In case you missed it, Rishca hosted the first ever Star Wars Unlimited Tournament on Tabletop Simulator over the weekend! Space was limited to 16 players in order to get the first tournament done in a suitable time frame, but they look to open up more space in the future!

The format was 4 pods of 4 players each playing Round Robin, before the Top 2 from each group made playoffs. With FFG’s recent confirmation, they ran 10 card sideboards that could be traded into the deck in between games. Deck lists were locked in on Thursday, before Fifth Brother and Patrolling V-Wing were revealed on Friday, so both of those cards did not see action in the tournament.

There were 3 streams through the tournament, first showing that players POV, and then transitioning to commentary watching a match after that player was eliminated.

PrairiePirates streamed their POV and a Top 8 match.

Take the Initiative streamed their POV, a Top 8, and Top 4 match.

L8 Night Gaming streamed their POV, a Top 8, Top 4, and the Grand Final match!

All 14 decklists that were played in the tournament, along with their sideboards, can be found here.

The breakdown was:

• 5 Boba Command
• 1 Boba Aggression
• 3 Sabine Cunning
• 1 Krennic Command
• 1 Chewbacca Command
• 1 Thrawn Command
• 1 Luke Command
• 1 Darth Vader Command

My biggest surprise was the lack of Luke Skywalker registered! Only 1 Luke in the whole field seemed real out of place. We personally enjoy the Command version, but I had seen several people online very high on the Aggression and Cunning versions as well.

Sabine is the de facto aggro deck right now, so it made sense to have a good showing of her. Shoutout to our Chewbacca pilot cqrbon, it’s always fun to see the players that are dedicated to playing one leader through the thick and thin and see how their results turn out as the expert.

The 14 players were put into 4 pods, with 2 pods having a “Bye” slot. The pods were as follows:

• Pod A
  • TowerNumberNine (Sabine Cunning) – 3-0
  • Thorrk (Vader Command) – 2-1
  • PrairiePirates (Boba Command) – 1-2
  • cqrbon (Chewbacca Command) – 0-3

• Pod B
  • Poem (Boba Command) – 3-0
  • Keaa San (Boba Command) – 2-1
  • Rebel Traitor (Thrawn Command) 1-2
  • Landair (Sabine Cunning) – 0-3

• Pod C
  • FA1TH (Krennic Command) – 3-0
  • wooooo (Boba Command) – 2-1
  • scrythe (Luke Command) – 1-2
  • RStan dropped

• Pod D
  • QuiShawnJinn (Boba Aggression) – 3-0
  • Picardy3rd (Boba Command) – 2-1
  • His Dudeness (Sabine Cunning) – 1-2
  • Unknown Dropped

For those keeping track at home, that means 4 Boba Commands, 1 Boba Aggression, 1 Vader Command, 1 Krennic Command, and 1 Sabine Cunning made the Top Cut of 8 players.

With just under half the field consisting of Boba Fett decks, it still held an impressive conversion to top cut rate with 5/8 of the Top cut decks running Boba Fett as the leader. Sabine Cunning was the big loser only converting 1 of the three entries to top cut.

Total representation in the top cut by aspect was:

• Villainy – 7
• Heroic – 1
• Vigilance – 1
• Command – 6
• Aggression – 3
• Cunning – 6

This isn’t necessarilly shocking, with Villainy Command being the sole holder of a card that can remove multiple units off the board in Overwhelming Barrage. Add in that Command has Energy Conversion Lab and DJ Deathstar, and it is no surprise Villainy Command was heavily featured.

In the last couple of weeks, Cunning got a lot more love after it already had a fantastic cheap event suite in Shoot First, Asteroid Sanctuary, and Surprise Strike. Now with No Good To Me Dead, Seventh Fleet Defender, and Greedo added to the mix, why wouldn’t you want Cunning? Boba Fett is also the defacto yellow leader with his ability to leverage more resources throughout the game, and a great Combo ability with Fett’s Firespray.

Sabine was our sole Heroic deck representing, which I don’t think is too far off from being indicative of the current meta. It’s hard not to run Villain when only one card in the game does what Overwhelming Barrage does.

