userGuide.md

Sealed: User Guide

dmgCtrl Sealed lets you play Star Wars: Unlimited Sealed games against an AI opponent, using a deck built from your own sealed pool.

The ? in the header opens this help, showing the part that covers the screen you're on: choosing and importing decks on the deck screen, playing the game once you're in one. It opens over what you were doing rather than replacing it, so opening it mid-game costs you nothing. Click anywhere outside it, or press Escape, to go back.

Importing a deck

1. Build your sealed deck in ProtectThePod and copy its JSON export to the clipboard.
2. On the deck selection screen, paste the JSON into the Import deck box and press Import.
3. A legal Sealed deck needs exactly 1 leader, exactly 1 base, and at least 30 other cards, unless the base itself says otherwise (Data Vault asks for 10 more, Thermal Oscillator for 5 fewer). The importer will tell you if something is missing.

Your decks are saved on this device and appear in the deck list. Every card a deck in that list names is fetched and cached locally as soon as it is there, leader and base first, so a deck you import now, or one saved from an earlier visit, can be viewed and played without you fetching anything yourself.

At the top of the right-hand column, above the card catalogue note, an Implemented cards panel shows how many card abilities are currently built into the engine. It starts collapsed: the heading, the count across every set (tokens included) and a progress bar. Click the Implemented cards heading to open the breakdown, and again to close it; it is closed again the next time you open the app. The breakdown lists each set, newest first, under its legality (current sets, then Rotated out, then Other sets), and each set is one line with its count and percentage. Every set starts closed; click a set's line to open its row per card type: leaders, bases, units, upgrades, events and tokens. A token counts for every set that prints it once the engine creates it, so Shield and Experience count in each set of the cycle. Cards not yet implemented still play: they just use their printed stats and keywords (and make fine resources) rather than their special ability text.

Caching a full set

There is nothing to fetch by hand, and for the sets in the Set pickers there is nothing to fetch at all: their cards come with the app. A generator can build from any of them on your first visit, and a generated deck plays, even on a day the card service cannot be reached. Card art is the exception: it is still downloaded as cards are shown, and a card whose art cannot be loaded shows a text summary instead. The app itself still needs a connection to open.

Each generator panel names its set on its summary line with the number of cards behind it, after a moment of Caching HMW… while the set is read. If a set's cards cannot be read from the app, the panel downloads the set instead and reports that there: a running count, the number of cards once it lands, and the reason if it fails.

A deck you import names the exact printings you own. The standard printing of a card in one of those sets needs no download either; a Hyperspace, foil, prestige or showcase printing, or a card from a set the pickers do not list, is downloaded once and kept on this device. Only the cards your own decks name are fetched, and nothing already here is fetched again. The Card catalogue column is a reference: it shows how much of each set the engine implements.

Choosing an opponent

The deck screen has three columns: your deck on the left, the opponent in the middle, and the card catalogue on the right.

The Opponent selector controls which deck the AI plays:

• Random generated deck (the default): a fresh deck built for every game, from the set of the deck you play unless you choose another (see below). Until that set holds enough cards to fill a whole deck, a random built deck is used instead, and Generate says the set cannot fill a deck.
• Random built deck: one of your imported decks at random (it may pick the same deck you're playing).
• A specific deck: choose any imported deck by name.

Each generator has its own Set picker: one in the Random generated deck panel for the deck you play, one in the Generated opponent panel for the deck the AI plays. Both start on the newest set. Same set as my deck (on by default) builds the generated opponent from the set of whichever deck you play: your generated deck's set, or for an imported deck the set of its leader (a deck mixing sets is matched to its leader's set only). An imported deck's set is read first if it hasn't been yet, so the game can take a moment to start. Untick it to choose the opponent's set yourself and play a deck from one set against an opponent from another. Each panel names the set it builds from and how many of its cards are here (see Caching a full set above). A deck is built from a single set, so the two pools are never mixed.

