We’re now 2 weeks into the Shadows of the Galaxies meta, with our first big events starting to run (SCG Baltimore this weekend, Gencon next). Now seemed like a perfect time to finally getting around to making my version of a leader tier list for SHD. This is purely with competitive premier play in mind, and you can check out Jayson’s list on our YouTube here.

A quick breakdown for how I will be ranking them:
S-Tier – Instantly competitive and will be a top competitive leader for the whole meta
A-Tier – Leaders that are sitting on the fringe of being near Tier 1 competitive play that could be explored more to push up, but as is will still be played competitively and have decent results throughout the meta.
B-Tier – These are the leaders that do cool things, but ultimately are forced out of the meta by better leader options or a glaring weakness to a common meta deck.
C-Tier – These are the leaders that just don’t have enough to work with in the current card pool. They could get better with more cards in future sets, but will likely not see much competitive play this set.
D-Tier – Don’t run these leaders outside of a weekly local!

S-Tier

As a reminder, S tier is what I see as instantly competitive leaders that will be near the top of the meta.

Qi’ra is exactly what you’re looking for in a control leader. Her unit side comes out on 5 with a board-wide damage effect that can enable some nice trades or combo well with cards like Overwhelming Barrage. Her leader side really shines in making sentinels like Pyke Sentinel super annoying with shields, are turning on Grit units like Scout Bike Pursuer to trade up and survive thanks to a shield. She’s already set up for success to immediately jump into the top tiers of the competitive meta, and she has the tools to stay there long term.

It may be pretty weak to only put 1 leader here, but I’m just not sold on the others yet.

A-Tier

These are leaders that are sitting on the fringe of being near Tier 1 competitive play who could be explored more to push past that boundary. As is, they will still be played competitively and have decent results throughout the meta.

Rey is in a weird spot of doing a lot of the same things as Chirrut. Jury’s still out on which leader does it better, but Rey definitely has enough tools to be played a competitive level. She just plays a little too fair, and won’t always survive long enough for her big restore 3 to come into play.

Kylo is our first direct competition to Sabine Wren coming out at 4 resources. Villain aggro was mostly lackluster in set 1 with IG-88, but Kylo presents an interesting option and discard mechanic to combine with some more solid aggro units in Shadows of the Galaxy. He also has some flexibility to combine with Palpatine’s return in a more rampy/midrange deck. I’m not convinced the best Kylo deck has been discovered yet, but he’s already quite competitive with Space aggro. He might have the most potential here to move up.

Bossk is the most unique leader in this section, focusing on the new mechanic of bounties. While Senior Game Designer Tyler Parrot might lead you to believe that he is not competitive outside of limited play, a ping ability and potentially claiming some of these bounty effects twice off of one card can be insane value! Finding the right combination of bounties within the 50 card deck will likely be the biggest hurdle to Bossk becoming a bigger part of the meta.

Cad Bane like most Cunning Villain leaders suffers a bit of Boba syndrome, where you struggle to find deckbuilding opportunities that you wouldn’t rather just use Boba Fett as your leader. Thankfully his pings set him up to do some unique things when built around the Underworld trait. If we ever see a meta made up of Han Solo decks, Cad’s poised to be the silver bullet.

Speaking of Han Solo, he’s my last A-Tier leader. Resource ramp has proven to be quite strong in Star Wars Unlimited and he may have the easiest time doing it. While the 2 damage may seem steep in the early game, it becomes less of a factor the longer the game goes on. As the hero card pool continues to grow with more high impact mid-cost units in the 4-6 range, I suspect Han will break further into the meta.

B-Tier

These are the leaders that do cool things, but ultimately are forced out of the meta by better leader options or a glaring weakness to a common meta deck.

The Mandalorian is a really sweet design, and I really want to see him break into the meta. Unforunately there’s just not as much payoff on the Hero side for tempo decks as Villain finds. I don’t think he will see much competitive play in the Set 2 meta outside of some surprise showings, but he is a card I expect to marinate well as the card pool expands with more sets.

Lando has the strongest resource cheat in the game, but it comes at a high cost. Defeating resources is not something you typically want to do other than right before you’re winning a game (so it doesn’t affect you). Lando can do some really strong aggro things going to 4 resources in every round following Round 2 as he defeats one each round, but is that enough to be competitive? With more exploration time, maybe someone smarter than me will find a better break point for him.

Jabba has a neat ability, comboing well with cards like Reputable Hunter. Not being able to capture with his 12 health body on leader deploy and getting the double ramp so late into the game puts him in a clunky spot though. If the meta ever begins to move to longer games, Jabba is poised to be one of the stronger options.

Boba isn’t as flash as his villain counterpart, but Ambush & Sentinel are two of the strongest keywords in the game and he does a great job of leveraging more out of them. Boba would likely have an easy time playing at the top tables if he played a little less fair than other midrange options (looking at you again Villain Boba).

Finn is in a decent spot of a few solid synergistic cards and a sweet 5 cost deploy. The problem is when you don’t find those few synergistic cards and he’s a blank leader side with a solid leader unit side. Many people called him the worst leader in the set, but he is far from that.

Moff Gideon is a weird one that I just haven’t felt like I’ve spent enough time on. For that, we throw him in the middle of the pack!

C-Tier

These are the leaders that just don’t have enough to work with in the current card pool. They could get better with more cards in future sets, but will likely not see much competitive play this set.

Bo-Katan has a nice ping ability and a lot of synergy with Mandalorian being a common trait in this set. Her 6 cost deploy will likely be what holds her back though, combined with a whole lot of upgrade hate existing.

Gar Saxon has a solid ability, but like Bo will struggle with the upgrade hate that exists. If we continue to get more units like Seventh Fleet Defender that are already great units that we can beef up further without any investment, Gar can do some nasty things.

Hondo just feels like a fairer version of Lando, which is sad theme wise because who doesn’t love a crafty Pirate?

Aphra is two fold of having very little synergistic cards (Restock, Palpatine’s Return) and being held out of the meta by the much better option of Boba Fett.

D-Tier

Don’t run these leaders outside of a weekly local!

Fennec at a glance seems like she would be a strong leader, but having to pay for the ambush on her leader side and it being limited to 4 cost or lower units on both sides makes her pretty weak. In the early game, playing cheaper/weaker units with ambush generally just equates to if you were playing a normal ambush unit at that cost. 4/4 on 5 resources is a very weak unit side as well, so I don’t recommend playing Fennec in premier play outside of a casual weekly!

Hunter effectively gets to smuggle a card out in 2 actions for 1 less cost than it would be to smuggle (if we use Tech as a normal valuation for the Smuggle cost) and with stricter limitations (it has to be a unit that we already have a copy of in play). There will likely be some powerful things we can do with this ability in the future when we have 8 different versions of cards like Luke Skywalker, but for now its mostly a blank card. A 7 cost leader that’s mostly blank just isn’t giving you enough to warrant being played at anything competitive.

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That’s it for today! What’s your tier list look like? Do you expect more set 2 leaders to see competitive play than I do?