Welcome back to The Fifth Trooper’s coverage of Star Wars Unlimited TCG, and happy New Year (or should I say, happy SWU year?1) — as we move ahead into 2025, I thought it would be interesting to look back on what this last year has brought us for Star Wars Unlimited TCG. What went well? What could be improved? What hopes do we have for the future? Let’s see what the Star Wars Unlimited year in review 2024 looks like!
Game Launch and Spark of Rebellion
The first and most important thing that happened for Star Wars Unlimited in 2024 is that the game actually came out — my Star Wars Unlimited year in review would be remiss if it didn’t point out that this was the year we finally got to get our hands on the cards! While some of us may have been following the game from before its launch (including here at The Fifth Trooper — my first article here came out in October of last year!), 2024 was the year that the game actually landed and made a big splash!
Spark of Rebellion’s launch was marked by great excitement and enthusiasm — so much so, in fact, that Fantasy Flight Games ended up quite underestimating demand and Spark of Rebellion booster boxes sold through almost completely in the game’s first month! FFG was quick to implement a plan to measure out the remaining product for stores, but it was still difficult to find Spark of Rebellion boxes for a while there! (Reprints have now made this set more widely available, however.)
The game’s first set also saw a lot of enthusiasm for organized play events, with Store Showdowns seeing large attendance as players flocked to the “highest level” competitive play that they could find! The early competitive meta featured strong results from a wide range of leaders and strategies — aggro, midrange, control, and tempo decks were all represented!
One interesting note is that Boba Fett, Collecting the Bounty was released in this set, but didn’t take over the competitive meta — he was certainly a strong option but not the be-all end-all. Boba Green started things off as the “deck to beat”, but players came up with answers — whether in the form of more successful attack patterns from aggressive Sabine decks or more control-oriented strategies (usually in Vigilance/Villainy but with a range of other colors — double blue Iden, blue/red Vader, and blue/green Krennic all had some success!), Boba was far from unbeatable.
That said, the two most popular and successful leaders in competitive play for the Spark of Rebellion meta did end up being Boba and Sabine Wren, Galvanized Revolutionary, with Boba usually representing midrange/tempo builds (depending on whether you went Command or Cunning with your base) and Sabine being the most prominent aggro leader. While Leia Organa, Alliance General saw some success early on in the Spark of Rebellion meta, it later became apparent that Sabine was a more effective pick if you planned on making a Heroism aggro build, even one with heavy Rebel synergy.
Overall I think Spark of Rebellion was an exciting launch for the game and brought a lot of cool stuff to the table. While the supply issues were a problem, the set was still a big hit and really put Star Wars Unlimited on the map!
Shadows of the Galaxy
Following Star Wars Unlimited’s strong launch, we moved on to the Shadows of the Galaxy for the game’s second release — this set that was focused not on a particular era of “Star Wars history” but rather on smugglers, bounty hunters, and other figures from the outskirts of the Star Wars galaxy.
Shadows of the Galaxy was an interesting set and widened the game’s options for both casual and competitive play. New mechanics Bounty and especially Smuggle made a splash on the tournament scene, as did several of the new leaders. Further, this set was a win for the logistical side of the game — while the initial Spark of Rebellion release had experienced widespread shortages beginning shortly after its launch, Shadows of the Galaxy did much better from a product availability standpoint. However, this set was somewhat marred competitively by the ascension of set one’s Boba Fett, Collecting the Bounty leader card as a dominant force in tournaments.
Shadows of the Galaxy brought very powerful cards for the already-strong Boba decks, with Boba Fett’s Armor being a particularly notable powerhouse. The game’s first Planetary Qualifier season launched during this set and was dominated by Boba Fett (in all four colors!) — in fact, Boba ended up winning more than half of the initial Planetary Qualifier events!
The balance situation with Boba somewhat overshadowed otherwise favorable elements of the competitive scene, and in fact led to the game’s first balance change — after the initial set of Planetary Qualifier events and shortly before the launch of Twilight of the Republic, Fantasy Flight Games announced that Boba Fett would be suspended. I found their announcement an interesting read — ultimately, they concluded that Boba was too much of an outlier and the leader card itself had to change, not the support cards.
Since Boba had somewhat obviously better stats for his deployment timing compared with other leaders — coupled that with a strong ability to boot — this change seemed pretty reasonable. Banning support cards like Boba Fett’s Armor might have helped, but since the Boba Fett leader card himself was the problem intervening there made perhaps more sense.
This Boba Fett ban meant that the Shadows of the galaxy era ended with a very uncertain meta — the top contender of the previous set’s tournaments had just been banned! Coupled with the exciting new Twilight of the Republic set, the game was in a real state of flux as things moved on to the winter release of the game’s third set.
Twilight of the Republic
That brings us to the game’s third set (and most current release as of this writing) — Twilight of the Republic! This set focused on some of the larger battles of the Clone Wars era, introducing token units to the game and adding new mechanics Coordinate and Exploit to take advantage of the new, larger boards.
Twilight of the Republic continued the general trend of increased set-by-set by being extremely available — in fact, so much so that the market price for Twilight of the Republic boxes dropped considerably below MSRP, a sign that this set was arguably overprinted. However, I’ve seen an international player say that this was the first set that was fully available for them — one way or another, it seems like these cards are getting into gamers’ hands more readily than with previous sets.
