Last week I attended three Star Wars Unlimited events. While all three were competitive to some degree, some were more so than others.
The first event was a Store Showdown at my friendly local gaming store, Leisure Games. While this is classed as a casual event, there is a competitive nature to it as there were official and non-official prizes on the line. Fantasy Flight (the makers of SWU) have just faced some complaints for their prizes for the Store Showdown events and even more so for the upcoming Planetary Qualifiers events. They have addressed those issues for the PQ events by making some adjustments, but couldn’t do anything in time for the Store Showdowns. The cards on offer for Set 2 are far less exciting than those that were available for Set 1. The prize cards are ones that not many people are currently playing and so are nowhere near as valuable as the more impressive Mace Windu(s) available previously – which is extra annoying given that I missed the Store Showdown for the first set. There are 16 people attending my local Store Showdown. I won the last competitive event that Leisure Games hosted, but that had less players so this will be a greater challenge.
The event is four rounds of a best of three Swiss format (I explained the origins of the term “Swiss” in my previous tournament article.) Win four matches and have a good chance of taking first place. I won my first two matches fairly comfortably. My third match is against a good player with a deck I haven’t played before: A Kylo Yellow deck, a quick deck which has popped up recently and features a lot of space units. It came down to the wire in the third game, but I lost and my opponent advanced to face a Vader deck in the final. The Boba player lost making the Vader player the victor of the Store Showdown (more notable as Vader doesn’t tend to win many Tournaments.) I won my final game putting me in third place overall. Which seems fair as the only person to beat me finished in 2nd and the only person to beat them won overall. Just a bit of a bummer as the extra prizes (provided by BuyTheSameToken) had two main prizes for 1st and 2nd meaning I just missed out!) Despite not quite hitting peak performance, I got fairly well rewarded for my position and Leisure Games put on a great event.
The following day I played in a UKTC Tournament. Unlike the previous UKTC Tournament I took part in, this one was in London – although it took me almost as long to get to the Lee Valley Leisure Centre as it did to get to Leicester. When I arrived at the venue, it became clear why this slightly out the way venue was needed, as the Tournament was a sideshow for the main event which was generally centred around Warhammer and other Miniature based Wargaming. The Star Wars Unlimited Tournament was sort of tucked away upstairs with a few other sideshows such as the SW comrades in arms playing Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game. UKTC had two SWU tournaments that weekend, the Sunday was the second one of these. Unfortunately they were not as well attended as the previous tournament – there were 95 in Leicester but only 33 of us on the Sunday and apparently a similar number attended on the Saturday. As shame as the UKTC run a tight ship, the staff are great and the prizes given out make it well worth it. I think the lower attendance was not helped by the fact that this was taking place in the middle of Store Showdown season and the venue being a bit difficult to get to.
If you read about my previous Tournament experience you will know that I came away with a dilemma about which deck to play. I previously played with a Young Han Blue deck (aka a New Han Vigilance deck) but prior to these events I flirted with playing a Kylo Ren Red (aka Aggression) deck. This had the advantage of being really fast and really fun, but was also a bit fragile, as it relies on a bit of luck in getting the right cards early on and/or my opponent having a shaky start. I ended up going with a refined version of my Young Han Deck and that did well in my Store Showdown, but that was where my luck ran out.
While my skill can certainly be questioned, I did not have any luck at the UKTC Tournament. SWU requires a lot of skill, but also a bit of luck and I had very little of either on display. The first round of the tournament pits me against a Sabine Wren Green (i.e. Command) deck, particularly an “ECL” deck which features a special base that gives the user less health but an ability to give a card the Ambush mechanic – which means it can attack when being played. I know this deck well, it is the deck I ran from Set 1 and at the beginning of Set 2. The first round of the Tournament is free-for-all in terms of pairings and the first bit of bad luck is who I am paired up against as he ended up being in the top three both days – a really nice chap, but a very good player who (thanks to his skill and my lack of luck and skill) wipes me out fairly quickly – with enough time left over for a friendly game afterwards. I play my Kylo deck this time and win. He may have taken it easy on me, but also the two decks are both Aggression (or Agro) decks and Kylo has the advantage of being a bit faster and making Sabine’s power (that hits both bases) a bit less useful. It is the first time that day that I begin to question if I have played the wrong deck.
The rest of the day has its ups and downs, but my bad luck persists. Both in my matchups and in my card draws. Round 2 I beat a Boba Fett player – but although he wins his next match, he then goes home. As rankings are based on who you beat and who beats you, this is a disaster for my final ranking. My next match is against another Boba Fett deck, so I fancy my chances, but it soon becomes clear that this a much better player and again my luck does not help as I have bad starts in both matches – which is particularly significant against a Boba deck as if the leader isn’t defeated quickly it can soon snowball into a massive issue. This is part of the reason why Boba Fett remains a very popular leader, doing well in Tournaments. The next match is a clash of the Hans – with my Young Han playing against an Old Han. It is tight, but I emerge victorious. My next opponent is a good player running a Palpatine Green deck – some more back luck for me as I know this is a deck that my deck struggles against. I get bullied in the first game, but the second game I refuse to die! This was the longest individual game I have ever played in a tournament – every time I got close to being taken out I drew the exact card I needed to defend or heal up and extend the game, but eventually I succumbed to another crushing defeat.
As the tournament had less people than the Leicester one, there was one round less, so the next match was my final match. In the previous tournament I won three matches and lost four, so it would be nice to at least finish even this time as that would technically display some progress – again I am unlucky and unskillful. My final opponent has just lost to another version of my deck, giving him a chance to adjust his tactics and he is piloting a Chirrut Yellow (aka Cunning) deck – a deck I have never played before. I make a number of rookie errors, mainly around not knowing how his leader works and while both matches take a long time I end up losing both. Despite the ending sour note, it was a great day and I look forward to attending another UKTC tournament. Next time though I think I am going to go with whichever deck I think I will have the most fun with rather than concentrating on which deck I think will do best. My Han Blue deck is popular, because it is good but also comes with the disadvantage of more people knowing how to play against it.
To round out the trio of events, we had a Draft event at our very own Tabletop Tuesday events at Loading Bar. Draft events remain my favourite. They aren’t as competitive as Tournaments, as decks are built at the event, which helps level the playing field. Prerelease events have a variant of this called a Sealed event, where you have a set group of cards that you construct a deck from. I like prerelease events but general Draft events have another tactical element to them that helps me enjoy them even more.
In draft events players have a choice of three leaders drafted and this choice is shown to the other players taking part. Each pack of cards is opened and passed from player to player and one card is chosen from the pack each time. This means that while your choices are limited by the leaders you have available to you, you can also draw cards based on what leaders you are surrounded by. For example, if you are surrounded by Heroic leaders, you know you have a better chance of being passed Villainy cards. You can also draw cards to prevent your opponents from having cards that work well with their leaders and are often faced with the tough decision to take a valuable card that you really want generally, but doesn’t really work with the deck you are building for that event.
I built a Director Krennic deck. Which was a leader that I hadn’t played before and worked out well as it turned out that everyone else was leaving me all the Imperial cards, which meant I built a really powerful deck. This made it quite easy to win most of my matches that night, although I did lose to the owner of the bar, Jimmy – which again I am putting down to bad luck rather than a lack of skill!
Draft events are not only my favourite way to play, but it is also the best way to acquire new cards as you get even more cards than you pay for. We are now featuring a draft event at Tabletop Tuesday on the first Tuesday of each month, so if you fancy joining us you can check out more details here to test your skill (or your luck!)