ICYMI Wednesday, Fantasy Flight Games gave us a detailed stream on their plans for Competitive organized play.

You can watch the stream here, or checkout their article here. Otherwise, follow along with our recap below!

Xander started off the stream recapping his TwitchCon experience and confirming Luke/Vader hyperspace promos will continue to be available at convention demos leading up to the game’s release. He also re-stated that Set 1 will have 18 leaders, 16 located in booster packs and the Darth Vader & Luke Skywalker starter cards.

We then saw the Green Squadron A-wing revealed, which Xander said is a top 3 unit in his books!

Justin – This card is fireeeee! Since it attacks as a 3/3, this will be one of the stronger early game space units that can trade into all the other rebel ships without being defeated! I’m definitely looking to slot this into my Sabine decks and Red Han.

Tyler – This card really hits all the notes for a Red aggro deck. The perfect trait hooks, advantageous stats- my only worry is that cards with Raid are going to be easy pickings for stockier units that put them on the defense. I like that the promo version has the reminder text removed. The more art and less text the better!

Jayson – I gotta call my parents, I think I met my soulmate today. This is exactly the kind of strong fundamentals card that really makes me excited to go build a deck. There are very few problems in SWU that can’t be solved by hitting something really hard over and over again, and a lil’ fleet of these guys is going to do that efficiently and offer the opponent pretty poor options to trade. Dodonna buffs it, Wedge buffs it, and – crucially – it is an A-Wing, the empirical coolest ship in Star Wars. Beautiful stuff.

Josh then guided us through the structures of competitive play.

The lowest level is Planetary Qualifiers (which are somewhat equivalent to regionals in previous FFG games). These are at the store level, but more limited than Store Showdowns. They confirmed the existence of Tournament Points, which you will be able to earn in competitive events in the hopes of earning a spot at the Galactic Championship (World Championship). Josh confirmed that winning a Planetary Qualifier will earn you enough points to get an invite for the next Galactic Championship. These will be one day events.

Planetary Qualifiers will not start until Set 2 release (July or later). These will be run by “top level stores” around the world, which Josh later explained meant stores with the most space for players, accessibility, and can host a good experience. The focus for starting with Set 2 was to give new TCG players the time to learn and play at smaller events before rolling out the more competitive structure. Josh also said single-set metas aren’t always the best, so this decision also allows the card pool to be bigger when competitive events begin. These events will take place in varying locations to be as accessible as possible.

We then got a few Q&A questions answered:

• There will be a judge program, with details to come.
• There will be some level of demo events at stores leading up to release, with details to come.
• FFG will be using its own proprietary tournament software, which will work offline. More details to come!
• More details to come on tournament points, specifically how they work, how many of them we get, and how to track them at a later date.

Next Xander and Josh walked us through Sector Qualifiers. This is the first standalone event on the competitive side. This means that these events will not be held at gaming conventions like Gencon, Nova or Spiel. That way you aren’t having to choose between playing in a SWU event and enjoying the con itself. These will be regularly throughout the year and around the globe at roughly one a month. If you do well enough at these events, top participants will be awarded enough points to earn a spot at the Galactic Championship. The exact number of people will vary based on attendance, as it will scale up for higher attendance events.

All of these events will be 2-day events, with a day of Swiss and then Top play. There will be side events and a prize wall at all of these Sector Qualifiers, giving people that drop early or don’t want to play in competitive events a place to engage in the game and earn cool prizes! Sector Qualifiers are also open entry, meaning anyone can sign up to play.

Josh then confirmed off of a Q&A question that promo cards will be unique in the way they look and collectable, but they WILL NOT be mechanically unique promo cards! Each level of event will have different promos and unique treatments. Josh feels that it limits the content more than anything else, and just wants to give people really cool versions of accessible and tournament legal cards.

Last, but not least, we have Regional Qualifiers. This event is even narrower, fewer of them happening, and worth more points than the previous 2 event structures. Josh hinted that these will happen about every other month. This will functionally be very similar to the Sector Qualifiers, just with more points and prizes. There may be a unique structure in this tier of event in the future (hopefully draft!).

Josh then revealed that the main format for all of these events in the first year will be constructed. They don’t want to keep it as straightforward as possible out the gate. They plan to grow, adapt, and build out OP in the years to come.

