Frustrations

*** If you don’t want to read some whining mini-rants, thanks for coming to this page but you may want to just stop reading now.

It is currently a time of personal frustration for myself with SWU.

I am not a top player. The largest thing that I have won was a store showdown from the Shadows of the Galaxy meta. Most of my large events have been relatively annoying finishes like a 1-2 drop at the last chance qualifier recently at the Galactic Championship.

I may represent the average SWU player decently, although admittedly I am on the more tagged in side of the bell curve since I am at a computer and paying attention to various online chat forums Monday through Friday.

With that context in mind, I have some current frustrations with Star Wars Unlimited.

Premier Meta

Cad Bane and blue red villain.
May not actually need to write anything else for this section, but I will elaborate at least a little.

Qualifier events are generally fun. It’s great to be in a place with like minded people, playing in large tournaments. This is why the GC event has been a blast this year and last.

However, two weekends the Porg Depot team decided not to bother with driving two hours to a PQ event simply because the meta seems not super fun currently. This is not coming from people upset because the cards are expensive since we have the cards and easily could play Cad Bane. It just didn’t seem to be a likely fun time to drive that far to likely have a coin flip match at some point determine the outcome for us for the event. Plus, playing something other than the best deck in the format seemed like a losing proposition overall.

Note of course that this could change as of this afternoon’s FFG stream or the special meta check in stream scheduled for Monday.

Eternal Meta

Closer PQ event you ask?
Sure, there was an Eternal qualifier 10 minutes from my house. Awesome, until I tried the Eternal meta out.

Tried pulling out an old Sabine deck list and adding some of the newer cards like Sabine’s Lightsaber. Quickly realized that it’s nearly completely unviable in the current Eternal meta at least based on my testing. Blue green hero is all the rage it seems with good reason since it’s very good.

Ok fine, what’s in the blue green hero decks? Well cards that are only found in the Twin Suns pre-constructed decks. To viably play one of the best decks in this format requires three copies of a Twin Suns deck at $40 each basically. Seems steep for something that is not generally useful outside of an Eternal PQ.

This is not a complaint solely about cost. It’s more the principle of having to buy a specific sealed product for a card that can only be obtained from there. Similar gripe about the couple highly playable cards from the Intro Battle Hoth box set.

Leader Design

Forget about the fact that we are getting a Wicket leader before R2-D2 even though in Return of the Jedi, R2-D2’s minutes on screen are 11:03 (8.2% of the film) vs Wicket at 4:41 (3.5%).

Forget also about the fact that General Veers is one of the most competent Imperial leader in the original trilogy, and yet we’ve gotten villain aspected leaders that are side characters and henchmen on the screen. (Not specifically the one pictured above as he’s a pretty large animated show villain.)

This is instead a complaint about the actual design of leaders and their abilities.

Wicket for example seems to have been the “little units matter” leader. His leader ability though doesn’t give a great way for those little units to trade up into larger ones and just gives the card draw for a likely sacrificial run into the larger costed unit. Would have been better if he had something along the lines of “Action: Attack with a unit of 4 or less cost. That unit gets +1/+0 for the attack.” Then the unit could actually trade up into the larger unit of your opponent.

Doctor Hemlock’s ability could be… fine I guess. He’d have been way better if the “without a Weakness token on it.” was taken off. Maybe that was tested and deemed way too good? Also his stats though seem terrible. 3/6 at 6 deploy feels generally bad.

These are just two recent examples. The general feel though is that the game designers do not seem willing to push the leaders into being powerful. When they do push (or accidentally let something good through testing) then you get things like Cad Bane that is so good he defines the meta and pushes other leaders like ASH Sabine out nearly entirely.

Legendary Power Level

The relative power level and playability of legendary cards can at times feel completely bonkers. Legendary cards seem to get tagged with that rarity because they are big, complex, or good. Cards falling into the first two categories maybe should just not be made.

There are cards like Summa-verminoth that are legendary probably only because they are really big. That one is also nearly unplayable in any format. 12 resources for a unit should basically just win the game for you or be incredibly board state altering. Aside from being a really big space sentinel it does nothing when it hits the board. Sure the on attack ability is bonkers, but that’s not getting used till the following turn.

Of course then there are legendary cards that are potentially too good. The new Chimaera from ASH is so good that certain hero decks are now playing it with an aspect penalty for 9. That’s likely a sign that the card was under-costed during the design process.

Some of these choices and designs create bad situations either in meta dominance or in pack opening feel bad moments. It also could call into question how well the play testing process is done. Was Chimaera never tried in a Lando deck during testing? Are things only tested within their one set and not with the surrounding meta sets?

Closing Out

I love SWU.
I will continue to play SWU.

Currently though there are some things that fall into a space between fascinating and utterly annoying.
Hopefully there are bright times coming with Homeworlds, Icons, and the sets announced for 2027.