Episode 3 | That’s Not How The 4th Works

Surprise!

On Wednesday, 12/4 FFG surprised the SWU world by throwing out somewhat early spoilers for the game’s 4th set, Jump To Lightspeed. Early reactions have been, well, interesting, and we figured it was a good time to start a discussion on the very interesting implications of what we’ve seen so far.

Read on to join us for our thoughts.

Jayson – Anybody else having a hard time believing that we’re about to fire up the 4th set of this game? Didn’t ol’ girl just launch?

Tyler – Launch is such an arbitrary milestone in my mind. We’ve been playing this game hardcore for 16 months now (since August ‘23)

Jayson – Time flies when you’re having fun. It also flies when you’re scooping to Sabine on T4.

Tyler – When there’s already 18 damage on base and they own the board, why not?

Jayson – Sometimes I do it on T3 just to switch things up.

Jim – Many players that play SWU have been playing some game designed by FFG, and in doing so, are used to seeing mechanics filter into each game. With the latest spoilers from set 4, we see the mechanic of attaching pilots (that we saw in both SW Destiny and SWLCG) to starship units. This was received with mixed results in both respective games.

In SWLCG, the mechanic worked well, but I have to give others some history on how that game was sold. Each expansion had a main box to kick off the set and then as each month would pass, a single expansion pack would be released totaling about 6 packs an expansion. When they introduced this mechanic of attaching pilots to other cards, it was cool and well-received. Unfortunately, in the last expansion pack, they released Moff Tarkin which completely wiped out the entire mechanic. So if anyone was playing decks that relied on pilots being attached, once your opponent got Tarkin, you were screwed.

So far, what we have learned so far, it is the same for SWU. With easy ways to completely remove your leader unit as an upgrade attachment from the game, then it seems almost a waste of time making it work.

Jayson – I’ve seen this take in a lot of places and for a lot of reasons I find it overly reductive. Just for starters, every Piloting card we’ve seen has the flexibility to deploy as an upgrade or as a regular unit. That alone gives you a built in option to not just get wrecked by, like, a Fang Fighter unless you’ve really backed yourself into a corner.

I’m sure we’ll discuss more, but suffice to say it’s just way, way too early to say the sky is falling on the whole mechanic. SWU is a very different game.

Tyler – I have the same emotional reaction Jim does. I was there for the LCG days where they seemed to undermine the core set theme every cycle so all decks were just “kitchen sink” builds. That comes on the heels of TWI entering competitive play where it’s looking like there’s not going be a meta competitive deck with either Coordinate or Exploit synergy.

I’ve heard the theory thrown around that the designers are primarily designing for draft/sealed play. Do we buy that? It would explain some of these seeming missteps, while also validating how awesome draft is for this game.

Justin – I was pretty busy at work today and missed the stream, but somebody said the designers mentioned the initially tested with the leader upgrades not being able to be defeated with upgrade hate and they were bonkers overpowered. Is landing at the opposite of Confiscate defeating a leader too much over an overreaction? Not sure we can say that until we get at least a few weeks into the set 4 meta.

I’m firmly on #teamJayson! piloting was interesting in destiny, and most of SWU design that has leaned off old destiny designs has been better versions of the old mechanics, so I’m hopeful the trend continues.

In other news they also did officially mention for the first time that Jeremy Zwirn is no longer at FFG. I will certainly miss his competitive mindset on the design team.

Tyler – I heard a lot of talk on the stream about flexibility, but if my choices are between:

A. Play my leader as an upgrade at significant risk of getting blown out by upgrade hate

B. Play a vanilla ground leader with no text

Aren’t both of those options bad?

Jayson – Maybe, but I also know that Darksaber took off in Sabine despite people running hard counters to it because the Sabine player had a ton of options on the flip turn to play things smartly and punish an opponent who was holding an answer. It’s just not too much of a stretch for me to imagine pilot players being able to navigate the turn and not be blown out.

Tyler – Well, the power of Darksaber was that it came out early and you could immediately smack with it. These leaders deploy later and leaders already came out ready, so I’m not seeing much additional benefit.

The leaders don’t ready the vehicle they pilot do they? That might have given it an edge.

Justin – It also introduces more poker into the game. If the threat of my leader deploying as an upgrade is requiring you to hold a confistace or similar level card and keep resources available for it, is that not strong as well?

Jim – Not when Confiscate costs one.

Jayson – We gotta send these guys back to sequencing school, huh Justin?

Justin – lol, I’m not committed it being great, I just think it’s way too early to write off an entire set and mechanic because a couple of silver bullets exist.

Jim – I agree with you, but I wish they would have made exceptions for leaders in some way.

Justin – Are we excited about our 3rd leader versions of Han Solo and Boba Fett?

Jayson – I gotta be honest, I laughed out loud. It’s just so silly.

Jim – Always excited for main staples to the SW universe, but I would expect a Wedge, Baron Soontir Fel, and other pilots to show up

Justin – Yeah, I think all things currently point to rotation working in blocks of 3, so I’m not super surprised to see some iconic figures showing up again in set 4. While I get the need to make sure iconic characters are always around, I wish they’d spread them out a bit more. Variety is the spice of life, and I’d love to be somewhere between where SWU is at in leader variety vs. Bala Tik, a random Nightsister, and FN-2199 aka TRAITOR!!!!! ruining our worlds in Star Wars Destiny

Jayson – Hey now. Bala Tik has a fanbase. Allegedly.

