It feels like a while since I made a good old-timey gameplay post. Furthermore, we also had the recent release of Riff Tamson’s Terror from Below box which features a number of interesting interactions with the reserve slot. With that in mind, now seems like a great time to discuss the art of reserving! How does it work? How should we use it? Who has can do fancy tricks with it? Let’s dive in.
The Rules
Barring any special rules, here are some basics of the reserve slot:
- It costs one force to put a unit in reserve
- Only one unit can be in reserve at a time
- At the start of your turn, you can choose the unit in reserve or the top card
- If the top card is a unit card, that unit will have to activate
- You have to activate the reserved unit before refreshing your deck
Given the inherent random nature of the order deck, reserving is one of the main ways we can control the order our units activate in. However, if the reserve slot is full, then drawing from the deck puts us at the whims of fate. That’s the price you pay for holding back a unit for just the right time! Also, force – that’s part of the price. Yeah, that’s a big one, especially if you reserve multiple times per deck.
Common Cases
Generally speaking, the cases where I’d want to reserve a unit fall into only a few categories. Let’s look at each one with some depth.
Early game – high ceiling activations
A great illustrative example here would be Anakin. If he gets the opportunity to go forward and wound a secondary or primary, then his turn can be super impactful. Hunkering onto an objective without attacking isn’t really what he wants to do, though. If we draw Anakin early, it often makes sense to reserve if he doesn’t have a juicy target in his threat range. If I was the on the other side, I might also be scared to move a primary or secondary to the midline across from Anakin, knowing my opponent can immediately retaliate with excessive force.
In the case of Anakin specifically, he does often like to reserve in later rounds, too. However, in most cases with high ceiling units, I’m more apt to reserve near the start of the first struggle. This is usually because the unit is still in its deployment position and might need the game to develop a bit before diving in. Once the late game hits and everything is (usually) more central, spending a force to wait with a high-impact character is often less appealing.
Early Game – Low floor activations
On the opposite side of the coin, we have units with pretty middling activations. In this case, usually it’s an issue with mobility. As much as I love a unit like Luminara, she’s melee only and not especially fast (until she attacks). If I can draw her early and stick her on an empty objective, that’s great, but if there’s an enemy who’s claimed it then I may not be able to even get to melee to knock them away. With Anakin I’d reserve to wait for an explosive turn, with Luminara I’d reserve to wait for a non-dud turn. With her in particular, though, it can be handy to have a unit in reserve. We’ll talk more about that later!
Wounded (or soon to be wounded)
Let’s say it’s a fresh deck and I draw Ezra. He has seven damage. Sure, I can activate him, and that might be the right call. However, a stiff breeze will wound him and he’ll be out cold for the rest of the deck (unless I have Hera or Shatterpoint him, neither are likely). If I reserve Ezra, I can keep moving him around until he becomes wounded, making good use of his tiebreaker. If/when he gets wounded I can immediately activate him to wake up and go back to full health. His abilities will be more expensive, but that might be an OK trade for having a living Ezra available for longer.
Conversely, let’s imagine I draw my rebel commandos who are wounded. If I bring them back, then my opponent is able to wound them again. Rebel commandos are great, but squishy, so they’ll probably get wounded relatively quickly. Then I’ll have to remove them from the table after their next turn, and that’s just sad. In these situations, I might consider reserving the commandos to delay waking them up. It certainly doesn’t hurt that I’m holding a strong activation in my back pocket!
End of struggle – save a unit
One important thing with Shatterpoint is keeping an eye on the next struggle (unless it’s struggle 3, then just win it). You have to give yourself the best chance to win two struggles, not just one. If I am about to finish a struggle, win or lose, I want to start the next struggle with a good activation, if possible. If I draw my most dynamic unit, it might be a waste on a turn where the struggle is over, no matter what. In that case, I’d think about reserving that unit to have them available in the next struggle.
End of deck – known next unit
This will be heresy to old men everywhere, but I don’t like fishing. I especially don’t like fishing in Shatterpoint. Reserving Unit X to hope you draw Unit Y is usually a bad move. However, reserving Unit X knowing you’ll draw Unit Y can be perfectly reasonable. If I’m down to the last few cards in my deck, not only do I have better knowledge about what’s coming, but I also have a more clear situation regarding my force expenditure, so I know if I can afford the reserve cost.
Late game – can’t make a play
Near the end of the game, many turns can be do or die. If you aren’t flipping an objective you’ll probably lose. Sometimes you’ll specifically need to flip the priority objective. Alas, you may draw a unit that simply can’t make the play you need. In that case, paying one force to maybe not lose the game is a pretty good deal. Ideally everyone is in a position to make a play, but that doesn’t always work out. We can’t always get the ideal situation. Speaking of that …
The Ideal-Case
The ideal scenario for reserving is quite simple: you never reserve. If things are going well, then top decking the next card every turn can absolutely work out. Maybe you have a bunch of speedy units that can get where they need, or the luck of the draw is in your favour. However, never needing to reserve is a bit unrealistic, even for strong lists. As such, I’d usually budget one force per rotation for deck manipulation (either reserving or shuffling back the Shatterpoint).
