Welcome to the second episode of SWU OVER/UNDER, where the GarbageRollers crew tackles various topics related to the game and decides whether they’re OVERRATED, UNDERRATED, or PROPERLY RATED. This format lets us tackle almost anything, and we’ve got some hot topics today, including what’s probably the single most divisive aspect of SWU so far…

As with any internet opinion, we encourage you to take these…takes (??) with a grain of salt. Let us know in the comments how off-base you think we are but keep it professional. You know we at the GarbageRollers always do. 

Kicking things off for our second episode, it’s yet another helmeted boogeyman storming the meta…how will this one fare?

SABINE WREN (Galvanized Revolutionary – SOR#14)

Justin – While it would be easy to go with overrated based on the number of Content Creators currently making “Can it beat Sabine” segments, I think the community is dead on that Sabine is a very strong leader. She’s the only leader in the game coming out before 5 resources and she has immediate aggro impact Round 1. She may not always be the best deck, but she will definitely be a premiere aggro leader indefinitely. She’s PROPERLY RATED.

Tyler – I think she’s OVERRATED because of sideboards. Burn is straightforward to counter – add healing to your deck. I see a future where Sabine can win the 1st game in a best of three, but once the opponent has had a chance to load up on counters, burn simply isn’t going to get through. Maybe Sabine can do some sideboarding herself and get into a mid-range on mid-range competition, but in that scenario, Sabine’s ability and speed are worth a lot less.

Jayson – Great players are calling this the deck to beat, so I’m risking my neck a little by saying she’s a touch OVERRATED. It’s very possible there are better aggro decks in the first set than Sabine, to say nothing of the largely unexplored balance between archetypes. I also think Tyler’s got a good point about the potential sideboard counters. Undoubtably she’s good, so really my thinking here is because I’m prone to believing that most extreme takes deserve some moderation. Chewie isn’t unplayable, he’s just not S-tier. Overwhelming Barrage isn’t busted, it’s just a good card. And along those same lines, I think Sabine isn’t crazy, she’s just a solid litmus test for the potential of aggro. You need to have a plan against her. That doesn’t mean she’s ridiculous.

DRAFTING SWU

Justin – Plenty of people say they’re excited to draft. A group of 15-30 diehards are even running drafts on Tabletop Simulator once a week. Overall community response seems to be very positive about draft, so I’ll go with PROPERLY RATED. It’s a heck of a lot of fun! While we’ll be buying plenty of product at launch so we have cards to start filing content with right away, I will still gladly draft every week at locals if people are up for it.

Tyler – I’ve only done one draft thus far, but I’m very impressed by the forethought that FFG has put into the process. That we can just pick up and go with a few packs each – and no separate draft kit – is huge! The community seems to be really high on it and I don’t see any reason to disagree– PROPERLY RATED.

Jayson – People have PROPERLY RATED this for sure, because it seems like draft nights are happening all over the place and I totally get why- they’re stupid fun. I was excited for Limited play and still had totally underestimated how much I would love it. Ever since my first draft as part of the GarbageRollers Christmas Special, my thoughts have been consumed with it, and all I wanna do in the evenings is get my friends together and pass some packs around. HUGE shoutout to the TTS mod developers who got those pack generators going, because it’s given me a whole new appreciation for the game. I am wholeheartedly telling buddies to get into SWU even if all they do is learn the rules and play drafts. It’s that awesome.

ASPECT BALANCE

Justin – As Tyler noted previously, there are 20 different color combinations you can roll with in this game, and thus far none of them (outside of a few outliers that need more cards revealed) feel way behind on balance. The community seems to get caught up in arms about the hottest card or series of reveals every week, but overall seems like everyone views different archetypes as viable depending on what cards we see in the last ~65 or so. Thus I will continue my streak of PROPERLY RATED.

Tyler – I’m very impressed with the balance between the colors and I don’t feel like any are pulling ahead in power level. That’s a huge positive for the game and its diversity. However, I’m confused by how the designers are costing and incentivizing mono-aspect play. Some of the cards seem legitimately pushed while others don’t. FFG also decided to include colorless cards – the one we’ve seen being pretty bad. Until I see real success in both those areas, I don’t know that I can say the colors are in balance. Since I see both positives and negatives here, gonna go with PROPERLY RATED.

