We had the chance to sit down with the Lead Designer of Star Wars Unlimited, Danny Schaefer! If you’re here exclusively for the new card reveals, go ahead and scroll on down to the very bottom.. otherwise we hope you enjoy the following insights and designer nuggets we were able to glean from Danny!

Hello Danny! Can you start things off by giving us a little bit of your designer background?

I’ve been a card game designer at FFG for almost 9 years. Prior to Unlimited, I had stretches leading the design of both A Game of Thrones: The Card Game and Keyforge. I also did a bit of design work for Warhammer: Conquest and Arkham Horror: The Card Game.

What excites you the most about Star Wars Unlimited?

The possibilities! After working on it for so long, I’m so excited for it to finally launch and see people play games and build decks.

What is your favorite card that you have designed? (If not revealed, can we get the Set # Card # for later reference?)

My favorite card changes from day to day, but just to really tease everyone I’m going to say one you won’t see for a while: Set 3 (Twilight of the Republic), Card 034, because it gives you a really exciting and unique dream to chase.

What does an average week of working on Star Wars Unlimited look like?

It really varies depending on what projects I’m focused on and where they’re at in their timeline. Pretty much every week includes some amount of playtesting and some time discussing card designs with the team. Other than that, it could be all sorts of different things from week to week: working on the high-level vision for sets in the distant future, figuring out nitty-gritty balance details, working with our production team, appearing on live streams, etc.

When doing internal playtesting, how do you strike the balance of building fun/thematic decks vs. testing purely from a competitive standpoint?

In general, the earlier we are in playtesting the more we’re testing for fun/theme, and as we get later into the process we focus more on balance and competitive play. We also have a good variety of skillsets and interests among the design team: some of us are great at competitive deckbuilding, others are more focused on the theme side.

In most games, there is a consolation mechanic for going second.  What have you observed about the difference between going first and second and what ultimately decided not giving the second player anything in Star Wars Unlimited?

Simply put, we didn’t see a significant advantage from having initiative in the first round, certainly not enough that giving a tangible reward to the other player felt balanced. In round 1, it’s often desirable to go second to be able to react to what the opponent does. (When playing a control deck, I often pass first action if I have the initiative round 1 to see if my opponent goes to ground or space and respond accordingly.) Obviously going first can be a major edge once you have units in play, and starting the game with initiative makes you more likely to go first in subsequent rounds. But with the way the action system works, the flow of gameplay and style of each deck are the biggest factors in determining initiative for most of the game—players rarely mirror each other action-for-action for more than a couple rounds.

What are your base numbers when developing Leaders? What are you looking for in a leader? Will we see General Jar Jar?

There are so many variables when designing leaders that I couldn’t really give hard baseline numbers—we have general ranges for power/HP depending on when they deploy and how strong their abilities are, but everything is flexible. We like to do a mix of leaders that feel generally useful and flexible along with those that really ask you to build or play in a very specific way, with the understanding that leaders with narrower abilities are allowed to have a higher ceiling. As for your last question, I can only say that I’m a major advocate for a Jar Jar leader but not everyone on the design team shares my enthusiasm.

Are you planning on adding new keywords, abilities, etc. to each set? If so, how do you think they will impact the base core set?

Yes, each set will have its own theme and identity, including mechanics specific to that set. We’ll want players to be able to build decks around those new mechanics, but we’re very aware of making sure that sets play nicely together. So, there will be cards in the second set that fit well into established decks from the first set, just as there will be plenty of decks built around new mechanics from the second set that want cards from the first set. Spark of Rebellion in particular was designed to have plenty of solid fundamental cards that I’m confident will continue to show up in decks well into the future.

Talk about the importance of double-aspect cards to the game. What design space does that open? What plans do you have for mono decks?

We want to give players some reward for building decks with 2 of the same aspect, just as another option to create more variety and possibilities when deckbuilding. We knew that in the first set it would be especially harder to play those decks because the card pool isn’t very large yet, so the draw to playing multiple different aspects is very strong. With that in mind, we gave a few splashy double-aspect cards to each of the aspects (other than Hero and Villain). We’ll continue to put those cards in sets going forward to help incentivize those double-aspect decks, though not necessarily at the same rate in every set.

Where do you find the balance of empowering the thematic fan favorite characters to be at the top of the meta vs. minor obscure characters of the Star Wars Universe?

We try not to push specific characters to be inherently stronger than others, but there are a few factors in design that help ensure people will get to play with their favorite characters and feel good about it:

• We allow our strongest cards to be unique cards and cards with multiple aspects because those cards have some built-in limitations when it comes to deckbuilding and playing—those cards often overlap with our iconic characters.
• This isn’t a universal rule, but we tend to give fan favorite characters more generally useful abilities that fit into a variety of decks (think Boba Fett, Leia Organa, Yoda, etc.), while more obscure characters often have more niche abilities or are designed to fit only in a certain archetype of deck.
• Finally, we’ll simply print more versions of the most popular characters, which inherently means they’ll show up more often.

What are your plans to address the “power creep” of new cards?

We have no intention of increasing the overall power level of the game. Obviously, every set will have individual cards that end up being the most powerful, and we’ll be making new cards that are at similar power level to the strongest cards from the first set, but there’s no plan for future sets to be more powerful than previous ones. The main competitive format will have rotation to help ensure that the newer sets remain relevant without power creep and keep the game accessible for new players.

Do you plan for mill to be a dedicated deck type, or will it only be a Plan B for decks?

At this point we don’t intend to push a high-level competitive deck in which mill is the primary strategy. There are a handful of mill cards in Spark of Rebellion, and we’ll continue to print a few here and there, so there definitely could be a casual mill deck at some point.