Below the opponent's set, Generated opponent chooses the leader and base aspect the generated deck is built around, and either can stay random. Both come from the opponent's chosen set, so switching sets drops a leader that the new set doesn't print (switch back and it returns). A random pick never pairs a leader with a base of an aspect the leader already has, since one colour rarely fills a deck; choose both yourself to get that pairing anyway, which is what makes cards with a doubled aspect (two Aggression icons, say) playable. It only applies while the opponent is a random generated deck, and it's the way to watch how the AI plays a particular leader.

How a generated deck is built, for yours and the opponent's alike:

• No aspect penalties. Every aspect icon on every card is paid by the leader and base, so a card with two Aggression icons only appears in a deck whose leader and base both bring Aggression. A card with another way to be played counts when that way is paid: The Mandalorian prints two Cunning but pilots for one, and a Smuggle cost can carry aspects of its own.
• Any base of the colour. The deck is built on any of the set's bases of its colour, not the same one each time. A rare base turns up in about one deck in 25, as it would from opening packs, and takes the place of one of the deck's rare cards.
• Deck size follows the base. A Thermal Oscillator deck has 25 cards and a Data Vault deck 40; the curve, card-type and rarity limits scale with it.
• Homeworlds worlds. Where a colour has several world bases (Tatooine, Naboo, Endor, Kashyyyk), the deck takes the world its cards name most, and any of them where none does.

The screen remembers your choices on this device: both sets, Same set as my deck, the opponent, and the generated opponent's leader and base aspect come back as you left them, after a game or a reload. A remembered deck you have since removed falls back to Random generated deck. Generated decks themselves are never kept.

The current AI opponent plays random legal moves. It exists to exercise the full rules engine; smarter opponents are on the roadmap.

Improving the bot

The AI bot gets better by learning from real games. If you opt in, each game you finish is sent to train it.

What is sent: both decks as loaded, every decision made in the game by you and the bot, who won, how long it took, and the app version.

What is not sent: your name, your deck names, or anything else that identifies you. There is no account, and your IP address is not linked to games. Because of that, a game cannot be traced back to you, and it also cannot be found and deleted later.

This data export is disabled unless you turn it on, and you can change it at any time in Settings.

Turning it off stops future games being sent and does not recall games already sent.

Playing a game

Press Play next to your deck. Cards hydrate, both players draw 6, and the board appears in the setup step: choose Keep hand or Mulligan (shuffle your hand back and draw a fresh 6, once only; whoever holds the initiative decides first). Then resource 2 cards, one pick at a time: click a hand card to resource it, and you can also just avoid resourcing your early plays. Aim to keep a curve: something to play on turn 1 (cost ≤ 2), turn 2 (≤ 3), turn 3 (≤ 4). Once both players have resourced 2, round 1 begins. Resourcing is private: the log shows only that your opponent resourced, never which card.

The AI opponent mulligans any hand without a turn-1 play and resources the pair of cards that best preserves its early curve.

