How Star Wars Unlimited can build on historic launch: 4 changes we want to see

Star Wars Unlimited has officially kicked off, with the game seeing a growing player base. However, like with most TCGs, we have some changes we’d make.

Fantasy Flight Games’ latest trading card game, Star Wars Unlimited has landed. The latest card game in Star Wars’ storied board game history finally launched in March and has seen some players jumping in early.

Though with its early praise, there’s no denying a few hindrances right out of the gate. Not everything is perfect in the galaxy far, far away. So we’ve put a few thoughts together on how we’d look to improve Star Wars Unlimited moving forward, building on the game’s historic launch with key changes and future improvements.

A better way to track health on bases & units

Topping our list is the desire for a better health-tracking system in Star Wars Unlimited. As it currently stands, damage dealt to bases or units is displayed through rather flimsy tokens provided through the starter pack (or a more expensive version purchased separately for a hefty fee). While these certainly do the job, they’re far from an ideal solution.

Tokens get cluttered far too easily. Before long, the game mat can look messy with tokens littered across units and bases. With almost every action, it’s far simpler to just ask your opponent how much health something has left, rather than count the tokens.

This is especially true when it comes to your base, the card with the most health of them all. As games go long, and tokens stack up, it can become all too cluttered near the center of the board. Let’s say you’ve taken 19 damage, which equates to 1x 10 damage token, 1x 5 damage token, and 4x 1 damage tokens. Six tokens in total just to display your base health. This is only compounded if multiple players have taken damage, let alone when you get into Twin Suns. There has to be a better way.

For casual play at home with friends, they do the job. But in more serious competitive settings at local tabletop stores, I’ve been defaulting to using a mobile app in every match I play. Rather than use tokens for base health, it’s been far smoother and timely to revert to an app designed for Magic The Gathering in order to track everyone’s health.

Obviously, it’s early days yet for Star Wars Unlimited. But here’s hoping a more effective solution is in the pipeline for future Sets.

Where are our Space Leaders?

Star Wars Unlimited’s first Set only just hit store shelves, so we can’t be too critical in this regard, but it would be wonderful to see a more diverse spread of Leader cards in the near future. Currently, all 18 Leaders in the game come into play as a Ground Unit. Why can’t we mix things up a little and see some Leaders wreak havoc on the other half of the board?

One could argue the likes of the Millennium Falcon or the Death Star are iconic characters in their own right. Rather than dropping a Leader onto the Ground, how awesome would it be to see a Leader floating in Space, dominating the fight in orbit?

Perhaps there’s even a more unique solution wherein, Leaders can pick and choose from game to game. Let’s take Han Solo as a prime example. In one game, you might want to deploy him on the Ground in his regular form. In the next game, what if you had the option to deploy him in Space as he pilots the iconic Falcon?

Anything we can do to spice up the Leader rollout sounds like a positive at this stage. But again, we’re only just getting the ball rolling so who’s to know for certain what’s in the plans as devs work on the next few years of content.

More space units in general

Piggybacking on the last point, it’d be great to balance out the current mix of units in Star Wars Unlimited. While Set 1 gave us some heavy artillery for the Space side of the board, there’s no denying Ground units were the major focus to start things off. Moving forward, it’d be ideal if future Sets help even out the mix of Space and Ground units so that one side doesn’t dominate the board more often than not.

Set 1 boasts 110 Ground units in total, plus the extra 18 that can come into play in the form of Leaders. Compare that to just 38 Space units all up, with no Leaders on that side of the board, and it’s safe to say the Ground arena is how games are won far more often than not.

Not to say a focus on Ground is a bad thing per se, more just that options in Space being so limited can feel unfun at times. Given how few Space cards you have in a given deck, the odds of drawing one at the right time can be slim to say the least. More options can lead to more well-rounded decks and that’s surely only a good thing in the months to come.

More stock can’t be a bad thing…unless?

We’re being cheeky here, but our last request for the future of Star Wars Unlimited is simply more stock. More of everything. But still maintaining the considered approach in delivering more goods.

It goes without saying, but flooding the market with an overwhelming surplus of Star Wars Unlimited product is a bad thing in the long run. The rarest cards wouldn’t be so rare if thousands had access to them. So there’s a downside to going all-out with the release of future Sets, but it would be great to see a slight increase in product availability with future launches.

Opening the floodgates with the Spark of Rebellion release, Star Wars Unlimited quickly became an “unprecedented success,” a TCG that almost instantly “exceeded sales expectations,” as the game’s creators revealed.

Thus, the current situation is completely understandable, and we’re just being wishful with our thinking. But the impact has certainly been felt far and wide across the TCG community. Draft events are stopping already, mainly due to lack of supply for rewards, prices of booster boxes are skyrocketing, closing the door on new players looking to get involved on the ground floor, and the only word from those behind the scenes is to hold steady on the road to Set 2 in July.

Eventually, this particular gripe will no doubt be ironed out. But it felt worth mentioning in the early outings as one of the pain points among the Star Wars Unlimited player base through the game’s very first Set.

Overall, as our own review stated, the game is off to an absolutely tremendous start. I’ve never been more hooked on a TCG before, and I can’t wait to see where things go from here. The foundation is excellent and with improvements over time, the future is incredibly bright for Star Wars Unlimited.