Jayson – It seems like there’s a new boogeyman every other week (the latest model is Force Throw), and I feel like in the dialogue about the current “meta”, people occasionally miss the forest for the trees a bit. We have so, so many signs of a healthy game already. I expect a pretty diverse spread of successful decks in the first set, and I think the primary factor in who wins events will be who pilots and builds the best, not just “whoever brought the right deck”. That’s such a great mark for a game. I’m just very impressed by what they’ve accomplished on the design side in the first set so far, and I think the balance of power between colors is UNDERRATED.

MONO CUNNING

Justin – Here’s the thing, Cunning is an insane tempo play as a card and when you combine that with Boba Fett’s undercosted value as a leader and some other great villain yellow cards (Greedo, Boba Fett unit, & Fett’s Firespray among others), you’re left with a pretty strong deck. Thankfully Cunning won’t be drawn every game, or I’d be worried about this deck being one of the highest negative play experience for opponents in set 1. I have to say everyone seems to have PROPERLY RATED mono cunning as the powerhouse it seems to be.

Tyler – My gameplay experiences against mono-Boba were pretty punishing. As Justin said, there are some insane tempo plays that allow you to advance your boardstate rapidly. While I don’t expect it to get significantly better in the next two months, people have PROPERLY RATED it.

Jayson – Jeremy Zwirn really lit a fire under people talking about how much he loves Mono Cunning Boba. We’ve now seen all the double yellow cards for SoR, and while they’re strong, I remain skeptical based on my play so far. Cunning as a color has some weaknesses that can be exploited, and running it in isolation seems to me to double down on those weaknesses. How much bounce does one really need? Without huge targets for cards like No Good To Me Dead, can mono-cunning win on math? Is it actually demonstrable that the worst cunning cards are better in this deck than the best cards you could grab from a third color? Lots of questions, and I think it’s pretty fair to ask whether we’re even close to having enough data to answer them right now. For that reason, I feel I can only reach the conclusion that this is a deck that’s currently OVERRATED.

SWU’S ART + DESIGN

Justin – I’m tempted to say this is properly rated, as art is subjective and people will call it how they see it…but I’ll break my streak and actually go with UNDERRATED. I cannot tell you how many bonus points FFG deserves for finally not reusing the same Star Wars art they’ve used on all their games for the last decade (even on the recently released Star Wars Deckbuilding Game). There’s been plenty of people that don’t like the art on newly revealed cards, but the art really does look cohesive and great when you actually put out a lot of cards on the table. I think it will grow on a lot of people as they actually get the cards in hand and start playing the game.

Tyler – I was lucky enough to attend GenCon this year and talk to people on the floor about what was then a newly announced game. We were all understandably skeptical due to FFG’s card game history. The art kept coming up in those conversations- and usually not in a good way. Since the summer, I’ve played the game a lot and am 100% willing to sell it to people as a gameplay experience, but I’m still not a huge fan of the art. I LOVED the luscious, borderless art that FFG put into the SWLCG and this feels like a step back. The community forgets how jarring the art style of this game can be for new players – OVERRATED. (Maybe I’m just an old fogey who wants Star Wars to be live-action and not a cartoon??)

Jayson – I was in the skeptical early crowd (this is my field- I’m a professional graphic designer/artist) but after seeing a couple questionable pieces, there’s no question that I now think this is UNDERRATED. There’s so much criticism of SWU art that, to my eye, is super well executed and whose only crime appears to have been being stylized. There’s pieces in this game that aren’t super, for sure, and you’d expect that as they nail down the style and find the artists they like working with best. But I’ve just seen a lot of folks take the step to call this game ugly, and I think that’s pure crazy talk. I was especially delighted with my print and play demo decks- this game looks amazing on the table, and I think visually it’s a real winner.

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That’s all folks! We’ll see you next time for another riveting episode of OVER/UNDER!