The board

• The battlefield: laid out like the tabletop around a central battlefront. The Space (left) and Ground (right) lanes flank a central strip holding the bases and your leader: reading down the middle you'll find the opponent's base, your base, then your leader, so the two bases meet at the battlefront. Units line up along the battlefront (level with the bases); as you play more, they stack further back, the opponent's toward the top, yours toward the bottom. Sentinels are held at the front, closest to the battlefront.
• The bars: each player's resources, hand, deck and discard sit in a bar across their side of the play area: the opponent bar above (with the opponent's leader centred above their base) and your bar below. Your bar also holds the action buttons; your hand is the widest area in it.
• Cards: each card is shown as its card art (power and health are on the art itself). Any damage a unit has taken is shown as a red token (white number) over the middle of the card art, like a physical token; it stays upright even when the card is rotated, and keeps the card's name, ability text and stats visible. Cards are drawn at a fixed size in a uniform square slot and in their true orientation: units stand portrait when ready and rotate landscape (sideways, dimmed) when exhausted; a deployed leader shows its unit side. The square slots mean cards never overlap, even when rotated. A highlight hugs the card edge when it's selectable, a target, or your playable hand card. A target's colour says what the effect will do to it: green is good for it (a buff, a heal, a Shield, Experience or Advantage token, readying it), red is bad for it (damage, a debuff, a Weakness token, defeat, or an attack), yellow is something cunning (exhausting, capturing, returning it to hand, taking control of it, or picking which of your units does the deed), and white attaches an upgrade card to it, which you judge for yourself. Blue means the unit you've selected. Bases take the same colours: attacking the opponent's base is red, healing your own is green. If a card's art can't be loaded, the card instead shows a text summary (cost, name, power/HP, keywords and abilities) so it's always readable.
• Upgrades & tokens: an upgrade attached to a unit sits behind the unit card, its ability text and power/health modifier protruding below; several stack. Effects also place tokens on a unit, drawn as labelled pills over the art (damage stays a small red square), one pill per kind with the count in it: Shield (blue, "Shd. 1") soaks the next instance of damage then pops, Experience (green, "+1 +1" per token), Advantage (gold, "Adv. 1", +1/0 on its next attack or defence), and Weakness (purple, "-1 -1" per token; a unit it takes to 0 health is defeated). A Shield or Advantage token that gets spent is defeated, exactly as a card upgrade is, so cards that watch for a defeated upgrade (Zeb Orrelios, Baylan Skoll) react to it. A stat change that isn't printed on the card or an attached upgrade, whether a temporary "this phase" boost (e.g. from a leader ability), a constant aura from another card (e.g. a leader buffing your units) or the unit's own conditional bonus (e.g. Clone Combat Squadron's +1/+1 for each other friendly space unit), shows as a white +X +Y buff pill; a reduction shows as a dark grey -X -Y debuff pill, and a mix of the two shows both. Stat pills show the power figure in the top-left corner and the health figure in the bottom-right, in bold: red and blue on the white buff pill, like the physical token, and white on the debuff, Experience and Weakness pills. A "this phase" boost clears at the end of the phase (a unit only that boost was keeping alive is then defeated); an aura lasts while its source is in play. A Hidden or Sentinel unit shows a small badge (Sentinel overrides Hidden: a hidden unit that gains Sentinel becomes attackable and drops the Hidden badge). A defeated card-upgrade returns to its owner's discard (which may not be the unit's controller); tokens simply vanish. An upgrade with Fortify goes on your base instead of a unit: its name is shown along the foot of the base card (hover it to see the card), and whatever it says the base gains works for you while it's there. A base upgrade's Action ability is a button in the Action column, like a unit's. A card that defeats or returns "an upgrade" can take one on a base (one that says "on a unit" cannot): when choosing an upgrade to defeat, click the base, then the upgrade.
