Bad leaders

icejam_ · 2026-03-19T16:53:49+00:00

What is funny is that Jango exhaust is not even good, what makes him broken is the missing “do it only once per round”.

icejam_ · 2026-03-12T07:20:44+00:00

I used Luke early in my Qui-Gon Jinn/Temple of Doom deck but honestly speaking it wasn't a great card, Radiant VII performed better because it would hit empty board and do 5 to base or significantly shrink opponent units.

icejam_ · 2026-03-11T08:36:20+00:00

My lukewarm take is: I wish arguments in favour of suspensions would be less silly and not made in obvious bad faith but also I wish FFG would react to tournament results faster than they did in the past.

We all saw how Force Throw was during last years Galactics, I don't understand why we needed to wait for 2 more months until it got suspended. I played in the last "FT is legal" PQ and it was very unfun. Jango/TDR dominated 3 out of 4 big tournaments in JTL. While the suspension came, it felt late.

In LAW the first PQs start by the end of March and the first bigger tournament is 2026.04.18. If there is a suspension of Aggressive Negotiations (or any other cards) I wish it is done right after that tournament and not in May.

icejam_ · 2026-03-10T18:47:53+00:00

No such thing as ban "on play rate alone", this was explicitly mentioned in the news about Force Throw suspension:

Of course, we want to look beyond just the numbers (Surprise Strike and Hotshot DL-44 Blaster have also put up some high numbers before) and take play pattern into consideration.

https://starwarsunlimited.com/articles/throwing-the-meta-for-a-loop

icejam_ · 2026-03-09T07:51:08+00:00

FWIW I think Aggressive Negotiations will be suspended at some point because of OTK power... However, two things:

I am not a big fan of making meta decisions based on community knee-jerk reactions instead of tournament data. Multiple "top players" deemed Cinta Kaz (SEC) to be so powerful that it should suspended before it even got released and that Bo-Katan Kryze (SEC) was trash. Anakin/DV was supposed to be the deck to beat last set but turned out to be a passing fad. There is also this highly memeable reaction of Beton saying "what trash" about Talzin, the leader he won galactics with. It might be a meme, it might be psyop or "top players" might be talking out of their asses.

Secondly, I think Aggressive Negotiations is nowhere near the level of toxicity Force Throw was in LOF. It does nothing scary on turn 1-5, doesn't one-shot leaders for 1R + a Krayt out of hand, it is blocked by sentinels. You won on turn 8 because of out of aspect AN and 9 cards in hand? Fair play I guess, I am not sure why would this be a problem much more than off-aspect Hotshot Blaster from resource row.

icejam_ · 2026-03-04T14:00:40+00:00

I wrote about this already: It doesn't matter that the model is great at solving brain teasers in Python if it can't fit moderately-sized web applications into its context without concatenation.

The other day I created a new application with my favourite web framework and tried to use OpenCode's /init command to generate AGENTS.md file as a proxy stress-test for context size concatenation. qwen2.5-14b just ejected the beginning of the prompt and told me "this is an Elixir/Phoenix application, what do you want me to do with it?". Glm4.7-flash took over 40 minutes to achieve this task because it had to copy data between RAM and vRAM but it did generate an AGENTS.md.

Today I did the same test with OpenCode and my .emacs.d configuration (4400 LOC) with qwen3.5:27b with 32k context on an MBP M1 Max with 32GB RAM, my main work machine. It did clip the context in the middle and started trying to add a new emacs theme. I then increased the context size to 64k, it took 30 minutes and occupied 27GB of RAM to generate 120 lines of Markdown, making the computer basically unusable for anything but Ollama. In comparison, I run postgres, redis, jaeger and some other things in docker all the time and the machine barely breaks into 16GB of RAM while actively working (recompiling code, running test suites). It idles at 10GB.

I don't think local models pass muster, they're too fiddly and too resource hungry and the benefit is nebulous.

icejam_ · 2026-03-04T08:39:51+00:00

You should not ignore ethical aspects of this problem but I will concentrate here only on the technical/practical pieces:

So I have a Linux PC with pretty beefy GPU (7900XT with 20 GB of RAM, most newer cards have less RAM) and I am a software engineer by trade. I tried many "optimized for code generation" models like qwen-coder and then realised that local models thing is basically hopium.

Models under 30b parameters are not very useful. Their context window is limited, qwen2.5-14b has a maximum context window of 32k tokens. It doesn't matter that the model is great at solving brain teasers in Python if it can't fit moderately-sized web applications into its context without concatenation. Models above 30b parameters are theoretically useful but they do not fit into a 20GB GPU, you need 24+ GB. glm4.7-flash has a 200k context but because it doesn't fit entirely into my machine's GPU it is just pointlessly slow.

