Unveiling Three Secrets of Power

The new Star Wars Unlimited set Secrets of Power releases on November 7. It debuts the Plot keyword, which allows you to play a card from your resources when deploying a leader unit. It also introduces effects that make you disclose aspect icons by revealing specific cards from your hand. On top of that we get the first token unit with a keyword on it, and we have one way to create some of these below.

Heroic ARC-170

The Heroic ARC-170 is a 4-cost Heroism space unit with a statline of 4 Power and 3 HP. It's a neat twist, as this is the first ARC-170 card in Star Wars Unlimited to come with more Power than HP. Its ability when played lets you deal 2 damage to an enemy unit if you happen to already control a damaged unit.

That small bit of text might look minor, but it could open some sneaky ways to push tempo and clear threats from any battlefield. While it's hard to judge how a card like this will perform, the combination of efficient stats and a useful effect will certainly get players to think about the possibilities.

Renewed Friendship

Renewed Friendship is a 4-cost Command Heroism event that offers some subtle utility. It allows you to take a unit from your discard pile back to your hand and then creates two Spy tokens.

So what exactly is a Spy token? This new token unit from Secrets of Power is the first to feature a keyword. Each Spy has 0 Power and 2HP but comes with Raid 2, meaning it gains +2 Power while attacking.

The ability to retrieve any unit from your discard pile gives Renewed Friendship a good degree of flexibility, and the bonus of generating two tokens helps offset the usual downside of such effects. Usually, spending your action on recovering a card does not have any immediate impact on the board, but here the two Spy tokens can help maintain your presence.

There's an interesting layer of synergy with Secrets of Power's new hand-reveal mechanics too. As this new type of effect makes you disclose cards from your hand to reach a certain combination of aspect icons, you can selectively return units with the right icons. So Renewed Friendship can subtly set up stronger reveals without giving away extra information to your opponent.

Lightmaker, I Have an Idea

With this card we get another fun, lore-accurate design from FFG. Lightmaker is a 5-cost Cunning Heroism Legendary space unit with a base statline of 3 Power and 4 HP. At first glance, that might not seem impressive, but it comes with Raid 4 giving it +4 Power while attacking. That's enough to take down ships far larger than itself. It's just like in Rogue One, where the Lightmaker sacrifices itself to ram the disabled Persecutor, an Imperial Star Destroyer. (At the time of writing, there is no Persecutor card in Star Wars Unlimited, but if it ever shows up, I hope for it to have 7 or less HP.)

Now, Lightmaker's ability when defeated makes it even more interesting: When it's destroyed, you choose an arena and exhaust all enemy units in that arena. This can be a game-changing effect; completely exhausting your opponent's forces can either save you from defeat or open a path to victory. It's not quite as easy to pull off as the and combo, since Lightmaker requires your opponent to control a space unit with at least 4 Power that you can trade for. However, it still meets the condition for the , meaning you can give it Ambush and make it an even greater threat.

When paired with the new , things get even more explosive. That extra point of damage from Luthen means you can deal up to 8 (or 9 if Luthen is currently a unit) damage in one attack. That's enough to take down massive space units like or in one attack.

Finally, Raid 4 is a noteworthy number. FFG teased that this set would include the unit with the highest printed Raid value so far. As the from Intro Battle: Hoth also has Raid 4, it looks like we might be seeing an even higher Raid value soon, crowning a new king. But even if that happens, Lightmaker will firmly sit near the top of the Raid scale for the foreseeable future.

I'd like to thank Fantasy Flight Games for giving Cardmarket the opportunity to preview another three cards. I always enjoy imagining how players might incorporate new cards into their decks, and I am excited to see the creative ways the Star Wars Unlimited community will make use of them. I can't wait for Secrets of Power to release. As always, may the Force be with you!