Every major set for Star Wars Unlimited comes with two pre-constructed decks and Homeworlds continues this trend with the Grand Moff Tarkin and Chewbacca decks, with each featuring wildly different ways to achieve victory.
Each of the pre-constructed decks, including the Homeworlds ones, usually feature a leader and base (that are normally found either just in these boxes or the pre-release boxes), a set of paper tokens, a fifty card deck that focuses around similar traits, keywords and actions as well as a booster pack to give you a little extra oomph to your collection. When I opened mine I was lucky enough to get the legendary Darth Vader in my booster.
Looking a bit deeper into each of the decks available for Homeworlds we’ll start with Tarkin. The focus for this deck is to upgrade your base with a selection of the new fortify keyword cards and with Tarkin’s ability to play them out of aspect for no extra cost, you’ve got tons to choose from. If you are unfamiliar with any of these terms do feel free to check out our beginner’s guide to learn what’s what!
Tarkin’s playside also features the absolutely iconic Death Star. A behemoth leader at 9 cost with a devastating ability, “When the regroup phase starts, if your opponent has less than 10 Health remaining, defeat them”. This basically puts most of your opponents on a timer and makes losing health throughout a match that much more deadly.
For what Tarkin offers in the late game he severely lacks in the early, with most leaders coming out between the 5-6 resource points there is a big gap in performance on the board at that time with them effectively getting a powerful free unit into play when you have nothing. Some of the fortify upgrades can help with this and give you bonuses along the way but you do walk a fine line between holding off the enemies and being overwhelmed.
Chewbacca on the other hand is the complete opposite of Tarkin and has the ability to make units attack even if they are exhausted (although not against bases). This leads to a lot of fast paced multi-trades, hard hitting units and quick, low-cost overwhelming board play.
Chewbacca as a leader is also very strong when in play as a unit as his action becomes not only free but non-exhaustive so there’s a lot of shenanigans to be had with him. A lot of Chewbacca’s synergy seems to drip towards having a combination of creatures and some solid ground units utilising the new 3/3 Creature tokens available with Homeworlds.
If, when you have Chewbacca out as a unit, you are able to utilise him with his Bowcaster special card he becomes a complete machine. The Bow Caster gives 3/1 in stats as well as letting you resource the top card of your deck if it’s attached to Chewbacca for a total of three resources.
On paper I would imagine that Chewbacca would win these games hands down but what with the odd way that Tarkin plays it’s actually not uncommon to not be able to utilise Chewbacca’s ability due to the fewer units Tarkin has in play – leaving Chewie a bit dead in the water at times. Against other decks he is much more efficient.
So, surprisingly, with a few tester games Tarkin does come out on top for me but it was incredibly close and my Death Star would be near enough targeted to oblivion if I brought it out at the beginning of a phase.
I think that for general play Chewbacca is a lot more versatile and offers a better counter to most decks but if built correctly Tarkin could be a serious menace and a scarily lethal competitor.
If you would like to give the pre-constructed decks a try or check out the other products released alongside Homeworlds check out the Asmodee website.
