JTL Base Comparison – Part 2… Apparently
Last week we posted a comparison of the Jump to Lightspeed rare bases. Seems we spoke a little too soon.
All you have to do is tell me you see five bases… There are always four bases! Five bases? Am I seeing things?
You’re not seeing things! Jump to Lightspeed is breaking the boundaries of what we expect in Star Wars Unlimited in even more ways than we’ve expected!
Lake Country
While the prior four rare bases from Jump to Lightspeed attempted to answer the question “What is it worth to have more/fewer cards available?”, the development team had one more (at least) trick up its sleeve for spoiler season. Lake Country may be trying to answer the question “What is an aspect worth?”.
Every base to date has had a single aspect available from Cunning, Aggression, Vigilance, and Command. This has made every deck played with a combination of one of those aspects with a different one from a leader along with the villain or hero aspect on that leader, or to have a mono-aspect deck that utilizes the same color of leader with the base. We have something that opens up another avenue of deck design by not actually having an aspect on the base at all and limiting deck construction without penalties to be only what the leader themselves has available.
Is the missing aspect worth the additional 4 hit points on the base? Let’s take a look at two quick examples.
Example One – Hero Yellow
Han Yellow is already the top deck. Can we replace Cantina Bouncer and Bohdi with some other tempo cards, like Ahsoka and new Mando as a pilot? That may not be an unreasonable tradeoff. What we do lose is the ability to play Cunning for 4 resources. Is that worth 4 life? It certainly may not be since Cunning on 4 resources is arguably the best card in the game. It’s an interesting choice though.
Example Two – Hero Blue
Hero Blue could be a good option based on the number of quality units and events that are available. You still have access to plenty of removal, plus most of the Jedi/Force units. You still have access to Luke, who can swing a game without any help from anyone else and you also have access to some fairly good space units. Playing the double aspect Vigilance for 6 instead of 4 has been done already in top tier decks and may not be an issue. With all the restore and not much downside, are the extra hit points worth it in this case?
Conclusions
Always be prepared for the unexpected and never underestimate a game developer’s ability to explore untapped design space. Jump to Lightspeed looks to be an excellent set so far that offers some exciting and new deck building challenges.