Build-A-Box Challenge, Part 2: Constructing a Deck

Welcome to a special collaboration between Roll On Gaming and Deploy Your Leader Gaming! In this article, we will be investigating the prospect of building a serviceable Premier deck in Star Wars: Unlimited based solely on the purchase of ONE booster box. 

This is being done purely to illustrate the notion that you don’t need a sizable investment to play SWU at a high level. One of the cornerstones of Star Wars: Unlimited’s marketing strategy has always been the accessibility of the game. What better way to shine a light on that concept than to focus on a single product as an entry point?

At this point in the story, we have already cracked open our booster box and are ready to build! To see all the pulls and think about how YOU would have built our deck, go watch the box-opening video on the Roll On Gaming YouTube channel here!

Access Granted

Because of how booster boxes are laid out in Star Wars: Unlimited, any box you open will likely yield entirely different results, and not all booster boxes in any trading card game are created equally. However, in opening several boxes of SWU (including the one used for this project) I have found a remarkable balance therein of aspects and strategies that can be used by players of all levels.

In the 24 packs I opened for this deck, I only missed out on three Leaders - weirdly, all Villainy, but also all rares: Iden Versio, Inferno Squad Commander (SOR 2), Emperor Palpatine, Galactic Ruler (SOR 6) and Grand Inquisitor, Hunting the Jedi (SOR 11). I also saw very similar numbers across the board when it came to aspects.

In addition to this balance, I also was able to find several playsets of certain cards, including widely-used Premier staples like Overwhelming Barrage (SOR 92), Battlefield Marine (SOR 95), and Guerilla Attack Pod (SOR 148).

Combined with a near-equal distribution of single-aspect Villainy (19) and Heroism (18) cards, this essentially gave me free reign of what deck to construct. But as we know, it’s not just the size of the card pool that matters… it’s how you use it.

Decision, Decisions

Upon analyzing the pulls of my box, I very quickly realized that I was going to play a Command deck. The Command aspect is one of the most versatile in Spark of Rebellion, with equivalent value in both Heroism and Villainy, as well as some of the single-aspect commons and uncommons to round out the deck.

In addition to the aforementioned Barrage and Marine, my box graced me with three Echo Base Defenders (SOR 98) on the Heroism side, two Gladiator Star Destroyers (SOR 86) for some help in the Space arena on the Villainy side, and 3 copies of Strike True (SOR 127) for some much-needed removal, no matter which side I chose.

Naturally, though, I didn’t want to do a double-Command deck, despite opening two General Krell, Heartless Tacticians (SOR 105), everyone’s FAVORITE dual-aspect unit. So I had to decide what to pair with the green cards I opened while I cleaned the dripping sarcasm from my last sentence off the floor. That choice proved to be the pivotal decision, because no two answers were alike.

My first thought was to leverage the power of Spectres with leader Hera Syndulla, Spectre Two (SOR 8), giving me access to more than just three colors no matter which direction I went. If I had opened more than one Sabine Wren, Explosives Artist (SOR 142) or Kanan Jarrus, Revealed Jedi (SOR 47) I might have done so.

Nevertheless, the three copies of The Ghost, Spectre Home Base (SOR 50) weren’t enough to carry the day, so I moved onto more traditional considerations.

The two things I had plenty of were the two primary traits in Spark of Rebellion: Rebels and Imperials. So I was left in a morality predicament: do I use the hordes of Rebels at my disposal and make a deck with Leia Organa, Alliance General (SOR 9) and an Aggression base? Or do I lean into the might of the Imperials and use Grand Moff Tarkin, Oversector Governor (SOR 7) with a Vigilance base?

Ultimately, the latter won out.

You May Fire When Ready

Once I narrowed down the card pool to Command/Vigilance/Villainy, it was time to assemble. At this point, I realized just how many cards you end up with just by purchasing one booster box. Math was never my strong suit, but out of 384 possible cards (and removing the leaders and bases, of which there were 34 - I pulled one rare base that I didn’t use), 124 of the cards in my box fit into one or two of those aspects.

