Thanks to the card reveals in yesterdays FFG stream, we are now at 156 cards revealed (officially or otherwise) and 14/18 leaders. We’ve also broken the 100 day mark until the March 8th release! Now seems as good a time as ever to make way too early predictions about the Set 1 meta.

Below is where I currently expect each leader to fall through the set 1 meta (March-July). This is taking into account the card pool we know, and some guess work on which leaders might see some more love with the rest of the card pool.

S-Tier

Not only do these 3 leaders rock with the card pool, they have fantastic leader and unit sides that I expect to be very relevant for future sets.

Boba Fett on paper is the definition of value in a Leader. On his leader side, once per round when an enemy unit leaves play, we get access to an extra resource for the round. Timing it right with his deployment, we can take advantage and get 3 extra resources the round he becomes a unit. At 5 resources for 4/7, there’s not really anything not to like. Villain yellow is full of tricky events, and he has access to the villain green card pool if desired to add resource ramp or bomb cards like Overwhelming Barrage. I don’t see his value dropping much if any with the remaining card reveals.

Director Krennic has one of the most impactful abilities in the game, always giving his friendly units +1 Attack if they are damaged. There are a lot of cool combos to be played with cards like Lil Bro who damages himself, or using cards like Entrenched to give units staying power. With a very limited card pool thus far, he’s already super competitive in multiple color splashes, and I only expect to see him get better with the remaining 96 cards.

Sabine Wren looks to be the hero aggro staple of Set 1, with plenty of cheap, efficient units to slot in. Her leader ability puts the game on a fast clock, and her unit side deploys earlier than any other leader in the game. That combo leaves us hopeful we will generally get pretty good value out of her for a round or two before our opponent can deal with her.

A-Tier

These leaders are strong, but can have sticky meta situations that could lead them to be less powerful at times.

Han Solo is the one leader in the game thus far that can ramp without being dependent on specific cards drawn from his deck. One of his most powerful lines is using his leader ability Round 4 to jump to 6 resources, deploying, attacking to get to 7 resources, and dropping a unit 2 resource curves ahead of the opponent! The more Cunning reveals we’ve seen though, the most ways we’ve seen to disrupt Han from accomplishing that line. This will likely change his deckbuilds to be a little more aggressive throughout the game of jumping 1 resource ahead and leveraging that. Still a very strong ability!

Darth Vader can run into similar problems to Han, except that he is able to splash Green and play resource ramp cards to help alleviate his problem. His leader ability is super strong, allowing him to ping off shields and prevent pesky units like Star Wing Scout from being played effectively against him. Everybody loves Darth Vader, and I’m very hopeful that we will have this iconic & starter rarity leader seeing lots of play!

Luke Skywalker completes the starter pairing, joining Dad in A-tier. He similarly has a fairly strong ability on his leader side, being able to give heroism units deployed a shield in the round they are played. This can create some weird sequencing/trade value for the opponent and give Luke time to stabilize before he comes out at 6 resources and becomes a shield-making machine.

B-Tier

This is where we start to get into murky waters of leaders we have seen very little card support for thus far.

Grand Moff Tarkin is the exception to that, though, as we have seen plenty of villain green and trooper synergy available to him. His leader and unit side are both impactful, but he seemingly keeps getting left behind against other decks as they see more cards revealed. I’m not sure we’ve discovered the best way to play Tarkin yet, and I’m interested to see if something different emerges taking him further up the ladder.

Hera Syndulla makes B tier for me based on the fact that she will likely be the best mono (double aspect) deck in the Set 1 meta. We’ve only seen 1 double aspect card for each aspect thus far (Aggression, Command, Cunning & Vigilance), and we don’t know if we’ll see more. Being able to play these cards for 4 is very strong, but it’s currently hard to be that restricted in deckbuilding to make up for 3 cards you may never see in a game. Hera breaks that by being able to bring Sabine Wren, Ezra Bridger, Kanan Jarrus, and Spark of Rebellion as well. I think its safe to say we’ll see somewhere between 2 and 4 more Spectres to make the restriction feel less bad as well.

Jyn Erso is the most recently revealed leader, and she has seen effectively no cards that synergize with her like other leaders so far. She seems like she will slot in well to a mid-range style deck with her leader ability, but its also hard to get too excited about her when you compare her 6 resource 4/7 unit side to Boba Fett who has the same for 5 resources. Jury is very much still out on how good or bad Jyn will end up being, so its middle of the pack for now.

Leia Organa is currently the hardest known commodity for me to peg. She has a great ability and great unit side that don’t really synergize at all with the Command aspect she belongs in. If Leia was printed as Aggression or Cunning, I feel like I’d be super high on her. As is, she fits into a weird spot of being strong, but she doesn’t synergize as well as I’d like. I suspect she will have lots of competitive builds, but never be at the top of the meta.

C-Tier

These are leaders that seem like they need a lot of help (and likely won’t see it in Set 1)

Chewbacca is such an odd leader. In a vacuum, his leader ability seems pretty great at stalling out the game to give you plenty of time to deploy as a powerful unit that simultaneously stalls your opponents attack out while making him stronger to swing you ahead. In reality, the leader ability feels clunky at times past the first few rounds when you wouldn’t necessarily want to keep dropping cheap units, and his unit side comes out so late the opponent can generally draw into an option or two to deal with him. I suspect Chewie will need to see several more cards that synergize well to see much play outside of enthusiasts like cqrbon on discord.

IG-88 suffers from a couple of problems. There are way too many accessible removal options that clear him out right away, and I often look at him and wonder why I would choose him over Darth Vader. IG seems like he’d be a great fit for aggro, but Heroism feels like the far better choice for that archetype play.

Grand Inquisitor is our first look at a Combo-Build hero. He wants to set-up for a big play in Round 3 or 4 of readying a beefy unit and then potentially readying it with an upgrade to do an even bigger second swing. The reality is that he’s generally easily disrupted by upgrade-hate cards like Fang Fighter and Bamboozle, and he hates to see Tarkintown on the other side. I suspect he will find ways to combo better as we get more sets, but you have to think the late playtesting nerf to 6 resource deploy is ultimately going to lead him to obscurity.

D-Tier

I just don’t see these leaders being competitively viable

Thrawn is probably my hottest take of the day, as I do not expect him to see high competitive play in set 1. His ability is too similar to many cheap events we have in Cunning that also give us something else (a shield, exhaust 2 rounds, return upgrades to hand, etc). Add in that his ability doesn’t work every round depending on whats on top, and I just think Thrawn ends up looking like a game stall-out mess that doesn’t accomplish enough. I really would love to see him get more weapons in set 1, but I suspect he will need at least a few more sets to marinate before he can see top competitive play.

That’s it for today! After sharing my tier list with the other guys, its exciting to see how different the three of us project Set 1 to look! You can expect to see their versions in the next week or two, and we look forward to revisiting these in the future and seeing who was closest.

What does your Set 1 tier list look like? Are you expecting to see some of the above leaders get a lot more love in the remainder of the card pool?