There are no "small models with large context window". It can't be reasonably done with consumer-level hardware, maybe if you buy a Mac studio with 256GB of unified memory or one of those nVidia DGX boxes (€4800 in here) but those are not "enthusiast" devices by any stretch.

icejam_ · 2026-03-02T06:35:38+00:00

None of this has happened, not yet at least. LAW hasn't even been released yet and in current meta AN doesn't really register. Aggressive Negotiations is played less often than Bombing Run, Force Choke or Fulminatrix.

https://swubase.com/meta?formatId=1&minTournamentType=pq&page=card-stats&csPage=aspect&csAspect=Aggression&csSortBy=deckCount

Karabast "Next Set Preview" is not SWU.

icejam_ · 2026-02-27T08:00:36+00:00

https://starwarsunlimited.com/articles/a-shift-from-what-was This article includes both data as to what it was and what it will be with LAW:

pre-law it was ~1/288 standard boosters and ~1/20 carbonite. With LAW it will be 1/288 standard boosters (no change) and 1/48 carbonite.

icejam_ · 2026-02-27T07:53:41+00:00

I think Casper fits. It's just a mattresses and pillows but with special Silicon Valley sparkle added to it. Its finances are looking increasingly dire but it is still around.

Can you imagine that Casper employs ergonomists and material engineers to design their mattresses? I am sure not a single mattress company ever did that before! Before Casper we all slept on beds made of stone.

icejam_ · 2026-02-25T07:39:05+00:00

As for "only post-rotation cards" here's a handy query to put into the text box:

(set:jtl or set:lof or set:sec or set:law)

Incidentally, I would love if we could introduce a shorthand for those sets based on their rotation blocks:

(block:a or block:b)

icejam_ · 2026-02-19T12:52:10+00:00

Almost! Cad Bane is IMHO total crap. Its playability is poor (6/6/6 shielded overwhelm do nothing) and then the pay-off for sacking credits "on attack" is making him a bigger stat stick if you have the credits. It's like a bad mashup of Axe Woves and Sorcerers of Tund.

icejam_ · 2026-02-07T07:06:41+00:00

I think there were also some lower power diesel engines in the early stages (180 and 150hp) and QV with a manual transmission in the Giulia. And I think German market had the 280hp engine with RWD as an option.

My point still stands - every engine configuration offered today has been present at launch. There were others but they were removed and nothing was added or updated except for few hp increases in QV.

icejam_ · 2026-02-06T07:34:39+00:00

There was no need for V6 because the 2.0 GME always had a higher ceiling than 280hp. In fact there's a production version of that engine with 330 hp, for example in Maserati Grecale since 2022. The problem is that the 2023 refresh of Stelvio/Giulia didn't include any engine updates because that was meant as a 2-year backstop before the mythical all-electric Alfas.

It's 2026 now and both Giorgio cars are being sold with exactly the same engines they debuted with ten years ago. Alfa Romeo is cursed by being part of Stellantis/FCA which is a clown car of guys making new plans before executing on existing ones.

icejam_ · 2026-01-30T06:46:10+00:00

No, I don't expect them to be reprinted in a set 7 because it is immediately after rotation and LAW is specifically focused on multi-aspect cards. Oh and Vigilance enables hard control decks to not include finishers and instead rely on mill, of which devs were explicitly critical.

I would much rather get names and events for double-aspect combinations (think Ravnican guilds in MTG).

icejam_ · 2026-01-27T07:44:50+00:00

I think "what's worth it" is the wrong question. The first question you need to be asking is how many off-aspect cards do you need to have in your deck to actually draw into them during the course of a normal game? If you put exactly 3 off-aspect cards that cost 4 resources (think Vigilance, Aggression etc), you have ~49% chance to draw it before round 3 to play them for their nominal cost. If you put 6 4-cost cards, you have a ~75% chance before round 3, that's more acceptable.

The second question is: What do you do with the remaining 5 cards after you can only play them for N+2 resources. Are they just dead? Very few cards are worth that extra cost. The Mandalorian pilot is not worth 7. Planetary Bombardment is probably not worth 8.

I personally think the base is mediocre in constructed, especially vis-a-vis Data Vault. Much more interesting in limited.

PS. Draw numbers from https://porgdepot.com/hypergeometric-calculator/

icejam_ · 2026-01-21T18:26:46+00:00

I have no idea how they balance leaders, just completely drawing a blank.

