Table of Contents
So you're interested in going to a pre-release event at your local game store. Great! Regardless of whether you are being dragged along by your friends or going solo to see what this game is all about, it's an absolutely great time to get into the game!
Before we get started, this guide assumes that you have basic understanding of how to play Star Wars: Unlimited. You don't need to be an expert by any means, and you don't need to know how pre-release works, but knowing the basics (you and your opponents take turns, paying resources for cards, taking the initiative) is necessary to get the full value out of this article.
Set-specific guides:
- Set 4: Jump to Lightspeed
- Set 2: Shadows of the Galaxy
What is a Prerelease?
A few times each year, a new set of cards come out. As a sort of "kick-off" when a new set releases, most stores host a pre-release event. Pre-release is not like most events. In most events, you'll need to come with your own deck of Star Wars Unlimited cards that you've built and play against other players who have also brought their own deck.
In pre-release, all you need to show up with is your beautiful self, whatever your store's entry fee is, and a few hours to play some cards!
Once the event starts, you'll be given a pre-release kit. Each kit will contain 2 leaders (Boba Fett, Any Methods Necessary and Han Solo, Never Tell Me the Odds for the upcoming JTL pre-release), 6 booster packs of cards from the new set, and some tokens.
You'll get about an hour to build a 30 card deck which you'll use to (hopefully) beat your opponents with!
It's that simple! Now let's talk about some of the nuances that come with pre-release.
If you are interested in my guide for JTL specifically, check it out here, in video form!
Good Cards
This is possibly the most important part of pre-release. If you're a new player, on the bright side this is also the first time your opponents have seen these cards as well, so their usual advantage of being more familiar with the cards in the game is less pronounced in these events. The downside is, of course, this is also the first time you'll be seeing these cards, so expect to do a decent amount of reading.
What cards are actually good?
That's a great question and depends on the set. If you're reading this in preparation for the Jump To Lightspeed pre-release, you can find more in depth thoughts on set specifics here, or if you're really crazy, here.
In general across sets though, there are themes you should be looking out for.
The BREAD system. Does it work for Star Wars Unlimited?
Those of you who are Magic: The Gathering players may have heard of the BREAD system for drafting. BREAD is an acronym that stands for:
BOMBS - these are very powerful cards that will shape the course of the game. You will often build your deck around getting maximum use out of these cards. If your opponent can't immediately deal with them, you'll likely win the game off their backs.
REMOVAL - these cards are how you deal with many bombs (and lots of other cards too). Cards that remove your opponents threats are very strong in limited formats like draft and pre-release sealed.
EVASION - these are threats that are tricky for your opponents to deal with, and can often end games is they are ignored. In Magic, a common example of evasion is flying. If your opponent doesn't have a card with flying or reach, they'll tend to just be able to keep hitting your opponent until the game ends. In Star Wars Unlimited the most direct analogues are saboteur and overwhelm, but evasion is more complicated in this game, we will talk more about it later.
AGGRESSIVE - These cards play aggressively and quickly. If your opponent has already set up a stable board presence they will be less handy, but sometimes you can just overwhelm them with aggressive cards before they have a chance to mount any sort of defence.
DUDS - despite the name, these are not unplayable cards by any means, in fact a few cards in your deck will likely be duds. These are just going to be the weakest cards in your deck and you should try to run as few as possible. This is basically an "everything else" category.
So when building a draft or sealed deck in Magic, common wisdom is to follow this sequence. Make sure you're playing as many bombs as you can, then your next priority is removal, then evasion, and so on. So does this apply to Star Wars Unlimited? Sort of.
Of course your highest priority should be playing your bombs. If you are doing a draft or sealed event for Spark of the Rebellion and you open a Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight or an Overwhelming Barrage then you should try your absolute best to find a spot in your deck for those cards.
Next, removal is very important in Star Wars Unlimited draft and sealed. If your opponent plays a bomb or just a solid threatening card, being able to say "no" to that and just remove it with something like Open Fire or Out the Airlock will feel very strong for you.
Evasion, like I said, is a bit trickier to evaluate. Cards with saboteur and overwhelm are definitely good to help close out games if your deck is aggressive, but this isn't quite as important as it is in Magic. For those who don't know, in Magic you don't get to choose where your unit attacks, your unit is always "attacking base" and your opponents decide which creatures will block them. You could imagine in that scenario cards that get through that blocking process can very quickly pose a real problem for your opponent. In Star Wars Unlimited if you have a threatening attacker, oftentimes your opponent will just attack it with one of their units and deal with it.
That's not to say cards with saboteur or overwhelm are bad, they're actually quite good. Evasive units just don't really exist in the same way that they do in Magic, so this category can't quite be evaluated the same way.
