Hello, my name is Parker. And my name is Ned. And this is The Force Unlimited, Yet Another Star Wars Unlimited Podcast. This is Episode Number 19. We are recording July 19. And we're going to dive right in, because we got a couple segments we want to cover today. Ned, tell us about the match that we just played and be kind. No, I will be more than kind. So, to revenge myself, Parker agreed to play Vader Green, and I'm playing a new variant of GI, GI, Yellow.
And I did take it down in three games. I will say that- I am no Gandork. You are- I would not put yourself down. I think that Game 3 you were just absolutely robbed. So, to go through the games in a little more detail. Game 1, I did not respect the ramp enough where I ran out Bayes, Nadal. I'm forgetting her name, the one that- Bazine. Bazine, thank you. Like, benzine. Alright, benzine, who is an incredible- That card makes me really angry because it's- Oh, yeah.
Her subtitle is First Order Spy, but she's not traded First Order. And- That is kind of wild. I'm sure there's some canonical narrative reason why she works for the First Order, but it's not of the First Order, but if you're going to highlight the First Order in her title, give her the trait. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter right now, but it's going to matter in the future, obviously. Yes. Every trait's going to matter.
Anyway, first game, I did not respect the ramp, and so you were entering your 7 resource turn on- When I was on my 4 resource turn, and I was able to kind of delay the inevitable very briefly, but then the just haymaker after haymaker of like Vader unit, leader, palp just slamming me into the ground over and over. Price on your head into ECL Super Laser Tech is just the light full combo where it's just like- Oh, yeah. Good luck on your turn.
You know, turn three, four resources I'm going into six. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. Game two, I was more defensive and even then it was a nail fighter. It was tight. It was real tight, but the 25 health base and me drawing triple dark raid hitting a ruthless raider enabled me to take it down. I wouldn't have lost in the next turn. Yeah, but triple dark, triple dark, triple card. Yeah. Game three, dear listener, I just staring down.
Yeah, I'm all again into all of my end game and I had nothing after nothing. It was just a brutal draw. Yeah, no. And I feel bad then for playing for board control and trying not to leave you with any units because I think that if you had been able to overwhelming barrage that scanning officer, you might have been able to make something happen. I don't know.
Yeah, but don't feel bad, Ned. You and I are going to be on late night gaming in October and you're going to be playing against real players. Yes, I will use three months. Yeah, you need two months of training. I'm getting all the reps that I can in to move. But yeah. All right, let's go segment one. Yes. I'm going to talk about so, so packs are out. I hope, dear listener, that your, your polls are amazing. Mine are respectable, but less fun than I would like.
And that's kind of what I want to talk about. I want to talk about mapping. Dear listener, if you're not familiar with mapping, mapping is the idea of it. Wait, Parker, mapping. Yes. This is where we're considering a set and we're trying to for every element in set one, find one and only one corresponding element in set two. That kind of mapping. I'm trying to twist it to be that kind of mapping with no, it's not that kind of mapping. It is the kind of mapping. And this is not my jam.
This isn't a thing that exists in LCGs. And that's part of the reason why I'm sharing the story as part of my discovering TCG experience. Mapping, as I understand it, and I have only recently become aware of this, is the fact that given enough nerds, enough time on the internet, they will deconstruct and destroy a thing much like Westworld. And so, cards are made in a factory, which is an automated process.
And, and, and, and, Ned, as somebody who has cut their teeth, made their bones on Monte Carlo, you understand true randomness. In fact, a lot of randomness has to do with nuclear stuff. So, like, you're super in the randomness. Yes. Tangent, do you know how Cloudfront does its randomness? Have you ever heard the story? Is it space noise? Because I know random hours use space noise. No, it's not. They use a wall of lava lamps. Oh! And, and, and they do hashes of an image of the lava lamps.
That's good. Because those are functionally random when you put 50 of them. Yeah. Anyways, so random packs, but they're not really random, because they're made in a factory that's making hundreds of thousands of units and blah, blah, blah, blah. But, you want there to be the appearance of randomness. More randomness than is necessary for, uh, the average human being. But, nerds being nerds there, not the average human being and money to be made.
They will explore how these factories make these packs, make these boxes, and eventually try to figure out what the pattern is. Because inevitably there will be some form of pattern, because there is not true randomness. And, and this is distinct from things like weighing for foil, which blows my mind that you can do that. But, that's not the story. The story is about mapping. Yeah. And, and set one, my understanding was that there was some mapping of the legendaries.
There was essentially a circle of legendaries, and if you found one or two in your box, you had a pretty high confidence of what the other legendaries were in your box. You were like, ooh, it's going to be either the one on the left or the one on the right, you know, or whatever. And, and you were pretty excited, but for the most part the box felt relatively random. Shadows is not that. Shadows has been, as I understand it, completely mapped.
If you look at the top two cards of a box, or top two packs of a box, and you open them and you're looking your rare slot, you can basically know beyond a shadow of a doubt what the rest of the box looks like. Or at least what the rest of that column looks like. Now, there's end of shift, you know, so it gets the end of a line. And it gets the end of a line, a new line starts, so it cuts, and you're like, oh, I got to the end, and now totally different thing is starting.