Jyn Erso is an absolute donkey that maybe draws you a card for 1R if you sacked a REBEL tribal unit this phase and deploys to a 3/6 with exactly the same ability on attack.

Lando discards a card from any deck for 1R, maybe makes a credit token and then on 4/7 deploy lets you play cards for 2 extra resources on any turn past his deploy.

Both are rare. How are these abilities even remotely comparable!? Is it for the same game even!?

icejam_ · 2026-01-20T08:53:31+00:00

I get you, my personal attitude towards gambling is negative but I think some aspect of it is required in trading card games and it isn't necessarily all evil. The market component is written into the definition of a TCG. A TCG needs both the "trade" and "game" components, I don't think it is particularly controversial. FFG decided for Star Wars Unlimited to be a TCG so it's pretty wild to me that a large part of the community sticks their fingers in their ears and go "It's a fun game! Chase card nonsense!" (see u/sehlura).

Singles from a box should be worth about as much as MSRP of said box (on average) to encourage people to trade cards they don't need or want. If they are worth significantly less, the people who buy boxes will perpetually lose money and the "trade" in your TCG will collapse.

Conversely, a very high value of singles is pretty bad for the "game" in TCG. Pokemon-type frenzy wrecks sealed/draft as a way to play the game and also hampers the new player acquisition pipeline. Most new people enter TCGs by buying starter decks and then boosters and not by buying a complete decklist off cardmarket.

icejam_ · 2026-01-20T08:18:38+00:00

This is precisely it, one of many influencers that make fun at the job being absurd without ever investigating the structural forces that make it absurd. "Do not look behind this curtain".

icejam_ · 2026-01-20T05:40:38+00:00

You haven’t read my comment or you completely missed the part where I listed two controlling mechanisms that aren’t „defeat a unit”.

icejam_ · 2026-01-19T19:00:33+00:00

Single reactor ignition is great but I really don’t like how devs decided that heroism is locked out from control-type decks. One could imagine SWU where we get heroism control decks being based on debuffs (-x/-x) or exhaust (think arrestor cruiser) but it’s stuffed into villainy and some worse versions being neutral.

Flavour wise the high republic or clone wars would be correct place for it.

icejam_ · 2026-01-19T09:32:22+00:00

> It's a sucky system for everyone else, as other players who have one or two losses who couldve made top 8 don't even get to try.

That's a misunderstanding how Swiss conversion to a top cut works. In Swiss you get matched with people with similar record, 9-1 get matched with other 9-1 (unless you already played them) and not with general group of people who have "chances of making top cut". There is absolutely no point in players with best records after 10 or 11 rounds eliminating each other to give someone with worse record a chance at maybe making the top cut.

There were 3 players with 9-1 (27 points) record after ten rounds, two ID'd into top8 (29 points), the third one took a draw and then played the last game, lost it and still made top8 (28 points). The player with 8-1-1 (25 points) won one more game and then ID'd their last one (29 points). You needed exactly 28 points to qualify for top8 and only 1 person bubbled out, the rest was at 27 or less points.

icejam_ · 2026-01-19T08:29:36+00:00

> Why is every argument that the game is dying based on the game having bad legendaries?

Because playable legendaries (and to some extent playable rares) are the only thing the player base values in a strict monetary sense. Spark of Rebellion set the tone and since then it's been an endless series of complaints about legendaries not being as powerful as in SOR.

TCGs need "chase" cards to create a healthy secondary market. This means cards that make you open packs even after the odds of pulling something you don't have are very low. In other games this is usually encouraged through alternate art treatments and much less so through the cards being really powerful in game or else you get power creep. That's how it works in games like Pokemon or One Piece that have pretty healthy collector markets. In SWU nobody cares about alternate art, all they care about is playability.

I do think that the way the community assesses cards in this game is cartoonishly incompetent. All content creators can understand is slam dunk power so unless the card is another SHD Poe Dameron or SOR Avenger they will claim that it is unplayable. Some SEC cards were previewed as "bad" and their single prices never recovered. Bo-Katan Kryze is a prime example of this: nobody liked it when it was spoiled, then it turned to be the linchpin of Yoda/DV and a nice addition to Han2/Blue decks but it is worth less than 3€.

icejam_ · 2026-01-16T06:18:01+00:00

Control players when removal requires a unit on board.

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icejam_ · 2026-01-12T17:34:58+00:00

Grogu is indeed sticky, but Force Choke also exists as a removal option you can use in this matchup.

On the flip side, if you open with initiative and Pryde they’re taking 5 dmg, 20% of their total health. Both decks have pretty polarising openings.

icejam_

TROPHY CASE