Deckbuilding 101: Beginner's Guide to Star Wars Unlimited

so you've decided to stop net decking and want to start deck building in Star Wars unlimited well you've come to the right place but there's a problem getting into a competitive trading card game and succeeding at deck building involves dealing with a complete mindfield of esoteric vocabulary you've probably heard these terms thrown around a lot and quite often misused probably by me terms like Tempo curve aggro value midrange card Advantage control these terms make up the Bedrock of a competitive Trading Card Game sure you can just throw 50 cards together into a deck and that might be enough for you in casual play or you can just make a theme deck and have fun with it but if you want to play in and win tournaments you're going to need to choose a style of play you're going to need to pick the right cards to match your style and you're going to need to make sure you have a good curve which allows you to maximize your chances of winning so without further Ado welcome to deck building 101 you might think the first step is to choose a leader in a base the first step is to choose a style of play because this will inform everything we do going forwards do you want to play aggro mid-range or control a quick side note currently in Stars unlimited the C pool is quite limited and so while you can push a deck down one of these routes they're not the perfect examples of that style but we have to work with what we've got so let's define each of these styles of play and run through the traits of each one starting with aggro aggro is exactly as it sounds the aim is to be aggressive flood the board with small units and race your opponent's base down from 30 or 25 to zero as fast as possible aggro often depends on a fast tempo rather than card advantage and value and if left unchecked by your opponent aggro can quickly overwhelm what do we mean when we talk about Tempo Tempo means both the speed at which you play the game and the efficiency of your actions whilst playing if you're playing multiple units on curve effectively and you're efficiently using your resources you can be said to have good Tempo aggro decks often have synergies to make their cheap units go further by trading two for one or by increasing their damage on the base further increasing their Tempo good deck examples of aggro include Sabine and Leia examples of strong aggro cards includes to being the unit and rally and cry the double red event which gives all your units raid to this phase both of these decks have synergies which mean that whilst their individual units are weak when played together they become something stronger and can overwhelm their opponent you should play aggro if you like to play fast if you enjoy the feeling of overwhelming your opponent quickly and if you like to be doing something every turn playing Agro well is quite difficult as it's a balance of knowing when to commit your resources when to hold back in expectation of removal and playing to your out by this I mean making a play based on you might draw next which is quite a difficult skill to master and requires you to know your deck inside out next up we have control once again the name is kind of on the tin here control decks want to control the battlefield and to play the long game they attempt to slow everything down through attrition and removal as the game progresses they take advantage of their more expensive powerful cards to destroy the opponent where Tempo is key for aggro Decks card Advantage is what control players are looking to gain what do we mean by card Advantage it simply means you have more cards and therefore more options than your opponent value and card advant Advantage can also be obtained by using cards which generate other cards either through card draw token generation or through something called tutoring which just means to search your deck for specific cards and draw them to your hand virtual card Advantage can also be obtained by not playing out your threats in the early game and by not being proactive and taking a more conservative approach a good example of this and this is a really key point so listen carefully is a good technique to play control against Boba green Boba green wants to play Down super laser tech into the ground Arena and run it into something with energy conversion lab a good control player would recognize this and not play down their cheap units in the ground arena in the early game preventing the bobber player from enacting their plan control decks have multiple ways to enact their own plan control decks gain card Advantage by answering multiple threats with one event something like overwhelming barrage or super laser blast stopping expensive threats with cheaper spells like force throw and drawing multiple cards or forcing the opponent to discard multiple cards with one event even if a control deck can't deal with every threat on the board they can leave out whichever ones stand poorly on their own for example removing red three to remove the raid effect from all of the other rebel units you should play a control deck if You' like to mess with your opponent if you like playing all the big fancy expensive cards like Devastator and Avenger or if you just like to cause people pain and suffering and you want your opponent to slowly die inside next up we have mid-range decks in mid-range decks the aim is to play on curve throughout the game always efficiently using your resources ramping in the early game and then playing a few big hitters in the mid to late game around turns 4 to six to overwhelm your opponent mid-range decks are unique in that they can be quite versatile St if built correctly you can assume the role of an agro player against control and you can be more controlled against aggro therefore mid-range decks tend to do well early