Now as you may expect, aggressive units are still very strong. Especially units that you can play on turn 1 or 2, more on that later. Being able to put pressure on your opponent and force them to either use their removal (which is scarce and very high value in draft and sealed!) or make unfavourable trades in order to stem the bleeding to their base is a very good strategy to take down games.
Duds are still duds. These are cards like Sullustan Spacer. They aren't unplayable but generally they aren't very efficient cards - they either cost too much or do too little.
There are a couple of other things that need to be considered in Star Wars Unlimited that Magic players don't really need to consider.
Balance - Not balancing the force, but balancing between your two arenas. In most formats, a large percentage of the battle will be fought on the ground but don't let yourself ignore space! If you have a good ground offensive but nothing in space, it's really easy to lose to one or two Green Squadron A-Wing just hitting you every turn.
Leader - Not every leader has synergy with every deck. That's okay sometimes. Sometimes you just build a good deck and your leader doesn't really do much except flip into a free unit. But the best decks are ones where your leader can complement your other units in a way that feels seamless and not forced.
So I guess Star Wars Unlimited doesn't have BREAD. I guess it has BRABLD. Doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well. Nevertheless I still recommend looking for bombs and removal as your highest priority in your sealed pool or draft table.
Deck Building
So you've sat down and opened all six packs. (Make sure to take your time and enjoy that part by the way! Opening packs of cards that just came out & reading them as you go will not only be a fun experience, it will also give you a better idea of what you opened!) Now you have 90+ cards sitting on the table in front of you and you have to figure out a way to get that number down to 30. You may feel a bit overwhelmed by that. Don't panic! There are lots of ways to do this and after a couple of pre-releases you'll figure out the one that works best for you.
My favourite way to do this is to start by sorting the cards. Heroism on one side, villainy on the other. I then look through each pile and pick out the heroism and villainy cards I'd most like to play and compare them. At this point you should have a pretty small stack of heroism cards and a pretty small stack of villainy cards. Then, compare their quantity and quality. Do I have more good heroism cards or more good villainy cards? Do I have enough neutral cards in their aspects in order to support them? How about my leaders? Is there one in particular I think will be strong?
Once I have figured out whether heroism or villainy is going to be the stronger option, I will set all of the cards from the side I did not chose aside - maybe in the handy deckbox that came with my pre-release kit!
Now comes choosing remaining aspects. Keep in mind that you didn't need to open a base of a certain aspect to play that aspect. The common bases, much like basic lands in Magic, can be treated in some sense as a just a free thing. Trading cards to improve your deck is NOT permitted in pre-release, but if your friend or the store you're playing at has extra common bases for an aspect you did not open but would like to play, then you're welcome to use that base. Depending on how chill the store was you could honestly write the name of the aspect and a big "30" on the back of a receipt and put that beside your leader. Basic common bases, along with tokens, are basically "not real cards" (don't come at me rule lawyers) and it's sort of implied you have an infinite number of either of them at your disposal should you need them.
So now you know whether you're playing heroism or villainy. What other aspects should you be playing? Now it's time to sort each aspect into its own pile. Once again, look through each pile individually and figure out both quality and quantity of the cards in those piles. Oftentimes (but not always) you'll have a clear best aspect and a clear worst pile, but choosing your second aspect is where the tricky part is.
Maybe you have a very strong command pile and a very weak vigilance pile. Perfect, throw the vigilance pile aside for now and look at cunning vs aggression. Which one has more removal? Does either pile have what you would consider a "bomb"? Do you have an aggression or cunning leader you think will be very cool and will synergize with your deck? All of these things need to be considered and weighted in order to choose which aspect you want.
I wish I could give you an equation that you could plug a bunch of variables into and have it spit out which aspect you should choose, but sadly that doesn't exist. The closest thing I can give you is this: which of those piles actually DO more. Does one pile have more removal? That's probably your choice. Does one pile have some pretty good cards that cost 5 or 6 but the other has good cards that cost 2 or 3? You probably want the pile with the cheaper good cards.
Complementing your main aspect
So you've decided on both of your aspects and even your leader. You're laying out all of the cards in those aspects and starting to build your deck. The first thing I like to do is lay them out organized by their resource costs. This will help you identify any gaps you may have. Returning to the above example, let's say your main aspect, command looks very solid but is completely missing 2 cost and 3 cost cards. Does the other aspect you chose fill in the weaknesses of your main aspect? If not it may be time to look for other options. I don't care how cool your deck is, if it doesn't do anything until turn 4, you're going to lose that game.
