Wide Open Meta: Exploring Star Wars Unlimited in Early Twilight of the Republic

Welcome back to The Fifth Trooper’s coverage of Star Wars Unlimited TCG! This time we’re discussing how things have changed with the release of the third set, Twilight of the Republic. New releases are often an exciting time for games and Star Wars Unlimited is no exception — a bunch of new leaders and other options can shake things up and leave players with a lot of exciting territory to explore.

The Twilight of the Republic launch meta, however, has ended up being extra exciting — not only did we get a bunch of new cards, but FFG also made the decision to suspend Boba Fett, Collecting the Bounty after his overperformance during the Shadows of the Galaxy Planetary Qualifier events. These changes have led to a “wide open meta”!

In my opinion this development has been highly positive for the game as a whole — Boba, while not unbeatable, was a balance issue that crowded a lot of other leaders out of the game. In fact, Boba was so strong that he ended up being quite competitive with any color of base — the classic Boba green was a powerful midrange option, double yellow Boba was a good choice for tempo play, blue Boba offered more of a control-oriented build, and Boba red was used both as a straight aggro deck (usually with a 30-HP base) or as another tempo deck (usually running Tarkintown).

Across this wide range of variants, Boba ended up winning over half the Planetary Qualifier events — he was absolutely the “deck to beat”. And while Boba wasn’t unbeatable, his presence cast a shadow over the meta as a whole. That shadow has now been lifted!

This “one-two punch” — releasing a bunch of new cards and banning Boba at a similar time — has put us in an unusually interesting time for Star Wars Unlimited by really shaking things up, and the meta has yet to really settle. These “exploratory” periods are often some of my favorites in games as they offer a lot of opportunities to experiment and try new things!

So, what’s the next move? Well, we’re in a wide open meta! I think there are three main things that strike my attention when it comes to the current meta: trying to develop “successors” to the Boba decks that had been performing very well at the end of set two but now have to find new leaders, exploring new leaders from Twilight of the Republic, and updating existing decks.

Boba Successors in a Wide Open Meta

Players who were already using Boba Fett, Collecting the Bounty have to come up with new options following FFG’s suspension of their previous leader. Since there were many different versions of Boba being played, the right solution might not necessarily be the same for every Boba player.

The most straightforward option is to run an existing Boba deck with Jango Fett, Concealing the Conspiracy instead. Jango is often most direct replacement possible for Boba since he has the same deployment timing and a Jango deck can still run Fett’s Firespray and have it come into play ready, but he offers fairly different capabilities.

Compared to Boba, Jango is a bit weaker in direct combat (with only three power instead of four) and lacks the ability to ready resources. However, his ability to exhaust opposing units makes him a great option for a more tempo-oriented build. Since the red Boba builds were already tempo decks that ran ping damage effects, Jango slots in very naturally there — in fact, I think Jango might even be a better leader for Aggression builds than Boba was!

For more on red Jango in particular, you might want to check out BobbySapphire’s deck tech on one Jango red build over at KTOD. Also, I recently did live commentary as part of MaclunkyGaming‘s broadcast of SCG CON Columbus’s Saturday $2k event, which was ultimately won by John Tatta from the KTOD tournament team — the streamed matches from that even featured several losses from Jango Tarkintown builds early on, but a much stronger performance later in the event!

However, Jango might not be as natural an option for other colors of Boba deck. While Jango fits well with some of the unit-based damage effects that Aggression builds were already incorporating with ISB Agent and Ruthless Raider, he may not fit as naturally as a replacement in double Cunning Boba builds as they tend to lack abilities that synergize with Jango in the same way.

While Jango Tarkintown is emerging as a prominent deck early on, there haven’t been as clear results with respect to direct replacements for the other colors of Boba. However, I have a few ideas.

I think that Asajj Ventress, Unparalleled Adversary is a prime option for replacing Boba when it comes to double Cunning builds. An aggro leader like Ventress fits well into the double yellow gameplan in my view — double yellow builds have very strong events and go well with her bonuses. Here’s a video from my Force Five series where I discuss this deck further.

Another option for double yellow if you don’t like committing to an aggro-heavy composition might be to build with Jango and try to incorporate more unit-based damage effects — perhaps a Bounty Hunter focused build with the Bounty Guild Initiate to provide an early ping threat would help?

Boba Green was perhaps the most popular and effective form of Boba deck in the Shadows of the Galaxy meta. However, there isn’t necessarily a super clear replacement for Boba in order to freshen up these builds. The best candidates would probably be either Jango or perhaps Cad Bane, He Who Needs No Introduction.

Of those leaders, Jango can use his ability with Overwhelming Barrage, potentially exhausting a whole enemy board if played while he is deployed, while Cad provides a lot of ping damage over the course of a game. However, neither of these leaders seems like a perfect substitution. It’s possible to me that more testing is needed in order to find the best yellow/green villain midrange build.

