Hello! Most of you know me from YouTube or the community discord as TD_Tatta but today I’m writing a guest article about a card that I think is still underrated despite getting plenty of praise in the SWU world – U-Wing Reinforcements.

Ever since the card was first spoiled at the community event a few weeks back, I, along with others, have been trying to figure out the most optimal way to build a U-Wing deck, as well as the most broken things you can do with the card. At first glance, the card is pretty innocuous, it allows you to play up to 3 units with a total combined cost of 7 or less, and on the surface that’s what most players will use it for. But if you look closer, this card allows you to “cheat” the game in the following ways:

1. You can play 3 units for 1 action, essentially granting 2 “free” actions worth of tempo.
2. You can play off-aspect cards with no penalty.
3. You can create multi-card combos, eg. Fighters for Freedom + 2 aggression cards; Vanguard Ace(s) + 1-2 other units.
4. You can put into play multiples cards with Ambush or that come into play ready such as Millennium Falcon.

The possibilities are really endless but what I wanted to focus on more than anything is how to deck build with Reinforcements. Because of the inherent nature of the card, it’s begging to be built in a very unconventional way. For example, you don’t want a deck jampacked with unique units or else you’re limiting your unit selection on your key combo turn. You also don’t want a lot of non-units in your deck, somewhere around 10-12, so that, again, your choices aren’t restricted. What this means in a lot of cases is that your deck is going to have a handful of 1-ofs.

Something I want to be clear about, and it’s been a stigma in TCGs since the dawn of time – do not be afraid to put 1-ofs in your deck. “It’ll ruin consistency, etc.” doesn’t apply to us in this case because what we’re aiming to do is actually increase consistency of our key enabler for our deck. As long as we’re playing 3x of all the key cards, and the deck is cohesive, the number of 1-ofs doesn’t matter. Let me give you an example of some cards that I believe are spectacular 1-ofs in a U-Wing deck and then we’ll talk about it a little bit.

1. General Dodonna
2. Benjamin Tubes, the second
3. Millennium Falcon (off-aspect)
4. Admiral Ackbar
5. Mon Mothma
6. Escort Skiff
7. Agent Kallus
8. Mace Windu

There’s more that I could name but this is a good starting point for the basis of a U-Wing Reinforcements deck. Identifying which cards are good in a Reinforcements deck is one thing, figuring out which aspects to play and what Leader to choose is an entirely different puzzle to solve. Before we get too deep in the tank, let’s just look at our options and start to breakdown strengths and weaknesses:

1. Han – We can start with the Leader that I think can play U Wing the most efficiently. There’s several reasons for that, the most importantly being that Han can play U-Wing earlier than any other Leader due to his ability. Some things that can do also do is play You’re My Only Hope alongside R2-D2 to peek at the top card in hope to find a big bomb, or a U-Wing, and play it considerably earlier. Decks like this have an inherent weakness or just being very gimmicky, but the combo is very difficult to beat when executed. In my opinion, this is the only “true” combo deck in the game. That being said, you don’t need to get “cute” with Han and can instead just play all the good cards afforded to green and try to win the game with large Vanguard Aces and Millennium Falcon.
   
2. Leia – I think Leia is the “best” U-Wing deck in the fact that it can most take advantage of the units that you play off it. It’s also the one that looks the oddest as you end up with cards like 1x Mace Windu, Millennium Falcon, Benny, etc. For now, Aggression is the best aspect to pair with Leia but I’m also very intrigued with double Command once we get more sets and it’s something I’ll be looking at. Attack Pattern Delta feels really good in this kind of deck but your card quality isn’t quite there yet.
   
3. Sabine – The last one we’ll talk about but also worse than Leia, I think. You slow the deck down a little too much to shoehorn in U-Wing and it makes the deck more clunky. I do think it should be in every Sabine Green decks sideboard but building your deck around it is a bit of a trap over something like Leia instead.

Instead of listing each individual deck I just want to give a starting point as a conclusion to the article. I do feel like people, so far, are being too narrow-minded with Reinforcements and over time will start to think outside the box a bit. I’ll use Leia as an example since that’s the one I have the most success and practice with. I’d start with something like this as far as units go:

Leia/U-Wing unit shell:
1x Benjamin Tubes, the Second
3x Specforce Soldier
3x Battlefield Marine
3x Sabine Wren
1x Mon Mothma
3x Fighters For Freedom
3x Echo Base Defender
1x General Ackbar
3x Fleet Lieutenant
1x General Dodonna
3x K-2SO
2x Guerilla Attack Pod
1x Mace Windu
1x Alliance X-Wing
3x A-Wing
3x Wing Leader
1x Millenium Falcon
3x Red Three

Now, from here we fill out with more Rebels for which to use Leia’s ability, sprinkle in some events to speed up the deck or survive until the late game, or a few more units to make it more cohesive to your liking. The point here is to showcase the effectiveness of 1-ofs, however. The might look weird on paper but what they do is just diversify our options while meting certain cost thresholds. We want 15ish 1/2 drops, right? Well instead of just playing a bunch of 2-3x copies we can simply add more U Wing targets. Same for 3-drops, etc. We’ve also created a bit of a combo with Fighters For Freedom plus 2 other aggression units. We can also Fleet Lieutenant plus Wing Leader to make a giant attacker and then attack with it immediately. The combo potential is very high.

I hope that this has helped you understand why U-Wing Reinforcements is so good and encourages you to think outside the box in your own build of the deck. Until next time, think creatively!

-TD_Tatta