Level One - Lesson 2

Comprehensive Rules: Section 1 - Game Concepts: Part 1

Also available are archives of live broadcasts, where the Program Director goes over the lesson, answers any questions that folks may have and sometimes goes on tangets about other elements of judging. You can find the playlist of broadcasts on youtube.
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Hello there and welcome back to the Judge Program for Star Wars™: Unlimited - Level One certification track lessons.

As always, I’m your host Jonah and today we’ll be going over the comprehensive rules, section one - Game Concepts. Going over all of the concepts is actually quite a lot of content, so it’s going to be broken up into two lessons. This lesson will cover the first eight subsections, while part two will cover the rest. Some of these were covered in the third Judge Apprentice lesson, but we’re going to talk about them again, just in case you haven’t watched those lessons!

These lessons aren’t going to go into every single detail - there are some mechanics that just don’t come up that often, and going over them isn’t necessary. There will be future lessons that cover the sections and elements that aren’t taught in these lessons!

Do you know the Golden Rules of Unlimited? What makes a player the Active Player? Can you own a card that’s considered to be an enemy? All this and more in today’s lesson!

1.1 - General

This contains two broad sub-rules.

The first is critical - these rules apply to all games of Star Wars: Unlimited! It also notes that the language used is intended for interpretation for two-player games, so the wording and examples are designed for that. Multiplayer formats have sections towards the back of the Comprehensive Rules.

This section also lists the required elements - decks, initiative counter, and a way to track damage or tokens.

1.2 - Deck

So the last section requires that players have a deck, and this one lays out the requirements for one. There is no maximum number of cards in a deck, and the minimum number of cards is provided by format, along with additional restrictions. These requirements are listed in sections 9, 10, and 12. The leader and base do not count towards deck size. Any tokens also do not count

Players can include cards from any aspect in their deck, but cards that don’t match the aspects provided by their leader and base may incur an aspect penalty, which will be covered in depth in future lessons.

The minimum card requirement for Twin Suns will increase to eighty with the release of set four: Jump to Lightspeed. If we haven’t updated this lesson and that set has been released, let us know in our Discord!

1.3 - 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.

1.4 - Players & Active Player

This section lets us know that a player is a person playing the game and their opponent is anyone else playing the game!

A more technical term appears 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.

1.5 - Cards

This is one of the meatier subsections in Game Concepts - in fact, there’s enough to talk about that we’ll have two whole lessons to go over after this one - covering Card Anatomy and Card Types in future lessons!

This lets us know that there are six card types - bases, events, leaders, units, upgrades and tokens and also lets us know that cards played into the resource zone are referred to as resources, but that resources are not a card type.

Some cards refer to the “owner” of a card - most frequently returning cards to their owner’s hands, like on Bright Hope. The owner of a card is the player who started the game with it as a part of their deck, including base and leader, as well as any tokens that player put into play.

Some cards refer to the “controller” of a card. A player is a controller of all cards that they put into play, including resources and tokens. They continue to control it until it leaves play or another player explicitly gains control of it. When a player takes control of a card, the card maintains it’s status, such as ready or exhausted.

Players can play upgrades onto enemy units, and will still be the player that controls the upgrade. However, if the upgrade grants the unit an ability, such as Jedi Lightsaber, the controller of the unit will resolve the ability, not the controller of the upgrade. That’s because it’s the unit that has the ability. This also applies to token upgrades.

Some cards also refer to “friendly” and “enemy” - any cards a player controls are friendly to that player, and any cards they don’t control are enemy! That means with Bright Hope, you can only return a unit you control.

However, if you had gained control of an enemy Battlefield Marine, using Traitorous, if you played Bright Hope, you could choose to return that Battlefield Marine, because you now control it, and therefore it’s friendly. When you do, it won’t go to your hand, because you’re not the owner of it.

Cards also have a status, which we’ve referred to a few times, which is either “ready” or “exhausted”. A card is ready when it’s upright, and exhaustion is indicated by turning it sideways.

Non-leader units and resources enter play exhausted, while upgrades are neither exhausted nor ready.

Exhausted cards ready either when instructed to do so by an ability or effect, like with Keep Fighting and the keyword Ambush, or during the appropriate step in the Regroup Phase.

In order to attack or to use an ability that requires exhausting, the unit must be ready. This means that most units can’t attack the turn that they’re played. Similarly, in order to pay costs, a resource must be ready. Units that are exhausted are eligible to be attacked.

Section 1.5.5 talks about how cards can be defeated - this applies to all cards in play - bases, tokens, units, upgrades, and resources.

Bases and units are defeated when they have damage on them greater than or equal to their HP. Units, upgrades, and resources can be defeated directly by an ability. Upgrades are also defeated when the unit they’re attached to leaves play for whatever reason. Tokens are defeated in the same way as a non-token of the same type is.

When a base is defeated, its owner loses the game. When a unit, upgrade, or resource is defeated (other than a leader) it is placed in its owner’s discard pile. Leaders are flipped to their leader side and moved back to the base zone, exhausted.

The last part element of cards discussed here is Aspects - it lists the six aspects - Vigilance, Command, Aggression, Cunning, Villainy, and Heroism, and talks about how your leader and base combine to grant your deck its aspects.

Cards that have an aspect that aren’t provided to your deck by the base and leader cost 2 additional resources per missing aspect. We’ll talk about this more in later lessons, as we talk about cards.

1.6 Abilities

Abilities are what let cards do things. Cards can have multiple abilities - each one will start on a new line. When following the instructions of an ability, do as much as you can, following the golden rule. The exception to this is abilities that have the phrase “you may” - those elements of the ability are optional, and can be skipped.

1.7 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. Putting a card into play as a resource 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 and re-order their resources at any time and may use that information to help inform decisions.

A player can even reorder their resources after their opponent has played a card like DJ - Blatant thief, but before they have resolved the when-played ability. If a player rearranges their resources, they must maintain how many resources are exhausted and how many are ready.

1.8 - Cost

A card’s cost is located at the top left of the card, above the aspect indicators. The cost of a card can be modified, and these modifiers are cumulative. For example, if one player controls Del Meeko, and their opponent activates Bib Fortuna, the resulting event played will cost the same as though neither effect was applied. If the final total cost of a card cannot be paid, the player cannot play the card and must choose a different action.

When instructed to play a card for free, all modifications to the cost are bypassed, including aspect penalties. However, “additional costs”, which are non-resource costs, must still be paid.

Some action abilities also have costs - these abilities function under similar rules as costs for cards, but frequently have non-resource costs. If any part of the cost cannot be paid, the ability cannot be activated.

If an ability refers to the cost of a card, it is looking at the printed cost of the card and does not take into account any modifiers, including aspect penalties.

Looking at Fennec Shand, if you have no ready resources or she is already exhausted, you wouldn’t be able to use her action ability. However, if you were able to pay those costs and use the ability you would be able to play TIE Advanced, because it’s printed cost is 4, which meets the requirement. You’re still paying for the unit, and so you would pay six resources.

Okay! That’s it for this lesson, but we’ll be back shortly covering the rest of the Game Concepts, including a lot of information about how units work, key actions, and information types! As always, if you have any questions, comments or insights, be sure to join the discard and make your voice heard. Until next time, good luck and have fun!
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