There’s an interesting conflict around leaders in Star Wars Unlimited. On one hand it’s neither realistic nor good for the game for every leader card to be a meta contender – some strategies are just inherently less good than others. On the other hand, though, a major draw to the game is of course the Star Wars branding and people want to play with their favorite characters. And then “favorite characters” differs from person-to-person, which means it’s really just coming down to the luck of the draw. If you went into set 1 excited to build a Sabine deck that probably went pretty well for you, but if you’ve been waiting all year to build a good Finn deck I don’t really know what to tell you.

Except I do know what to tell you, I guess, because that’s the problem I want to fix. I love Cassian Andor as a character. Morally complex criminal turned ruthless spy is a fantastic character concept, and Diego Luna made him the breakout character of Rogue One for me even before the incredible Andor series was announced. Unfortunately, though, the leader kinda sucks.

It took me awhile to accept that there’s a TCG where generating card advantage for 1 resource wasn’t good enough, and to be fair it’s one of the things he does have going for him. Ultimately, however, he’s just not good enough to lead any deck that isn’t extremely casual, and he doesn’t have the support in the Limited environment he’s printed in to see any play there either. But we can fix that.

When you’re looking to make a leader playable it’s easy to say “oh change his deploy to 5” or “give him extra stats”, but that’s kind of boring? Sure it’s true, but I could make any leader meta by just saying “okay deploy on turn 4 as a 6/6”. Instead I want to analyze his abilities, gameplay niche, stats, and theming to figure out what’s working about this leader and what isn’t – and then design the ultimate version of this Cassian Andor leader, and maybe some support cards while we’re at it.

What’s Working?

The theming and niche for Cassian is really good and interesting. He’s definitively a midrange leader, something red heroism doesn’t have a lot of so far, and providing a value reward for chipping damage from your opponent’s base each turn is a compelling premise. It’s easy to see where Cassian’s spy theming comes in here, asking you to sneak past your enemy’s guard and leave with a bit of intel. This is reinforced by his unit side having Saboteur, enabling him to bypass sentinels, hit the base, and draw a card all at once.

When it comes to themed cards and support, we do see a little bit for Cassian. He cares about dealing 3 damage each turn and having card advantage over your opponent, both of which are supported by the “When Defeated” effect on Cassian’s companion droid K-2SO. We also see For A Cause I Believe In, a direct damage event that can deal that important 3 damage from hand and set up your next draws. Heroic Sacrifice is also arguably included in this support in that it replaces itself in hand and makes any unit with at least 1 power deal 3 damage, but that’s a bit of a stretch – it’s more of a combo with K-2SO than it is with Cassian himself.

But these support cards have one more thing in common that we’ll note for now and come back to later: They all involve moving cards to your discard pile, which is frequently used in the context of self sacrifice. Interesting. I bet we can do something with that.

What Isn’t Working?

There are quite a few things holding Cassian back from being a playable meta leader, one of the most prominent of which is that there are simply better options. Red Heroism has Sabine, Han Solo #2, Anakin Skywalker, and Poe Dameron covering a wide range of deck archetypes and providing more powerful effects. This gives us a solid power floor for buffing our leader: within its own niche, and with the deck built around his abilities, Cassian needs to outshine the other options.

Past that, Cassian’s ability is a bit underpowered. Drawing a card for 1 isn’t bad per se, but in a game where you’re drawing two cards per turn card advantage has proven to be less important. If we’re keeping the damage condition, which I think is a flavorful part of the leader’s identity, then there’s room to either remove the cost from the ability or to add a little extra spice to it.

Lastly we reach the deploy, which is quite rough for Cassian. A 4/6 on 6 is definitely under-statted, with that stat line frequently showing up on faster 5 resource deploys. Saboteur helps Cassian a bit in that he can always hit base, but the ability to draw one card per turn without paying isn’t nearly a strong enough ability to make up for his late deploy and squishy stats. Even with powerful abilities and better stats, however, many 6 cost leaders struggle with the same fundamental problem as Cassian: at 6 resources, a leader deploy needs to be very high impact as both a leader and as a unit.

Bringing It All Together

I like the midrange identity of Cassian, I think that’s an archetype Red Heroism wants and needs. The card draw condition on his leader side provides important theming, and I want to keep that, so we definitely have room to tune up his leader ability. His deploy is quite bad compared to other 6 drop leaders with lots of room to improve it. When we consider the throughline of sacrificing in his support cards and theming, though, I think I see where all this extra power can come from.

Our leader side changes are pretty straightforward here. We keep the core of “deal 3 damage to a base and then pay 1 to draw a card”, but by looking at a second card and choosing one to discard we can improve our card quality at the same time we improve our card quantity.

The unit side, on the other hand, is greatly changed. Instead of continuing to draw cards, which we may have done quite a bit by now, we’re going to get some immediate splashy impact by looking through our discard pile for a “When Defeated” ability. This ties nicely into his leader changes, which now let you load up your discard with relevant effects for the deploy, but it also provides extra synergies with the themed cards. Cassian can now use K-2SO’s “When Defeated” effect, he can tactically stack the discard with For A Cause I Believe In rather than saving it as a last second finisher, and he can really make the Heroic Sacrifice himself.

We of course keep the Saboteur keyword, which is flavorful, and we up his stats just a tad. Rather than the typical 4/7 statline of most 6 deploys, however, this Cassian is built as a 5/6 to get in, hit the base with one big strike, and then pressure your opponent into the relatively easy kill to give you the last piece of value (unless they’d prefer you keep hitting them).

More Support!

I’ll leave the act of digging through existing “When Defeated” effects to you, because I know that’s the fun part of a new leader reveal. But obviously I couldn’t just force this leader to exist in a vacuum, so here are a few other cards I’ve designed to work alongside this Cassian.

How did I do? Is this new Cassian totally busted? Still under powered? Is there another leader I should redesign next? I’m just getting started, so let me know in the comments!