Lastly, Boba Blue decks offered an interesting control option and were especially good for control mirrors. I think if you are interested in exploring this aspect combination, your best bet might be to swap leaders over to Iden Versio, Inferno Squad Commander and run a yellow base with her. Iden’s healing can give a control deck crucial extra time against aggressive opponents. That said I think this aspect combination is less explored, and there are several other decks that seem like they could be interesting to test!

Exploring New Leaders in a Wide Open Meta

One of the most exciting things about a new set in Star Wars Unlimited is that it comes with eighteen new leaders for players to explore — sixteen leaders in boosters and two in the two-player starter! Exploring these leaders can be one of the most interesting ways to test.

One way to do this is to play in Limited events and see whether you find anything that inspires you! Since Draft and Sealed play often lead players to “get outside their comfort zone” and play things that they otherwise wouldn’t normally use, I think Limited can be a great way to try out leaders or styles that you haven’t used yet and that might be appealing! When playing Limited, keep an eye out both for cool things in your own build and also for interesting options opponents might play!

Another thing you can do is just look at the set and see if there’s anything that catches your eye as especially interesting to test! I like SWUDB as a resource for looking at cards — here’s their page for Twilight of the Republic if you want to take a look yourself!

Finally, another method you can use is just forcing yourself to play games with things that you otherwise might not try! Personally, I’ve embarked on a project to play at least five games with every leader in the new set in order to try and get some basic understanding of their capabilities and options. I call this my “Force Five” series and have been recording videos showing the builds I’ve ended up with — thus far I’ve covered Rex, Anakin, Dooku, Ahsoka, and Ventress, with more to come soon!

For me, new leaders are probably some of the most exciting to test.

Updating Existing Decks in a Wide Open Meta

Last but not least, another way to explore a new set is to take a deck that you’ve already liked, update it with new cards that strike your fancy, and see where things can go from there! For example, I enjoyed playing Cunning Sabine in the late Shadows of the Galaxy meta — so now that Twilight of the Republic is here, I have an alternate version of my Cunning Sabine build that I’m testing using new cards like Petranaki Arena!

When doing this sort of “update testing”, I often like including cards that I’m unsure about — for instance, I’m testing Jyn Erso, Stardust. While I’m not sure that Jyn will earn a spot in the deck in the long term, I think it’s often worth doing some more “experimental” changes and seeing how things shake out when testing. After all, if you never try a new card you may never find out whether it’s good!

In Star Wars Unlimited, it’s worth noting that to test new cards properly, you not only have to put them into your deck but also actually play them — in other words, if you always resource the new cards you’re trying to test you might not be testing them properly! I know it can be appealing to stick with play lines that you’re already familiar with, but this gives you less information than seeing how the new cards you’ve included wind up doing! (On the other hand, if you always find yourself resourcing a card in favor of others, that can be a sign that the card isn’t as strong as other options…)

The Importance of a “Gauntlet” for Competitive Testing

If you’re interested in competitive play, one factor that can help improve your exploration of new cards is having a “gauntlet” for testing new builds. A “gauntlet” consists of several “known good” decks of different styles that you can test against in order to see if that new deck you just finished building is ready for prime time!

For example, a basic testing gauntlet might have one deck for each of several archetypes — maybe you would have a Sabine ECL build representing aggro, a Jango Tarkintown build representing tempo, an Anakin Blue representing midrange, a Krennic ECL build representing “soft control”, and a double blue Iden representing “hard control”.

When constructing gauntlet decks, be sure to make them relatively “normal”. The point of these decks is not to push the limit and come up with the craziest new compositions possible — the point is to have some decks that represent relatively “standard” options that you might go against at a local event. If your gauntlet decks become too weird and experimental, you will potentially lose testing value when it comes time to play against people who aren’t making those changes!

Once you have your “gauntlet” decklists, it can be prudent to test new lists that you’ve developed against the gauntlet and see how things go. If you’re notably struggling against some of the “gauntlet” decks you might want to come up with an answer, whether that be in the maindeck or the sideboard. You shouldn’t necessarily expect to be able to destroy all the decks in your gauntlet — having at least some bad matchups is fine — but if they’re all wiping the floor with you and you’re losing horribly, it might be time to go back to the drawing board!

It can also make sense to update your gauntlet over time as things change. For example, let’s say in a few weeks it turns out that Clone Trooper tokens are really good and Rex decks are winning a bunch of events. In that scenario it’d be time to add a Rex build to the gauntlet, since it would be worth making sure your decks could handle the dangerous Rex decks that were taking down events!

So there you have it — some thoughts on retooling Boba decks with new leaders, exploring some of the leaders released with Twilight of the Republic, updating old decks with new cards, and building a testing gauntlet to improve your ability to assess decks for competitive play! I find these periods where the meta is really in flux to be very exciting — best of luck in your exploration!