In our last article, we discussed the importance of always playing the smallest deck possible. For Star Wars: Unlimited that is a standard deck size of 50 cards with a 10 card sideboard. Playing this size deck will increase your deck’s consistency and help you draw the card you need when you need it. However, this is the first, very basic decision you have to make when deckbuilding. Next we want to delve a little deeper into deckbuilding decisions, and answer the age-old question, “ How many copies of each card should you play in your deck?”
Unfortunately, the answer isn’t straightforward. Star Wars Unlimited allows for up to 3 copies of the same card in any given deck. Well, that’s easy, always play 3 copies of every card in your deck! Consistency right? All I do is win win win… Hold on a second, it can’t be that easy. It’s not.
I would say most of the time, key cards in your deck should always be a 3-of. However, perfect 3-of lists (you’ll always need to trim one to a 2-of to make a clean 50 cards) rarely exist. Let’s look at the math when you include 3 copies of a card in your deck.
In this example let’s say you have 3 copies of R2-D2 Ignoring Protocol. What are your odds of drawing one of these cards? Let’s use the hypergeometric calculator to do some more calculations!
Percentage to draw one of these cards in your opening hand: 32.4%
Percentage to draw one of these cards on the second turn: 13.3%
As you can see from the numbers (assuming you have no card draw) you can expect to see old R2 in your opening hand in about ⅓ of games. Which is very consistent. The consistency increases once you add in the mulligan, which complicates the math a bit. The formula is 1+(1 – percentage of first attempt)^number of attempts. Long story short, your odds go up to 45.7%.
In the course of a normal game that goes 7 turns, you will see your odds of drawing an R2 unit steadily increase, especially if you don’t draw one.
Percentage to draw one of these cards on the third turn: 13.9%
Fourth turn: 14.6%
Fifth turn: 15.4%
Sixth turn: 16.2%
Seventh turn:17.1%
As you can see the longer a game goes the odds continue to increase to the point that drawing the card you need becomes an inevitability. This is why control decks attempt to force games to go long enough that they can draw their closer such as Krayt Dragon or Avenger.
So why ever play less than 3 of any card in your deck? That question is harder to answer. Some cards are powerful enough you may only need to draw one to finish the game, the classic example being Avenger. It can be powerful enough on its own that you may only want to include 2 of it in your deck. In fact, these types of cards you want to draw less in the earlier stages of the game, and combined with strategic mulliganing, you can include fewer copies to ensure you are less likely to draw them in the early game.
Lastly, you may have toolbox cards that play a particular role in your deck, and you may only include single copies of these types of cards to deal with very specific situations. An example of this is a “Old” Han Green deck including an off-aspect Luke Skywalker card because of the powerful ability of U-Wing Reinforcement to allow it to be searched for and played without penalty.
Cards such as Search Your Feelings allow the player to search their deck to find a specific type of card and either draw them or play them can make the singleton tech cards much more viable. Also decks built with consistent card draw in mind may be able to get away with a wider variety of 1-of or 2-of cards as drawing cards can mitigate the drawback of not including the maximum number of copies.
Hopefully the above examples will provide some insight as you go to build your next deck. It is always important to determine why you are including any particular card in your deck. Is it a staple? Is it tech for a certain popular matchup? Is it an answer to a particular popular card like Boba Fett or the Lurking TIE Phantom? Answering these questions will also help guide you on the number of copies you will need.
All of these are considerations when building a deck, and often a list takes a lot of time and trial and error to really zero in on the correct number of copies for any particular card. My advice is playtest, playtest, playtest and try different numbers of cards in your list until you find something that works for you and your playstyle. Happy deckbuilding!
Art by Joshua Carson
Copyright Fantasy Flight Games
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