• Your own tokens: two kinds of token belong to a player rather than to a unit, and each player's are shown as pills over the foot of the Resources column in their bar, the opponent's included, since both are public. A Credit token (orange, "Cred. 2", with how many are held) is spare money: while you hold any, anything that costs resources asks how you want to pay first, whether that is a card from your hand, a card played from somewhere else (Smuggle, a discard pile, your resources), a leader's or a unit's action, or a "you may pay" a card offers. The prompt names what you are paying for and how much, with a Defeat a Credit token button that makes it cost 1 less each time you press it, and Done once your ready resources cover what's left. You are asked even when your resources would cover all of it, because it is your call which to spend: press Done straight away to keep your tokens. The tokens you picked are defeated as the cost is paid, so the count drops then, and cancelling the prompt takes the whole action back with nothing spent. A card that lets units pay as resources (Vuutun Palaa's Droids) is asked in the same prompt: click a highlighted unit to exhaust it for 1, alongside the Credit button if you hold both. A unit can't pay for its own action this way. The Force token (teal, "Force") shows that the Force is with that player: a player has one or none, a card that says "the Force is with you" creates it, and a card that says "use the Force" defeats it to get its effect. A pill is only there while its player holds the token.
• Zoom: hold Shift and move the mouse over a card to enlarge it at full size for reading (or long-press on a touch screen); release, or move away, to dismiss. Zoom needs Shift so plain hovering doesn't get in the way of making a play. While zoomed, hold Alt over a leader to see its other (unit) side.
• Your hand: clickable cards are highlighted: blue when a click will play the card (action phase), green when a click will resource it (setup/regroup). Cards you can't act on are dimmed. A card's shown cost includes any aspect penalty (+2 per aspect icon your leader and base don't provide).
• Your move: playing, resourcing and attacking are done by clicking: click a playable hand card to play it (a unit enters play; an upgrade highlights the units it can attach to, click one to attach, except a Fortify upgrade, which goes straight onto your base), or click a glowing unit then a highlighted target (enemy unit or their base) to attack. When an ability lets you pick a target, including a leader ability (click your leader card to use it, then a highlighted target) or an optional in-combat effect, the valid targets highlight on the board and a Decline button appears for optional ones. A "look at a card", search, choose-a-card, or look at your resources effect (e.g. picking which upgrade to defeat, or playing an upgrade from your resources) shows the card(s) centre-screen for you to pick: click the highlighted card to choose it (cards that aren't valid picks are revealed but dimmed); token cards (Shield, Advantage, Experience, Mandalorian) show their real art, and optional effects have a Cancel button (a "look at a card, then decide" effect, e.g. Reanimated Night Trooper's peek at a deck's top card, instead says Leave (same idea, worded for leaving the card where it is). A search always shows you the cards it looked at, even when none of them match what it was searching for: they are about to go to the bottom of your deck, and knowing which ones is worth having. Press Done to send them there. This is private: your opponent doesn't see it. When an effect then lets you choose where damage lands, the valid units and bases highlight on the board (either base can be chosen when the card says "a base"), and you click one. An effect that spreads damage or healing a point at a time (including indirect damage dealt to you) works the same way: click a highlighted unit or base for each point, with a count of how much is placed shown in the Action column, and Done there when the card lets you stop early. The remaining standing choices (Mulligan, Keep hand, Take the initiative, Pass, and skip resourcing / deploy leader / use a unit's Action ability, including an opponent's unit whose ability any player may use, such as Mercenary Gunship, or your base's Epic Action, which you get once a game) are buttons in the Action column of your bar.
• Undo: off unless you turn it on, under Allow undo in Settings. With it on, an Undo button appears at the foot of the Action column once you've taken an action. It rewinds to just before your last move, including the opponent's reply to it, so one click takes back the whole exchange. You can keep clicking to rewind further, all the way back to the opening mulligan; the button disappears when there's nothing left to take back, and once the game is over. Replaying the same move gives the same response from the opponent, so it isn't a way to re-roll a bad outcome, but it does rewind past a mulligan, a draw or a search, which means deciding again with cards you have already seen. That is why it's a practice tool rather than part of a game: turn it on to try a line again, and expect a game played with it to be worth less as a record of how you played. Games remember how many times you used it, and undone moves are left out of the saved game record.
