Will Pilots Really Fly?

The Jump to Lightspeed First Look live stream took place on December 4, 2024. A few days later Tyler Parrott gave us the following quote via Twitter:

Tyler’s quote came fairly soon after the Star Wars Unlimited community was first introduced to the new piloting mechanic in Jump to Lightspeed.  During that stream, the chat’s comments and questions had more than a little emphasis on Confiscate and other anti-upgrade cards. Would those cards simply existing be problematic for the new set and render a large part of this set to be inconsequential?  

The quote is interesting in that it gives a look into the dev team’s expectations, but as we know, with anything, expectations don’t always match reality.  I’m talking to you Boba Fett – Collecting the Bounty.  Let’s use what we know and see if we can poke any holes in these expectations, or maybe things will play out as hoped.

Upgrades so Far

We were given 62 upgrades in the first 3 sets.  We can broadly separate these into 2 categories.  upgrades you play on your own units and those you play on your opponents units.  Control decks, like Bossk Blue, will often use upgrades to help manage the board state.  These are cards like Entrenched, Perilous Position, Traitorous and a couple of Bounties.  On the other hand we have the more “aggressive” upgrades, as Tyler put it.  We’ve seen Darksaber, General’s Blade, Jedi Lightsaber and Hotshot DL-44 Blaster.  

Out of the same 62 upgrades printed there are about 10, give or take, that would be deemed “competitive”.  From that set of 10, there has generally only been 4 offensive upgrades that would qualify as aggressive and were competitively played. Why so few? Let’s next explore some of the things that make upgrades harder to play in SWU than what we may be used to in other games.

The Problem with Upgrades

Star Wars Unlimited has some very fun, interactive and unique game mechanics that make it better than any other game out there.  Players are rewarded for playing well, and small mistakes can add up to a loss. This leads to a few issues with upgrades.

1. Alternating turns makes the game incredibly interactive and makes you think through your turns much more than in something like Magic the Gathering. This is a huge hurdle for upgrades.  Your opponent almost always has an opportunity to act before you get to take advantage of your upgrade.  They have a chance to use any Event they have available, or they can just attack your upgraded unit to try and defeat it.  This will always act as a limiter on upgrades.  You just can’t invest that much into one just to have it or the unit defeated before getting any value from it.
2. The average cost of any of the good aggressive upgrades is more than the cost of all of the available upgrade removal we have.  If you were to play a 1 cost upgrade and your opponent Confiscates it, no big deal.  I used a card and 1 resource and you used a card and 1 resource.  That’s generally not the case though.  Things like Jedi Lightsaber and General’s Blade both cost 3.  The outcome of that trade is significantly worse.  This, again, acts as a limiter on the cost of what an upgrade can be to be playable. 
3. Upgrades are slow! Playing an upgrade means you are less likely to go into the next turn with the initiative.  This goes against the aggressive gameplan and just makes the upgrade easier to deal with.
4. Plan A for any offensive upgrade is to play it on your Leader.  They usually have higher stats and are generally harder to remove than a regular unit card.  Your Leader is always the safest target for an upgrade.  It’s possible that if any of the current “good” upgrades said “play on a non-leader unit” then none of them would make the cut. 

There are cards that get around some of these issues.  Hot Shot Blaster is the main one, which is played in almost every Cunning deck.  You are still generally paying 3 for it but you gain the action economy of attacking immediately.  Its “permanent” effect is also not as powerful as something like a Jedi Lightsaber. Once you smuggle it out and attack, it’s not as likely to draw out the upgrade removal, so it will generally stick around longer.  

Talk About Pilots Already!!

How does this all lead into Pilots?  Since pilots count as an upgrade, then they have to worry about all the same pitfalls as previous upgrades.  How are they different, what did the developers possibly get right and what things should we be worried about?

1. Pilots are generally cheap to play.  Most of the pilots cost 1 or 2 resources to upgrade a vehicle.  This reduces their risk of getting out-tempod by the opposing removal.  If I spend 1 to play Biggs and you spend 1 to confiscate it, then we both spent a resource and a card which is a fair trade.
2. Most of the pilots give above average stats for their cost.  The majority of pilots give you +2 stats per resource spent to pilot them, oftentimes better than a typical upgrade. This can push the reward to be greater than the risk.
3. Flexibility!  The option to play the pilot as an upgrade or a unit can not be overstated.  If you know you are playing against someone who uses Fang Fighters, put your Cassian Andor on the ground. Having options built into your cards goes a long way. 

Sounds pretty good.  What’s there to be worried about?

1. For one,  pilots come built in with the one downside that would make most upgrades unplayable.  They effectively say “Play on a Non-Leader Unit”.  This is a huge hurdle to overcome since this is almost always Plan A for an upgrade.  If pilots do not end up being easy to play, this could be one of the key reasons.
2. Another issue is that the meta may not allow them to become too prevalent.  There is so much efficient upgrade removal that as soon as a pilot deck starts to become top tier, it can easily be game planned and side boarded against at little cost to your opponent.  This means it may be hard for a pilot based deck to remain at the top similar to a Sabine ECL or Han1 Yellow.
3. Leaders.  Deploying your leader is one of the pivotal actions you can take in a game.  Games are often won or lost on the backs of your leader unit.  There is also no 1 cost event that says “Defeat a Leader”, until now that is.  For the cost of 1 resource, your opponent can just Confiscate your leader.  That is devastating.  Unless a leader with a pilot deploy option has a great ability you want to use, like Wedge, you can’t risk playing them.  This possibly limits the playability of the leaders with pilot abilities.  

Where do we think pilots will end up?  Likely somewhere in the middle.  The few best ones will make it into some decks, like Han Solo or any that have an impact on the board just from being played.  A good couple examples of this are BoShek and Victor Wingman Two.  Is somewhere in the middle enough for such an important mechanic?  Maybe.

The type of pilot that worries me is Darth Vader.  He costs 3 to deploy as a pilot and has no when played effect.  His unit side, while big at 7/7, does nothing when played at a cost of 6. Both options are expensive with no immediate payoff.  Will you win games by playing a turn 2 Darth Vader?  Most definitely.  Could you lose games because you played a turn 2 Darth Vader? Most definitely.  

Summary

Pilots are one of the big features of Jump to Lightspeed. Piloting is a very cool mechanic. It gives incredible versatility to a unit to have the option of being an upgrade, or depending on how you look at it the opposite with an upgrade being played as a unit. It would be a shame pilots are not able to overcome some of the issues upgrades have run into in the past.  They look really fun, exciting and will hopefully shake up the meta.

We’ll soon find out if Tyler was correct in his assessment and that upgrade decks, specifically with pilots, can play a major role in the Jump to Lightspeed meta.

For more info, check out our “Pilots: Risk vs Reward” article for some initial thoughts on some specific pilots.