But there's a pattern, and you can identify the pattern. I want to talk about Quick Tangent, a man by the name of Paul Groenke. He's a professor at my alma mater, actually, weirdly enough on the cover of this month's alumni magazine. He is a political science professor, and thinking about this segment net, it made me feel like you should have gone to political science. I actually considered doing political science, but it's basically like board gaming, but with like real life elections.
No, no, no. Yeah, happy to have that discussion with you, but that was an alternate life path that I considered. But so Groenke, I took a class with him, first class he taught at our school, he had just come over from Michigan, Wisconsin, somewhere over there. And he was talking the Oregon lottery at the time, or the, I don't know, how lotters work, but a Pacific Northwest Lotter, or some lottery you can buy in Oregon.
It was up to like a quarter billion dollars, and he asked if anybody student had bought a ticket, and the 22 of us being young liberal arts students, hiring our own farts with no money to our name, we're like, obviously not lotteries and gambling our taxes on the stupid. And he then proceeds to pull out his lottery ticket, you know, and he is his whole thing was rational decision making.
He said he didn't buy, spend $10 on this ticket for a chance at winning the lottery, because that's ridiculous. Don't do that, that's dumb. He's been the $10 because when the money got that big, the fantasy for a week of making that fantasy from just pure fantasy to an actual possible possibility, no matter how remote.
But there was a universe where he won, and so sitting in the car, stuck in, you know, rush hour traffic, fantasizing about being infinitely wealthy, as we all do for him for one week for that $10 making it real mattered. And that lecture lives, I just go back to that lecture all the time, because it's the value of fantasy that fantasizing is a rational action made by rational actors.
So I want to talk about the fact that, you know, back to Star Wars Unlimited, theory, I'm a target audience, I don't want to be so egotistical to say I'm the target audience, but I am an upper middle class nerd with discretionary income, who is getting back into TCGs after 20 plus years.
So I have the spending ability of somebody in my, of a software developer in my 40s, and I have the spending impulse control of an eight year old, like in the, I'm going to pack west purely to get a very expensive, a saw as Ventress variant art, right? Like, that's why I'm going to pack west, right? That that's nuts. I, that's what I'm here for, right? And so I bought a little bit more swoof of shadows, and I did have spark of villain a little bit more than I should have.
Ned, you and I have done a talk about Mr. Briefcase, and how what's the, you know, I, I firmly believe that depending on how many pre releases you do, there's a turning point where there's up to some inflection point, the marginal return on a box or on packs is good, right? Like if you're actually, if your aim is to not build a deck, but to establish a collection, why do you have collection that you can build many decks, a box, two boxes, maybe three depending on your release, makes sense.
Beyond that point, though, the marginal return drops off, you're chasing things or whatever. But for me, I've, you know, and spark or a bell, and I heard all these people talking about buying cases, multiple cases. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to do it. I know it doesn't make sense financially, but I'm going to participate in that fantasy. I want, I want that fantasy of, of the cards. I want to crack those packs, you know, this is the thing I want to do.
Now again, marginal return. So I knew oddly enough that I wasn't going to open a showcase because I ordered my majority of all my non-local boxes came from Deploy Your Leader, which is also the fine, fine purveyor. Thank you, Brian, for shipping out during barrel. He sold boxes to Golden Dice, who opened like three show four showcases, and also sold boxes to Jenna Geekirl, who opened two showcases.
So I was like, yeah, random is random, but a number of showcases come off the same shelf as your box. Your box probably, I mean your box already probably didn't, but it definitely probably doesn't. But you know, there's this fantasy. There's this excitement. But so we don't normally do pack openings on this video, and we are not a science YouTube channel.
But I want to open three packs because theory opening a pack is fun. I watch Ice Cave Radio, they do emergency pack openings. You can vicariously get that little gambling high of what's in the pack, what's going to be in the pack. But I feel like the math changes. We've got to again, don't quote me. I mean, believe me or don't, we're not doing weird audio tricks here. I've got a pack here. Could be anything, but I'm pretty sure it's let the wookie win.
And can you put it on for the camera to demonstrate that it is, yeah, not again. We're not doing science here. Like people have done YouTube videos on this. You don't believe me at this point. That's fine. But so we got this pack of cards turning around here. Going to go through anything good. Hyperspace take captive. That's moderately interesting. Chris Anton. Hyperspace new adventure. And there's the rare. Let the wookie win. So, okay. Right? Like a little less fun when you know. Yeah.
Here's another pack. Open it right in front of the camera. Again. At this point our listeners know like cannery is not our brand. We're not hype dudes. What is the rare before before you fan? What's the rare? Right. The rare is effent mom. And you can tell not a content creator, not my jam. And oh, there's effent mom. We'll do the third one perfectly. All right. Of course perfect. You and I do an ed. This pack right here. Sealed. Pretty confident. It's a wild rank or.
Could be wrong rank. I'm pretty sure. A fine card. I enjoy a wild rank or. There's some cards. Right. Yeah. Never leaving the camera. I hope. I think. And wild rank or is there. There you go. It's not fun. Like you I used to play LCGs. Like. And you know, back in the early days, old FFG made you buy a starter decks. Right. So you had to buy the starter box three times. If you were playing the first time you're opening the cards. It's exciting.
Second, third time. Not fun. And what that is right there. That's the removal of the dream. Right. That that that that makes you focus on is $10 worth it for a quarter. A chance of winning a quarter billion dollars, which we all know it's not. Or is $10 worth. Like the fantasy and and and perfectly mapped boxes. Remove that fantasy and it sucks. That was. I couldn't I can't put into words how.