• Choosing between options: when an ability asks you to pick one of a few answers (choose one effect, pay or exhaust, a "you may" on your leader), it asks in a centre-screen panel with the question and one button per answer, the decline muted. A choice you answer by clicking the board, such as Ambush or another "attack right now", stays on the board: click the unit to attack with and then its target, and Don't ambush (or the decline) is in the Action column.
• Cancelling: when the panel (or any centre-screen prompt) came from your own move, an × in its top corner cancels that move, as if you had never made it: the card goes back to your hand, the resources come back, and you can do something else. It isn't offered once the move has shown you anything hidden (a draw, a search, a look at a hand or the top of a deck) or drawn something random, because going back then would let you decide again knowing the cards, and it isn't offered for anything the opponent's card asked of you. On the opponent's prompts the × on a button panel only puts it aside so you can look at the board: the question stays below the round tracker and Show choice in the Action column brings the panel back. The other centre-screen prompts on the opponent's turn stay until you answer them.
• What am I being asked?: when an ability needs you to choose something on the board, a prompt floats just below the round tracker, between the two bases, saying what's wanted ("choose a unit to deal 2 damage to"), and where the card that caused it is known, it leads with that card. This matters most when the opponent's card is what triggered the decision. You also get one for the steps that aren't resolved by clicking the board: the mulligan (which points you at the Action buttons) and resourcing, both during setup, counting off the two cards you must pick, and at the regroup step where it's optional, because clicking a hand card to resource looks just like clicking one to play it. It stays quiet for the obvious things, playing a card or picking an attacker, so that when it appears it means something. It floats over the board rather than pushing it around, and never blocks a click.
• Card names: any card named in the log or in a prompt is shown in bold and underlined, coloured blue if you control it and amber if the opponent does. Hover the name to see the full card, with no Shift needed, unlike cards on the board. They aren't links; clicking does nothing.
• Card printings: a card can be printed several ways (Normal, Hyperspace, foil, prestige, showcase), each with its own collector number, and your imported deck keeps whichever you own. They all play identically: the game matches your printing to the card it is, so abilities work whatever version you opened, while the board still shows your art. A card reprinted in a later set is the same card too, and plays the same way. If a printing can't be identified (you're offline, say, and that set has never been cached), the card still plays but only with its printed stats and keywords, and a notice above the log names exactly which cards are affected.
• Log: a running record of every action, in a panel on the left of the screen. Under an action, indented and with no You or Opp beside them, are the lines for what it changed: damage and healing on units and bases, upgrades and tokens gained or lost, units entering play, being defeated, leaving play or changing sides, and cards going to a discard pile. They say what happened, not which card caused it, and when one action does several things they are listed together. Damage that only lands once a later choice is answered is listed under that answer. Anything revealed or discarded is named, and you can hover it like any other card name. Hidden cards are never named: what your opponent draws, resources, holds in hand, or moves around their deck shows as "a card" or not at all. Undoing an action takes its lines with it.
• Reporting a bug: off unless you turn it on, under Show the bug report button in Settings. With it on, the bug button in the header (beside the cog and ?) opens a short form for a title and a description. Submitting copies a full report to your clipboard and opens GitHub's new-issue page with the title already filled in and the body left empty, so all you do is paste and submit. The issue is filed under your own GitHub account, so you need to be signed in there. The report carries the whole game so far, so the problem can be replayed exactly rather than guessed at, along with the build number and whether you were on dev or prod. If the clipboard can't be reached, the form stays open with the report shown for you to copy by hand.