With that knowledge, I tackled what I thought would be the most difficult challenge first: the Space arena. Luckily, I was able to fill the void in Space with the two Gladiators and two copies of System Patrol Craft (SOR 66). I paired those with two Consortium StarVipers (SOR 112) and a full playset of TIE/LN Fighters (SOR 225), then filled to taste until I had 11 Space units I was comfortable with.

Then came the events. Six slots were already spoken for by Overwhelming Barrage and Strike True. Once I added more removal, I felt like something was missing: a Legendary. And what better way to incorporate one of our three Legendaries than by adding in a Superlaser Blast (SOR 43)? Seemed like the Tarkin thing to do.

Eventually I stopped at 14 events - leaving me with 25 Ground units to figure out. I chose to leave upgrades out of the deck because Tarkin would be doing the upgrading for me!

Prepare for Ground Assault

Trimming the wealth of Ground units at my disposal to 25 proved to be the most difficult challenge the deckbuilding process presented. I opened two copies of General Tagge, Concerned Commander (SOR 80) so all the Troopers I could muster went into the deck, for the most part.

That turned out to be a sizable chunk of my allotment - 18 cards in total. I had a full playset of Scout Bike Pursuer (SOR 32), but I decided to cut one in favor of a Regional Governor (SOR 62) for some spice. With 7 cards to go, I had to consider my cost curve. Luckily, the box provided the answers.

Need another Round 1 play? Let’s drop in 2 copies of Viper Probe Droid (SOR 228), which also is a threatening Strike True target. Need more Sentinel units? Got you covered with two Academy Defense Walkers (SOR 37). Need some heavy-impact units with When Played abilities? Enter Count Dooku, Darth Tyranus (SOR 38) and Reinforcement Walker (SOR 119).

When all was said and done, this is what the deck looked like.

An Immediate Test of the Weapon

I was eager to get some matches in with this new technological terror I had constructed, so I brought Tarkin along with me to my local Weekly Play event. It was a fun, relaxed environment full of players that did not have fully-optimized decks yet, so I felt it was the perfect training ground for the deck.

During the event, I played three games against a Boba Fett (SOR 15)/Command deck and two games against a Cassian Andor (SOR 13)/Cunning deck.

Of the 5 games I played, I won four of them, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Overwhelming Barrage and Academy Defense Walker, who were the MVP’s of my matches.

The combination of the Scout Bike Pursuer and Death Trooper (SOR 33) proved useful in almost every game. Additionally, when he hit the table, Gideon Hask, Ruthless Loyalist (SOR 36) was a force that required an immediate answer.

Having not played a ton with Grand Moff Tarkin, it took a moment to figure out the proper sequencing. Nevertheless, the strength of the Command/Vigilance package was on full display, despite not having a deck chock-full of playsets to improve my own efficiency.

Also, and more importantly - it was fun! I enjoyed attempting to maximize Tarkin’s ability to hand out experience tokens, and watching a low-power unit grow into something that could make favorable trades or deal chunks of damage proved to be highly rewarding.

Continue with the Operation

Would the deck hold up against a fully-optimized meta deck? That remains to be seen. But between having so much of the card pool available, being strategic with deckbuilding options, and choosing complementary aspects, there’s no reason that a deck built out of one box couldn’t at least hold its own.

If you want to see my Tarkin/Vigilance build in action, let me know in the comments of our box-opening video on YouTube, and we just might fire up a game with it on our channel!

If nothing else, I hope this challenge has been as instructive to you as it was to me. Crafting a build-a-box deck feels like something that can be done with reasonable effectiveness. Once you pick a deck, you may even be able to make some trades to fill out the playsets of the cards you chose within it to optimize it further.

The deckbuilding process in Star Wars: Unlimited has been so much fun, from Sealed-format decks with 6 packs to opening a whole box and making some difficult choices. Every time I build a deck, though, I’m rewarded with a new experience and a new appreciation for some of the cards in the set that I hadn’t considered. I may end up enjoying the Limited formats more than Premier, at this rate.

So what are you waiting for? Head over to Deploy Your Leader’s Sealed section and try this out for yourself!

Kevin
Roll On Gaming
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