I'm not crushingly disappointing. That experience of opening those boxes was because you know, you open the top pack and it's a vowel. And I'm not going to like keep the mystery. I'm a nerd. Right. Curious. Like it literally says curious down here. Most episodes. I'm obviously going to go find a list if there's a list and seeing Val. I'm like. There's a German word for the combination of excitement knowing that I was about to get another Po.
The most expensive legendary in the set. And also the disappointment of being like, well, and and now I've defined. The next 11 packs I'm going to open like any other. There's there's a weird chance of a foil being a legendary. There's a chance of a showcase, but but not really. Right. Why do I bring this up? I don't I mean partly just to share my personal experience. This is not a crazy new thing. Although it sounds like it's pretty bad in shadows compared to the way it is.
In other TCG packs. Eventually nerds will crack the formula, but I mean literally I was on vacation. Mm hmm. While my boxes came in, I come back from vacation and I am cracking them already knowing what is in basically every box. And I also really ruins the randomization because you immediately I mean theory that it's not evenly distributed. So once you start down a streak, you're getting all of that streak again. Right.
Which means I have a surplus of pose and crates who who woe is me, but zero mandos, right? Like, you know, zero dark savers, you know, zero rays, which is statistical anomaly. I don't know randomization, but one, I really hope FFG does better. Probably not for Twilight. Twilight probably is also going to suffer from this. It's not really fantasy flights fault. How many places can you print cards in the United States, but still sucks.
And I still hope they do better. Also a bit of a just PSA. I know a lot of our dear listeners like listen to us and not. I mean, I feel like dear listeners either like terminally online listens to 50 podcasts and probably has two of their own. Or it's just us. There is a local shop who I will not name. Who I'm not, I can't go to during shadows for price support because I have zero confidence that they will not open the top two packs identify the legendary packs for single selling.
And immediately move them and then take the other 20 packs and give them out as price support. Like you want to, you know, you want in our constructive and here you go. Here's three packs that we've already pulled the legendaries from and maybe you get a showcase, you know, maybe you get in the extra foil legendary. But we've already locked down Poe. We've already locked down crate, you know, sure there's a finalizer. We'll leave it in because nobody wants it, but you know.
So don't buy packs now of shadows from sources you don't trust. Yeah. If you're really lucky, you have an idiot friend who is providing you with a playside of comments and comments and a wide variety of about half the rares. And access surplus of half the rares do that if you can, but I don't really have a point on that one except for its sucked and it was really disappointing.
And for Twilight, I think I'm buying like a box, maybe two because it's just not like I don't have confidence that this will be solved by them. And so it's just going to be all singles, which is a past. But I want that joy like I'm that idiot Timmy. Let me be the idiot Timmy. So now I got to go up to like Pac-West and I don't know, Essen or Spiel or wherever the, you know, if you're going to feel, I mean, let me know.
Yeah, right. Yeah, I don't think I am, but you know, maybe next year I'll be chasing those variants all over the place. So all right. Let's talk about a real segment break though. Speaking about things dying like dreams. Let's talk about removal. I was fascinated and that I'm mostly going to let you talk in the segment, but I was fascinated by the speed in which, you know, Sparker rebellion first set kind of course that has to lock down really basic ideas.
Yeah, had a lot of removal, but okay, a game needs a certain amount of removal. Yes. And shadows came out with a lot more removal. We got fell the dragon. We got rivals fall, which are actual removal, but we also got like kind of circuit is removal and Mr. Perflexion, things like Pikesbane, Chewbacca, which daring rate, daring rate, do not forget daring rate. Daring rate. That's damage.
That's it's removal, which is a form of removal, but I meant like, yeah, you know, I know you've got a taxonomy of removal, but it just surprised me how much more removal we had in shadows. And so given that this is a game where you can directly attack your units, I was kind of caught off guard by how fast we got more removal. And I wanted to kind of that felt off to me. That felt maybe too much too much of a reliance on assumptions of other games.
But I assume you're going to tell me that. Yeah, no, no, remove. So, so teach. So, I think that one of the other things about the volume of removal that's important is because Star Wars unlimited is a limited first game or a limited primary game. It's one of the supported modes first class support.
Yes, in order to have first class support for limited, you do need removal. You just absolutely positively need removal. And removal is if you think about like the fundamental card effects, if I was going to design a game, not that I have done so in the past, but if I were to design a card game hypothetically, the kind of core elements of the game are the things that you use to do stop with, which I'm going to call units in in this kind of a game and removal.
Like these are the two most fundamental elements. And for a lot of folks, particularly, add cards remove cards plus a minus. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The plus and the minus. And for a lot of folks, particularly folks who are kind of newer to deck building or who are trying, you know, I'm guilty of this also.
I come with a fun idea for the deck and what you start off by doing is you start off by adding a whole bunch of units. And now you're up at 45 cards and you say, OK, I have five more cards to include. Let's, I guess sprinkle in some removal. And so like, including removal in your debt can feel like eating your veggies like everybody tells you, you know, you should really pack some removal. Have you considered removing some of your underperforming units in favor of like removal.
