Closed Lanes: Legion is Beginning to Feel Like a One-Way Street
November 18, 2024
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Welcome back to The Fifth Trooper’s coverage of Star Wars Unlimited TCG — to see our past articles, check out the Star Wars Unlimited section of the blog! Today we’re celebrating the launch of competitive Star Wars Unlimited Season 0 by taking a look at what the competitive circuit looks like for Unlimited — including what events are coming soon, what they will lead up to in the future, and how the meta is looking for the opening of competitive play!
During the leadup to Star Wars Unlimited’s release, Fantasy Flight Games discussed plans for organized play, including both casual and competitive play. They refer to this plan as “C3OP”, which is both a pun on C-3PO and a reference to three core components of organized play — Connect, Collect, and Compete. As FFG says on their site:
The three core aspects of Organized Play are Connect, Collect, and Compete. Connect represents the community aspect of OP, in which players get together to play the game, discuss the game, and just generally have a good time engaging with Star Wars: Unlimited. Collect represents the aspect of enhancing your card collection with awesome promo cards (featuring various aesthetic treatments) that can be obtained through any level of OP. Finally, Compete represents the competitive aspect of OP, in which players test their skills against one another in tournaments.
Part of that plan was beginning things with more casual organized play, then slowly ramping up with more and more competitive-oriented events as the game grew and expanded. Here’s FFG’s blueprint for organized play as a whole — the events on the left side of the diagram are casual, while those on the right are competitive:
Prereleases are the casual Sealed events that lead off a new set, Weekly Play is the standard events stores run during “normal periods” and vary a lot store by store (some might run casual tournaments or drafts, some might just have a “show up at this time and play!” type event, etc.), and Store Showdowns are more organized tournaments towards the later part of a set.
By contrast, the Competitive tier features Planetary Qualifiers, Regional Qualifiers, and Sector Qualifiers, all feeding into the Galactic Championship (this game’s version of World Championships). Planetary Qualifiers are hosted by normal stores during each set, while Regional and Sector Qualifiers are higher level events that take place throughout the season. (Confusingly, Regional Qualifiers are significantly higher-level events than “Regionals” from past FFG games, which are perhaps more like Planetary Qualifiers here.) The Galactic Championship will (as I understand it) take place once per year and be the culmination of the competitive season.
For Spark of Rebellion, the casual tier was the only one really in play — there were some larger, more competitive tournaments organized outside FFG’s system, but no “official” Competitive tier events. However, players took to the Store Championship events — the highest level of casual play and in some ways an event “in between” casual and competitive — with enthusiasm.
With Shadows of the Galaxy, the real competitive tier of events is starting up. FFG has begun their first — or rather zeroth — season of competitive play for Star Wars Unlimited TCG! Star Wars Unlimited Season 0 officially began with this last weekend’s first Planetary Qualifiers, and more “PQ” events will be running throughout October.
Season Zero consists of those events that will be held in the leadup to the first Galactic Championship in 2025; after the Galactic Championship, things will shift over to the first “official” season. So what events are available for Season Zero? Right now, we have Planetary Qualifiers, and FFG is ramping them up quickly! There was substantial demand for these events and FFG was taken by surprise by how many people wanted to compete — the first PQ events, taking place now, are often already sold out, sometimes in fact selling out before they were even generally announced!
Winners of Planetary Qualifier events will get a day one bye at the Galactic Championship. — not a round one bye, a day one bye! This allows them to skip the first full day of what will otherwise be a multi-day event, giving extra time to relax, observe the field — or play in an exclusive side event that FFG will be hosting during the first day of the Galactic Championship for PQ winners only!
If you want to compete in Star Wars Unlimited and earn your day one bye for the first Galactic Championship, have no fear — not only are there still a bunch of Planetary Qualifiers to go for the first set, but FFG is substantially increasing the number of tournaments being held for Twilight of the Republic’s PQs, giving people more chances to play and compete!
Further, I believe there will be Sector and Regional Qualifiers as part of Season Zero — these larger, multi-day tournaments will offer other opportunities to compete in the leadup to the Galactic Championship. Sector Qualifiers will run approximately once a month, while Regionals will be among the largest events for the game and perhaps run once every few months.
I’m not sure when these events are going to first start, but they will provide similar opportunities to skip the first day of the Galactic Championship. Both Sector and Regional Qualifiers are intended to put not just their winners but a significant portion of the top cut into Galactic Championships! These events will also have significant side events, “prize walls”, and the like allowing players who didn’t necessarily make the top to continue to play and have fun. Further, players of past Fantasy Flight card games may be pleased to know that these large events will not be held at conventions!
In the past, some of the larger tournaments held by Fantasy Flight would take place at tabletop gaming conventions like GenCon or KublaCon, which was convenient in a sense but also had a major downside — players who were not otherwise planning to attend the relevant conventions found these events significantly less accessible, as they had to pay for a convention badge in addition to the event itself. I for one am quite happy to hear that this will not be the case for our big Star Wars Unlimited tournaments!