Justin –

I was surprised to see Indirect Damage making a showing here as well, and even stronger than it was in Star Wars Destiny! Now it is considered unpreventable damage, meaning it will defeat your only unit with 1 hp left and a shield if the scenario arises. How do we like this vs the generic damage Star Wars destiny had (similar to cad Bane leader in SWU)

Jim – I’m still thinking whether or not I like it bypassing shields. Need to see more cards.

Justin – I think it will likely be a love/hate relationship in the context of different scenarios. In a heavy shield meta, knocking off the shield will often be more relevant than a damage.

Tyler – I think the unpreventable was more about making sure you couldn’t just ignore it with Lurking TIE Phantom.

Justin – Let me guess, this is the 7th (?) Han Solo art you don’t like Tyler?

Tyler – The art:

My reaction:

Justin – Predictable. I do find it interesting the 10 or so cards we’ve seen so far feel different from set 1-3 art imo. A little more realism maybe?

Jim – Yeah, has anyone in the community put together an artist checklist? For example, this artist has drawn X amount of the game, etc?

Tyler – You can search SWUDB by Artist. We have some new blood this time around, it looks like.

Jayson – I’m absolutely a SWU art apologist. I even like the much maligned Set 1 Chewie and Han Leaders. I like them because they’re really good and everybody else is wrong and I am right. You can tell this is true because of the way that it is.

As an artist myself, the art pieces that bother me are more things that are inconsistent or sloppy, things like Mace Party Crasher and the Grogu hand. By that measure, the art revealed for Set 4 so far is actually a real mixed bag. There’s some amazing stuff and some awful clunkers. Never Tell Me The Odds might be the worst art in the whole dang game- each character’s style and lighting look like they were pulled from different artists drawing them in different pieces. Ugh, dude. Somebody signed off on that.

I also think the template for the Pilots is a little messy, but it’s a tall order to get good visuals on an effect that complex. I bet it’ll work better on the table than it does on our phones.

Jim – At least they are consistent. In testing, I am sure they knew of the pilot mechanic so the upgrades from Day 1 had a bottom of the card function. Adding the game text did crowd the box more though

Tyler – I second that the templates seem a bit messy.

Justin – It will probably look better in hyperspace versions when we lose the reminder text.

Well, let’s go ahead and move into the next big part of the announcement article – Carbonite Packs!

Information from the article : “These premium packs have the same number of cards as normal boosters, however, while normal booster packs have a single foil card and only a chance of containing a Hyperspace or Showcase variant, all cards in a Carbonite pack have some form of special aesthetic treatment. This means that when you open up a Carbonite Edition booster pack, every single card is guaranteed to be a collector’s item, whether it’s foil, Hyperspace, Hyperspace foil, Showcase, or the new, Carbonite Edition-exclusive Prestige variants. That said, as a quick emphasis, these are all variants of existing cards in the set; no unique cards will ever be exclusive to Carbonite Edition packs, just unique aesthetic treatments.

We just have one more note to make: not only are these booster packs premium, they are also limited. Only a certain number of Carbonite Edition booster packs will be printed for each set, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. These are designed to help bolster the collections of dedicated collectors and diehard fans, and they won’t be reprinted, so if you fancy grabbing ahold of one, make sure you do so right away once the set releases!”

How do we feel about these? Initial reactions? Are you going to try to buy any?

Jayson – As someone who has had diminishing returns on their purchased packs, I’m actually pretty excited. I’d really like to divert more of my budget away from regular packs and into these. The last $100 or so I spent on Twilight probably would have better been served getting a few of these, in terms of things I’d actually enjoy having.

Justin – People are speculating $250 for a box of these, definitely not a cheap entry point.

Tyler – Oh wow, that price is high, but what do we think the odds of pulling showcase from one will be? Like, what’s the potential return on investment?

Jim – I’ll order a box or two. Depends on when they come out in comparison to a normal set. Did they mention a street date?

Justin – They release with the normal boosters boxes is my understanding. Someone claiming to have inside info said only 8,000 boxes of these would be made each set which seems very very scarce!

Tyler – Anybody else have closing thoughts on this Set 4 preview?

Justin – New mechanics seem interesting, starter kit change seems good for new players, Carbonite packs seem like they’ll piss off a lot of people, andddddddd OP continues to be the only real complaint I have about this game.

Tyler – Why do you think Carbonite will piss people off? Just that they’ll be so limited?

Justin – They’re basically the convention packs on a bigger scale, so yeah for sure. Nothing upsets people like FOMO…

Jayson – I was today years old when I realized card gamers needed good reasons to be pissed off.

Jim – Not sure the convention packs are that difficult to get. I know about six people that went to PAX in Philadelphia this weekend and they all got one.

Justin – People aren’t gonna want just one of these though…

Check out this listing from across the pond:

Justin – 360 some odd, so $300-350 MSRP maybe?

All: collective groaning through text

Tyler – I expected this to be expensive. We won’t know if it’s worth it until we know the drop rates.

Justin – Singles look better every day if you aren’t a collector!

Jayson – Speaking of singles, I’ve got my Confiscates up for grabs on Craigslist at $18 a playset. We killed Boba once and we’ll f***in’ do it again.

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Set 4 is definitely jumping to lightspeed (sorry) straight to our wallets! How do Carbonite packs leave you feeling?

Did you enjoy this? Any topics you’d like to see us discuss in the future?