Keeps your regular. He keeps your regular. It's fiber. But I feel like you can make a very positive case for removal outside of just being the fun police. And more specifically, if we look at swoo, the way that removal is handled in swoo because of the unique facets of swoo's system. So join me, won't you? Yeah, no. So I see your bold list of taxonomy of removal.
Yes. I already called out. I think let's go with our simplest form of removal, which is, you know, surprisingly, everybody talks about vanquish and spark. But that is even qualified. Yes. And rivals fall comes out and shadows, which is, I don't think, I mean, that's about as simple as the card gets to feed a unit period. Three words. Don't done. Yeah. So that is the purest form of removal. I think we have in the game. Yes.
So that's a removal where it is just point and click. Removal unit is typically called hard removal. So sometimes you have hard removal with constraints. So examples of hard removal with constraints are takedown, fell the dragon. Vanquish is even kind of like hard removal with constraints where you're, it's a non-liter unit. And you can have these constraints operate in different ways.
But fundamentally, the idea behind hard removal is if there is a unit and you need to get rid of it, you can point your hard removal at it and it will go away. There's also kind of pseudo hard removal. So this is like minus minus x minus x effects or just minus minus hit points effects. So make an opening, mystic reflection, Luke unit. These are right. Because those remove the phantom.
The lurking type phantom lurking phantom which can't be damaged. Yes, it doesn't defeat the unit because if it was a dark index that has a 10, 9 phantom minus 2 minus 2 doesn't do it. But okay, yep, pseudo hard removal. I'm with you. Yeah. So I mean, and again, this is a loose typology.
And I know that whenever we start talking about a topic, I always immediately jump into definitions like like a huge grind, but I feel like it's important. That's our brand. Yeah, we got to talk about the space because in addition to hard removal things that say like defeat a unit, there's also soft or temporary removal.
So an example of softer temporary removal are things like capture exhaust. You can think of as a removal effect. Like again, it's not quite as good as remove a unit, but no good to me dead. I think pulls a lot of weight index as a way to remove your opponent's units temporarily.
You can't spell temporary removal without tempo. Exactly. Okay, yep, temporary soft. We lay for evacuation are perfectly, cromulent ways to remove units temporarily. And this is one of the ideas behind soft removal is you're taking something out of the picture for a little while.
And frequently was off removal. You're not completely removing unit for the picture, but you are inhibiting the ability of the unit to do one of its primary functions. So an example of something that I also think of as frequently removal, but is not is entrench. Right.
If you think of a unit's primary function as dealing damage to your opponent's base, if you entrench that unit and you you are eliminating the ability for that unit to fulfill that particular function, you leave an enormous number of other functions in place. CF overwhelming barrage. But I mean, even between like what is it effective lackeys and the the new guys who when they die, you can just essentially return them as a resource. Yeah, those guys. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or palps, palps return like even harder move is temporary. Yeah, again, it's a temporary. Right. Yeah, it's definitely a spectrum. And there's not yet been the like remove from the game. As we talked about many episodes ago, the kind of, you know, to use magic terminology like exile based removal.
There has been a need for that yet, but probably we'll get there at some point like literally no, just just go away burn or damage based removal is also removal. So open fire, daring raid, forced show overwhelming barrage straight through.
And I think barrage, yeah, these, these are all other ways to remove units. And finally, you have what I think of as unit based removal. And here you might immediately point to like count to go or Pike's band two, and those are kind of unit based removal, but I'm thinking more here about ambush as a keyword and just attacking your units into the opponent's units. And solves the problem.
It solves the problem, right? Like the whole idea about why we're talking about this typology of removal and why all these things are classified under removal is that removal is there to solve your problems. Your problems are typically your opponent's units. And you need to have tools to be able to handle them and removal is the way that you do it.
So you might say, well, I don't, you know, I'm cool. I'm hip. I know everything. Why do I need to include explicit removal tools when I can just play a bunch of units and then attack my units into my opponent's units. And that solves my problem. And I think that's good, right? Like, like units are your most efficient removal tools because of the way that swoos math works and because of alternating actions and just the fundamental combat model of swoom.
Having units that can trade effectively into your opponent's units while staying on board is really good. And so, you know, whether it comes from an ambushing or whether it comes from just having like attacking your two three into their two two. And so, being able to keep your to have your units remove their units to leave your units on board is a really powerful effect and is something that you want to do.
But there are times that you don't want to do that. And specifically, if you think about, you might need your units to do other things.
The last thing to take example of this is if you are the, if you are the aggro deck in who's the beat down, if you're the beat down, you want your units to be damaging your opponent's base because every unit that you are spending on attacking your opponent's units is making the game take longer and the longer that the game takes the less advantage that you are when you are the beat down.
Sometimes your units just don't trade well. Right? Like, if maybe they've got a sentinel unit in place. And so you can't, you have to remove the sentinel unit, but the sentinel unit might be big. You might have to trade away your whole board. You don't want to do that.
There might be like just sizing considerations. Right? Like, if you've got a bunch of small minions, a bunch of small units and your opponent has a single large unit, you might not want to trade your whole board away into your opponent's large unit or you might not want to trade your good stuff away into your opponent's large unit.
And sometimes there's just tempo questions about, you know, not only in terms of like attacking your opponent, but if we imagine a situation where I'm the aggro deck and my opponent drops a medium sized sentinel, I can trade my unit into their sentinel. But then I've spent one of my actions and I spent one of my units. And so I'm following behind on my ability to deal damage. And so having a way to deal with my opponent's units out of my hand is really clutch.
