Judge Apprentice - Lesson 3
Golden Rules and Game Fundamentals
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Hello there and welcome back to the Judge Program for Star Wars™: Unlimited - Apprentice Lesson Track.
As always, I’m your host Jonah, and today we’ll be talking about the golden rules of the Star Wars: Unlimited comprehensive rules, and the fundamentals of game structure. The Golden Rules are rules about the rules, and factor into how we discuss them, and how they interact with people actually playing the game, so we have to get that out of the way before diving into the rest of the rules documents. There are also some technical terms that are part of the game that are important to understand, so we’ll touch on those. Finally, we’ll cover the core structure of the game.
If you’re someone who is interested in becoming a judge for Star Wars: Unlimited, you probably already know the fundamentals that we’ll be covering. However, if you’re not, going over them ensures that you have the appropriate context for upcoming lessons and even if you are comfortable with them, it’s a good framework for us to look at the golden rules in action, and you can see how they play out.
Some of the questions we’ll be answering today include: What takes precedence between card text, the rules and reminder text? What happens when you’re trying to resolve an event or an ability, but can’t follow all of the instructions? What do terms like “Active Player” and “Game State” mean on a technical level?
Without further ado, let’s dive on in.
The Golden Rules
The golden rules can be found in the comprehensive rules in section 1.3. The first covers precedence - there are a few places where rules may not appear to align, and so there’s an order of importance - if the comprehensive rules contradicts the quickstart rules, follow the comprehensive rules - for example, the quickstart rules say that every base starts with 30 hit points, but the comprehensive rules indicates that bases have HP dependent on what’s printed on the card - if a player comes to you and says that Energy Conversion Lab has 30 HP because of the Quickstart Rules, you can let them down gently.Similarly, if the ability text of a card contradicts the text of the comprehensive rules, the card takes precedence - this is key for the game to work. Without this rule, something like Hera Syndulla, Spectre Two, or Chirrut Îmwe, One With The Force’s passive abilities would be overwritten by the game rules, and not function. Notably, this does not include reminder text. Reminder text is text that is italicized and in parentheses and functions as a shorthand and reminder for some effects. For example, the reminder text for sentinel is incomplete, and does not include “Abilities this unit gains can’t prevent this unit from being attacked.”
1.3.2 is our second golden rule - Do as much as you can - when resolving a card ability, do as much as you can - for example with The Force Is With Me, if you play it on an exhausted unit, you’ll still give it the two experience tokens, and potentially the shield token, but will not be able to choose to attack with it.
With Death Trooper, if there are no enemy ground units, you will still have to choose a friendly ground unit. With the unit Grand Moff Tarkin, Death Star Overseer, if you only have three cards in your deck, you will still search those cards, and can reveal up to two Imperial cards from among them.
Finally, in 1.3.3 we have our third golden rule, which is that restrictions override permissions. If one ability is saying that you can’t do something, and another ability is telling you to take that action, the card saying that you can’t wins. For example, if one player controls a Regional Governor naming Death Star Stormtrooper and their opponent play unit Darth Vader, Commanding the First Legion, that player is not able to play a Death Star Stormtrooper despite being instructed to do so.
As a quick summary of these golden rules - card rules take precedence over the comprehensive rules, which takes precedence over the quickstart rules, when you’re resolving an ability, do as much as you can, and when two cards conflict, the card restricting the action takes precedence.
Technical Terms
Active Player
As mentioned, the comprehensive rules have some specific technical language. Starting in 1.4.3, we have the term “Active Player” - whichever player is taking an action is the active player, and this is something that will be referred to in the rules, as a point of reference for when players get to make decisions, who gets to make them, and in what order they’re made. If no player is taking an action - such as the start and end of the Action Phase, or throughout the Regroup phase, the player with the initiative is considered to be the active player.Resources
Next, in section 1.7 the rules define resources - any card placed in the resource zone becomes a resource. Resources are treated as though they are blank, with no printed attributes. This means that they are not taken into consideration when evaluating unique units and won’t trigger cards that are looking for cards of a specific aspect to be played, like Commander Yularen, ISB Director. However, if an ability or its rules text states that it is active while a resource, that ability is active, but does not override these other restrictions. Playing a card like Battlefield Marine won’t trigger Yularen, but you can still play a card from your resources with Smuggle, like Nite Owl Skirmisher. A player can look at their resources at any time and may use that information to help inform decisions.Game State
We’re going to take a bit of a jump down to section 1.16 - Game State. The term “game state” generally refers to the status and quantity of every object in the game - each card’s current zone, controller, attributes, and status (including ready or exhausted and faceup or facedown); the initiative counter’s controller and status (taken or available); the status of open and hidden information for a player; the status of all active lasting effects and delayed effects; and the status of Epic Action abilities (used or unused).That’s a heck of a list, but it’s pretty much everything observable about the game. An action, ability, or payment of a cost that changes any of these elements is considered to change the game state, and a player must change the game state when they take an action other than passing during their turn. For example with Fennec Shand, Honoring The Deal flipped to her unit side, if you don’t play a unit with her action, you haven’t changed the game state, and must choose a different action for your turn.