on in the meta when there's a smaller card pool and decks are less refined kind of what we're seeing with Boba green at the moment a lot of the Decks that are being played in Star Wars unlimited at the moment kind of fall into mid-range category just because we don't have great aggro and control cards so these decks are much less well defined okay so now you've got an idea of what type of deck you want to play the next step is to pick a leader and a base generally the different leaders then themselves to different of play this is obviously a generalization and its personal preference so if you want to you can try and play an aggro Deck with Emperor Palpatine it just won't be optimal so I've group the leaders into which kind of deck they suit the most so in the aggro section I've gone for Sabine leayer ig88 and Tarin let's start going through the aggro leaders first Sabine is the archetypal Agro leader she comes down on turn three as a two5 she comes out earlier than every other leader in the game meaning that you're moving faster than your opponent her ability allows her to deal a damage to the enemy base and your own base which allows you to Nuke down your opponent faster you really don't care about your own base when racing down your opponent she's the best example we have and an aggro leader in the game at the moment next up is Leia if Sabina is the best example of an aggro leader Leia is a close second she comes down on turn four as a 36 and she allows you to attack with two units in one go which is great for aggro decks as they want to move faster than the opponent and this allows them to gain Tempo and claim the initiative next up is ig88 who is one of the weaker leaders in the game but he's definitely built around an aggro game plan he comes down on turn four as a 54 so he has really bad Health but really high attack for a leader the only other leader with five attack is Darth Vader his ability as a leader lets you attack with a unit that gets plus one if you have more units in play than your opponent this is obviously suited to an aggro strategy where you're going to be flooding the board early and are therefore likely to have more units than your opponent when deployed he gives all friendly units raid one which again is really suited to an aggressive game plan this ability is actually really strong I think if ig's stats were just switched around and he was a 4 five he'd be much higher on tier lists and be and be a sort of more played leader but as it's to he's he's just too fragile he's a glass Cannon basically next up is Tarin who comes down on turn four as a 27 with the ability H give an experience token to a an Imperial unit he can be used in Agro or mid-range with Tarin you're playing lots of small things and buffing them with his ability so he's not an archetypal aggro card but he can be used in this way lastly we've got Cassian who like Taren can be used in aggro or mid-range he comes down late for an aggro card on turn five as a 46 the reason I've put him in aggro is that his ability is all about dealing damage to the base and drawing cards this can be quite powerful in aggro as obviously you're going to be trying to De as much damage to the base as possible and the cards that you draw with Cassian you can play them out as you draw them because they're so cheap he's not the best Agro leader but I think he does have some potential next we're going to discuss the control leaders and I've gone in this list for krennic Iden Palpatine Vader and thrawn I'm going to discuss krennic and Iden Verso together because they're so similar they're both they both essentially offer the same thing they both offer healing with Idan it's a passive ability when an opponent's unit at leades play you can exhaust her and heal one from your base and with krennic he has restored two when he comes down both of them give you access to powerful removal late game options in blue villain and both of them will heal you for an average of four to five damage a game krennic's passive ability gives all damaged units plus one attack which is very strong simply by virtue of being passive so they're both really good control Leaders with for the healing they give you and for the access they give you to the color blue next up is Palpatine Palpatine comes down on turn seven as a 410 with an ability which says pay one defeat a friendly unit deal one damage to a unit and draw a card and then when he comes down as a unit you can take over a damage non-leader unit off your opponent the reason he's suited to control is simply because he comes down so late in the game he's the latest leader actually so to make it worthwhile playing him you need some kind of strategy to ramp and you need some kind of strategy to delay the game just to make it that far but once he comes down he is very powerful probably the most powerful leader in the game so he's a big payoff which is kind of how control decks want to operate he also gives you access to Green which gives you natural access to ramp and then you compare him with either red or blue depending on how much of control you want to go down I think paired with blue palatini is a very strong control deck but no one seems to be playing that right now next up is Vader Vader comes down on turn six as a 58 with an ability which says pay one deal one damage to a unit and one to a base and then when he's a unit he can deal two damage to another unit on attack so Vader is very much a mid-range or Control Card like Palpatine he comes down very late and so you need to make it to make him worthwhile basically his color combination options uh mean he's also a good fit for control having natural access to a lot of good removal and store cards and you can either pair him with green to get things like overwhelm the garage and ramp or you compare him with blue to get more powerful