New Terminology, New Mechanics – Looking at Bounty / Bounties in Star Wars Unlimited

Last week, Asmodee Canada and Fantasy Flight Games sent over a few of the products that will be launching in stores when the second set of Star Wars Unlimited hits store shelves. While many trading card games will run a few sets before changing some key game mechanics – i.e., Disney adding Locations in their third release), Fantasy Flight Games has opted to make a change right away with the second set, and what we can expect is looking pretty promising. Here is our early thoughts on the new Bounty mechanic in Star Wars Unlimited – Shadows of the Galaxy!

Bounties are an interesting keyword addition to the game, and in general it’s not a positive keyword to have on your cards! Cards with bounties give rewards to your opposition when they manage to defeat or capture your unit, which adds another layer of player interaction to an already heavy interactive experience. It makes player decisions that much more impactful. The decision of how and where to make your attacks now has an additional wrinkle. “If I defeat that unit, I get that bounty, and it’s pretty good. However, should I make a different choice.”

These choices matter, because the trade off of having a built in bounty on your cards is that the cards themselves are generally more powerful – either having stronger than normal attack and defence stats, or having a really good unique ability. In some cases, it’s a simple situation of having an usually expensive card for what you get in stats being able to be played much sooner in the game because of a cheap purchase cost. It’s great as an early game card, but when defeated your opponent will get some type of bonus. Weighing the risk of playing a card, or building cards into your deck for certain points in the game, adds another layer of depth to the experience that I have really enjoyed so far.

In a very thematic sense, bounty Upgrade cards are also another great addition to the game, that not only changes how things play out from one turn to the next, but also add a heavy dose of thematic elements to the game. I know that trading card games are less tied up in how thematic a game is, but casual players coming from a predominantly board game focused thought process will enjoy this additional card type. These upgrade bounty cards generally provide no benefits, and it is likely you will spend your time playing these onto your opponents cards, giving them the keyword bounty and providing you a bonus when they are defeated or captured. Bounties are a big thing in the Star Wars Universe, and this essentially let you, in a thematic sense, have your leader place a bounty on an opposing character. That’s really cool, if you ask me.

You might be asking yourself, what is with all these bounties if there aren’t any bounty hunters? Rest assured friend, those exist as well and also provide benefits around the Bounty keyword. Bounty Hunters, when in play, receive additional benefits if enemy units have the bounty keyword. This could include making bounty hunters cheaper to play, or providing additional stats in combat. s

We have more to write about Star Wars Unlimited – Shadows of the Galaxy, but will save that for a later date. For now, rest assured that at the very least, the inclusion of the Bounty keyword provides an additional layer of theme and strategy into an already fantastic trading card game experience.