Level One - Lesson 7
Comprehensive Rules: Section 5 - Game Structure
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 covering the comprehensive rules, section five - Game Structure. This is another relatively short section, and one that we’ve covered extensively, because of its importance to, well, how the game plays out. Of course, we’ll be going into a bit more detail than we have before, with more complex examples than we’ve previously covered.
5.1 - General
A game consists of rounds and a round consists of turns and a turn consists of actions... and that’s all you need to know! We’ll see you in the next one!Of course there’s more to it than that. A game does consist of rounds - each round is the Action Phase and the Regroup Phase, which have steps within them. The action phase is where players take turns going back and forth taking actions, and the regroup phase is where the game runs a bit of maintenance - players draw cards, put them into play as resources and ready their cards, so that they can go again for another action phase.
It’s important to make sure you’re using the terms “round” and “turn” correctly. Many games may use the term “turn” to indicate what Star Wars: Unlimited calls a round, and so when you’re communicating with players (or studying the rules) keep in mind the appropriate context. Of course, there’s the bonus that the word “round” is also used in a broader tournament sense, to mean “the matches being played”. It’s been so ingrained in me that that is a round, that I can’t think of a better name for it. If you have any ideas, be sure to mention them in the community discord!
Each step of setup and each step of each phase must be completed in full, unless otherwise specified.
5.2 - Starting the Game and Setup
There are six steps to setting up the game:- Put bases into play
- Put leaders into play
- Determine the first player
- Shuffle decks and draw opening hands
- Make mulligan decisions
- Resource two cards
Step three is the first time players make a decision - determining the starting player. On a technical level, you actually determine which player chooses who starts with the initiative, which means that the player who wins the die roll or coin flip doesn’t have to go first and that this rule scales up to multiplayer games with no changes.
Once the starting player is locked in, players shuffle their decks. In tournament play, they are required to then present their deck to their opponent who may cut or shuffle the deck to further ensure randomization.
After that, players draw their opening hands of six cards. If a player doesn’t like their hand, they may choose to take one mulligan, return all of the cards in their hand to the deck, shuffle, present, and draw a new six-card hand, which they must keep.
Taking mulligans is the first step that is not simultaneous. If players are waiting to see what their opponent does, the active player must decide whether or not they are taking a mulligan first. After they make their decision, their opponent can make theirs.
However, a player can’t force the active player to be unable to take a mulligan by quickly declaring whether or not they are. If a player skips ahead in the sequence of declaring mulligans (and similarly with putting resources into play in the regroup step), the active player does not get locked out of making a decision - they just have more information to work with than the rules require them to have.
Finally, both players resource two cards from their opening hands. Unlike cards being put into play as resources normally, these resources are ready. Players cannot choose to resource fewer cards. This means that players will begin the first action phase with two ready resources and four cards in hand.
5.3 - Round
A round, as we mentioned back in the overview consists of two phases in order - the action phase and the regroup phase. The “start of the action phase” step is also the start of a new game round.Anything that refers to “this round”, like No Good To Me Dead encapsulates both the Action Phase and the Regroup Phase. If it’s somehow played during the Regroup Phase, it will end at the end of that Regroup Phase.
5.4 - Action Phase
Unsurprisingly, the first step in the Action Phase is the Start of Phase step, along with the requisite triggers and effects. Three types of abilities and effects can occur now, and they occur in a prescribed order. This order also applies for the end of the action phase, the start of the regroup phase, and the end of the regroup phase. In order it is: lasting effects, delayed effects, and then triggered abilities.First, any lasting effects wear off - these are effects that say “this phase” or “this round” (there are also some with shorter durations like “for this attack”, but those aren’t relevant to the game structure). These end immediately at the noted time - before anything else can happen. Most of the time, these wear off at the end of the phase, like on Attack Pattern Delta or General Rieekan.
If multiple lasting effects have the same end condition, they end simultaneously - so a unit that had been chosen for both Tactical Advantage and Hello There wouldn’t be under the effect of them both, and then under the effect of neither.
Next are delayed effects - these are effects that were set up by the resolution of an ability previously and are resolving now. These are phrased with “At the start of...” or “At the end...” like on Final Showdown or Triple Dark Raid. These can be effects that require a player to do something, which sets them apart from lasting effects expiring.
