Star Wars Unlimited - Jump to Lightspeed Spotlights
Star Wars Unlimited hit its one-year anniversary and is celebrating with a bang following the launch of the Jump to Lightspeed wave and its flagship releases, the Spotlight Decks. Replacing the previous Two Player Starter sets, Spotlight Decks are smaller products which still contain a 50 card deck, a unique Leader card and base alongside the standard counters and a 16 card Booster pack. Gone are printed rulesets, a cardboard deck box and a paper playmat which shrinks the box size down enough that even two Spotlight Decks side to side take up less space than a Two Player Starter – good news for space-conscious game stores and players trying to store an ever-expanding collection.
The Jump to Lightspeed Spotlight Decks come in two configurations, both of which draw heavily from the original film trilogy; Han Solo and Boba Fett, sporting the ‘S’ Starter rarity designation on their leader cards which denotes they are exclusive to this particular product and these versions won’t be found in Boosters, while a new change to distribution for this wave means that foil, Hyperspace and Hyperspace foil versions of these cards can be now found in Jump to Lightspeed boosters which will impact drafting formats.
The Spotlight Decks include a mixture of new and older cards, as well as a few more ‘S’ rarity cards for those who really need to have a complete set. The deck make up consists of:
Boba Fett Spotlight Deck – Aggression and Villainy Aspects
- 30 Jump to Lightspeed wave cards (12 ‘S’ rarity)
- 14 Spark of Rebellion wave cards
- 3 Shadows of the Galaxy wave cards
- 3 Twilight of the Republic wave cards
Han Solo Spotlight Deck – Cunning and Heroism Aspects
- 30 Jump to Lightspeed wave cards (12 ‘S’ rarity)
- 9 Spark of Rebellion wave cards
- 6 Shadows of the Galaxy wave cards
- 5 Twilight of the Republic wave cards
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Both decks feature the new Pilot keyword, which allows Units to be played as Upgrades to vehicles, often including a secondary effect or reaction. ‘Piloting’ is more pronounced in the Han Solo deck as is the Bounty Keyword introduced in Twilight of the Republic, allowing the Boba Fett player to live up their reputation as a feared Bounty Hunter throughout the galaxy.
Also new is the ‘Rotation’ symbol, a small ‘A’ surrounded by a pointer arrow on each Jump to Lightspeed card which will also feature on the subsequent two waves of content, making up the Legends of the Force fifth and Secrets of Power sixth SWU waves respectively. Once the seventh as-yet-untitles wave launches with a ‘B’ designation, that signals the outward rotation of the first three waves – Spark of Rebellion, Shadows of the Galaxy and Twilight of the Republic – from the Premier tournament format and heralds the arrival of ‘Eternal’, a format in which all cards remain legal. Much like Lorcana and many other CCG’s beforehand, Star Wars Unlimited moving away from the Starter Deck nomenclature allows them to produce decks which, while still a great way to on-board new players, can also up the complexity somewhat to keep things interesting for current players.
