Darren Price
Star Wars: Unlimited is a new trading card game from Fantasy Flight Games set in the Star Wars universe.
We checked out the 110-card Spark of Rebellion Two-Player Starter Set.
I seem to have gone full circle. It was FFG’s excellent X-Wing miniatures that got me back into tabletop games and then on to Magic the Gathering. Now here I am with an FFG Star Wars TCG that is very reminiscent of the Wizards of the Coast game.
The Star Wars Unlimited Spark of Rebellion Two-Player Starter Set is based on the original trilogy of movies: A New Hope to Return of the Jedi. This kit has Darth Vader leading the Empire and Luke Skywalker leading the rebels.
The kit has all you need to get going with the game. There are two decks, one for the Empire and another for the Rebels. There are also a couple of deck boxes, some cardboard tokens and folded paper playmats. The paper playmats have set-up instructions and reference panels to get you into the game faster.
Each 52-card deck has a leader card, either Luke or Vader and a base card, Cloud City or The Death Star. The rest are units, tactics, and events. There are also six upgrade token cards.
The first thing that struck me was the art on the cards. The colour-line-drawn images have a comic-book look that gives them a unique style. These are a lot different than the more regular painted cards included in the X-Wing game.
The game starts with each player having a hand of six cards. The base and leader card are placed in the boxes on the playmat. Two cards from each player’s hand are placed in their resource boxes.
The game is played over a series of phases, the first being the action phase. At this time players attack and use abilities against their opponent. Each card has a cost. Unit cards have a power number and HP. Power is how much damage the unit dishes out whereas HP is how much it can take. Upgrades can add to a unit’s power and / or HP.
The game is unique in that battles are fought on the ground and in space, with units dedicated to each. Units can only attack opponents’ units in the same arena (ground or space), or the base. As well as attacking opponents’ forces, units can also directly attack the base. Each base starts with 30 hit points and the game ends when on player’s base HP reaches zero.
Leader cards have a unique ability available to the player from the start of the game. But they also have an epic ability that can be used only when enough resources are available to deploy them in the ground arena. The leader’s card is then flipped to become a unit card. This epic action can only be used once per game.
The regroup phase allows players to draw two more cards. Optionally, one card can be selected from the player’s hand as a resource card.
As with all collectable trading card games, decks are supplemented by booster packs. A Spark of Rebellion booster pack contains 16 cards: one leader, one base, nine commons, one rare, one legendary and one foil card.
The game is easy to pick up, especially if you have played other TCGs. The 24-page quick start rulebook does a pretty good job of explaining this but does leave a few gaps. I had the same issue with X-Wing to start with, but that’s what the Internet is for. To be fair, the Star Wars Unlimited website has loads of information on how to play the basic game as well as variations such as premier, draft play, seal play and the multiplayer-focused, Twin Suns.
It’s still early days for Star Wars: Unlimited but it is already an easy-to-play dynamic card game that offers players a lot of fun with some beautiful card art. Fantasy Flight Games have good form in supporting and enhancing their games with new rules, card types and organised tournament play. It’ll be exciting to see what other packs get released from across the Star Wars mythos.