Finally, there are triggered abilities - these are abilities that trigger when a phase begins or ends. These are phrased with “When the action phase starts...” or “When the regroup phase starts...”, as seen on the leaders Grand Admiral Thrawn and Doctor Aphra. These also require players to do something but weren’t established by a previous ability, which is what distinguishes them from delayed effects.
Okay, so why does all of this matter? Well, I want to thank some of our Judge Apprentices for this - while we’ve talked about this sequencing before, I hadn’t been able to come up with an example where it would have a gameplay impact, and some of the Judge Apprentices came up with an example where this sequencing matters.
The active player controls a leader Doctor Aphra, and earlier in the round played Sneak Attack playing an Inferno Four. After the action phase, we move to the start of the regroup phase. Delayed effects trigger now, so Sneak Attack’s “At the start of the regroup phase, defeat it” effect applies, and Inferno Four is defeated. This triggers Inferno Four’s When Defeated triggered ability, which then resolves, and the active player is able to look at the top two cards of their deck and choose to put them either on top or bottom of their deck. After that, Doctor Aphra’s “start of phase” ability triggers, and the top card of the deck is discarded.
Between starting and ending the Action Phase, there are player turns. During each player’s turn, they alternate taking actions, starting with the player who had the initiative counter when the phase began. We’ve gone over the actions players can take several times now, but we’ll list them out again because a reminder never hurts:
- Play A Card
- Attack with a Unit
- Use an Action Ability
- Pass
- Take the Initiative
Once both players have passed in succession, the step ends, and the end-of-phase step begins, before moving on to the regroup phase.
Regroup Phase
Following the Action Phase is the regroup phase. Like the Action Phase, the regroup phase begins and ends with the start of phase and end of phase steps, but it also has three other steps - the draw step, the resource step, and the ready step.The start and end of phase steps function the same as they do in the action phase - with lasting effects, then delayed effects, then triggered abilities.
The other three steps are straightforward.
In the Draw Step, each player draws two cards simultaneously. If a player attempts to draw cards from an empty deck, they take three damage for each card they were unable to draw. If the active player has two remaining HP on their base, and their opponent has 6, and neither player has any cards in their deck, they would both attempt to draw two cards, then take six damage, and be defeated - all simultaneously. This would result in the game being in a draw.
In a best-of-three setting, like many tournaments, a drawn game doesn’t count towards the result of best-of-three, that’s because best-of-three actually means “first to two wins” and neither player won the game.
In the Resource Step, both players may resource one card from their hand, putting it into play facedown and exhausted. If players want to see what their opponent is doing, the Active Player must choose whether or not they are resourcing and put a card into play as a resource before their opponent does. As mentioned previously in this lesson with mulligans, the non-active player can’t force this action by acting preemptively.
Finally, in the Ready Step, players ready all resources and units they control, this conveniently includes the resource that they may have just put into play!
As soon as the regroup phase ends, the next action phase begins, with the start of phase step.
Ending the Game
The game continues in this cycle until one player is defeated. A game ends immediately once a player’s base reaches 0 remaining HP and is defeated. A player whose base is defeated loses the game and their opponent wins the game! As soon as a player’s base reaches 0 HP, they cannot take any actions and cannot resolve any abilities or effects. Let’s go over a quick example - the Active Player has 2 remaining HP on their base and their opponent has 3 remaining HP on theirs. The active player plays Mercenary Company, ambushing their opponent’s OOM-Series Officer. They deal 1 damage to the Officer, and 3 damage to their opponent’s base, defeating both of them. The non-active player doesn’t get the opportunity to deal two damage to the Active Player’s base.Finally, a player can concede at any time, and doing so causes them to lose the game immediately. If you’re playing in a best-of-three, and know you’re going to lose the game, you can concede when your opponent plays an Viper Probe Droid, before they’re allowed to see your hand, and preserve some of the information about your deck for a future game.
However, a player cannot concede to avoid an infraction or penalty. If a player commits an error, while they are allowed to concede the game, the infraction and penalty will still be recorded and issued.
With the end of the game comes the end of this lesson! Our next scheduled lesson will cover Action Timing and Clarification. Although it’s only a couple of pages, you might say that they’re “action packed”! As always, if you have any questions, comments, or insights, be sure to join the Judge Community Discord and make your voice heard. Until next time, good luck and have fun!