single Target removal next up we have Thorn who comes down as a turn five 39 so he has really high Health quite difficult to get rid of his ability lets him look at the top card of each deck and then he can reveal one and exhaust the that cost the same or less than the real card so Thon is in a very interesting spot he's got a very strong control ability to let him delay his opponent but his color is yellow which lacks access to some of the most powerful late game cards so it's really difficult to pair him because whatever color you choose you're going to miss out on something if you choose to pair him with blue you get some good single Target removal and some very powerful late game cards like Avenger and the at80 but you miss out on ramp and overwhelming barrage which are two of the strongest things in the game if you choose green you miss out on good single Target removal and some powerful late game bombs but you get the ramp package so overall Thon is a really good control card but currently as it stands there's not enough in the yellow villain pool to make him one of the top tier decks now for the mid-range decks I'm just going to consolidate this into one large chunk all of the leaders in the game with the exception of maybe sine can be played as a mid-range deck and all of the leaders left that I haven't discussed yet now the ones that are showing don't have stats or abilities which push them in one direction towards control or one direction towards aggro and so I've kind of lumped them together in this mid-range section I've also put Vader back in here because he is in one of the best mid-range decks in the game currently so you'll notice that a lot of the leaders on this list bobber Vader Han Luke are in some of the best decks in the game and I think that's because we have a limited card pool and we have a limited scope to make strong aggro and control decks and so mid-range decks are kind of dominating The Meta right now now like I said this list isn't definitive quite a few of these leaders you can take one way or another aggro or mid-range mid-range of control for example but in general the things I've described to you are probably the most efficient way to use these leaders next up is choosing a base which means choosing a color combination you need to choose a color that complements what you're trying to do and so for this you need to look at what each color is good at look at the card pool find the best cards for your game plan for example if you're choosing to do a pure control list with someone like Darth Vader you might want to consider running him alongside a blue base because there are some really powerful removal events in blue like Vanquish takeown and super laser blast next up we have to discuss the curve so when you're building your deck you need to build a deck with a good curve and building a deck with a good curve is a skill necessary in nearly all trading card games but what do we mean when we talk about the curve having a deck with a good curve simply means there's a good distribution of cards with different costs in your deck so that we can play out on curve that means to play cards each turn that spend all or most of our resources it doesn't mean we have the same number of cards at each cost Point throughout the deck because it's going to vary with the style of deck that you're going to use AG gr mid-range or control when putting together your deck and your curve you need to think about what each turn is going to look like build it based on what we've discussed already what what type of deck you're going to play and look at cards that synergize well together identify cards in your aspects which help your game plan for example if you're building a blue control list as we discussed you're going to need good removal so Vanquish and takedown whilst feeling horribly inefficient are some of the best single Target removal cards we have in the game when playing your deck you're going to want consistency you're going to want to know how likely you are to draw a card that you need to that end it's usually better to play three copies of cards unless you know they're extremely situational or extremely expensive in which case you might want to play two or even one copy of something that leads us on to our next point once you've built your deck try and learn it inside out because when you're playing you want to be able to tailor your gameplay based on what you might draw next this is called knowing your outs or playing to your outs and quite often the difference between winning and losing a game I want to finish this video with a short discussion on theme theme is something that's not really taken into consideration in competitive play but it's a concept which is important and is one of the ways to have fun with trading card games and isn't that really why we play the game in the first place at base level theme is about the game feeling like it's IP which in this instance is Star Wars I actually think that unlimited has some really great thematic elements some of my favorites being Han and grea Han's ability to shoot first when he comes down with Ambush and also there being an event with a hand on the picture called Shoot first and greo getting to shoot second and take someone on the way out feel very thematic putting together a theme deck can be really fun and sometimes despite being quite janky you can still manage to eek out a few wins along the way so there you have it those are my tips on becoming a better deck builder just some beginner tips really if you have any recommendations of things you want me to cover on Star Wars unlimited let me know in the comments ments thanks for watching

Channel: Top Deck Wizard

Views: 3,240

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Id: rsrt11bMFd0

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024