Settings

The cog in the header opens Settings, from the deck screen and from inside a game alike. It opens over whatever you're doing, so changing something mid-game costs you nothing: your game is exactly where you left it when you close it, and a change takes effect straight away rather than at the next game. Settings are remembered on this device, in this browser, so they don't follow you to another machine.

• Allow undo: shows the Undo button. Off by default. See Undo above for what it does and why it's a practice tool.
• Show the bug report button: shows the bug button in the game header. Off by default.
• Opponent pace: how quickly the opponent's actions follow one another. The opponent's actions appear one at a time, each with its lines in the log, so you can see what an action did before the next one lands. The pace is the least time between two of them: half a second by default, with quicker and slower choices and Instant, which shows the opponent's whole reply at once. It is not added to the opponent's thinking time: when the opponent takes longer than the pace to decide, its action appears as soon as it is ready. While its actions are still appearing the Action column reads Opponent… and there is nothing for you to click, Undo included; your turn comes back when the last one has been shown. Changing the pace mid-game applies from the opponent's very next action.
• Base health: whether a base shows the damage it has taken, counting up to its printed health (the default, matching the physical game's damage tokens), or the health it has left, counting down to zero. Purely what's drawn on the base card: the game is played and won identically either way.

Turn structure

Players alternate single actions. When both players pass consecutively, the round moves to the regroup phase: anything that happens "when the regroup phase starts" resolves first, then each player draws 2, may put 1 card from hand into resources, then everything readies and a new round begins. In regroup, click any hand card to resource it (or Skip resourcing to resource nothing). Whoever holds the initiative acts first each round: take it during a round to act first in the next one (but you'll pass for the rest of the current one).

A card put into your resource zone by a card ability (Long Live the Empire, The Armorer) arrives exhausted, exactly as one you resource yourself does. It pays for something from the next round, not the action that created it, so ramp buys you a bigger future turn rather than a bigger current one. Only a card that says otherwise in its own text gives you a ready resource.

Some cards play a card back out of a resource zone (The Armorer, Osha), or out of the top of your deck or an opponent's resources. When one does, you get a picker showing that whole zone, with the cards you can play highlighted and the rest dimmed. A resource you play helps pay for itself: it is still a resource while you pay, so a 5-cost card is playable out of a zone holding exactly 5 ready resources, one of which is that card. It leaves the zone as it enters play, and a card that says so replaces it with the top card of your deck.

A card with Smuggle offers this same play on its own, with no picker needed: whenever one sits in your resource zone and you can afford its printed smuggle cost, "Smuggle" shows up as an ordinary move alongside Play a Card, for as long as it stays there. With Tech in play every one of your resources has Smuggle, so a card that prints its own may show two Smuggle moves at different prices. First Light also costs 4 damage to a friendly unit, so it shows one Smuggle move for each unit that could take it. When Lando Calrissian plays a card using Smuggle, the same moves appear at 2 less.

Winning

Deal damage to the opponent's base until it reaches its health before they do the same to you. Each base shows a large number over the card: by default the damage it has taken, counting up to its printed health (which varies from base to base), or the health remaining counting down if you've switched Base health in Settings. If a single action defeats both bases at once, the game is a draw. If your deck runs out, drawing deals 3 damage to your own base per missed card, so don't dawdle.

Conceding. On your turn, Concede at the foot of the Action column ends the game as your loss, after asking you to confirm. The opponent can concede too, but it offers rather than walking away: when its loss is certain, meaning every move it could make leaves you able to finish its base with a single attack on your next action, it offers to concede, once a game. Accept to take the win, or Decline to play it out; it won't ask again that game. The game-over screen says when a game ended by concession.

Keywords, upgrades & card abilities

The rules engine runs the cards, not just the board:

