Set Rotation
Rotation has become a normal thing in many collectible card games. We now know what this will mean in the context of Star Wars Unlimited.
Every March starting in 2026, the three sets from two years prior will rotate out. This means that next year Spark of Rebellion, Shadows of the Galaxy, and Twilight of the Republic will be gone from the Premier meta.
What Will This Do?
The intended outcome of this is to keep the Premier format healthy and interesting. Removing the older cards from the format will create opportunities for newer cards to take the lead. Things that are too powerful and overshadowing going away just makes room for the other things to step up and take their places.
It also potentially makes it easier for a new player to jump in as they would not need to find cards that are difficult to get due to being older and out of print.
Potential Unintended Consequences
Rotation does have the unfortunate outcome of alienating a section of the player community. There are people that just want to play with the cards they already have.
Another aspect of this rotation is that the last set released each year will not actually see two full years of play. In fact only the March released set would be available for a full two year period before it would rotate out of Premier.
Throw in the leader component of the game. There are players that choose their leader based on a connection with a specific character and not any of the actual game text. It is easy to say that if Luke Skywalker is “your guy” there will likely always be a Premier legal Luke leader and Luke unit available. Perhaps even more than one. If a person’s favorite character is more obscure this seems like it would be unlikely. For example, it is doubtful that we would see a Nute Gunray or Doctor Aphra available for play at all times in Premier.
Yes the answers to these problems is in some cases the casual Twin Suns format. There is also a yet to be officially named eternal one vs. one format that would allow all previously printed cards regardless of rotation. If the eternal format gets event support with good prizing that may help the situation a bit, but if the majority of competitive level events stay as Premier (which seems likely) then the above issues would still exist.
Game companies creating and selling collectible card games don’t generally worry about the secondary card price market, but there would be an impact there as well. If a set is about to rotate out of Premier we should expect the prices of those single cards to start to dip as their playable lifespan gets shorter and shorter.
Conclusions
For now there is nothing to worry about. Rotation is still a year away. Likely people are not going to start selling off their Spark of Rebellion legendaries a year ahead of time just because they couldn’t use them in March 2026. Singles market would be unlikely to crash this far ahead. Everything is still playable (aside from the one Boba suspension).
People are absolutely going to debate this over the next year. Really it’s a decent topic to discuss as there are arguments both for and against this type of thing. We’ll have to wait 13 months to see the real outcome though.