Early plays of the game have revealed some key differences in how the space and ground lanes function. Can you elaborate on the design vision behind the two lanes? What kinds of successful decks have you seen that approach the lanes in unique ways?

Our design philosophy is not to make the arenas perfectly balanced—when we tried that in playtesting it tended to lead to rather uninteresting gameplay and deckbuilding. Instead, we want to give each arena its own flavor, with more ground units than space units in the card pool and ground units having slightly better stats overall, which leads to more dynamic gameplay and metagame choices. Basically, there’s a default state where in a typical game you’ll expect there to be more units in the ground arena. This makes space units “safer”, in that they’re less likely to be taken out quickly by enemy units in combat. Players can then exploit this default state and build a deck that’s heavily focused on space—an excellent strategy for aggro decks to catch opponents off-guard. But that strategy will usually lose to an opponent who goes all-in on ground units because those units will be stronger. There’s an intentional imbalance built in that keeps things dynamic and asks players to adjust depending on what they expect their opponents to do, and we really love how that’s played out.

Why was Fett’s Firespray templated in a way that can combo with effects like ambush (from Piett or Energy Conversion Lab), whereas the Falcon was not?

A lot of factors go into how we template cards, and to be honest I don’t remember exactly why we decided to go this way on those two cards. I believe “enters play ready” is our default for that type of effect and the Firespray is the exception. We may have thought the phrasing of the ability was clearer as a “When Played” given the unusual condition (controlling either of two possible characters, either as unit or leader), or perhaps in development we thought it could use a slightly higher power level as a 6-cost unit, or maybe some combination of those reasons and others I’m not remembering right now.

What is your favorite thing about working at Fantasy Flight Games?

The people! It’s so great to work every day with so many fun, talented, interesting people who are all excited about creating the best games possible.

If you had to spend a week locked in a basement with only tabletop games and 1 other person involved in Star Wars Unlimited, who would it be and why?

Impossible to choose just one (see above answer about how great the people at FFG are)—I’d have an awesome time with pretty much anyone on the Unlimited team.

Well, we’d be pretty weak Content Creators if we didn’t take this opportunity to ask for some new cards.. can you throw us a bone?

…Well you did ask nicely!

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Behold, the Garbage Rollers have entered the game! We love to give our first thoughts and impressions on cards, what do you think about this card Danny?

Danny – I love this little guy. It’s well known among the design team that I have an affinity for building decks with a lot of 1-drops. There’s nothing better than getting 2 units into play in the first round to immediately put your opponent on the back foot and force them to play catch up as they try to answer multiple threats each round. Jawa Scavenger fits that role perfectly. With 2 power it can immediately start applying some pressure to the enemy base, and Saboteur is great against those pesky Blue players trying to stop you with Sentinels. Only having 1 HP can be a drawback in certain matchups, but all in all the Scavenger is a great tool for aggressive decks in the first set.

Justin – Obviously we’re all estatic to see Jawas in Star Wars Unlimited from the get-go! Interesting to note this is the first unit Villain potentially has access to, free of aspect-penalty, with saboteur! We’ve seen a whole lot of the Fringe trait, so I’m very interested to see what synergies it gets in the future. With 1 HP, it’s going to be tough at times to get this little guy in play to take advantage of the Saboteur ability, so I’m curious if we’ll see much of him in Constructed play early on.

Tyler – Our namesake arrives! Happy that I’ll be able to open the little guy in draft packs. Constructed play rests on if we ever get a tribal (ha!) effect for Fringe characters. Interesting that they made Jawa a trait. Maybe this means we get more (unique?!) Jawas down the line!

Jayson – Wow, thanks for the thematic choice of spoiler here FFG! Saboteur is a weird keyword for a 1 drop, but in an early meta where Luke Skywalker could very well be all over the place, you may want as much of it as you can get. Utinni!

The trend of Inferno Squad reveals continues! 

Danny – On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve found this space unit to be at its best in controlling decks. Fittingly, one of its best homes is with the Inferno Squad Commander herself, Iden Versio. I spent a lot of time in Set 1 and Set 2 playtesting piloting a Blue-Red Iden control deck that aimed to keep the board clear, answering all of the opponent’s threats and healing enough to stall until a powerful late game headlined by cards like Count Dooku, Emperor Palpatine, and Avenger. As a 2-cost 2/3, Inferno Four is a great early play to defend yourself in space, easily mopping up TIE Fighters and trading for aggressive 2-drops. And it does so while also letting you dig through your deck to find the cards you need. Drawing the right card at the right time can be crucial for a control deck, so it’s fantastic that Inferno Four can help you draw the perfect answer.

Justin – At last, some space units for Villain Blue! In case you weren’t keeping track, the Avenger was the only preveiously revealed Villain Blue space unit. At 2 cost, this will likely be a staple for Villain blue. The 2/3 stat line gives you great trade ability into a lot of villain space units, and I’m always a fan of the double combo of When Played/When Defeated. The ability to sift through 4 cards will end up being quite strong a lot of the time! We were actually talking about the Inferno Squad novel in the Unplayable discord the other day, so nice to see Seyn Marana represented here!

Tyler – A solid include for Villain Blue decks that have been short on good 2-drop options. The digging ability will be nice for decks that need to search for a Childsen, OB or the inevitable (but still theoretical) board wipe.

Jayson – I love the When Played/When Defeated combo, and filter effects are always super handy to have. It’s a little less juicy than some of other other unique units, but straightforward low curve pieces are just what the doctor ordered for Villain/Blue.

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Big thanks to Danny for answering all of our questions and bringing a couple of sweet cards along with him! What do you think of the new cards? Which card are you more excited about?