One thing that may come up if you're lucky is multiples of a single card. Usually in Star Wars Unlimited, cards are limited to 3 of each in one deck. But in limited formats like draft and sealed (pre-release is sealed), you can have as many copies of any given card in your deck. Open 4 copies of a solid 2 cost card? I'd be running all 4 if I were you.
So you've chosen your aspects and put together a deck. Hopefully you've hit 30 cards, but if you haven't, don't fret! If you are stuck at 28 or 29 cards, just look at your deck for a moment. Is there anything missing? Anything you wish you had more of? Now it's time to make a decision. Should you run no aspect cards or should you splash out of aspect. Cards with no aspect cost are usually weaker as a trade off for being able to fit in any deck. This is in contrast with cards in other aspects, which will likely be a lot stronger but you need to pay 2 more resources for each aspect of that card you don't have.
Often times this is when you pull back out the heroism or villainy cards you put in your deck box a few minutes ago. Sift through those and see if you can identify a card that shares one aspect that would work well with your deck. Make sure when laying it out in your resource cost piles to put it in the spot two higher than it normally would be in.
Don't worry if you need to do this and your friend doesn't. It doesn't mean that you built your deck wrong. In sealed you are at the mercy of the cards you open. Sometimes in sealed your best two aspects will be a card or two short and you'll need to supplement with cards you'd rather not run. At the end of the day you can always just play these cards as resources if you need to.
Now what if your sealed pool (a term referring to the cards you opened) seems very strong and very deep in two aspects. What if you throw together your resource curve like I described above and you realize you have 33 cards, all of which are good and play their role. Should you just run all 33 even if the minimum deck size is 30?
99 times out of 100, you should cut down to the minimum deck size. This is the biggest mistake I see newer players or even some experienced players make. They build a deck that has 33 good cards and they say "why should I cut 3 good cards from my deck, what if I need those?" This sounds very compelling, after all - playing good cards is how you win games. But consider this: if you are playing 33 cards when the minimum deck size is 30, then 3 of those cards are the worst cards in your deck, even if they're good cards. And why would you play the worst cards in your deck? Cutting the right cards will almost always increase the AVERAGE power level of your deck, which is often what actually matters.
Now, if you actually have 33 good cards on aspect in your sealed pool, then I envy you, that's a great spot to be in and you're probably going to do very well in your pre-release! But please, try your best to cut down to 30.
Now let's talk about what cards you should be looking for. Identifying removal is pretty straightforward, but how do you identify other things you should be looking for? This is a general guide for Star Wars Unlimited pre-releases, and not for any specific set - so I'm not going to be saying any specific card is good, except for a few examples that I'll use as tools to hopefully help you generalize.
Things to Look out for
Bombs
So we know bombs are the best things to play, but what actually makes a bomb a bomb? Is Endless Legions a bomb? It's true that if you play it you're probably going to win the game very quickly. That is actually very much not a bomb, because the power level of the card is secondary to what actually matters. That card's EFFICIENCY.
In Star Wars Unlimited limited events like pre-relase, you're often going to be playing a bunch of fine units without much synergy, and you're going to attack your opponents units and trade unit for unit, then they'll do the same, then you'll play a unit, then they'll play a unit. This symmetry will often continue until one player finds something to do that can break it. This often is in the form of a "2 for 1" type card. A common example of a "2 for 1" bomb is Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight. That's because when you play it, you will likely be able to destroy one of your opponent's units immediately, and then still use Luke as a unit to trade with at least one other of your opponent's units. Suddenly, the symmetry has broken - your opponent is now playing at least one action behind and you will likely be able to turn that advantage into a victory.
So when trying to identify if something is a bomb, two really good places to start are "does this card break some sort of symmetry by getting me at least "2 for 1" in value?" and "Is this card reasonably costed". While it's true that pre-release games can often get to later turns than constructed or even draft games because of the lower deck power levels, getting to 11 is still a tall ask. Sorry Executor, Might of the Empire.
2 Cost Units and 3 Cost Units
Like I said earlier, it is so important to have early units to play. It may seem excessive but trust me on this - you want at least half of your pre-release deck to cost 2-3, with most of them being units. The amount of games you will just win by default because you'll play something on turn 1, 2 and 3 almost every game when your opponent didn't build their deck in a way that they could do that is going to shock you.
Because you start with 2 resources, 1 cost cards are often a bit less valuable, but that doesn't mean they're useless at all. Sometimes you just won't open enough 2 or 3 cost cards and you'll need to play some 1 cost cards too. That's fine - playing a decent 1 cost card on turn 1 is MUCH better than having no play at all.
