Images courtesy of Fantasy Flight Games/Lucasfilm
The general consensus is that the suspensions of Jango, TDR, and DJ was a good thing. The results of an 80+ person Showdown in Yerres, France confirmed that the Yellow Wednesday helped in creating a healthy Star Wars Unlimited meta. The event had seven different leaders in the Top 8, and no deck lists in the Top 8 had matching leader and base pairs.
Let’s dive right into some analysis, shall we?
Yerres Top 8
Santa Geek Cafe Showdown Top 8:
- Sabine ECL
- Bossk Blue
- HanSHD ECL
- Palpatine Yellow
- Palpatine Colossus
- Quinlan TT
- HanSOR Yellow
- Piett Colossus
That’s a diverse and lovely meta if you ask me. The only repeating leader is Emperor Palpatine, and a yellow versus blue version of the deck play quite a bit differently. According to a user on Reddit, they said the local meta is a “…particularly control-oriented meta. Despite everything, Sabine doesn’t have a highway to victory.” They placed 13th with a Palp Colossus deck. Well done, Astic0.
Of note, a LukeJTL ECL deck just missed the Top 8 and placed 9th. That’s two of the top 10 with Jump to Lightspeed (JTL) leaders, and out of that top 10 there were three new JTL rare bases.
Let’s get some fine grain detail on how JTL influenced these “old” leaders and brought them up to… Lightspeed.
Sabine ECL Still On Top
As I said right after the Yellow Wednesday suspensions, Sabine ECL is now the deck to beat. Why? It’s still a strong deck and after a major change in TCGs people are going to default to what they know. Just like Jango, JTL added some cards that could easily slot into the powerful decks. Over a quarter of the cards in the winning Sabine deck were new JTL cards. 14/50 cards is a significant amount to an already tuned deck. The player included: three R2-D2, Artooooooooo!; three Luke Skywalker, You Still With Me?; two Chewbacca, Faithful First Mate; and three Phoenix Squadron A-Wing.
Let’s take a second to see why Pilot Luke is so good in this Sabine deck: you get a ground unit if your Space Unit gets smoked. That’s more pressure on your opponent with an already quick deck. Also, that’s another target for another noticeable difference in this Sabine deck compared to older shells. They decided to use General’s Blade instead of The Darksaber. I’m speculating that it’s because GB is not a unique card (8.30 in CR 4.0.1), thus you can have multiple copies on the board.
Last, Pilot Chewie is just a miserable card to play against for control decks. It’s like the Rebels got their own Lurking TIE Phantom (LTP).
Speaking of Villainy cards, let’s look at the 8th placed deck next.
Is Piett Colossus the Best Piett?
This deck was the only “new” deck to finish in the Top 8. It’s definitely a more refined deck than the one I posted on my article, “The Cunning And Vigilance Of Admiral Piett in SWU.” I like this deck a lot. It definitely leans into the control aspect SWU. Three Regional Governor in the main deck is spicy. You better know your opponent’s decks as well as they know theirs if you’re going to do that.
Let’s see what they accomplished.
Leader
Admiral Piett, Commanding The Armada
Base
Ground Unit (14)
3 Doctor Pershing, Expirimenting With Life
3 Jarek Yeager, Coordinating With The Resistance
1 Tam Ryvora, Searching For Purpose
1 The Client, Dictated By Discretion
Space Unit (18)
3 Corvus, Inferno Squadron Raider
2 Avenger, Hunting Star Destroyer
1 Relentless, Konstantine’s Folly
2 Annihilator, Tagge’s Flagship
Events (18)
3 Resupply
Sideboard (10)
1 Restock
2 The Client, Dictated By Discretion
1 Takedown
The first thing that stood out to me was, “What card is Strike True, again?” I have to admit, adding that card is pretty clever. It’s like a baby Overwhelming Barrage. As you can see from my previous article looking at Piett (you can check it out here), the deck is evolving. Good job, SWU community. After TDR got suspended, the logical step was to move on to this shell. I’ve seen some Piett Red decks, but I still think this is the better option for Piett.
Yes, I absolutely love the Villainy/Aggression options in SWU. Ruthless Raider is still a fantastic card. However, that’s pretty much where Piett Red hits a big gap because the next big card is the nine-drop Relentless. Giving up Blue means you’re going to lose out on the absolute best of the best Capital Ships in the game.
The Command Capital Ships in Villainy really shine in this deck. Fleet Interdictor is a house when it comes to stabilizing in the Space Arena. Sentinel with a huge HP count at seven cost is a stretch, but with a flipped Piett and some ramp you can probably drop this onto the board on round three or four easily. That’s going to clog up your opponent’s Space Arena for sure and give you some breathing room.
Since this is Premier, and a competitive scene, dropping Annihilator on your opponent, defeating a unit then removing it from their deck is… satisfying.
I am a little surprised I’m not seeing a single No Glory, Only Results in this deck. The aforementioned Reddit user said the Paris meta was very control heavy… that card just gives anyone playing SLT nightmares. I’d maybe forego a spot or two in the sideboard if I knew I was in a control heavy meta, because almost assuredly I’d be facing a control matchup. Also, No Glory is fantastic now that it looks like people are throwing Chewie Pilot into their Sabine and Luke decks (more on that below) and it’s almost like people have forgotten LTD is a thing…
Incidentally, Gar Yellow with LTD is positioned so well right now. I’m going to keep beating that drum until I see more people top with that deck.
Quick Shout Out and Honorable Mention
LukeJTL with ECL in the top 10 is just fantastic. This is the first iteration of this deck to pop up in the wild (that I know of) and place highly in a large tournament, and I’m sure more people will pick it up and hone it to a finer edge. It functions a lot like the Sabine ECL deck except it eschews the Ground Arena for a heavy Space Arena presence. The Space units all have the Fighter trait, so LukeJTL can pilot them and use his “On Attack: You may deal 3 damage to a unit.”
Similar to Pilot Chewie, Luke JTL as a pilot upgrade cannot defeated (HA! Take that Confiscate!). This gives it extra sticking power rather than just begging to get removed back to the Leader Zone. Last, shout out for using Trench Run without Kazuda. That’s a bold move, Cotton!
That’s It for the Month of April
The next time you hear from me on here I will have completed a chaos sealed event on May the Fourth Be With You at my LGS. If you don’t know, “chaos” is used many times in draft or sealed when referring to packs from different events. We’ll be using two packs from Spark of Rebellion, two packs from Shadows of the Galaxy, and two packs from Jump To Lightspeed. I think those three sets create a great experience because there’s plenty of overlapping traits, such as Imperial, Rebel, and Underworld.
One last thing, because I didn’t want you to think I forgot about your fun judge/rule interaction for the article:
You all know by now my inner Spike is pretty vicious (we keep that locked away for good reason), and I’m always talking about No Glorying my opponent’s SLT. So, what happens if I No Glory my opponent’s Phoenix Squadron A-Wing that’s piloted by Luke, Are You Still With Me? Do I get to put my opponent’s Luke into my Ground Arena exhausted as a unit? Unfortunately, no. The reason is because the owner retains control of upgrades. Here’s the reference:
8.28.1A Under the CR section for “Take Control” we have “[…] All upgrades remain attached to it remain attached and keep their original controllers.”
I feel personally attacked.
Until next time, be cool to your fellow players, be cool to your judges, hydrate, eat well, exercise, and wear clean socks. Hit me up anytime on Bluesky @TheFlyingWriter or Reddit at u/TheFlyingWriter.
Want more Jump to Lightspeed? Check out our full card image gallery here, or you can check out the previews of the next SWU set: Legends of the Force.