Josh confirmed there will be livestreaming at big events, so we can all follow along with the action!

Sector Qualifiers and Regional Qualifiers will start in 2025, to allow time for players to build and have time to get comfortable with the competitive scene.

That leads us into our final format, the Galactic Championship. All the other event structures above lead into the World championship level event. This event will be invitation only except for the first one hosted in Summer of 2025. They plan to host these in the summer every year where most people have more time to travel. The first GC will be open invitation up to space limitations, so be sure to get your ticket quick when they open up!

A standard Galactic Championship will use the prior year of point earnings to earn a spot. With no GC in 2024, you will have extra time to earn points for that first GC in 2025. You may ask why though if it is open invite? Top point earners throughout the year will actually earn a bye into Day 2 of Competition.

Tournament points collect from Galactic Championship to Galactic Championship, so these will reset after each Galactic Championship. Xander also revealed there will be an event locator on the SWU website in the future to help players find events.

Some more Q&A quick hitters:

• Competitive format will be Best of 3’s wherever possible.
• Sideboards will be a part of competitive play
• Round time is something they’ve been doing a lot of internal testing on and they think they’re in a good spot for it (but not revealing yet).
• Rotation will be a thing in Star Wars Unlimited. No details today.
• Age Divisions are not something they are looking to do right outside the gate. It’s a possibility though.

Back to the Galactic Championship, it will be a 3-day event. Day 1 will host most of the players outside of the above-mentioned Day 2 qualifiers of top tournament points. This rewards the best and most engaged players from the year-long season. Day 2 will consist of more swiss, more gameplay, and then Day 3 the final exciting conclusion to the Star Wars Unlimited Competitive Season.

There will be side events all throughout the Galactic Championship, which are open to anyone to attend subject to space limitations. The first Sector Qualifier for the following season will be hosted at the Galactic Championship every year! This means that there will be players that don’t make it to Day 2 of the Galactic Championship that then play in the Sector Qualifier and earn a spot to next year’s Galactic Championship before this one has concluded! Anybody who makes Day of the Galactic Championship will also earn several tournament points for next year’s Galactic Championship.

There will be different prize support at every level of event that they have plans to reveal as we get closer to those events.

Josh then circled back to rotation and explained briefly there will be ban lists and errata’s as needed. They have a plan for it, but aren’t revealing anything until it is necessary.

Lastly Xander revealed us the spicy Academy Defense Walker. Really cool card that slots into Krennic!

Justin – The obvious instant deck build is to put this in all of your Director Krennic decks, but I definitely see including this in most villain blue decks. A 5/5 Sentinel for 6 is already about average value, and it shouldn’t be too hard to play this at the right time to get at least get 1 experience token every time. Anything better than that and we are super happy to play this.

Tyler – A 6-cost unit should get us 6/7 stats and an average keyword (think AT-ST.) The sentinel keyword usually means a -1 stat reduction so even accounting for the keyword this unit is below curve without the ability. A single other damaged unit puts us at curve, and it’s not until we can drop 2 experience tokens that we get above curve, which is where a ground unit should be. Given that we’re starting below curve, you’ll likely need a deck built around damaged units (and Krennic’s ability) to make this thrive. Krennic himself could use another card or two before he’s viable, so I think this card probably sits on the shelf until then.

Jayson – I’m ready to eat these words, but for the moment I think this is probably pretty good. Most Sentinels are more annoyances than true roadblocks, but this guy is gonna seriously hurt anything it touches. You likely can’t ignore it and dealing with it isn’t trivial. Awesome keywords too. I think this is the most compelling argument for Saboteur so far and a super great example of what kinds of things to look for when you’re paying 6 for something.

We also got the news that Xander will be the new stream host going forward and Josh steps back into focusing on his Organized Play duties.

If you want to read all of the above again in bullet point format, including the Casual OP news from last month, you can check out this page from our friends at SWU Holocron.

You might be asking yourself who this mysterious Jayson guy is that randomly started showing up in this article.. Come back on Monday to meet our newest team member!

What was your favorite part of the stream reveals? Did you want to see anything else from the Organized Play announcements?