With two sets now out in the world, Star Wars™: Unlimited has only continued to ramp up since the game’s launch back in March. The second set, Shadows of the Galaxy, shifted the focus away from a specific era of the Star Wars galaxy in favor of shining some light on the shadows of the Outer Rim. Now, it’s time to return the focus to an iconic era, and a highly anticipated one at that: the Clone Wars.
Welcome to the official first look at Twilight of the Republic, the epic third set of Star Wars: Unlimited!
As we just mentioned, this set puts the Clone Wars on center stage, with all the classic characters, ships, and weapons that hailed from the conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Separatist Confederacy. Battle droids and clone troopers take to the field en masse in this set, so much so that the set introduces a brand-new type of token: token units! There’s a lot of exciting content to cover, so without further ado, let’s dive right into Twilight of the Republic!
As with the previous two sets, Twilight of the Republic will launch with a Two-Player Starter that features a pair of pre-built, ready-to-play decks. This time, these decks Ahsoka Tano (Twilight of the Republic, 11) and General Grievous (Twilight of the Republic, 15) as leaders. These two bitter rivals bring a lot to the table, so let’s kick off this preview with a look at what they have to offer!
First, we have Ahsoka Tano. This spunky Padawan leaps into the fray with a pre-built Aggression and Command deck, and her playstyle is all about showcasing one of the new mechanics of Twilight of the Republic: the Coordinate keyword. This simple keyword grants a card an ability that is active whenever you control three or more units (in any combination of ground and/or space). In Ahsoka’s case, on her non-unit side, while you control at least three units, she gains an action that allows you to perform a boosted attack with a unit. When you deploy Ahsoka to her unit side, she gains a different Coordinate ability, one that grants herself an additional +2 power. Since Ahsoka herself counts toward the three-unit requirement for Coordinate to be online, you could surprise your opponent with a pretty nasty swing with just a couple friendly units on the board.
Speaking of friendly units, in order to get Ahsoka’s Coordinate abilities going as soon as possible, you’ll want to fill up your arenas with low-cost units. The 332nd Stalwart (Twilight of the Republic, 240) is a great cheap unit to get out early, and it even comes with its own Coordinate ability to buff its stats once you get a few more units into play. Likewise, the Coruscant Guard (Twilight of the Republic, 106) is a terrific low-cost unit in the early game that also gains Ambush once your forces are built up. Once you’re ready to deploy Ahsoka, you can have her tag-team with her mentor, Anakin Skywalker (Twilight of the Republic, 147), and watch them both fire off their Coordinate abilities with just one other friendly unit at their sides!
Playing units one at a time is all well and good, but if you play Captain Rex (Twilight of the Republic, 97), you’ll instantly have three units thanks to him creating two Clone Trooper (Twilight of the Republic, T02) tokens! This is our first example of a “token unit,” which functions exactly like a normal unit in almost every way; the only real exception is, when a token unit is defeated or returned to your hand, it’s instead removed from the game, just like with Shield and Experience tokens. With units like Rex allowing you to create token units on the fly, you’ll be able to activate Coordinate abilities with ease and overwhelm your opponents with the strength of your clone armies!
Of course, the Republic isn’t the only side with great armies at their command. On the side of the Separatists, we have General Grievous. This leader of the droid armies comes with a pre-built Command and Cunning deck, and it’s all about Droid units. Grievous’s ability on both sides lets him give a Droid unit Sentinel for the phase, with his unit side also granting a boost in attack power. This works great with units like General’s Guardian (Twilight of the Republic, 83), which allows you to create a Battle Droid (Twilight of the Republic, T01) token each time it’s attacked. Those Battle Droids can be granted Sentinel as well, and they all count as Separatist units, which means units like the Separatist Commando (Twilight of the Republic, 180) are always at full strength.
That said, there is another use for Battle Droid tokens, one that involves the second new keyword in Twilight of the Republic: Exploit. This keyword allows you to defeat units you control to play units like the Hailfire Tank (Twilight of the Republic, 233) for a discount, reducing their cost by 2 for each unit you defeat this way. The Hailfire Tank lets you Exploit up to 2 units, but other units with the keyword might allow you to defeat more, which means having lots of low-cost, disposable units (such as Battle Droid tokens) to use as fodder can open up all sorts of strategies for deckbuilding. This works especially well with units like Battle Droid Escort (Twilight of the Republic, 229), which creates a Battle Droid token when it’s played and when it’s defeated. This means you could play the Battle Droid Escort at 3 resources to create a token, then, on your next turn, Exploit the Escort and the token unit to play the Hailfire Tank for a mere 4 resources! And to top it all off, since you defeated the Escort to trigger Exploit, you’d still get to create another Battle Droid token for your army.
With over 250 new cards, two new keywords, and the introduction of token units, Twilight of the Republic promises to shake up your games of Star Wars: Unlimited in all sorts of exciting ways. Stay tuned for more news, previews, and card spoilers as we count down toward the third set’s release on November 8th, 2024!
