Star Wars Unlimited has been thriving recently, and now the latest set, Ashes of The Empire, has been released. I got to get my hands on a pre-release box and duke it out at my local venue with some play-from-sealed gameplay.
Pre-release events work slightly differently from your standard version of gameplay. Because you only get around six packs in your pre-release box, the card limit for decks is reduced to just 30 as a minimum, if you get more or want to use more that’s fine but due to the nature of what you pull this is what you’ll be aiming to make.
Some of the new cards featured in the Ashes of The Empire are devastating to use. I managed to pull the Legendary Elzarr Mann, a unit that gives up to five of the new advantage tokens (+1/0) to another unit and then lets the opponent search twice as many cards from the top of their deck for an event to reveal and draw. If you control a force leader this unit also comes in ready meaning you could possibly pile all of that onto this unit at the end of the phase and hit for a devastating amount of damage if played correctly.
I utilised this card and a few others in a red/yellow/heroism deck with The Mandalorian as my leader of choice. With the new ability that lets you pay 1 resource when taking the initiative, letting me draw all the cards I needed to win, or so I thought. You are limited by what you get, this is included to the cards played and the leaders you go in your packs and at the time Mando seemed like a strong contender.
Everything was going well for my first game, went up against a Baylen Skoll deck which I managed to outpace with some of my new advantage token unit, the Ferry Droid was one in particular that stood out from my normal cards packing a punch with four advantage tokens when played making it a 5/5 until it either is attacked or attacks. I won my first round and faced my next opponent and boy did I run into the true queen of this new set in terms of leaders, Ahsoka.
The new Ahsoka leader is a green/heroism mix, featuring the other new keyword, support. Support allows you to attack with a ready unit and that unit gains the support units abilities for that attack, this paired with Ahsoka’s buff that gives another unit +2/0 if it has less power than the attacking unit is absolutely devastating. I was swiftly crushed for my next two games. My card draw was beaten down by an unrelenting leader and mandalorians galore.
Finally I hit my last game of the organised play, this time it was up against Moff Gideon, the new leader lets him adopt the keywords of a number of imperial units in the discard pile creating effectively one absolutely insane unit that can pack a massive punch. Thankfully with my card draw and the fact that he can only come out with 7 resources I managed to out pace the Moff and win my next two rounds securing a solid third place in the overall pre-release.
With some amazing new cards, devastating leaders and nasty events in play for Ashes of The Empire, Star Wars Unlimited has delivered continuously and shows no signs of stopping with the release of another new set, Homeworlds scheduled for October 2026 and the Icons mini-set, similar to the Twin Suns release, being on the horizon as well there’s lots to look forward to.
If you’d like to learn more about Star Wars Unlimited or find out where you can play locally check out the Star Wars Unlimited Website.
