I’ve played a lot of card games, and loved them all in their own ways…with one notable exception.

I spent about a month and a half playing Magic: The Gathering, and enjoyed precisely zero minutes of that experience. This is not an indictment on those of you who love MTG, of course. I have a lot of criticisms of MTG as a card game, and a lot of issues with WOTC as a company, but at the end of the day, players should feel empowered to like what they like.

But there’s another thing too, and it’s one that might just invalidate my feelings about MTG for many people- I actually never got a chance to experience Commander, the 100 card deck, 1x card limit, multiplayer game mode that so many people love most over in that neck of the woods.

This lack of exposure to multiplayer card games meant that when Twin Suns was detailed and announced (I got to be there to see that live with the FFG team!), my main feeling was that I was excited at what it meant for the playerbase. I was thinking about the amount of Commander fans it could pull in and how great that was for, you know, them. I wasn’t sure it was a mode that had much value for me as a player. But the buzz has been so good that my curiosity stayed high, and at our recent Planetary Qualifier in Dallas, I got a chance to try out Twin Suns for the first time with GarbageRollers alumni Tyler and Jim, as well as Corey Scott from the FFG OP team. Since then, I’ve gotten to play a few more rounds with buddies as well.

It turned out I had made a huge mistake- I should have started playing Twin Suns a long time ago.

Here are a few things that I think are special about this mode, and why no matter what kind of SWU player you are, I think you should keep a Twin Suns deck in your bag at all times.

Thing 1: Winning At Twin Suns Isn’t Easy

It’s true that Twin Suns, like Commander, is a much more casual, laid back way to play SWU than the head to head modes. But the thing that surprised me most when I started playing was that, despite this easygoing nature, the decision making in a game could get deep.

Premier SWU is a head to head tactical duel, but Twin Suns is something closer to a political war-game. Being good at it goes beyond just sequencing well and building a deck that works well. It also involves new skills like reading the table, balancing multiple lanes worth of threats, and even straight up negotiating. The ruleset is masterful, and the ways that players work to collectively balance health totals so as not to tip their hands too early is fascinating. The opportunity to heal 5 and trigger the endgame if you’re the person to land a killing blow is so enticing and potentially game-winning that players will be absolute weasels in their attempts to engineer making it happen for themselves. And that’s got just as much to do with making yourself a less enticing target than everyone else as it does mounting an offensive.

These considerations are just so broad that something as simple as winning a game of Twin Suns seems to me like a pretty huge accomplishment. I wouldn’t know, as I haven’t done it yet. But what’s clear to me so far is that while it’s a less sweaty mode, it’s not a less skillful one. It’s a mode that makes players exercise entirely new muscles, and I’ve so far found that really engaging.

Thing 2: Twin Suns Decks Are Fun To Build And Play

Because so much of the skill expression lies in your play rather than your strange, rainbow colored singleton deck, a funny thing happens- cards, themes, and especially leaders that normally might be tough to win with can be perfectly fine in Twin Suns.

There are powerful combos, to be sure, and there are definitely some ways to maximize the format. But anything that gives you crazy board presence is also going to paint a target on your back, and the winner of a given game of Twin Suns is often the player that does the best job of not seeming like a threat. This means you can go to town with things you might not get away with otherwise. A Boba2/Fennec Underworld deck? Probably viable. Bossk/Jabba bounty sniping? Go for it. Hera/Sabine and a pile of Spectres? Sounds like that might fly under the radar, and that’s just what the doctor ordered.

Particularly if you’re a Star Wars fan, this is such a great format. The opportunity to not only play your favorite cards, but to potentially pair up two Leaders who may not see much play, all while still being perfectly capable of winning if you’re savvy enough, is a really awesome thing. It just feels good to know that as long as you build and play thoughtfully, sleeving up your darlings isn’t usually going to send you home underwhelmed.

Thing 3: Twin Suns Is Frequently Hilarious

The average Twin Suns game has about 3 to 5 things happen that are just kind of ridiculous.

The nature of this mode provides ample opportunities for the unexpected. Just tonight, my buddy Jeremy ended up hitting Resupply in his Han1/Chewbacca deck, setting him up to deploy both of his leaders when the rest of us mortals were just at 4 resources. I failed to convince another player at the table to set up a kill on Han before he could swing to get Chewie ready to deploy, and so we had to sit there and watch this boardstate rapidly spiral out of control when we barely had anything going on.

The end result of this? Jeremy ended up being the first to die anyway. All that high-rolling just made him a bigger target. And every part of this exchange, from the collective fear when he hit the Resupply to the coordinated bushwhacking of his crazy board (shoutout to whatever card-playing deity drew me that Bombing Run), had the whole table giggling like idiots. So did my 12 attack Gideon Hask the game after that, or the fact that my buddy Ryan somehow hit Boba Armor twice in one night.

Twin Suns is nearly constantly bringing about new interactions and boardstates that wouldn’t happen in regular play, and for some reason, it’s just plain funny. Seeing all this wild stuff happens feels like you’re gazing into an alternate universe, and it’s frequently pure joy.

Surprise Yourself

Maybe you’re not sure if all this is your cup of tea. I can certainly relate, as my journey to loving Twin Suns took months before I finally sleeved up a deck and took my chance to give it a go.

But since then? My plays of this mode have darn near made it supplant Draft as my favorite way to play SWU. It has even made me think more deeply on why I play card games in the first place. There’s a lot of ways to find enrichment and engagement in tabletop, and I enjoy most of them. I was surprised to find that Twin Suns provides a way to play that hits nearly all of my favorite notes that this hobby can hit.

I urge you to give it a try if you haven’t already- and if you have, leave a comment below telling us about some of your favorite games of Twin Suns. It is an anecdote factory, and I want to hear some of yours.

Have a great weekend of SWU, y’all. Play some Twin Suns for me. And may the force be with you!