He Star Wars: Unlimited The Boba Fett (Collecting the Reward) card is now suspended from play in the Premier format. The announcement of the change was made by lead designer Danny Schaefer in a blog post published Wednesday. He also called the card “a development error.” While Boba Fett is not banned entirely, he will have limited usefulness starting November 8th.
“If we had known back then what we know now,” Schefer said, “we would never have let it go to print with that combination of skills, statistics and cost of implementation.”
According to Schaefer, the Boba Fett card in question, a leader card, was included in the decks of 55% of winners in a recent competitive tournament. For a game with 54 different leader cards at the time of publication, that represents a major design issue. Schaefer writes that the decision to suspend the card was not made lightly, but was preferred to alternative methods, including an outright ban or withdrawal, as is common with competitors. Flesh and blood.
“He is the most serious power-level outlier, and his power-level problems are exacerbated because he is a leader,” Schaefer writes. And he's right: every time players sit down at the table, they get to choose their leaders, who start each game in play at the table. Leaders also set the tone for the rest of the deck.
“Leaders have a special weight in this game because they define archetypes, because you are guaranteed access to them in every game, and because a deck can only have one leader,” he writes. “Boba Fett's combination of stats and abilities have proven to be too far ahead. [preventing] other mid-level leaders […] to be viable in the metagame. Regardless of what specific card options in these decks change from set to set, it would probably be optimal to have leader Boba Fett at the helm.”
Star Wars: Unlimited released in March 2024 to near universal critical acclaim. Reviewers, including here at Polygon, praised developers Fantasy Flight Games for the TCG's fast and powerful gameplay. Combining a beloved IP with a novel two-lane combat style, with ground and space forces segregated on separate sides of the battlefield, is still a winning combination.
Schaefer left the door open for Boba Fett (Collecting the Bounty) to return from suspension at a later date.
The news of the suspension comes during a transition period for TCGs globally. Not only were more new, high-profile TCGs released in 2023 and 2024 than in previous years, 800-pound gorilla Magic: The Gathering It's also making big changes in how often it reinforces its own unique narrative with its biggest fans. He Magic The community has also recently been reeling from card bans, leading to threats of violence, including death threats against volunteers.
Polygon has reached out to Fantasy Flight for additional clarification and will update this story accordingly.