Back in January, my colleague Jayson wrote an excellent article about leader design in SWU. If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to do so! To recap, he outlined some common traits that good leaders usually have (solid stats, useful leader sides, resource cheating) and ones that not so good leaders often have (bad stats, slow and conditional leader sides, trait dependency). Looking at the current crop of leaders on our Meta Snapshot, it’s hard to disagree with his analysis. The decks that rise to the top are consistently ones that meet his criteria. So how are the Secrets of Power leaders stacking up?

Two notes before we start: First, this is only examining premiere constructed format playability. Some of the leaders below might end up being great in draft/sealed, but that’s not our focus today. Second, this calculus may change after the release of set 7 and SWU’s first rotation. So, if you’re from The Future, take this all with a grain of salt.

Chancellor Palpatine

The Chancellor is back! This time he’s focused on the Plot keyword which allows you to play cards from the resource row when he’s deployed. His leader side is fairly generic, allowing you to search the top 5 cards of your deck for a plot card and draw it. You’ll need to have 10+ plot cards in your deck to make that reasonably consistent, but luckily there are already enough Plot cards to make that feasible in Command/Vigilance – Jar Jar, Cad Bane, Chancellor Palp (unit), Mas Ameda, and Sly Moore. His unit side is where Chancellor really shines. His flip allows you to play a Plot card at a heavy discount making turns where you can put 5-6 units on the table a consistent possibility. And that’s without spending a single card from hand! On top of his formidable flip ability, he has a solid 14 points of stats which puts him on the right side of the curve for a 7-drop leader. If you want to see him in action, check out our YouTube.

Overall Outlook: Solidly Playable in Command/Vigilance

Satine Kryze

Satine comes to us as a sort of reverse Anakin. Instead of damaging your base to increase power and trade more effectively, she heals your units to make them more survivable. Likewise, on her unit side she heals your base instead of doing damage. Not sure the design inversion works in Satine’s favor, though… The leader side can interact well with self-damaging units like Royal Guard Attache and Dilapidated Ski Speeder, but that doesn’t produce anything more than the 2/5s Rey can already produce in round 1 (without damaging base.) On the unit side, a leader that can be freely attacked with no consequences doesn’t stand much of a chance in our board-centric world.

Overall Outlook: Not Escaping Rey’s Shadow

Colonel Yularen

Colonel Yularen is a fairly direct analogue to Leia Organa from Set 1, who has not seen play since. However, this aggro version of Yularen slightly improves over Leia in two ways: First, he has one additional power, rather than Raid 1. Second, his ability is not trait limited, allowing builders to use the best available units. Where Yularen may suffer, though, is the same place that Leia did – his aspect. Being in Command precludes pairing him with Energy Conversion Lab, which is the best base for an aggro deck, and there also isn’t much support for villain aggro strategies in green. The ideal aggro pairing would be Aggression/Cunning which Yularen unfortunately does not support.

Overall Outlook: Good Leader in the Wrong Color

Mon Mothma

We have yet to see a cardpool-expanding leader be competitive. Both Hera and Nala Se never saw competitive play. The ability to put a few off-aspect cards into your deck typically fails to offset not having a leader ability. Will Mon Mothma be different? I’m doubtful. As of now, there are very few playable Official units outside of Command, and given FFG’s poor track record of trait support, we can’t count on there being many more. Yeah, her unit side is fine (she has the coveted 3/7 on 5 statline), but, much like her leader side, it won’t help you control the board. The only hope for Mon seems to be some kind of broken combo with Chancellor Palpatine.

Overall Outlook: Dependent on the Unlikely Appearance of a Broken Combo

Dedra Meero

Don’t let Deedra’s four resource deploy fool you. She is not an aggro leader- she’s a hard control leader. Think about the set 1 card I Am Your Father. Where was it useful? …only in hard control builds like Bossk/Blue. Likewise, that’s the only place where Deedra’s choice between damage and card advantage will work in her owner’s favor. Now, will she turn out to be a better leader in that archetype than Bossk or Iden? TBD. But if she’s playable, that’s where it will be.

Overall Outlook: A Contender for Villain Hard Control

Luthen Rael

Luthen’s ability is a weirdly specific one. Only a small portion of the time will you be able to trigger the specific conditions required to get his extra damage. Compare him to a leader like Quinlan or Cad who can easily proc their pings and Luthen’s deficiencies are clear. Combine that with a below-curve leader side and it’s hard to see how Luthen will ever find a meta niche.

Overall Outlook: Too Conditional

Sly Moore

Sly Moore has a very conditional leader side which can produce a Spy token on rate, but probably not before the 4-resource turn. Her unit side is slightly more appealing with a strong “On Attack” ability that helps make up for her below rate stats. It’s also worth pointing out her trio of relevant traits. However, it’s hard to see how Sly achieves the synergies required to be a meta deck. The “four exhausted units” condition would need to prove much easier than expected, and Spy tokens will need to functionally operate as much more than the 0/2 Raid 2’s they’re printed at.

Overall Outlook: Lacking Synergy and a Niche

C-3P0

Since players typically attack with their best units as the first action of their turns, exhaust effects get less useful the further into a given round you go. Since Threepio requires us to have an exhausted unit in play to trigger his ability, and we won’t be able to use it as our first action, that exhaust won’t pack much punch. Furthermore, his leader side is weak, putting only a single power on the board. Yeah, yeah, Babu Frik is a thing and could make 3P0 hit for 6, but relying on a 1-cost unit staying in play to make your leader useable is not a competitive strategy.

Overall Outlook: Babu Frik Dependency Does Not Make Good Leaders

Padme Amidala

Padme is emblematic of the underpowered nature of most 6-drop leaders. She has an equivalent ability to Quinlan, but with a worse deploy and less relevant traits. I can’t see a reason why you’d ever want to get 11 stats on 6 when you can have 10 on 5.

Overall Outlook: Just a Worse Version of Quinlan

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I wish I could give this crop of leaders a more optimistic outlook. It seems like the designers are intentionally bringing the power level of leaders down to establish a new curve for leader power post-rotation. Can you blame them after the Fett family wrecked the meta twice? Unfortunately, that leaves us with some dicey prospects in the short term. As of now, I’m excited for Chancellor Palpatine but not really any of these other leaders. Let’s hope the second half of the Secrets of Power spoilers give us more meta contenders.

Thanks for reading!

Check out Part 2