Twin Porgs… I mean Suns
Guest author Dan, aka The Flying Writer, joins us from in between galavanting across the skies. He brings a wealth of knowledge on Star Wars Unlimited in general and in this case specifically Twin Suns.
First, I’d like to thank the team here at Porg Depot for giving me an opportunity to write on their fantastic website. I followed them before I met them in Las Vegas during the Championship. Not surprising, they were incredibly friendly and passionate about SWU. It’s great to find another group of people that are still into the written word as I am. Now I get to squeeze in some Twin Suns writing between flying planes.
Quick Crash Course on Twin Suns
Twin Suns is a multiplayer casual format (my local group usually plays 5 or 6 person pods if we can). The decks are created with two leaders (only stipulation is they both have to be Heroism or both have to be Villainy), one base, and a minimum of 80 cards with a restriction of only having one copy of a card in the deck (also known as a “singleton” or “highlander” format). The game goes until a player is eliminated, then the game ends when the current phase ends. The player with the most remaining HP on their base wins. As an added wrinkle, whenever a player eliminates another player they get to heal 5 HP from their own base.
This format tends to open up the game a bit for a few reasons:
First, it’s much easier to run two colors. From personal experience, double blue with Gar Saxon is great. A flipped Gar with Second Chance on one of your units is a great recurring loop.
Second, there’s also more forgiveness using leaders that aren’t used in Premier. For example, a person in our play group regularly uses Cassian Andor from Spark of Rebellion.
Last, it’s an eternal format so (as of yet), no cards are suspended (by the time you read this my play group will have experienced Jango Fett and Boba Fett – Collecting the Bounty with generic red base… I don’t think they’ll be happy with that surprise).
Shifting to 80 card decks means the math changes a bit. Here’s a little bit of calculation for you all on constructing a new Twin Suns deck. Using a hypergeometric calculator, here are the number of 1 or 2 cost units and the percent chance to draw a turn one play (with mulligan):
- 14 – 90.9%
- 15 – 92.4%
- 16 – 93.7%
- 17 – 94.8%
- 18 – 95.7%
- 19 – 96.5%
- 20 – 97.2%
Legends of the Force and Twin Suns
The biggest benefit Legends of the Force brought to Twin Sun players is the ability to construct a complete Jedi deck. Yes, Twilight of the Republic had Jedi and the Republic traits. However, to have the proper amount of 1 and 2 drops to have a high enough percentage to reliably get a first round play there had to be a high number of cards with Clone trait. Now, LOF added six units with the Jedi trait opposed to the one that existed before (Barriss Offee – Unassuming Apprentice). That’s now more than a third of the usual cards needed to pretty much assure to draw a unit to play in the first round.
The next question is: are the two less HP, (that’s a 28 HP LOF common base), worth getting the Force? It really depends if you want to maximize Force cards in your deck. Assuming you want to get the Force on a turn 2 attack, there are 18 turn one units across four colors (non-villainy). The percent chance of getting a turn one Force unit is around the low 90s since you’re only able to run three colors. That’s not awful. Just be aware the Villainy numbers are way worse and it’s not likely to get a turn one Force unit into play.
Legends of the Force offers some great additions for other tribal Twin Suns decks as well. First Order, Separatist, Republic, and even Imperial gets more love. Lots of Fringe cards make their way into play, but now all we need is a Leader that maximizes that Trait. Unfortunately, Holdo is still waiting for back up.
Some Quick and Flavorful LOF Twin Suns Decks
My son and I put together a couple of thematic decks. He’s a huge Clone Wars series fan, and I am a fan of villains. Hope you enjoy the first iterations of these decks.
Both are pretty straight forward lists. To be honest, you could make the argument that the “Hunting Down Jedi” list doesn’t need a LOF common base. I think that would be a fair argument because only two units use The Force to do anything extra. The Power of the Republic deck has a lot more benefits from using the Force comparatively speaking. I just want to add one last thing, Face Off is a fantastic card for politicking in Twin Suns. I usually use it to ready one of my units and ready someone else’s unit and attack someone who thinks they’re ahead in the game.
*Click through to each to see the full deck list.
Looking Forward
That’s it. I hope you enjoyed this first article on Twin Suns and a couple of example decks. I look forward to working with the people at Porg Depot, and I’m happy to be writing articles about SWU again.
Be cool to your fellow players, be cool to your judges, hydrate, eat well, exercise, and wear clean socks.
Hit me up anytime on Bluesky @TheFlyingWriter or Reddit at u/TheFlyingWriter