So you can it. You should use, I guess the kind of bottom line of this and I'm going to try and pepper some practice points in here about things that you can apply to your own games of swoo, not just like kind of this very theoretical high level discussion. But so the answer to why not use your own units is because inevitably an A matchup. Yeah, there is some trade. Yeah, that is bad whether it's yes, a bad number of units.
It's a bad resource. It's a bad lane. Yeah, there's just something that you need to trade that you can't or you don't want to. Right removal by virtue of being more targetable. Yes, it it lets you solve the problem that your unit is problem. Yeah, it's also problem. Okay, okay. So practice points. Yes, practice points. So going into here, you can think of removal like a shield, right?
You and or you know to use kind of a crude or analogy, it's kind of a gun, right? And like a gun, you have a limited number of bullets. So you want to make sure that you are using your bullets on the things that deserve to have bullets used on them. So do not that you will inevitably encounter these situations where you are confronted with a problem and that problem you have and you have some removal in your hand and your removal could deal with the problem.
But you should ask yourself before you use your removal. Do I really need to use my removal on this unit or can I just suck it up and use my units or take some damage or whatever. So your threshold for how aggressive you need to be about employing your removal is going to vary on the deck that you're playing. So if you think about like a control deck, a control deck is probably going to be a little more aggressive about deploying removal then and all it's back up.
Yeah, you got your own bullets. Yeah, and your your early game is defined by using your removal against their units, right, whereas in an aggro deck, your early game is defined by getting your units onto the board to attack your opponent's face. But there are times when you're playing a control deck if your opponent has like Piat out, right, let's imagine that that we're in some kind of a limited game and I'm playing a control deck and my opponent drops Piat on turn two.
And I've got a force choke in hand. Parker, in your qualified estimation, should I use my force choke on the Piat? Oh, I love this. No, because Piat doesn't become relevant until you have six resources. Right. It's just a one for for five turns or for four turns. Right. If you leave Piat there, the worst thing that Piat is going to do is inflict four points of damage on you. Yeah, right. Yeah.
It's a problem you have to solve. There's a ticking clock, but you have oodles of time. Right. So don't don't use your removal on the Piat. In contrast, you know, if they've got a Sabine unit out there. And you have a removal, you probably want to choke it. Right. Like even though Sabine, you know, in sort of like this cosmic scheme of things or let's not talk about Sabine. Let's talk about like Viper ProbeDroid. Right.
Like you can say in the view of like an omnipotent game defining being the Viper ProbeDroid is probably a less powerful card during most of the game than Piat. But if you don't answer that Viper ProbeDroid, you're going to be eating 12 points of damage, whereas if you don't answer Piat, you're going to be taking four.
And no, you read also, I feel it's worth noting that the reason why we don't ascend to the truly highest levels of content creation is because we say we're not, we approach the matter from if you were an omniscient game designing entity, right? Yeah. Yeah. If I'm in that situation, what's the line here? But I know I mean, continue. I just I absolutely love our conversations. And because yeah, I'm never going to be an omniscient game designing entity. No, you're not. But if I were, right? Yeah.
Would that you were. So this is kind of bringing us going to bring us into the second part about removal is when you are playing a mid range deck against an aggro deck, you are going to see yourself in the control role as who's the beat down. So you are going to be thinking of this as I need to be using my removal against my opponents units. And that's generally good and generally a good idea, but there is a problem.
And that is at you have only so many things that you can do on your turn, right? Like if you're spending your three resource turn, playing power of the dark side to eliminate one of your opponents units. You are not playing your boba fat, right? If you are spending your four resource turn using takedown, you are not playing came in jarris.
And so when you can very easily get into this situation where you are a, you're in this kind of role assignment idea, you think, OK, I'm going to be the control in this situation. And so my goal is just to spend my turns removing my opponent's units. And I would invite you to consider an alternate universe where you let your opponent be able to do some stuff. And then you let yourself also be able to do some stuff, right?
Like if you are a very controlling deck, then answering something all the way up the chain and spending most of the game in an empty board state is great for you. But the game is progressing. And so there is a world of difference. And this is a situation that I see frequently when I'm playing GI is that I will drop my scout bike pursuer on one.
I'll get it in for three damage. This is GI blue. I'll get it in for three damage on my two resource turn. And then when I'm moving into my three resource turn. If I can remove their unit and keep my scout bike on the board, that is worlds better than a situation where I am hat we are left with an empty board.
Because as long as my scout bike is on the board, I am advancing the game state. I am dealing up damage to my opponent. And for most decks, you're going to have a limited window in which to operate. You are not going to be able to be perfectly efficient all the way up and down the curve. And so being able to deploy your removal, this is something where swoo is very interesting with the alternating action mechanism.
Because if you can claim initiative, you can get your attack, you can do your open attack, you can get your attack in before they have a chance to use removal. And so one of the reasons as an aggro deck, you are frequently having to ask questions about trying to squeeze in a little bit more value on this turn versus subsequent turn.
If you're Sabine and you're operating on your two resource turn. If you're in a situation where you can activate Sabine to deal damage versus you can move into the next turn with you having the initiative, you're going to deal more damage if you can hang on to the initiative if you feel like you're opponent is on removal. Or if your opponent has the unit based removal, if they're going to control that you can trade that one.
