Star Wars Unlimited Releases Quickstart Rules, Reveals New Cards

By Christian Hoffer

Star Wars Unlimited has officially released its Quickstart ruleset along with several new cards. Today, Fantasy Flight Games released the Quickstart rules for Star Wars Unlimited, the new trading card game coming out next year. The ruleset details everything from deckbuilding rules to victory conditions to how exactly to deploy cards and attack. While some of the rules were either fully revealed or strongly hinted at, the Quickstart rules provide the deepest look yet for the first new Star Wars trading card game published since 2020. Additionally, Fantasy Flight Games also revealed three new cards over the past several weeks – the Cloud City Wing Guard and Viper Probe Droid unit cards and the "I Am Your Father" action card, which was appropriately first revealed on Father's Day. 

In Star Wars Unlimited, players build a 50-card deck made up of a mixture of units, actions, and event cards. Every deck contains a Leader and a Base card, which are put out on the playing field at the beginning of play. Every card has an "aspect" – a symbol that serves a similar role as a color in Magic: The Gathering or a Pokemon type in the Pokemon Trading Card Game. While players can build their deck using cards of any combination of aspects, they must pay an "aspect penalty" to play cards that don't share an aspect with either their Leader or Base card. Every Leader card has two Aspects and every Base card has a single aspect, so most decks in Star Wars: Unlimited will be made up of cards from three aspects. 

Interestingly, Star Wars Unlimited's resource mechanic is very similar to Disney Lorcana, another highly anticipated trading card game coming out in the coming months. At the start of the game, players choose two cards from their initial hand to serve as resources. These cards are placed to the side of the playing field and can be exhausted every turn to pay for other cards. Once a card is designated as a resource, it can't enter the field of play as a normal card, but it appears that any card can be used as a resource. Players can add one card to their resource pool at the end of every turn, so players will need to decide whether to stockpile cards in their hand or use them as fuel to get other cards into play, 

As stated previously, every deck has a Leader card, which has two functions. Players can use a Leader card's default ability every turn and they can eventually be deployed as a normal unit by activating their "Epic Action" ability once they have enough resources. Once a Leader card is defeated as a unit, they are returned to their base and cannot be redeployed. However, they can continue to use their standard action every turn. 

Players win the game by reducing their player's Base to zero HP. Players can attack with Unit cards that are deployed to one of two arenas of play – the ground or space. Players can still choose to attack a player's base with a unit even if their opponent has units in the same arena of play, unless an opposing Unit has the Sentinel trait. Saboteur units can bypass Sentinel cards and still deal damage to a base directly, so a player can't just stack up arenas with stout Sentinel unit cards. Some cards also restore health to a base when they attack. If a player attacks an opposing unit, both units simultaneously take damage, with damage persisting on a card until it's defeated. 

In general, it seems like Star Wars Unlimited is a bit like a game of Magic: The Gathering Commander but with enough twists and wrinkles to keep the game distinct. The three aspect system adds a lot more possibility for deck builds, and it will be interesting to see how players balance dealing with two ways to attack their opponent (and defend against attacks) on every turn. 

You can read the full Quickstart rules to Star Wars Unlimited here. The card game will be released in 2024. 

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