However, you can activate Leader Iden Versio, Inferno Squad Commander, even if no enemy units have been defeated this turn because exhausting Iden changes the game state. This rule exists to prevent players from effectively “passing”, without using the “pass” action.
As a corollary - while every action must be associated with a change in the game state, every change in the game state must be associated with an action, ability, or other rule. Players are not allowed to alter the game state without identifiable cause. This means a player can not exhaust resources when they aren’t paying a cost or discard a card they are not instructed to discard.
Open and Hidden Information
The game state also ties into the next section, 1.17 which regards Open and Hidden information. Open information is information that all players are entitled to have access to and to know. Hidden information is any information that has restrictions on when it can be known or by whom.Open information includes attributes of face-up cards in play - units, upgrades, bases, and leaders, the number of counters or tokens on cards, the number of cards in various zones, the cards in each player’s discard, and both sides of each player’s leader.
All information that is not Open, is considered hidden, such as the contents of a players hand (always accessible by that player) or the order of the cards in a players deck (available to a player while they’re searching that portion of that deck, but not otherwise).
Players must disclose and allow access to all open information to their opponent - you’re not allowed to prevent them from counting how many cards you have in your hand. However, a player is allowed to take actions that involve hidden information, and act as though they have fewer options - for example, a player who plays the unit Grand Moff Tarkin, Death Star Overseer can choose to take no Imperial cards, even if every card is Imperial, despite the ability not saying “may”.
Game Structure
Starting the Game
With those terms out of the way, we come now to the core game structure. We’re going to go over it briefly but go a bit more in-depth during lesson five.We begin, as we frequently do, at the beginning - section 5.2! When starting the game, put bases and leaders into play, and then randomly determine the starting player. Next players draw an opening hand of six cards and are allowed to take one mulligan, by shuffling their hand into their deck and drawing a new hand of six cards. If a player takes a mulligan, they must keep that hand. If both players are considering a mulligan, the active player makes their decision first.
Once hands have been kept, both players resource two cards. Unlike resourcing cards during your turn, this is not optional, and two cards must be resourced. Unlike when cards are resourced at other times, these resources are put into play ready.
Once the start of game procedures are complete, the first round begins! A round is comprised of two phases - the action phase and the regroup phase. The action phase is comprised of players taking turns going back and forth, each player taking an action during each of their turns during the round. The regroup phase has specific actions the players both take, at the same time. The Active Player takes the first turn, and with it, the first action. After a player completes their action, the next player takes theirs and becomes the active player.
That may sound like a lot, but it’s important to be clear if you’re talking about a round or a turn when talking about when events happen or have happened!
Action Phase
There are five core actions to choose from and players can take any number of actions during a round, so long as they are changing the game state with each one. Players are allowed to take the same action during different turns of the same round.The five actions are to play a card, use an action ability, attack with a unit, claim the initiative, or pass. The first three - playing a card, using an action ability, and attacking with a unit will be explored more in-depth in lesson six.
If a player claims the initiative, that means that they’ll be the active player for the regroup phase, and will take the first action at the start of the next Action Phase. The initiative can only be claimed once per round, and once a player claims the initiative, they pass for all future turns during that action phase.
If a player passes, they do nothing. If both players pass sequentially, or one player passes and the other claims the initiative, the action phase ends, and the round proceeds to the regroup phase.
Regroup Phase
In the regroup phase, three things happen in sequence - first, both players draw two cards. Then each player chooses up to one card in their hand to place face down in the resource zone, and finally, players ready all exhausted cards they control.Once the cards have been readied, the regroup phase ends, and a new round begins with the start of a new Action Phase.
Ending the Game
The game continues through this cycle of Action Phases and Regroup Phases until one player’s base reaches zero remaining HP, and is defeated. That player loses the game, and their opponent wins.Notably, a player may concede at any time by saying that they concede. A player who concedes the game immediately loses the game, and their opponent wins the game. At events, players may not ask their opponents to concede to them.
That wraps us up for the golden rules and game fundamentals. One of the major goals of the Star Wars: Unlimited rules is making them intuitive. You probably already understand a lot of these rules or assumed that the game works that way, because that’s what makes sense, especially with things like the golden rules.
That’s going to be true in a lot of cases - without having read dozens of pages in the complete comprehensive rules, most players know most of the rules - maybe without ever having read the rules. However, as the game continues to grow there will be interactions between cards that don’t make as much intuitive sense - and that’s what this training is for, to understand it all, from the ground up.
In our next lesson we will take a look at why we’re all here - the cards themselves. We’ll be discussing card anatomy and card types and begin to really delve into the comprehensive rules. Good luck, and have fun!