If you find yourself reserving multiple times per deck, that might be a red flag with the list. Perhaps there are too many timing sensitive units and you need to swap one or more out for a more flexible option.
Shenanigans
Considering Terror from Below was partly an inspiration for this article, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention some of the fun ways you can mess with the reserve slot. This won’t be fully comprehensive, but I do want to touch on some highlights. Let’s start with a group of three related units.
General Kenobi / Nossor Ri / Aqua Droids
I’ve put these three units together because they all fall broadly into the “can put the reserved card on the top or bottom of the deck, then go in reserve” category. Obi gets a bonus effect for this (triple heal and a jump). This extra bit of flexibility can be really handy.
Starting with Obi, as another melee-only character, he can often be a bit slow to get into the fight initially. An extra jump can help with that. However, if you are relying on this reserve jump, then you might not want to pull someone out of reserve until Obi-Wan has shown up. If I pay to reserve a unit, activate it, then pay again for Obi later, then that can get expensive.
For Nossor Ri, he loves hiding in reserve. While in reserve he can’t be shot and if he hasn’t activated yet he probably isn’t getting punch either. Seven health isn’t an issue when you’re not getting hit and Riptide for free is awesome! One trick for Nossor Ri, or characters like Chopper or Lando & R2-D2, is to keep him in reserve until the end of your deck. After activating you’ll shuffle and he’ll be back in the deck, unshootable.
Luminara
Master Unduli is my personal favourite for these abilities! In a game of Shatterpoint there is very little hidden information. Essentially it’s just the, for lack of a better phrase, order of the order decks. That information is usually hidden to both players. Flow of the Force gets around that by letting you peek at the top card prior to deciding whether you draw that top card or go with the unit in reserve. No matter who we decide to go with, this sneak peek can give us useful information.
In the mid to late game, it can be common to have a card in reserve that is an OK choice for the upcoming turn. In your deck you may have some better options, but also some worse. As such, the risk of drawing a bad card may dictate you use the reserved card, even though ideally it would be held for later when it could have more impact. However, if you know with 100% certainty that the next card is a better draw then you can go ahead with that! More knowledge means you can make better decisions. I guess it’s pretty obvious when you say it like that, right?
Consider instead a turn where, for whatever reason, I know I’m going to activate my unit in reserve. Knowing the draw for my next turn could still be very useful. In a recent game I knew that Luminara herself was coming up the following turn. In the meantime, I got a wound and had a couple options for who to dash (also using Flow of the Force, what a great identity). Knowing I would need Luminara to activate next, I was able to dash her into a better position. In other circumstances, perhaps you’re about to lose a struggle. Knowing the unit that will activate first in the following struggle might impact which layout you choose. The possible uses of this special knowledge are endless!
Thrawn
Reserving for free is pretty good, and Thrawn can do that for you! If you’re willing to pay the usual one force, though, a reserved character can heal and reposition. Extra movement is obviously great, and potentially getting rid of a pesky pin or strain beforehand is especially useful. I’ll admit that I have not played nearly as much Thrawn as I probably should have, so I can’t go super in depth here. However, in my limited experience I’ve found that I want to be cycling that reserve spot when possible; units go in, units go out. Clogging it up for a long time can take some explosive plays off the table.
Reserve Hate
Of course, you can’t always reserve with impunity. There are some abilities out there that, to varying degrees, punish you for utilizing the reserve slot. Hondo can force you to shuffle the reserved unit back into your deck while Greef and Jango can create extra movement and attacks when the reserved unit activates. However, those units don’t see lots of play and honestly aren’t generally big deterrents. The main big bad when it comes to reserving is Moff Gideon.
Remember when I said I don’t want to be reserving multiple times per deck? That’s because 2+ force just for reserving is quite expensive. Well, when Moff is on the other side even just one reserve costs two force!* Doubling the usual cost can make reserving almost cost prohibitive for some lists. Consider the all-Mando lists that commonly run five force. The first struggle is usually where force is the tightest since they may be paying for a lot of Jet Pack jumps. In most situations they can’t afford to use 40% of their force for the deck reserving a single card. As such, the chances of a dead turn go up which can swing the critical first struggle in Moff’s favour.
*Technically speaking, Moff increases the cost to reserve by one. As written there is some ambiguity when it comes to units that reserve for one less, such as the Super Tactical Droids, since they usually pay zero to reserve. In this case it has been confirmed they would pay 1-1+1=1 force.
Wrap-Up
While you ideally never have to reserve, we don’t play games in an ideal world. Shatterpoint can get messy, and the occasional reserve is often the correct decision. The important thing is to recognize both the flexibility reserving brings and the limitations it imposes. Finally, if you are reserving frequently or find you have many units that want to take the reserve slot, consider changing your list around to make things a little less timing sensitive.
I hope you enjoyed this deep dive on the reserve slot! If you’re looking for some list inspiration, why not use this as an excuse to try something with Lumi or Thrawn?* It’ll be fun!
*Now I kind of want to try a list with both Lumi and Thrawn