Yeah, to go back to the analogy about the shield, it is one thing if you're using your shield to kind of parry your opponent sword swings. If you feel like they're going to tire out, that's good. But if you can hit him in the face with the shield, then kind of sit on him. You are using your removal and you're able to continue to advance your game state.
And this is one of the reasons why being able to have a situation where you can remove something and play a threat either because of your removal is cheap enough. And it winds up well against your opponent. So imagine that you're like on your three resource turn, you use a daring raid to remove their unit and then you play a two resource unit.
That's a really good turn. Right. Or unit based removal, one of the reasons why ambush is so powerful. One of the reasons why green Vader is so powerful is they come in on seven. They ambush into one of your opponents units and remove it and then they leave behind a five X body and another body. Right. So you removed and progressed. So I mean, that seems to be the mantra is wherever possible, remove and progress.
Right. I think that's why we're seeing the relentless a ride. I think we'll see a rise of relentless raider in shadows. Because we're seeing it tonight and it's I mean, don't discount the eight free damage that it's guaranteed to do no matter what happens. Assuming you're putting this units on the board. And if they don't then they're losing. And then on top of that, it dodges both fell the dragon and take down and has that like perfectly.
And force show right because it's a vehicle, right. You can't you can't choke it. Yeah. No, it's it's. It's a real good unit like zero dark rating into that unit is it's a good feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and then yeah. And then just triple dark reading and then triple dark. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. And then getting it back to it again. Like, you know, there's a lot of fun fun to be had there. So do you have more practice points?
And then because I do have a follow up question for you. I do have one more practice point. And that is around talking specifically about swoo. Swoo unlike a lot of a lot is maybe stretching it, but unlike a number of other card games that I have played in the past hard removal in swoo is very expensive. You know, in magic, kill a creature is, which is the equivalent of defeat a unit is two or three. Like it costs two or three for just remove a unit.
Battlefields and magic are very clear places, whereas in swoo, I think that the designers made an explicit choice. And I think it's a good choice to make hard removal really expensive. And so your ability to do the play a unit and do something else is going to be difficult unless you're dealing with your opponents relatively small units or relatively damaged units.
But I think that's the value of persistent damage on the other side. Yeah. Right. Like is that daring raid right like two damages nothing in magic. Yeah. But often you can you can get pretty darn close this round draw daring raid next round. Yep. Sure. Like I'd rather just nuke a unit turn one or something, but late game. Right. Yeah, I can get you within two and then just top it off. So. Yeah.
And another part of this is that a lot of times in swoo because of alternating actions, you end up with having windows where you can remove things. So a challenge that I've experienced a lot is playing against yellow boba. They I have a very narrow window to deal damage to yellow boba before they put the armor on the stupid thing. And once the armor goes on, you're going to have a bad time.
So removal solves that bad time removal solves that some removal solves that. And this is where you get into sometimes you're going to end up with these narrow windows where you're able to use your removal effectively, you know, against yellow boba.
Let's imagine that like they play yellow boba and then I attack seventh sister into their base to deal three to yellow boba. That was a window in which I could get that damage through meaningfully because as soon as the armor goes on instead of dealing three, I'm dealing one. Right. Another example of that is take down or or shield right like a lot of times your you will have a very narrow window to try and get your stuff through. You know before they put some protection.
So because of that, think carefully about and you know, I know this is not news to people, but think carefully before you take an action, because if you are under the assumption that, oh, I need to get in my damage now and I'll just take down their unit later, you might find yourself badly surprised when they play a lightsaber on it or when they even use like devotion or something to just get it out of danger range. So yeah.
All right. But so at the opening at the top of the segment that you said, yeah, that removal is key, important use to some powerful word there for the limited and obviously we see most of the removal in common or common or uncommon, everything but super laser blast and avenger or in common or uncommon. And those, you know, why. I mean, the limit is special.
So unlimited, you do not get to choose completely your pieces, the pieces that you have to play with are limited. And so as a result, there is frequently going to be a lot of situations where your opponent will be able to establish a board presence. They'll be able to put down units and you won't immediately have the answers to them either because your curves not great or because.
Just from mechanically unit comparisons, I'm thinking here, if you look at like common units, right, like if I'm in aggression, if we look at common aggression units in spark. You tend not to have more than like three, maybe four hit points, right. And so you can end up in situations where you're not able to trade efficiently.
And if you do not have removal, the game very quickly turns into who's got the beefier beaker or who can run faster, right. Like it it, it plays towards the edges of you're playing aggressive decks that are trying to get under your opponent before they can play their beef or you're playing again limited control decks are kind of weird but like a classic limited control deck is one in which you have.
Big you opened or draft a legendary so you congratulations, you got Vader, you're just dragging the game out so you get to play your Vader and. Right or you got Luke right like as soon as Luke, you know, Luke removes unit and is hitting for a lot and restoring three right like Luke is solving an enormous number of your problems in shadows like let's pretend you get create dragon right like as soon as create dragon hits the board.
Outside of a number of circumstances your opponent is just host and so you need to be able to give catch up mechanisms and so removal less that I mean I was going to say control versus aggro is the natural spectrum but it's the fact that if you got to be able to come back to it yeah mid range needs to exist in an order for mid range to exist you need to have catch up mechanisms because otherwise if you fall behind you cannot come back efficiently.
