Boba is suspended ... Now what? Spoiler: Sabine isn't the answer

Hello and welcome back to my new (new) blog. In my first entry I spoiled a brand new card from set 3, Shadowed Intentions, and while I think it has a lot of potential to break out, today we're going to talk about the most recent news from FFG ...

... Boba Fett has been suspended from play, effective now (essentially). 

I've seen a lot of chatter in the public discard, on the KTOD discord, and on Facebook about how Sabine is the best deck and nothing can beat it. I'm here to tell you that you couldn't be more wrong. Before we get into that, let me introduce myself to those of you who don't know me or have visited my blog in the past. My name is John Tatta, I've been playing Star Wars Unlimited since around December of 2023 before set 1 was fully spoiled, and I've had a lot of success in SWU so far. I'm a part of the KTOD competitive tournament team, I've won a SCG Open, top 8'd many others, and also top 8'ed a recent PQ in Maryland. I love the game, love the people, and always happy to help anyone who is open to suggestions and ideas. All that said, let's jump in.

With Boba being gone, a lot of decks can now really jump into the spotlight. The first ones that jump out to me are the other yellow villains, particularly Cad Bane and Jango Fett, and of course Sabine Wren. On top of those, the hard control decks like Bossk blue and Cad blue should gain in popularity. Furthermore, decks like Luke Skywalker, who could never beat Boba Fett before, should gain in popularity. This is also especially true for Han1 yellow, a deck that was hard countered by both Boba green and yellow. That's a lot of new decks to consider, whew. Let's just start with the obvious "new" best deck, or what most of you think is the best deck, Sabine Wren.

In the previous meta, Sabine knew exactly what it has to do. The best decks were Boba, and then the decks that tried to beat Boba; largely blue soft control/hard control decks. These decks were feasted on by Sabine ECL, and a good Sabine player was also at worst 50/50 into Boba green but a heavy underdog to boba red and yellow. In this new meta, we're eliminating a Cunning deck and all other Boba decks so Sabine should be great, right? Well, not exactly. The decks that Boba was gate-keeping are now free and unfortuantely for Sabine, that isn't good news. Cad TTown, Jango TTown, Krennic, and Iden, etc are all decks that Sabine doesn't want to see and were kept in "Boba Prison" for multiple sets. 

I fully expect Cad and Jango to gain in popularity, with Tarkintown in particular, to counter the combo decks with Now There Are Two Of Them, but just also happen to be very good into Sabine. Both decks have the capability of taking out Sabine's turn 1 play in a multitude of ways which is oftentimes enough to cripple the deck. It's also worth noting that every deck no longer has to play slow cards like Rival's Fall anymore because there's no longer fear of an unkillable leader with an Armor which opens up slots for more things that can counter Sabine. You can say, "well Sabine can adjust to counter those, right?" In part, I agree, but in a wide open meta it's impossible to plan your deck and sideboard to counter everything, and Tarkintown is very difficult to counter anyway as it's just always going to happen at some point. In my opinion, I truly believe that Sabine is no better off now than she was Wednesday at 2pm but it's still of course a tier one deck, if not the most consistent deck. It just will never make up 50% of top cuts on a consistent basis no matter how hard you try, much mess 60% of overall wins.

Moving on to hard control, Bossk blue and Cad blue are definite winners here. I think I prefer Bossk blue but Cad gained a lot as well. There are going to be a LOT of midrange piles floating around while the meta tries to settle. By this I mean Quinlan, Anakin, Cad, etc., and the hard control decks are just going to punish them to no end. Something I've been trying in Bossk with great early success is the new event, A Fine Addition. You get the opportunity to rebuy Top Target, Perilous Position, Entrenched, or a number of new upgrades from your discard, or the ability to play a Lightsaber of whatever flavor from an opposing discard pile onto something like a Childsen or your leader. Cad also gets this effect allowing him to most likely rebuy a Perilous Position or Frozen in Carbonite, or even better a powerful card draw engine like Enticing Reward. You are no longer fearful of Boba's Armor, again, so you can move to the sideboard or completely cut Rival's Fall and just max out on Fell the Dragon and Takedown which makes your Sabine matchup much less clunky and all-in on Childsen. Palpatine is a big loser of all this, for now, since Sabine will be everywhere for a little while, but once the meta calms down a little I think Palp 1 yellow and green will both be popular choices.

Moving on to more winners of the banning- midrange piles. Decks like Luke, Iden, Krennic, now Quinlan and Anakin, etc. all struggled into Boba decks. All the tempo options Boba had, combined with stretching their resources far past what they were allowed, made it impossible for midrange decks to even get ahead of a good Boba player. Yellow would aggro you down and green would just stretch the game and their resources. Now that we don't have to worry about that, the blue hero decks in particular can focus on beating aggro and just grind out the control decks with Home One and U-Wing alongside infinite Tech with Spark of Hope. I'm personally excited to really revisit Luke now that he has some new toys and it's most likely still the best home for U-Wing Reinforcements. Krennic and Iden also got new toys but ultimately just fall into the category of "blue/green Barrage decks" with Qi'ra probably being the best of the bunch but each doing something a little different from the other. I want to think one of these decks can play the combo of The Clone Wars alongside In Defense of Kamino to win games but that's just an idea and largely untested.

Some of the decks that I've personally been testing in preparation for the SCG Con weekend in Ohio coming up is Jango TTown and Bossk blue. I spoke about Bossk briefly but I think the Jango deck is going to go largely under the radar (unless you're part of the group in the KTOD discord discussing it) until it starts putting up results. Being able to still play a max power Firespray has a lot of merit and yellow/red space has been the best since set 2. Your turn 1 and flip turns are a lot more awkward than they were in Boba due to not being able to stretch your resources but you can counteract that by playing more 1-drops and always aiming to go double 1-drop on your first turn. The main pick-up from TWI here is the Elite P-38 ship. Being able to protect against Falcon is one thing but the when played/when destroyed effects play so well into Jango's leader ability that it makes winning base races trivial. Ruthless Raider also turns into a menace since it's when played/when destroyed abilitiy also works extremely well in Jango. I'm sure over time the deck with evolve but just using the set 2 Boba red shell and changing a few cards should be a good starting point. The deck is a lot better than expected.

I'm excited to see what people come up with over the next few months before we move into set 3 PQ season and truly believe the meta is now completely wide open. While there will always be a "best deck," it won't always be something that takes up 50%+ of every top cut and that's a good thing for the game. If anyone will be in Columbus this weekend for the SCG events, please come say hi!

-PN (Tatta)