Jump to Lightspeed Speculation

FFG basically just released the third set for Star Wars Unlimited. Of course that means it’s time to start speculating on the fourth one.

** Small disclaimer up front. This is all entirely speculation. Porg Depot has no insider knowledge of things contained or not in the upcoming set nor anything happening internally at FFG as of the writing of this post.

Jump to Lightspeed is currently slated to be released in the first quarter of 2025. No specific launch date has been announced and no real information aside from the set’s name has been divulged. However we can potentially intuit some interesting things simply by examining the name and extrapolating from there.

In the Star Wars universe lightspeed is the method by which space ships are able to travel between different star systems. It is one of the concepts that makes Star Wars heavy on the fantasy side vs. other science fiction universes that try to base things on known science and projecting out what future discoveries would be. Actually this makes sense since Star Wars is a “long time ago” and not in the future anyway.

Given the relation of lightspeed to space ships, it’s extremely likely that we will see a heavy focus on the space arena of the game. Expect that we’ll see another version of the Millennium Falcon and possibly some key ships that we haven’t seen in prior sets such as Red Five.

It also might be a decent bet to suggest that specific space based characters are likely to show up. Red Leader, Gold Leader, Porkins and the rest of the pilots from A New Hope’s attack on the Death Star are possibilities. The Death Star itself could be included. New versions of Poe, Lando, Han, Luke, and pretty much any other character that has piloted a ship of some form are decent bets as well.

Believe there will be at least one space unit upgrade called “Astromech” which could give a +1/+1 boost to a unit with the fighter trait. Another option for this upgrade could be a shield, and could be both depending on cost.

One big thing that is ripe for innovation are leaders. Figure that there are multiple options for what could exist in this design space:

• Leaders that deploy into the space arena instead of on the ground. A Luke unit deploys as “Red Five” obviously with Luke piloting his X-wing craft. Han deploying as the Falcon. Etc.
• Leaders could deploy as upgrades to a space arena unit as a pilot. Instead of being a free to deploy (give the correct resources in play) ground unit, the leader would instead be a free to play upgrade on a specific type of ship, fighter, freighter, etc.
• At least one leader could have the option of deploying to the ground arena as a stand alone unit with some amount of stats, or as a pilot upgrade on a specific type of ship. In fact “Pilot” as a keyword could be related to any standard ground unit such that it could be deployed as the ground unit or as an upgrade to a ship giving some bonus. “Pilot, 1” could give a +1/+1 bump, “Pilot, 2” a +2/+2, etc. There could also be a “Pilot, shield” which grants a shield token on deploy.
• Way outside the box could be a leader that IS the ship. There could be a Millennium Falcon leader that deploys to space as a ship, because well it is a ship. After all the Falcon is nearly as much a main character of the original trilogy as some of the actors.

Granted not all of the leaders could work the same way. The above four examples could all be individual leaders with each of their own specific abilities and game text.

My personal hope is that Jump to Lightspeed will be the set that introduces an R2-D2 leader. On one hand I don’t care what he would do so long as the showcase art is awesome. If I had to pick something specific, it’s be very cool if for 1 resource cost, he could give a shield to a fighter unit, or repair some amount of damage from a ship. Then the deployed ability could be that he deploys to a ship and grants his stats to that ship and acts as a shield of sorts such that he absorbs damage done first and would have to be defeated prior to the actual ship being defeated in a second separate attack. This would kind of mirror the trench run when Vader shoots at Red Five and basically blows R2 up while Luke and the ship continue down the trench.

Whatever the case, more ships and more space arena love are likely a given. While we are only just starting to enjoy Twilight of the Republic it’s still fun to look ahead to Jump to Lightspeed.