We got the full spoiler this weekend and it’s a thing of beauty. Now we start looking at the cards and the rarities to see how they will impact limited play. The most important rarities for limited are commons and uncommons. Most of your decks will be built around these, with some splashy rares and uncommons coming in for clean-up.
In sealed all 8 of the common bases are options to choose from when building your deck. That means you would need to pull 6 leaders of the same 2 aspects to not be able to play an aspect combo. Toss in the prerelease promos, which can be played in your deck as well, and it’s almost impossible. We’ve also got some great leaders in the pool, even defaulting to Luke or Vader is a great option. I honestly think you will see quite a few Vader decks and it’s something to be prepared for.
After looking at your leaders and keeping them in mind, one of the first things to do will be to sort by aspect. Look at your units in each aspect as they will be the foundation of your deck. Even if an aspect doesn’t have a ton of units, don’t count it out, but the odds you will play it are much lower. One of the things I love about this game is that even at uncommon you get some unique units, which are always more fun to play with. And at lower rarities you also get some synergies that can work well. Remember that Spectre, if you get the Rare Hera or even Sabine leader still has a decent pool at uncommon. Rebels have quite a bit at so, Leia can be a fun leader.
Another thing of importance is to look at your space units. At the common and uncommon rarity each of the 4 primary aspects has between 4 and 7 space units in the pool, plus 2 each for Heroism and Villainy and the 1 neutral. Cunning is in a weird spot here. While it doesn’t really have any big beefy space units at common or uncommon, it has quite a few of them at 7, 4 of them at common! A well timed Auzituck Liberator Gunship can definitely turn the tide of a battle, and the Mining Guild Tie Fighter can lead to some amazing card advantage if you’re left alone in space.
You’re going to want to fill most of your deck with units. Make sure you have a good mix of high power units and some defensive units as well. Being too much on either end can be risky. It’s hard to win if all you have is defense. But, too much aggro can leave you with little gas later on.
Next you’re gonna want to see where your removal is. When they play their big bombs, you want to be able to deal with them. Removal is usually going to be more cost effect than slamming your smaller guys into their big dude. This really depends on your aspects. Overwhelming Barrage is probably the best removal in the game. Vanquish gets the job done well. Aggression needs to do direct damage with cards like Open Fire. and Cunning is going to just exhaust a unit. No Good to Me Dead and Asteroid Sanctuary get the job done.
Let us also not forget some choice upgrades to buff up your unit choices. The best part of this is the casual nature of the prerelease. Being a best of one tournament, if you get beaten by someone who had much better pulls than you, you don’t have to face another game with them.