Like many of us, Shadows of the Galaxy is my second second set of a collectible FFG Star Wars game.

The second set of Star Wars: Destiny, Spirit of Rebellion, was an interesting time for me. I was trying to make Chewbacca work and failing. I was diving into my first couple tries at writing about games via deck writeups. And I still vividly remember taking third at the Store Championship at my favorite local haunt. I got a hefty chunk of store credit, plus that sweet playmat, and I ended up picking up a cool board game (Five Tribes, actually) with the prize money. The buzz in the store was really electric, as Empire At War was about to drop in a couple of weeks.

And that’s when I told my buddies that I was quitting the game.

I was kind of on an island- nobody else I knew personally was choosing this moment as an exit ramp. After all, product had finally stabilized and our local events were as healthy as ever. I also personally had been able to consistently perform running off-meta builds (I was more stubborn back then), and had already enjoyed more success competitively than I expected.

But coming off of Android: Netrunner, I was hyper-vigilant about a game knowing what its heart and soul was. I had fallen in love with card games through Netrunner, and found myself devastated when the meta for that game had devolved into degenerate prison builds and deck diversity tanked. I was among the folks who become infatuated with that game because of it’s singular potential for playing cat and mouse, with the rush of facechecking a piece of ICE and paying the price for my hubris, with the satisfaction of a well-bluffed agenda score. And the game just stopped looking like that, almost in its entirety. As someone newer to card games, I kind of didn’t know that stepping back for a season and waiting for things to improve was an option, and so I ended up retiring from Netrunner and selling my collection. And alas, I found myself in that position again with Destiny.

So rapidly, with cards like Vibroknife and Force Speed, I found myself playing a game that I didn’t really recognize as itself. The back and forth, tactical nature of those Rey vs. Kylo starter decks I’d played breathlessly at a friend’s kitchen table the previous year felt entirely absent from the tournament I had just played in. I had been on the fence for a while, and here I was again at the end of another event where I just hadn’t had much fun. I didn’t feel like I had even played well that day- just that I had rolled well.

And so- I exited early from a game that it turned out would get a little better, though as many readers know I also heard that I’d dodged a lot of bullets, too. And as you can imagine, these experiences were a large piece of why it took me some convincing to be ready to dive into Star Wars: Unlimited.

Now here we are, at the same spot in the game’s life. How are we doing?

The Soul Of A Game

I think we’re doing great, actually.

There are definitely some lingering issues. I’d summarize them like this, along with their state as we see it:

• The game’s Legendary and Rare collation issues, where the cards in your packs become determinable, makes cracking loose packs, boxes, and draft events a lot less exciting than they should be. This appears to have been addressed for Set 3, according to Jim Cartwright’s recent interview over at Unplayable.
• Communication and execution around Organized Play has been lackluster, culminating in a really rough rollout of the Planetary Qualifiers for this set. Luckily, this appears to have a great path forward, as you can hear in our interview with Corey and Alicia from the OP team.
• Set 2 didn’t do a whole lot to shake up established decks from the first set, meaning Boba and Sabine are almost more ubiquitous than they were before. That said, deck diversity is still pretty high and there’s no fewer than a dozen lists that could win an event on the right weekend.
• Product shortages are still an issue- the game is not as widely available to buy as it should be. But the release of Set 2 to stores in distribution waves has made things sting less, putting fewer boxes in the hands of scalpers and more boxes in the hands of players sitting down to draft or collect their prize packs from local play.

These issues aren’t inconsequential, and if any of them were left unaddressed, players would eventually lose patience in a real way. But as we’ve noted, there are real solutions in the pipe for each of these issues. And none of them really approached the issues I’ve felt when I’ve moved on from other games in the past, because…

Star Wars Unlimited still has a firm grasp on what makes it special.

The game is still incredibly approachable and mechanically intuitive. The game’s art and design gives it a distinct presence on the table. The game is richly tactical and skill is the #1 determinant of game outcome. The game gives players ways to succeed with a variety of characters and expressions of the Star Wars universe.

These are the things that made most of us fall in love. And they don’t appear to be going anywhere at all.

My personal biggest obstacle with the game experience so far doesn’t even have a thing to do with FFG- it’s that my wife and I had a daughter in mid-April, which has majorly impacted my ability to stay plugged in to my local scene and keep up with the game! There’s nothing I love more than my wife and my two kids, but holy crap man, I wish I’d taken more advantage of my time with no kids while I was playing previous card games. I should have never missed a meetup! And as for my current situation with SWU, I think it says a lot that for all the time I’ve spent writing on this site and building and playing, I just wish I was able to play more.

As we head into a third set that looks, at this stage, to be doubling down on simple mechanics and beloved characters, I think we have a good indication that the team at FFG is going to continue striking a balance between pushing the game forward and keeping it’s soul intact. I also am very much part of the crowd that grew up on the prequels and is just pumped to dive into that corner of the IP. Qui-Gon Jinn! Kit Fisto! PLO KOON. GIVE THEM TO ME.

I hope our community continues being vocal about the things that can improve. I also hope we stay locked in to the magic of a great Star Wars game. What a time to be alive.

May the force be with you!