plan is to hopefully avoid being paired against it” and not spend sideboard slots on it but instead allocate them to improving your odds against your most common opponents!
Another interesting option is to change your sideboarding options based on whether you are going first or second. Some cards in Star Wars Unlimited are substantially better when going first — for example, Scanning Officer is much better when you have the initiative, as she threatens to remove resources the opponent was relying on for the turn. While the opponent does get to replace the resources Scanning Officer potentially defeats, the replacement resources come into play exhausted — hence her ability is much stronger when you use it before the opponent gets a chance to spend those resources.
On the other side of things, there are also some cards that are better when going second. For example, ISB Agent is best played after the opponent has already played a unit. While it is possible in some cases to pass in order to allow you to go after your opponent even if you have the initiative, this has two major flaws — first, it lets the opponent know that you might have some trick waiting. Second, if the opponent doesn’t have a turn one play (or declines to use it), they can take the initiative themselves and with you having passed, the turn will end without you getting a chance to play anything!
Thus, sideboarding can sometimes be used to adjust your deck based on whether you are going first or second. Note that you can choose to sideboard both between games one and two and between games two and three — so you could potentially sideboard some cards in knowing you will go first in game two, then change them back out if you are going second for game three!
Another sideboarding tactic is the “transformative sideboard”, where one plays one strategy before sideboarding but a very different one afterwards. This can catch opponents off guard and might lead them to sideboard incorrectly! For example, a deck might seek to be aggro for game one but switch to a different gameplan in game two. Midrange decks often do something like this by default, switching to either a more control-oriented package against aggro opponents or a more aggressive plan against control decks.
These sorts of tactics can be especially effective at events where deck lists are not shared, as they can really take someone by surprise! However, as a note of caution I generally think you should try to win matches via “normal methods” rather than relying on surprising your opponent — after all, decklists are open in the top cut and opponents might well scout you in earlier rounds anyway. As cool and fun as it can be to win with a wacky out of aspect play that your opponent wasn’t expecting, that type of thing gets considerably less reliable in competitive play.
So, we’ve gone over some considerations as to when you might want to put certain cards in your Star Wars Unlimited sideboard — but when can this prove unnecessary?
One note is that the game’s resource system allows any card to be used as a resource. As a result, you may find it worthwhile to include some more situational cards in maindeck than you might in other games — after all, if you draw a situational card in a situation where it isn’t strong, that could perhaps just become your resource for the turn! In an environment where the thing you want to counter is prevalent, sometimes the counter can become a maindeck card instead of a sideboard one!
A useful rule of thumb is that if you find yourself bringing a certain card in from your sideboard in a large enough percentage of matches, it might be time to promote it to being a maindeck card! Conversely, if there’s a card in your maindeck that you almost always “board out”, maybe that one ought to be in the sideboard by default instead!
Another scenario where you might not want to sideboard is in matchups that take a long time to resolve, where you may not reliably get all three games in. Sideboarding in that sort of long matchup is risky since game one is unusually important.
We saw this in set one with hard control decks that relied on the Vigilance mill endgame against other control builds. These decks often run several “mirrorbreakers” that help win against other control decks — but many of those end up in maindeck rather than in the sideboard because the long nature of these matchups means time constraints are an issue, and you want as much of an advantage in game one as you can get if the other games might not complete!
Past competitive games from Fantasy Flight — including Star Wars Legion, where this site got its start — have often not had sideboards, so Star Wars Unlimited sideboard options may be novel to some fans! However, if you learn to use your sideboard well you can gain a significant advantage in competitive play. Building not just a strong maindeck but also a well-calibrated sideboard can be a very useful skill to have!
Last but not least — remember to remove your sideboard cards and go back to your original maindeck configuration after each match is complete! It may sound silly, but forgetting this has been the source of many penalties over the years in Magic: the Gathering and other games!
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more Star Wars Unlimited content here at The Fifth Trooper — I’m hoping to bring you a tournament report soon after I take my own shot at a Planetary Qualifier!
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