• Keywords apply: Sentinel (enemies in the same arena must attack it, so a unit able to reach across arenas is not forced by a Sentinel in the other one; a unit with Sentinel can always be attacked, even if a card says it can't be), Saboteur (ignores Sentinel and defeats the defender's Shields before it attacks), Raid, Grit, Overwhelm, Restore, Ambush (may attack the moment it enters play; declining leaves it exhausted, as a played unit normally enters, unless it would have entered ready anyway, as a deployed leader does), Shielded (is given a Shield token when it's played or deployed), Hidden (can't be attacked for the rest of the phase it was played in, unless it has Sentinel), Support (lends its abilities to another attacker), and Advantage.
• Exploit lets you defeat some of your own units as you play the card, each making it 2 cheaper. A card with Exploit is playable whenever the most it could save would make it affordable. Click it and the game asks for your units first, before anything is paid: click each unit to exploit, then Done. Done appears only once what is left to pay is affordable, and reaching the card's Exploit number plays it straight away. The exploited units' when defeated abilities go into the same queue as the card's own when played, so you order them together. The Marauder works the same way, dealing 1 damage to each unit you pick and costing 1 less for each. Greater Sarlacc does it with your ready resources instead: pick each resource to defeat from the menu, and it costs 3 less for each one.
• Upgrades attach to a unit, yours or the enemy's, and modify power/health, grant keywords, or add abilities. Fortify upgrades attach to your own base instead, never a unit.
• Piloting: a Pilot card can be played as a unit, or for its Piloting cost as an upgrade on one of your Vehicles without a Pilot (one Pilot per Vehicle unless a card says otherwise). Clicking the card plays it as a unit; each way to play it as a Pilot is a Play … as a Pilot button in the Action column, naming the cost and the Vehicle. As an upgrade it adds the +X/+Y printed beside its own stats and only what its text gives the "attached unit": its own keywords and unit abilities stay behind. "When played as an upgrade" fires only for the Pilot play, "When played as a unit" only for the unit play. A defeated Pilot goes to its owner's discard like any upgrade. Some cards move between the two once in play: a unit that attaches itself to a Vehicle (Poe Dameron, Sidon Ithano, L3-37 instead of being defeated, Phantom II onto The Ghost) loses its upgrades and damage, and a Pilot moved to the ground arena as a unit (Eject, Luke Skywalker instead of being defeated) arrives exhausted. Luke always takes that move.
• Pilot leaders: a leader with the Pilot trait and a printed +X/+Y (most JTL leaders) can deploy as a unit or as an upgrade on one of your Vehicles without a Pilot: each Vehicle is a Deploy … as a Pilot on … button beside Deploy. The Vehicle becomes a leader unit and gets the leader's +X/+Y and what its text gives the "attached unit"; "When deployed as an upgrade" fires only for that deploy. If the Vehicle or the leader upgrade is defeated or returned to hand, the leader goes back to your base zone exhausted, as a defeated leader unit does, and cannot deploy again (Poe Dameron's own action can still flip him onto a Vehicle once he readies).
• Playing from a discard pile: a card that lets you play a card out of a discard pile ("for this phase, you may play that card from your discard pile"), and a card whose own Action works from your discard pile (Kylo's TIE Silencer, Salvaged Blaster, Brutal Traditions), each shows as a Play … from your discard pile button in the Action column, naming the cost and, for an upgrade, the unit it goes on. "Discarded from your hand or deck" means exactly that: a defeated unit or a played event reaches the pile without being discarded.
• Looking at the top card of your deck: while a card says you may look at the top card of your deck at any time (Hondo Ohnaka in play, or Intelligence Agency on your base), your deck in your bar is outlined like anything else you can click. Click it to see the top card centre-screen, as often as you like and on either player's turn, and click outside it to put it away. Looking is not a move: it costs nothing, uses no action, adds nothing to the log, and your opponent is not told what the card is or that you looked. The outline goes when the card that allowed it leaves play or loses its abilities.
• Grand Admiral Thrawn's look: Thrawn prints "When the action phase starts: Look at the top card of each player's deck" on both sides. If he is your leader, each round opens with both cards shown centre-screen, yours and your opponent's, each labelled with whose deck it is on. It is free and there is nothing to choose: press Done, or click beside the cards, and the round begins. You see them at that moment only, not later in the round. It is private: the log records that you finished looking and never which cards they were, and when your opponent's Thrawn looks, nothing is shown on your side. A deck with no cards left shows nothing, and if both are empty you are not asked. When both players lead with Thrawn you are first asked whose ability resolves first, as for any two abilities that trigger together.
• Unique cards (star by the name) are one-per-player. Come to control a second copy of a unique upgrade or unit and you choose one of the two to defeat: pick the upgrade in the centre-screen prompt, or click the duplicate unit on the board. (Your opponent controlling their own copy is fine, as the limit is per player.)
