Review – Star Wars: Unlimited – Shadows of the Galaxy

Star Wars: Unlimited’s second 2-player starter pack features the Mandalorian and Moff Gideon, new play styles, and new card abilities. Does all the new clog up Star Wars: Unlimited’s clean gameplay, or are these new styles and card abilities a fine addition to any collection? 

Review 

Star Wars: Unlimited is a collectible card game (which means when you pay booster packs outside of starter sets, you’ll get a bunch of random cards). I won’t rehash basic gameplay, so if you haven’t already read the original review, it may be best to start there. 

Shadows of the Galaxy introduces 2 main new characters: The Mandalorian, whose deck is built around upgrades and bounties, and Moff Gideon, whose deck is loaded with stormtroopers, Dark Troopers, and a generally overpowering army. In short, the Mandalorian will usually want to play ground units and upgrade them quickly because many of the ground units receive additional buffs when they have an upgrade, in addition to the buffs the upgrades provide. Moff Gideon will want to get grunt units in play quickly so he can use his special ability, as well as play his own bounty and upgrade cards. 

The main new mechanics are bounties, which have a reward (such as turning the top card of your deck over as a resource) that you can claim after you defeat the enemy card that your bounty is attached to. Smuggle cards are also new, and they function as any other card would unless they are in your resource pool (facedown). Smuggle cards have a special smuggle price on them that allows you to play them right out of your resource pool instead of your hand. 

As far as the new mechanics go, they work really well within the Star Wars universe, and they’re intuitive enough that gameplay flows along smoothly, even if someone has to look at their player mat now and again for a quick reminder. Smuggle in particular is incredibly helpful because maybe you drew a smuggle card early, and you want to play it eventually, so you can use it as a resource until late-game when you can afford to play it. 

A few other well-themed cards to note: the Dark Troopers aren’t indestructible, but it can feel like they are if you don’t take them out in one shot because they will gain a shielded token; Grogue can’t attack, but he can use the force to exhaust enemy units; the Mandalorian doesn’t get many vehicles, but the design team utilized stars of the show like the Clone Wars Juggernaut; and finally, the Village Protectors aren’t that strong to begin with, but there was one game where I used the many upgrades in the Mandalorian’s deck to beef them up considerably (stronger than both the Mandalorian and Moff Gideon at their base levels). Remember season 1 episode 4 when Mando and Cara Dune train the villagers to fight like soldiers? That’s essentially what I did. 

Shadows of the Galaxy is a great addition to the Star Wars: Unlimited CCG. It’s thematically on-point, and while there are a few villain cards in Moff Gideon’s deck that we saw in the first starter set, most everything else is new. This set isn’t game-changing, and I don’t want it to be. Here’s to hoping Fantasy Flight continues the slow and steady trickle of Star Wars: Unlimited content, like blue milk dripping from the tap. 

Fantasy Flight Games kindly provided a review copy.