Han Solo is a beloved Star Wars character know for taking chances, a trait that has been thematically integrated into his deck with his Leader action that increases the attack of a unit if it and a card then revealed from the deck have different odd costs. This is made possible by the fact that every card in Solo’s deck is an odd cost of 1, 3 or 5 – no even numbers in sight – “Never Tell Me The Odds” indeed. His deck contains a few cards that have effects chaining off such reveals of Odd costed cards such as ‘BoShek’, a Ground Unit that can be played as a pilot upgrade which discards two cards from deck but will return them to a player’s hand if their costs are odd – a guaranteed pair thanks to Solo’s odds only resource costs. Showcasing the new Piloting keyword, there are 15 Space Vehicle Units included with 12 potential Pilots amongst the 24 Ground Units, great odds of ensuring almost every vehicle can secure a Pilot upgrade throughout a match. While there are no dedicated Ground Vehicle Units included, the Blue Leader card can be turned into a Ground Vehicle for an added resource cost of 2, although this opportunity doesn’t tend to manifest itself often in-game. Events like ‘Tandem Assault’ take advantage of Han’s Space focus, allowing a player to attack with a Space Unit, then immediately attack with a Ground Unit and give it an increased of 2 attack power to boot. Han’s unique ‘Never Tell Me The Odds’ card is incredibly fun to execute, with each player Discarding 3 cards from deck and damage dealt to a unit equal to each cards discarded with an odd cost. However, when facing off against Boba Fett, chances are around 40% to draw an odd card, so it can still be a bit of a gamble to get more than 3-4 damage assigned. As with any push your luck element though, seeing all 6 cards show up with odd numbers is a rare but incredibly joyous moment for the Han player. Many Pilot upgrade cards feature synergistic effects like R2-D2 that increase the number of Pilots a Vehicle can carry joining forced with Nien Nunb whose Vehicle Unit gets a plus one to attack for each other friendly Unit and Pilot upgrade. Balancing out some of this goodness are several Bounty triggers, all of which allow an opponent to draw a card. Han is an enjoyable deck to play, but I can see players getting frustrated if they can’t quite get some of these synergies to fire off.
Boba Fett has always been for me, a character with inexplicable popularity up until more recent Star Wars media. Dude had four lines in two movies and yet still there were fans that went all out for him. Fortunately, his Spotlight deck goes some way towards redeeming him in my eyes, largely as a function of the new ‘Indirect Damage’ effect he is built around. As part of his Leader ability, players can exhaust him whenever they deal non-combat damage to deal 1 indirect damage, which is unpreventable and unblockable – the caveat being that the targeted player assigns the damage themselves. This deck is chock-full of ways to deal non-combat damage, so a Boba Fett player may get to use this ability almost every turn thanks to Event Cards like ‘Electromagnetic Pulse’ (2 Damage to a Droid or Vehicle), ‘Force Choke’ (5 Damage to non-Vehicle unit), ‘Grenade Strike’ (Deal 2 Damage to a unit, may deal 1 to another in the same arena) and the ‘S’ rarity deck exclusive ‘No Disintegrations’, a thematic powerhouse that can leave a non-leader unit with a single point of health, which in dire situations can wipe them from the table if the Boba Fett Leader ability ends up landing an extra indirect damage on that card. Once deployed to the field, either as an Upgrade or a Ground Unit, the Boba Fett player can assign up to four points of damage divided any way they choose among any number of units, which can be devastating after a few rounds of indirect damage chipping away at an opponent. Due to the structure of Star Wars Unlimited, this ‘death by a thousand cuts’ style of play never becomes overwhelming the way it might if players could take more than a single action on their turn. With the Spark of Rebellion incarnation of the Boba Fett banned for the forseeable future, it’s nice to see another way for players to engage with the character in a way that feels quite thematic.
Overall, the new Spotlight Decks are a great way for players to get to grips with the Pilot and Indirect Damage mechanics Jump to Lightspeed introduces, with a smattering of Shadows of the Galaxy’s Bounty thrown in for thematic measure. Any value proposition concerns around the price of two Spotlight Decks vs the older Two Player Starter packs are offset by the inclusion of Booster Packs and provide a great way for players to try some basic deck construction right out of the box.
Player2 was also fortunate enough to receive the accompanying Gamegenic sleeves for each Spotlight Deck, featuring the Leader artwork for both Boba Fett and Han Solo. Each box of sleeves can handle a deck of up to 60 cards, with a clear sleeve for the Leader card and Location as well. The sleeves are high quality and are a great accessory for any player planning on keeping their pre-con decks around for a while, but have a tendency to slip over when stacked due to the very minimal amount of matte texture on the back, something I’d like to see Fantasy Flight Games increase if feasible on future sleeve runs, although that could become an issue given most sleevers’ obsession with uniformity.
The Jump to Lightspeed Boba Fett and Han Solo Spotlight Decks were reviewed using product kindly supplied by PR.