That leads us into the top cut, the bracket was as follows:

If I were to do a tournament prediction bracket before this started going, I would have had 4 Boba’s to the Top 4! Boba is pretty favored into Sabine, the Boba/Krennic matchup is much closer to 50/50, but I’d still lean on Boba being slightly more efficient, and I expected the Cunning wheelhouse to help Boba beat up on Vader in the last match.

Turns out Thorrk designed his deck with beating Boba in mind. Here’s how the Top 8 finished:

75% correct. Interestingly every single 3-0 deck lost in the Top 8. It is important to note how more common top seeds losing in a TCG top cut is compared to sports like football or soccer if that is your bracket experience, as matchups can play a huge difference here.

The match I was super interested in (and plan on going back to rewatch on Take the Initiative’s channel since I was busy at the time) is the Boba Command vs Aggression matchup. I generally look at these 2 decks fairly similarly, with the Aggression aspect being a little more consistent, but the Command version having a higher ceiling when you include ramp and Overhwhelming Barrage.

Surely Boba will take care of Vader this time right? I definitely thought so as we discussed the tournament in the Community Discord as it was running. Let’s see how the Top 4 shook up!

Well well well, Vader pulled it off yet again. This one is a bit weird to watch back as Game 1 had a weird situation that required a judge to get involved, but likely had no change on the eventual outcome of the game. Boba bounced back in a strong Game 2 win before Vader sealed the deal in Game 3 in similar fashion.

The Boba on Boba matchup was actually a swift 2-0 by Boba Command, though Game 2 initially looked like it was going to swing Aggression Boba’s way.

This led to yet another Boba Command rising to face Darth Vader. Could Thorrk’s deck continue to defeat Boba Fett as intended?

Though it took another 3 games, Thorrk and Darth Vader took it home! Game 1 was a decisive victory by Keaa San’s Boba Command, but Thorrk was able to sustain in Game 2 and turn the tide before dominating Game 3.

Congrats to Thorrk on winning the first ever Star Wars Unlimited Tournament!

While this is a small tournament, run with many cards left to be spoiled for set 1, I think there are still some good takeaways from this data.

Starter Leaders are good in this game! – We’ve been high on Luke Skywalker for a while, but turns out Darth Vader is no slouch either. Despite a sea of hate cards for Vader, Villainy Aggression and Command are 2 of the best card pools currently and he does the best job of taking advantage of them.

Working with extra resources is good – Other than Sabine, every other deck in the Top Cut either had access to Command (Resupply and DJ Deathstar), Boba Fett who readied resources after spent, or both! The only other leader that can take advantage of this is Han Solo, though at a steeper cost which can be harder to deal with the Cunning hate.

Rare bases are the way to go – Every single deck in this tournament ran a 25hp Rare base. A lot of people struggle to see how giving up 5 hp could be worth whatever effect the base gives. Truth is, it’s not about the hp, the goal of the rare base is to give you an extra effect that can help you take control of the board and game. Not having access to one of these strong effects is playing at a disadvantage and just delaying the inevitable of losing 5 hp later.

The meta is incredibly dynamic – Just 2 weeks ago, Han Solo decks were everywhere! Tarkin had been pretty popular and was nowhere to be found in this tournament. Sabine wasn’t quite there yet a few weeks ago, and suddenly she is the second most popular deck in the tournament. Everything is constantly changing as more cards are revealed, and we obviously are still missing a lot of cards, so don’t read these results as the end all be all for set 1 Meta.

Well if you’ve made it this far and you’re thinking to yourself “Okay, but who cares? Why are these crazy people playing a TOURNAMENT for a game that isn’t released and only has about 56% of the set 1 card revealed!?”

I can’t say I disagreed with you when we initially started playing with proxies IRL. Truth is though, we quickly realized that this is one of the most exciting and fun times to play a TCG! With FFG’s consistent and steady stream of card reveals, we’ve been playing a very dynamic meta that can completely turn on its head from week-to-week.

It’s been a genuine blast to play, and despite a lot of printer ink used and nights spent chopping and sleeveing cards, we’ve had a great time playing it. If you haven’t had a chance to try the game yet, there really is a lot of depth to the gameplay, and I recommend you try it out as soon as you can (even if thats in March on official release)!

Once again, thanks to Rishca for putting on the tournament, to the players for showing up, and to the people that streamed the games so we could all follow along! I look forward to the coming years where we get to experience this with in-person gameplay and actual cards.