Ambush
This keyword is such a sleeper. Most people by now have realized how good it is, but I have been able to squeeze out a LOT of wins on its back before folks caught on. As a refresher, ambush (essentially) reads: "When Played: If there is an enemy unit that this unit can attack, this unit may attack that enemy unit, even if this unit is exhausted." Basically, you get a free attack with a unit IMMEDIATELY upon playing it (you just can't target their base with the attack).
This keyword is very very strong, probably the strongest keyword you'll see at your pre-release. Playing a unit that immediately attacks one of your opponent's units means that not only did you cheat an action, but you also likely removed a small unit AND played to your own board. Oftentimes the worst case scenario for ambush will be that it immediately trades with one of your opponents units, and that's totally fine. It's basically just a removal card in those instances, which as we know from BRABLD (okay I'll stop trying to make that catch on), is very good.
In summary, when choosing your aspect, value ambush very highly. It will often even sway which aspect you play.
Leaders
Leaders are an interesting part of Star Wars Unlimited. Many of them have very cool synergies that will make decks built around specific themes come together well. In your pre-release though, you can't really expect to get some crazy capital ship or force or wookie synergy deck. If you do that's awesome, but it will happen very very rarely.
While in constructed the synergy given by the leader is often its main function, in pre-release the main function of the leader is often its flip. Is its flip efficient? You and your opponent basically get a free unit. Make sure yours is better.
For example, Admiral Piett, Commanding the Armada is a super cool leader for constructed decks built around capital ships. It also is a 2/7 that flips on 5 resources. The capital ship synergy is almost never going to come up in pre-release.
On the other hand, Rose Tico, Saving What We Love also flips on 5 into a 4/6, which is almost always better stats. In addition, you are almost always going to have vehicles in your pre-release deck, and she heals your vehicles. That will come up so much more than Piett's discount.
In a pre-release game where you're playing Rose against your opponent's Piett, sure you'll be flipping your leaders on the same turn, but most of the time yours will feel MUCH more impactful.
Should I Play that Cool Rare Base I Opened?
Ok, so this is a cool one that I don't see many people talking about. The answer is ultimately if you can do something at pre-release that will make it more fun for you then you should do it. Pre-release is about having fun!
That being said, if you are trying to make the best deck you can, really think about whether it helps your game plan. Rare bases will give you either a small benefit at the cost of some life or some life at the cost of a small drawback. Sometimes, famously in Energy Conversion Lab or Tarkintown, that life is often worth the effect. But sometimes, like in the case of Lake Country it's basically never going to be a good trade for you during pre-release.
Bases need to be ranked on a case by case basis since all of their effects are so different or unique, but a fine heuristic you can use is "does this base make my deck able to be more consistent and control my opponent". If the answer is yes, then consider it. Otherwise don't bother. You will find that most of your opponents at pre-release will likely just be using common bases, and that's usually right.
Summary
So to summarize, in pre-release you should be looking for cheap, efficient units, a few high impact high cost cards, and lots of removal.
Deck building:
Figure out which aspects allow you to play the most efficient cards while getting as close to the 30 card minimum. Don't worry about playing one or two out of aspect or aspect-less cards; you can always resource them.
Removal:
If a card lets you re-actively deal with one of your opponent's threats, it's probably worth putting into your deck. Remember, removal will be pretty sparse in pre-release, so every piece counts!
Resource curve:
Make sure your deck has a hefty supply of 2 and 3 cost cards, especially units. Doing nothing or almost nothing in the first few turns of the game is a death sentence most of the time!
Ambush:
Play ambush cards, especially cheap and medium cost ones. They are sometimes 2 for 1s and basically always at least 1 for 1s. Most of your high efficiency units will just have ambush.
Leaders:
Leaders are free stats that you get - make sure that yours has pretty high stats for the turn on which it flips. Sometimes some light synergy will happen too, and those cases are great but you can't bank on that.
Bases:
Probably just run a basic good ole' fashioned 30 life base. If you open a rare base you really want to try it, ask yourself - is this going to be working towards my game plan or is it going to make my life harder?
Ultimately, don't get frustrated! Pre-release is cool because it levels the playing field in a lot of ways. The more experienced players who have super blingy decks are now starting at square 1 just like you, with all new cards they haven't played with before. Sealed also can sometimes feel frustrating. Maybe you'll manage to throw together an okay deck and someone else opens the absolute craziest deck you've ever seen in your life. Sealed has a big element of luck in that you are limited to the cards you open. Don't get stressed, it was just their turn to get the crazy pulls. Maybe next time it will be yours!
All of that to say, pre-release is one of the most fun times for any game, and I wish you the best of luck in your games and your pulls. May the force be with you!
As always, thank you very much for reading, and feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel here where I talk more about Star Wars Unlimited, in particular limited formats like draft and sealed. Feel free to shoot me a message with any questions and good luck on your pre-release!