You know if to use to go back to that idea of using your shield to sit on your opponent if I play something on to and you miss your two and then every other play we're just trading our units of. That cost away I'm and I'm still able to get an attack in with my to my unit that I played on my to resource turn I will win right removal being able to to handle that efficiently. Inables you to come back from a bad start were able to deal with your opponents powerful cards.
All right that is a compelling case for removal but I want to go on to our next segment are you ready to go on our next segment then I am pumped to go on to our next segment I dear listener for next segment thank you for sticking with us to the sad stuff thank you for sticking with us to the dry stuff now we have the good stuff if you listen to other content creators other podcasts and you should you will hear about good decks.
We have mostly talked about a grand inquisitors so we don't know anything about good that's what we can talk about is the most popular decks so we want to talk about what the most. Top 10 leaders not decks leaders were in the first week of shadows.
We think this is kind of interesting I share some of this information at the end of one spark of rebellion launched people have been talking and talking about what are people actually building this is based on July 12th through July 19th seven days exactly seven times 24.
And accommodating accounting for the additional week for pre release does not change this top 10 fundamentally so these are the 10 leaders that out of the 36 that we now have that people are excited to build there were 41,000 decks created in that week and 22,000 of them are in the top 10. By coming in number 10 yellow on classic on Han one using the new nomenclature from garbage rollers Han one. Number nine Gar saxon. Number eight again a returning face, Tarkin.
So be still good dark sabers good dark sabers number six cad Bane for those not aware cad Bane is the common cunning villain leader who when you play an underworld unit forces your opponent to choose one of their units to do one damage to he deploys is a two eight with raid two and bumps that chip damage up he's a bounty hunter. Number five is the number five most popular created deck on swidi B is Kylo Ren bringing in 9% of the top 10.
And that's in it people are people are hungry for villain aggro. Jason Mendoza on the acolyte is yeah you know yeah no dark dark plagiarism is Jason Mendoza yeah no dark plagiarism yeah hands hands summer beef your apprentice so yeah Kylo number five Java at number four also with 9%. I was just saying.
I mean I'm kind of curious about job like when I was looking at the leaders I had to say I was expecting Java to be not as up there because it felt like it was kind of unfocused and weird but people are definitely really liking it. So in our last episode where we got married net I think the reason I like Java is the reason a lot of people like Java I think a lot of people find green control appealing and don't want to play pal.
I don't want to sacrifice your own unit right like killing your own unit isn't fun that's that's the juice that's the juice you get to kill your own units and draw cards yeah I understand intellectually but I think there's a clearly with Java at number four there's a non trivial number of people who find sacking your own units towards victory on appealing you want to play with your units you just got these toys so I think he has this promise of ramp he has free bounties I think people are trying to make him work.
Yes, see number three on two young Han red Han I really like I'm not surprised by this this is a card that has like so many different things going for it. Oh man yeah you can do it aggro you can do it. Not quite control but he's his own ramp. Yeah like like a ramp style deck you can do it to enable self-damaged you know turn on caribass it's not he's not a bad unit on his own. Yeah I mean he's not good three six or five. I'm sure he's not bad he's better than land oh.
Yeah no no I mean yes the most are better than land oh no I've played now a number of games with Han two. I don't want him an aggro because I feel like that's just the line is too tight. Yes. The line is too close but playing Po on you know turn three feels good getting crate out earlier right like just getting all those things out earlier. The one I've been really big on is Yoda in a blue Han because a two two with restore two who draws his own card who has the four ski word.
As your opening card is not bad like you can slap a lightsaber on him right. Yeah exactly Yoda is fine Yoda's I think mid he just happens to be the best of the three and under cost four shoesers of which there are what two. Three with Ezra but but you know in blue it's just him in the guardian of the wills. Yeah I think Yoda gets bumped pretty aggressively once you know it's twilight with all more all the more four shoesers comes out.
But in Han for two that that exchange I feel like just makes Han or Yoda fantastic because especially you're playing in the Sabine or something they they got to go for immediately which draws you a card. If they don't go for him they're going for face you've got that restore and again yeah the great lightsaber is cost three you're off to the races. Also a vindication of Ned math because they're they're implicitly valuing one cost at two hit points.
Yes very much so right but not one one right like that was actually yeah no Tyler I think was it Xander or Tyler No it's Tyler who tweeted it was telling yeah no yeah no no total of it Ned math again you're not describing the universe as people think it is you're describing it as it is so. Purely descriptive number two the second most popular leader number by number of decks created 2,900 plus decks bringing in 13% of the top 10 decks is Ray.
Which does not surprise me really okay I'm surprised but I like I looked at that card and nothing about that card spoke to me but I'm also like a monster so. I raise one of the two decks that I'm currently meaning Ray blue slaps Ray red is probably I think the better deck it just. You can drop so many big butts and unlike villainy which wants to trade those big butts for more damage in this weird control game.
Ray can turn those big butts into time it's it's just pure value when you've got a three six. R2 on turn two like you just drag the game out and you just yeah I'm gonna you you can you can trade that R2 into like three aggro units and and then there's just I mean she comes with three restore you've got.
