The newest set for Star Wars Unlimited – Jump To Light Speed – is the fourth release for this ever-growing game from Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). Unlimited took the gaming world by storm last year, a simple game to learn, allowing children and adults to start playing fairly quickly. Yet the depth that this game could go to was stunning. Over the course of the year, there were three releases, all focusing on different areas of the Star Wars galaxy and introducing us to new rules as we went. It was quite the ride!
Entering its second year, I was intrigued to find out if there would be even more rules, focuses on new areas of the galaxy, or if FFG would expand on the areas that we already had. Asmodee and FFG were very kind to send along a care package to me for the new set so I could take a look! Inside there were boosters, a new four-player mat, plastic tokens and deck boxes. It was quite a sight! I will review all of these cool new additions to the game separately as, like most players, I wanted to start with what concerned me most; the gameplay itself.
I could have opened boosters and provided my opinion on them and called it a job done, yet for a game like this, there is only one real way to see how new cards and new mechanics (if there are any) work: play the game! With nine boosters in hand and my regular gaming night coming up with my son Charlie and my best buddy Gav, I already knew how we could best test out this new set: a draft! That way we could see the new cards and mechanics in action as well as see if everything was still working in terms of the drafting method of playing. I’m not going to lie, this is my favourite way to play the game. You get new cards, it doesn’t cost a lot of money and every time I’ve had a huge amount of fun. The game works amazingly in this format.
So, Charlie, Gav and I all sat down, eager to open boosters, marvel at the new cards and prepared to smash each other to pieces!
The first thing that was very evident on opening our boosters was the huge focus on space units. This might seem like it should be obvious, but the balance with ground troops was not there. This isn’t a bad thing as the first three sets have been heavily focused on ground troops. What I like is for built decks, you have got a lot more options to go with that range of ground troops now. I always found when building decks that I was having to grasp at space units where I had a lot of choice for ground. This should mean decks are able to become a lot more balanced. In draft, it doesn’t change much, except now there are more space units rather than ground, so most of your battles will occur in that arena.
While we marvelled at all the new cards, we did notice that a lot of the time, we wanted the common and uncommon cards far more than the rare and legendary. There were plenty of awesome characters. We had Hondo, Ashoka, Sabine’s Masterpiece, but these were going around us several times before we actually chose them. It is always worrying when a game comes down to who has the most rare and expensive cards. The fact that all of us pretty much ignored these cards in favour of the more common and cheaper cards bodes very well for the game. It doesn’t become how much money you have, but who can make the best deck.
I have long done a Spectre deck and even with the limited number of cards we were using, I was already able to find cards to aid that deck, a deck that is mostly built from the initial set, which was released three waves ago. It means that even if you have an established deck, you will probably find cards to enhance those decks further. It’s great to see that the set hasn’t removed them entirely, the designers have clearly got all the cards released so far in mind.
In terms of mechanics, there are two new mechanics. The first is pilots, which allow you to aid pilots to your starships, boosting their attacks, defense and sometimes giving them extra abilities. It’s a great touch, I got Poe Dameron as a leader and he can be added as a pilot, rather than having to go into the ground arena. The second mechanic is indirect damage. I think this will really change strategies. Indirect damage is damage that can’t be blocked by shields nor sentinel, and the opponent receiving the damage can choose how to spread that damage on units and their base. It’s not too much of a change to the game. Both are mechanics that look interesting to use.
We were all really enjoying the new cards, the new abilities and seeing what decks we could create. But how did the actual gameplay fare? Not much has really changed; it’s just that everything is happening in space rather than the ground. It’s like the initial release but opposite. This is of course for drafts and for the sort of cards you will get to add to your decks. It does mean drafts are still very balanced. On our draws there still seemed to be more ‘good’ cards than evil cards, which is something we’ve noticed in every draft we have ever done.
The new mechanics work really well, and we all agreed that we much preferred the pilot ability to the smuggler one, but this is of course game style preference. It was very interesting to add different pilots to vehicles and see how these things played out. Charlie was very good at stringing attacks in space and beefing his vehicles, Gav on the other hand was always copying abilities, usually for healing his base! I on the other hand was using Poe, who could move from vehicle to vehicle, allowing him to trigger abilities on certain vehicles. It gave us plenty of ideas for decks to build. The other new mechanic, indirect damage, came up only twice in all our games. In some ways I wanted to see more of it but in other ways I’m glad it’s not on every new card, only certain ones. It’ll be interesting when looking at more cards as I open boosters to see how many cards do have the ability and if a deck could be built around it.
In the last expansion, you could build droid and clone units, represented by cards for the ground arena. The same sort of mechanic is here but this time it’s for the space arena. That means it’s x-wings and TIE fighters. As someone who grew up on the Original Trilogy, this pleases my inner child so much, seeing those x-wings forming and attacking… well it’s what we’ve all dreamed about!
Our only complaint was some of the cards seem to have different coloured backs. Very unusual and it’s the first time we’ve noticed it. I’m not too sure what caused this and I’m hoping this was just an odd booster.
Overall, I’m very impressed with this expansion to Star Wars Unlimited. It adds a huge amount to the game without taking anything away from the draft game. The draft game is as it always was, but the focus is now on space. In terms of deck building, this provides so many more options for space units which I think will really start to help players vary their decks considerably. While this game continues to introduce new mechanics, they are not over burdening and are not too prevalent in the range of cards. It offers another style of play for fans while not leaving behind any who would rather stick with the already introduced play styles. Three releases a year is a lot with new mechanics each time, yet somehow Star Wars Unlimited never lets you feel like you’re drowning in new rules. It keeps it fresh. Changing it up enough to make it interesting but not too much that you feel like you are playing a new game. Dare I say it, I think this might be my favourite expansion since Spark of Rebellion. I love the focus on space and how it adds so many more units for players to choose from. Now to get my Spectre deck out and start making some special modifications to it.
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