Star Wars Unlimited Season 0 competition will reach its apex with the Galactic Championship, which I believe will occur sometime during summer 2025. This event will essentially be the “World Championship” for the game and will be a three-day tournament — there will be two days of Swiss play and then a top cut to be played out on day three! Further, for the first season here the Galactic Championship will be open entry and there will be a wide range of side events and the like. Like some of Fantasy Flight Games’s past World Championship events for other games, the goal is not just to be a tournament but a celebration of the game as a whole, and there will be space even for less competitive players to have fun with the game!
The prizes and locations for these higher-level events — Sector and Regional Qualifiers and the Galactic Championship — have yet to be announced, but we’ll hopefully be hearing more about them soon so players can begin planning to compete in the later part of Star Wars Unlimited Season 0, taking place in early 2025.
To sum up, we’re going to continue to have Planetary Qualifier events for a while, with some in the next few weeks for Spark of Rebellion and even more being held for future sets. Then, bigger events will begin in 2025, all building towards the Galactic Championship — a large, open entry event that will be the height of the competitive play season and mark the capstone to Star Wars Unlimited Season 0!
So, if that’s what season zero looks like as a whole, how is the meta shaping up in these early days? Well, we’ve had our first Planetary Qualifiers over these last two weeks. With less than twenty PQs thus far, we don’t have a huge sample size — but thus far we’ve seen Boba Fett, Collecting the Bounty as the most successful leader, with the most common base pairing being a 30HP Command base.
With Boba winning a majority of the events, he looks to be the “deck to beat”. If you want to hear more about 30HP Command Boba and the tactics involved, feel free to check out my interview with PQ winner Aneil (aka MindsDesire) — we go over Aneil’s decklist, his good and bad matchups, and tactics involved in using the deck!
Generally speaking though, an old principle is that you want to either be a bit slower than your opponent or much faster than them; a good strategy to beat a specific deck is to either play one that is a little bit slower and stronger than your opponent’s build and can “go over” them to win with a more powerful endgame, or else one that is much faster than your opponent’s build and can “go under” them and win before they get a chance to execute their gameplan.
Applying that principle to Boba, we see that there really isn’t a lot of “under” to go! While there are some leaders that deploy at the same time or similar to Boba and tend to run a faster, more aggressive gameplan (Sabine, Kylo, Lando), these builds are not so fast as to leave him in the dust — and indeed the new Boba builds are in part built to combat Sabine in particular!
Therefore, an easier solution to fighting Boba might be to go “over” and play a slower, more controlling deck that can shut down some of his early plays and then win later in the game. Time will tell whether people will be successful in this — but in the first set’s Store Showdown meta (Store Showdowns having been taken more seriously as competitive events due to the lack of official competitive play), control decks were able to counter Boba’s midrange gameplan at least some of the time.
As such, I think it may be time to start practicing your Iden and Qi’ra decks… we’ll see whether control players are able to assert themselves and conquer a field mostly driven by midrange Boba! When Boba was strong in set one, players were able to adapt with decks like Vigilance Vader and change things up. However, players going for control strategies do need to watch out for Sabine, who is a major threat for control and still makes up a large part of the meta despite being much less successful than Boba this time around.
It’ll be interesting to see how the metagame evolves — but thus far, Sabine Wren, Galvanized Revolutionary and Boba Fett, Collecting the Bounty have been standout leaders both in overall strength and in simple popularity. If you’re planning on hitting up some of the upcoming Planetary Qualifiers, I would make sure to have a game plan in mind for these two!
Another question becomes — if that’s what competitive play in Star Wars Unlimited Season 0 looks like, what will Season One and future seasons of competitive play look like? One notable difference is that Fantasy Flight plans to implement a “points system” where players generate points via participating in lower-level competitive events, and these points then go towards qualifying them for Galactic Championships — unlike in Season 0, further Galactic Championships will not be open entry events. However, top players will still potentially be able to earn the ability to skip the first day of Galactic Championships by sufficiently strong performances earlier in the season.
Further, I believe that Sector and Regional events will be ongoing throughout Season One rather than delayed as they were with Star Wars Unlimited Season 0 — Fantasy Flight has been starting things off slowly for the first set to get players a chance to get used to the game and create a larger cardpool. (Personally, I would have been fine with them getting started fast — I have fond memories of “core set only Worlds” for the WH40k: Conquest and Legend of the Five Rings LCGs!)
Additionally, I expect there to be generally more events as the game gets “up to speed” and the competitive scene grows. I think it’ll be an exciting time for Star Wars Unlimited!
Regardless of whether you’re a top tournament competitor or a more casual player, Star Wars Unlimited has a lot to offer and it’s an exciting time to be involved — stay tuned for more coverage of the game here at The Fifth Trooper!
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