Being a CPA deep in the depths of tax season, it seemed like a no-brainer to revisit a topic we were keenly interested in months ago… is the Aspect Penalty ever worth paying in Star Wars Unlimited?

If you haven’t taken the deep dive into deckbuilding yet, it’s possible you’ve missed one of the most interesting gameplay decisions the FFG development team made for Star Wars Unlimited. You can include literally any card in your deck, regardless of its colors (aspects). How could this possibly be balanced you might ask? FFG added an “Aspect Penalty” of 2 resources for every aspect icon on the card you do not have on your leader or base. Or as I prefer to call it, the “Aspect Tax.”

Similar to the Unique rules (as explained by Tyler Parrott here), there are some weird interactions on the theme side of things. While Saw Gerrera was known as a terrorist in the eyes of the empire, I can include him in my Darth Vader villainy deck and command him to bomb the Rebels this go-around! I guess vice-versa, it could allow some cool what-ifs, like if Luke Skywalker did join his father at the end of ESB. I can slot him in that same Darth Vader deck and play some scary-big force units on my side of the board!

Is it playable in Constructed?

This question will hang over the set 1 meta. While the easy answer is to say, “No shot. No card could possibly be worth two extra resources,” it’s theoretically possible to find a wild combo with cards that weren’t intended to be played together. Let’s not forget that Han Solo as a leader can cheat 2 resources ahead of other leaders on his deploy round (thanks to using his Leader ability to go to 6 resources, deploying and attacking to go to 7). Is that effect powerful enough to negate the penalty of a 5-cost card out of aspect? Potentially, but can we find anything that would be worth playing over a 7-cost card in our actual aspects? Probably not.

The day-one candidate for this argument was Overwhelming Barrage. While it is one of the few multi-target removal cards in the game, we have so many good options at 7-resource cards now that it’s really hard to argue OB is fundamentally better in that deck slot.

I want to explore cards like Energy Conversion Lab that care about the printed cost of a card. We received an interesting combo piece in U-Wing Reinforcement that lets you play up to 3 units at a combined cost of 7, not counting any aspect penalties. You can’t dilute your deck with 3x copies of these out-of-aspect cards, but dumping something like a Millenium Falcon that you’d love to pay 3 for via U-Wing sounds great. There are situations where you’d be happy to pay 5 for the Falcon in order to close out a game.

The other theory I’ve seen work out okay is Force Throw. A deck like Luke Green that can guarantee force units are generally out and pay 3 resources + 2 cards to defeat a leader or other big unit is typically happy with that exchange. It’s likely not something you want 3 of, but a spicy 1 of or maybe 2 of could be playable in the right off-aspect force decks.

What about Limited formats?

Where we’re likely to see much more action on the Aspect Tax is the limited formats (Draft and Sealed.) Having done four in-person drafts now, I feel confident saying you can easily draft enough cards to stay in-aspect, but that doesn’t mean you’ll want to! One of the draft pods I watched, I had the pleasure of standing behind RebelSpy from Unplayable and Sugi from TCGCast. During the 3rd round of packs, Mike (RebelSpy) had committed to playing a Han/Green deck and was flipping the cards of a pack. He chuckled when he saw an Overwhelming Barrage and I reminded him “You are playing Han after all.” Mike ended up picking the card and later that night I had the pleasure of getting an after-match report from Nick Nelson who was not too happy to say he was caught off-guard when Mike OB’d him at seven resources. Twice.

Another common situation in both draft and sealed was to have few space units in either player’s deck. So, you’ll potentially be happy to run a few space units out of aspect that can capitalize on the often-empty space lane. Millenium Falcon, Bright Hope, A-wing, or maybe even a Pirated Starfighter (if you have cheap units to bounce) are all great options.

We also can’t forget the Double Aspect cards, which are typically power-pushed due to their deckbuilding restrictions. I’m happy to pay 6 for most of the Aspect-named Legendaries (Aggression, Command, Cunning, Vigilance), and some mad-lads out there (Jeremy Zwirn) would argue you might even pay 8 for them! Saw Gerrera is another interesting candidate to pay 6 for in the right deck.

Certain as death

I fully expect to hear about surprise out-of-aspect cards hitting tables everywhere Pre-release weekend, and I think these will be my favorite stories. Beyond that, I, for one, am very curious to see if we ever get a big tournament won by a list that paid the Aspect Tax. While I think it’s unlikely with just Set 1 cards, I won’t write it off completely! I hope someone puts out a bounty for a Store Showdown win with it!

What do you think of the design around aspect Penalties? Do you like being able to include any card in your deck? Have you played any other cards out-of-aspect?