Vexed by Vigilance
Reviewing Vigilance Spoilers in Star Wars: Unlimited
August was vigilance month at FFG, and we got some very nice spoilers from that aspect. Today we discuss those spoilers and what they say about how the game of Unlimited will play. Next month we’ll get a new aspect, and I’ll probably write another article about that one.
To kick off “vigilance month” FFG did a live stream where they showed us 4 big spoilers.
In my mind, we learned two broader things from these spoilers. First, it seems like vigilance is going to be the color of the force, at least for heroes. Obi-Wan, coupled with the existing Luke Skywalker and Yoda cards, seems to put Hero force users squarely into vigilance. Obi-Wan also offers you a form of force synergy, and he is one of the first cards to do so.
The second thing is that FFG seems to pushing, or at least making room for, mono-color decks. When the quickstart rules came out, they teased the existence of cards like Vigilance(capital V) with two aspect icons. Cards like this are very high value, but can only be played efficiently in a deck with two vigilance icons. Distant Patroller and Lieutenant Childsen, while only having one vigilance icon each, work better when your deck is full of other vigilance cards.
Childsen’s Math
I wanted to do a little math on Lieutenant Childsen. Based on some of the other spoilers, we want Childsen to be at least a 4/4 to meet curve, which means we need two other vigilance cards. We need three to rise above the curve. I did the math on how likely it is to draw as many blue cards as you need at various counts of blue cards in your deck. If you want to learn how I did this, or do the math yourself for other quantities of card, check out this article that I wrote a while ago.
This is a table that shows the probability of drawing X number of blue cards and Childsen by round 3. Keep in mind the probability is capped at .66 because that’s the probability of drawing Childsen by round 3 with a mulligan is .66. “Number of Cards” means the number of non-Childsen blue cards in your deck. p(X) and C is the probability of drawing X non-Childsen blue cards as well as Childsen by round 3.
Vigilance is VeXing
After the live stream, FFG took to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter to spoil a base, upgrade, event, and unit from the vigilance aspect. These cards show a bit more of the thematic elements of vigilance. It Binds All Things is more force synergy, and Security Complex is shield synergy, which is something we’ve seen in lots of other vigilance cards.
Security Complex is also the first base we’ve seen that stays from the 30 health baseline set forth by the other four bases in the game so far. I think it’s a really interesting trade off. Five health for a shield is not obviously a good trade or a bad trade. I think decks that can benefit a lot from keeping one specific unit around for longer will run Security Complex, while other decks will probably tend to opt for a generic base like Dagobah Swamp.
Entrenched is also a very interesting design that I want to talk about because it’s an upgrade that can be effective on either a friendly or enemy character. Remember that you can play an upgrade on either in Unlimited. Playing entrenched can have the effect of essentially conceding that one character will be very strong, and can probably kill any unit it wishes, but will not be able to help directly in the winning of the game. One use case I can imagine for this is to essentially remove an enemy space unit from the game in a deck that plays only ground units.
It Binds All Things is a very powerful card when combined with a big unit like Luke Skywalker’s leader unit or Obi-Wan Kenobi. It can be a 6 damage swing for only two resources with no downside, which is really good if it goes off. The closest comparison is Force Choke, which only does 5 damage and allows the opponent to draw a card.
Rugged Survivors look like a nice tool for Director Krennic, because it can get buffed to a pretty extreme degree once it starts taking damage. It also looks like it’s a decent all-around value card because it allows you to draw. We haven’t seen a ton of card draw so far, and effects like that tend to be one of the most powerful in card games.
Be on the look out for more articles like this as more spoilers continue to come out. And always remember to take the initiative, in Unlimited and in life. Only you can prevent forest fires.
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