• Card abilities resolve, including triggered effects (when played, when defeated, when an attack ends, which still fires even if the attacker was defeated in the combat, when a unit readies, on attack/defence), activated Action abilities, and the interactive choices they raise (pay-or-exhaust, play a revealed card free, deal damage, search-and-discard, an optional follow-up attack, and so on).
• Leader abilities: some leaders have an ability you use while they're undeployed (click your leader card, then a highlighted target). Once deployed, the leader is a unit on the board with its own (usually stronger) ability, keywords and stats.
• When both of you have abilities waiting — say two units trade in combat and each has a when defeated ability — a centre-screen prompt asks who resolves first. It lists both sides' waiting abilities and the card each came from, and you pick I resolve first or They resolve first. It's your call because you're the player taking the action, and it's the only thing you choose: how the opponent orders their own abilities is up to them. Nothing else can be clicked until you answer, because the order changes what the later abilities find, though when your own move set the abilities off its × cancels the move (see Cancelling).
• When several of your own abilities trigger at once, a second prompt asks which resolves next, with one button per waiting ability, each naming the card it came from. That matters more than it sounds: a single unit often carries two, its own ability and one granted by an upgrade attached to it, and the card name is the only thing telling them apart. Where two of the buttons would read identically (two copies of the same card, each with the same ability) they're numbered instead. There's no way to decline here, because all of them will resolve; the only question is the sequence. Turning one down happens later, on the ability's own prompt when its turn comes: anything worded "you may" arrives with a Decline (or "Don't") button, and anything that isn't has nothing to decline.
• The order you pick is real. Each ability finishes completely before the next starts, so an earlier one changes what the later ones find: deploy a leader first and it's a friendly unit that the next ability can target, clear a lane first and the attack that follows has different options. That's why the game asks rather than choosing for you. It doesn't ask when there's nothing to decide: one ability firing several times off a single event (a unit losing three upgrades at once), or an ability whose "if…" condition isn't met at that moment.
• Shielded and Ambush are ordered like any other ability. Play a unit with both while there's an enemy unit it can attack, and the which resolves next prompt offers "Give a Shield token to this unit" and "You may attack with this unit". Take the attack first and the unit takes the hit, then gets its Shield, which it keeps; take the Shield first and the Shield soaks the hit and is gone. A unit with Grit, like Mae, usually wants the attack first: the damage is power, and the Shield is still to come. Whatever you leave for later waits until the whole attack is over. The same goes for a Shielded unit whose other ability could do something with the Shield, and for a leader that deploys with both. You aren't asked when the order couldn't show: a Shielded unit with nothing else to resolve, an Ambush with nothing to attack, or an ability that ends up in the same place either way (healing your base, giving a token to a different unit) all just get their Shield first.
• An unmet "if…" gets a second look. Abilities that can do something go first, and the board is checked again afterwards, so one of them can switch another on. Play Luke Skywalker with two units out and his "if you control at least 4 units" is short by one, until you take Grogu's deploy, which makes four and lets Luke's sweep fire. He isn't spent while the condition is still unmet.
• Ambush and Support wait their turn too. Both are abilities that trigger on playing the unit, so they queue up with everything else that play set off, and you choose where they go in the sequence. A unit whose when played clears the way can do that before it takes its Ambush attack.
• "Instead" abilities ask at the moment they apply. Queen Amidala's offer to defeat another friendly unit sharing a trait with her comes as the damage is about to land, mid-combat included: one button per unit you could defeat, or Take the damage, and the attack carries on once you answer. Vice Admiral Rampart asks whenever an upgrade on your base would be defeated, even by your own card's cost or by the opponent's card: defeat him and the upgrade stays, and whatever defeated it still goes ahead. Ty Yorrick's "plus 1" is applied for you without asking: to your abilities' damage to an opponent's units and base, never to your own side.
• Winning ends everything immediately. If a base hits 0 while abilities are still waiting, they're discarded unresolved and you go straight to the result. A card that would have been revealed or played simply isn't.

Every upgrade and every leader (both sides) in the ASH set is implemented, and so are most leaders from the other sets. A leader whose ability isn't built yet still plays with its printed stats and keywords. Some leaders say When Deployed: that ability fires as the leader unit arrives. Cards whose ability text isn't built still make fine resources.

After the game

The result banner offers a Rematch (fresh shuffle, same decks) or Back to decks. Completed games are recorded on-device for future analysis.

---

dmgCtrl is an unofficial fan site and is not produced by or endorsed by Fantasy Flight Games, Lucasfilm or Disney. The Star Wars Unlimited cards, logos and art used on the site are property of Disney and/or Fantasy Flight Games.