Competitively speaking, Twilight of the Republic has been exciting and fresh — and oddly, this has been the case despite token units not making much of a splash competitively! The Boba Fett suspension and influx of new cards — including some exciting new leaders — has kept things pretty fresh. In fact, while the next set of PQs is going on now, the meta still doesn’t seem to have really coalesced and been defined yet. There are some early standouts — Sabine is still strong, double Cunning Han Solo, Audacious Smuggler has been a big hit, and Jango Fett, Concealing the Conspiracy has been a strong replacement for Boba in Tarkintown decks — but we’ve also seen some more surprising builds have success, like ramp-heavy Command Bossk.
If you want to follow along with the current season as it develops, I recommend SWU Competitive Hub — this fanmade website tries to keep track of various tournament results from larger Star Wars Unlimited events and can be a useful resource for trying to keep track of the meta!
That said, right now the future of SWU looks bright — while some aspects of Twilight of the Republic ended up being a bit weaker than some had perhaps hoped, the environment as a whole is very interesting and it’s an exciting time to be playing Star Wars Unlimited!
Organized Play in 2024
One category that I think didn’t always go great in 2024 was Organized Play — while Star Wars Unlimited does have a strong program in some ways, there were also some relevant misses.
On the plus side, FFG successfully rolled out a large-scale Organized Play program that encompassed both serious competitive play and also more casual fare. The game proved to be fun in both constructed and limited formats (quite important IMO, drafting is a big value add), and I participated in probably dozens of weekly play events across various stores in my area!
Additionally, Star Wars Unlimited had some interesting ideas about how to diversify the Organized Play experience, with weekly play packs being given out not just for events but also just for playing casual games in a store or even hanging out and trading or organizing cards! While I am a very competitive-minded player, I also recognize that competitive players are a small fraction of the overall playerbase for a game, and having Organized Play efforts that are inclusive of casual players and collectors is a nice touch!
That said, there were also some aspects of the program that were perhaps less exciting.
Maybe chief among the issues was the lack of any high-level official tournaments in 2024 — past games from FFG have often had a World Championship in their first year, and as someone who has attended and competed in several of these “year one Worlds” events I found them to be very positive and fun for the games in question — further, many of these events were held with only the core set of the game available! Not having this for Star Wars Unlimited feels like a missed opportunity.
Another issue that became salient this year was prizing. While the Organized Play packs available for weekly play events at local stores have generally been quite good, the prizing at larger events hasn’t always held up. In particular, Store Showdowns and Planetary Qualifiers have often had promo cards as prizes. While this is not in itself a problem — promo cards are commonly used for prizing across multiple other TCGs — the specific cards selected to be event prizes were often not particularly good, leading to low enthusiasm.
It can of course be difficult to predict what cards are going to end up being strong, but there’s been an unfortunate string of misses — and the upcoming prizes for the larger events look to be potentially continuing that with fancy alt art versions of Rey and Kylo, which (while Legendary rarity cards with popular characters) are both notably weak. When other games are offering significant cash prizes and/or unique treatments of powerhouse staples, Star Wars Unlimited’s prizing seems a bit weak by comparison. (That said, this could always change — I believe not all the prizing for the larger Sector and Regional events has been announced yet!)
One thing that I’ve sometimes heard is that the Organized Play issues are thanks to Josh Massey leaving FFG shortly after Star Wars Unlimited’s release, and the program has had to find its footing without him. While I do think this probably played some role, I also note that some of the relevant decisions I am critiquing here were made before Josh left the company — for instance, I remember him talking on a livestream before the game’s launch about how they planned to hold off on the larger competitive events at first.
That said, I don’t want to dwell on negatives too long. While the slow rollout of major events was frustrating for me, FFG recently did announce that we’re going to be seeing the first Sector and Planetary events in 2025, leading up to the first Galactic Championship in late July. I hope to attend several of these events and am excited to see where they go — hopefully my 2026 retrospective will be able to gush about the awesome rollout of big new events for the game! Further, FFG has been very responsive to community feedback on these considerations — there are a few issues that I didn’t bother mentioning because FFG has already fixed them! This is a big relief compared to engaging with some companies out there.
Overall Popularity in 2024
Perhaps the most important thing that is notable about Star Wars Unlimited is that it has been really, really popular with its launch! I mentioned this somewhat in my coverage of Spark of Rebellion, but it perhaps benefits from further emphasis — Star Wars Unlimited is a big new addition to the TCG space, and has done very well for itself in its first year!
TCGPlayer sealed product sales for Star Wars Unlimited products have been fairly consistently strong, competing with established “big TCGs”. We’ll see whether FFG will be able to keep this going, but as it stands I think the game has a bright future, especially since it hasn’t even fully started running big events yet!
Additionally, I think the Star Wars Unlimited community has generally been much more positive and welcoming than some TCG communities I’ve been a part of — while there are definitely competitive players, the overall SWU environment does not feel overly “cut-throat” or harsh for new guys (at least in my area and from what I’ve seen online). This was a big plus of some of FFG’s past titles and it’s good to see SWU following in their footsteps!
What Happens Next?
So, with 2024 in the books, the question becomes what comes next for Star Wars Unlimited in 2025?
To me, the future of the game looks bright — we’ll have three new sets (and the Jump to Lightspeed previews are looking hype already!), the start of major official tournaments, and perhaps some other fun surprises to boot! I think that 2024 put FFG in a great position to build on their successes and make 2025 an even better year for Star Wars Unlimited, and I’m excited to see how it develops!
Stay tuned for more Star Wars Unlimited coverage here on The Fifth Trooper — next up I’ll have some info on the upcoming Jump to Lightspeed set and what it will be bringing to the game!
- I apologize for this joke on behalf of the website – Doc ↩︎
