And what that means for SWU

Every card game with life and damage also has its healers- units tasked with cleaning up the last fight’s mess. It’s rarely a glamourous (or Tier 1) effect, but it’s a persistently effective one. This article will review healing effects across a variety of card games and speculate as to how those effects will impact Star Wars: Unlimited.

First: this article concerns unit healing- not healing a player or base. So, this won’t be an exhaustive survey of Magic’s Lifegain cards, or SWU’s Restore units. Hopefully, by focusing on unit damage, we can do apples-to-apples comparisons.

Let’s start with healers in Magic. Magic just isn’t our best healing analogy for SWU, even though they share a similar combat structure. For those unaware, all units in Magic: The Gathering fully heal at the end of each turn, so its healers primarily deal in damage prevention. Since shield tokens take up the “prevent” design space in SWU, I doubt we’ll see healer characters with prevention effects. SWU can give them a more nuanced identity since damage persists from round to round.

What about in Star Wars: Destiny? 39 cards in Destiny provided healing, but there aren’t many power cards on the list. The healing on Ancient Lightsaber was just gravy on top of its pushed stats. Second Chance, with its death trigger, was technically healing, but really a (death) prevention effect. The cards focused on healing never really took off (Force Heal, anyone?)

After looking at the weakness of healing effects in Destiny, it’s a good time to break down why healing effects are so difficult to pull off. First, you have to have a live unit. Second, that unit must have damage from a previous engagement that they survived. Third, you have to be holding the healing effect. Fourth, you have to be able to afford it. This is all before we layer on any additional spot requirements like It Binds All Things does. Combined, these factors make healing a very situational effect- and hard to pull off.

So, what’s a card game where healing effects are common and effective?

The game that springs to my mind is Legends of Runeterra. I was a big Braum/Vladimir fan, and the Regenerate keyword made that deck. Regenerate healed all of a character’s damage at the end of each turn. It was key for keeping units on the board and making sure your “base” (crystal?) stayed defended. Buffs each time a unit took damage and survived were also useful on cards like Scarthane Steffen and Scargrounds. LoR later produced cards that solved the “Where’s my damaged unit?” problem by giving us high-stats, self-damaging units like Crusty Codger and Boxtopus. Finally, they gave us units that simply raised their stats when healing happened.

How is Star Wars: Unlimited incorporating these successful healing mechanics?
Regenerating units: None currently.
Bonuses for surviving damage: Yes! The Grit keyword is on leader Chewbacca and Rugged Survivors. Krennic also rewards units for having damage.
Self-damaging units: Yes! We got the first of hopefully many with Deathtrooper.
Buff-when-healed units: None currently.

We also have solid upgrades like Entrenched and Resilient that increase the odds an upgraded unit will survive long enough to be healed.

Clearly, there’s more design space in healing to augment the situational healing effects we already have like Surgical Droid and It Binds All Things. I’ve crossed my fingers that we get more healing abilities like those in Legends of Runeterra. What might that look like? Here’s my dream card for a SWU healing deck:

[Blue] 1 •Grogu, Novice Healer
0/3
On Attack: Heal 1 damage from another unit.
When one of your units is healed: Give an experience token to this unit.

What do you think of my dream Grogu? Have you built a deck that uses healing that you like? Let us know in the comments!