Restore for days and blue heroism there's so much restore the one of the most fun games I played was a showdown where I was credit and I healed for 29 against the city or sorry a layer red player I think that's I watch somebody break. I'm excited to have that be my every game like you know like why not like Ray just restores I mean she restores three that's a guaranteed. I'm credit was bad she's worse.
There's just so many big butts and shadows like and if you take her with the pure blue she has vigilance for four which is again it just drags the game out but I think in red you get a lot of force package that force throw. There's there's all kinds of games you can play.
I think she's the the I think she's the most obvious nut to crack right like in that speaking just to the meta I don't think anybody stepped up in aggro I think Kira's stepping up in Vilni but that's not because she's busted it's just because credit and item. Yeah it's the same package but yeah it's the same package but with it with a more aggressive removal engine slash more aggressive leader staple.
Yeah exactly so it's like yeah we can go with that but which maybe hints at my comment about maybe things not changing the number one with a bullet. Most popular leader created on swidi b in the first week yellow boba boba one we're gonna have more insert photo of me to south next the wax statue of boba fat it's gonna we got we got four more months of this net ground hog has seen a shadow it's.
It's good but everybody still wants to build them right like well so like the deck didn't even get like it got some stuff but boba fats armor on its own is just so good and the fact that it costs to and it plays into the boba turn like the number of games that I have you know before shadows I felt like I had a pretty good GI blue match up into boba most boba variants.
I'm boba blue not wasn't to share about but no but and that's actually completely destroys yeah no the armors I mean so you just got to have some bounce or you know upgrade removal but that's why a deck is a list of 60 cards net yeah but I actually I suspect this is not based on data this is based on my hunch I suspect part of the popularity of boba is that I mean he's busted good as noted but we now have tools.
Sparkle rebellion did not have the tools to build blue boba it got there in the end but it was it wasn't obvious and and it took a very high skill and boba red was borderline non existent I think I'm allowed to say that and I think now you can just run boba like with anything you know and so whatever villainy color you open the most of.
You know people invested in boba and spark and whatever villainy color you invested in the most of you know param up he goes great with everything right like he is I think Frank's red hot of of.
Yeah but I yeah I think he might be you know I've made a personal brand of trying to call out first I think he might be our first star was a limited leader who is viable in all four colors like I. Yeah I I've seen I'm thinking here like I've seen saving and everything but blue right like everything but there we've had a couple leaders to get to three right yeah but I think boba will be our first leader who you have met a viable or had met a viable you know the
first one was partners with this color and he'll hit all four colors I think I think he's our first on that front but 3000 the almost 10% of the all new decks created on swidibee in the first week were boba yellow were boba one but you were surprised let me give you a note of optimism net new topography you said you were surprised by
that you're not talking and I think her I didn't get any love I don't think lay I really got enough love now it turns out that lurking tie phantom is all the love Tarcan needed it's an imperial unit that just is immune to most control and unlike anybody else
you know if you're not talking can just buff it for days if he gets it out and you don't immediately have an answer you know five four lurking typhantoms not crazy and good luck answering that with units right like he just builds it up and if you're throwing it well then he wins by just beaving everything else up so I think Tarcan and seeing a resurgence because I think there's lurking typhantoms enough to push him and now you've got a space imperial package I think that's what we're seeing
yeah no I think that that is really interesting I again this would if you had asked me before the set and I think that before twilight comes out we ought to go through and make a guess at what we think the top 10 will be of the new set that is that is staring into the abyss net that is that is that is us watching too much content and then coming back predictions man that's getting really dangerously close to like predicting which cards are good and then talking about
which cards are good you're right you're right I'm not saying I'm opposed I'm just saying predicting which cards are going to be good is that that that that that that that that that that that's not our brand yeah we need to get youtuber logos and you know stuff and we'll have a little AI clip all of our arms and Oz and what blue lights on like a little show's matching matching shirts well we're in did anyway I mean you got a right like you know got a roll
in the pack west of style so there you have it we've got a couple returning leaders make returning leaders making the hot top 10 not a huge surprise it's a Han Tarcan Sabine and Bobo once and you'll notice none of the control package made it back into the top 10 and in fact well I that might speak just to the nature that met us start aggro and get sure control your as people figure it out that there is no control in the top 10 so
if you are if you are a player of the game go find somebody else to tell you what to build but if you are a content creator there's your list of the 10 years other people would like to hear you talk about how to make good we do not have that answer we're going to go back to playing GI and like you know Timi decks I want to give one final shout out to the person or people who
made the sum total of 58 decks starting gin or so resisting oppression 58 gin or so decks in the first week compared to over 3000 Bobo decks keeping the dream alive I was not there to help you but jins never going to be good but but she's a good dream no no I feel there will come a time I don't know what what that time will be I don't know why it's
one her title changes because she's a different leader that's when general so if you go on paper attacking like giving defending units minus one power doesn't seem too bad and yet it is not yet it is and yet it is all right and that's all she wrote dear listener this was episode number 19 of the Forcel Limited we're recording on July 19th if you have any thoughts about the episode please email us at the Forcel Limited Gmail.com seriously like ask us
weird questions either net or I know the answer or we will make it up for 70 minutes that you have any final thoughts Parker what do you think of my new hat is it a man with a beard it's a dwarf it's it's a it's a dwarf fortress hat a door fortress hat well yeah it's not asking so it's I mean it is this is the the asking dwarf it's worth fortress this is a rough note to go out on your listener we will see you in a few weeks