Quick Links
Smugglers move goods and materials from one place to another without being detected by hiding them in secret cargo bays or by bribing officials to overlook their illegal contraband. InStar Wars: Unlimited, you may smuggle your own goods into play by hiding them in your resources, allowing you to get the drop on your opponent by playing cards they didn’t even realize that you had.
Smuggling fundamentally changes the game by allowing you to use cards as resources but still play them. This can lead to exciting new plays and take your opponents by surprise.
What Is Smuggle?
Smuggle isa mechanic that allows you to play cards that you previously set as resourcesas though they were in your hand. If a card has the Smuggle [Y] ability and is set as a resource, you can pay [Y] to play it as if it was in your hand. This bypasses the rule that you must have a card in your hand to play it, and counts as being played.
Just like Yu-Gi-Oh’s face-down cards, Magic’s morph and disguise mechanics, and Pokemon’s face-down Active and Benched Pokemon during setup, the face of a resource is considered hidden information. you’re able to look at your resources at any time, and then set them face down again.
Since the Smuggled card counts as being played, all"When Played" effects still trigger. If the card is a unit, it enters exhausted, and if it’s an event, it goes to the discard pile, exactly like if you had played it from your hand.
The Smuggle mechanic is remarkably forgiving in terms of resources:A resource can be exhausted to pay its own Smuggle cost, and when you play it you immediately set the top card of your deck as a new exhausted resource. So, while you won’t lose resources as a result of smuggling them into play,you may end up with important cards lost to your resource zone.
Since you may always look at your resources, Smuggle encourages you to play more cards with Smuggle so that the cards you put into play as resources from your deck can still be used.
If you manage to run out of cards in your deck, you can still use Smuggle: You still lose your resource, but do not replace it. Since replacing the resource is not considered drawing, you do not put any damage on your base.
How To Use Smuggle
The Smuggle mechanic allows for a lot of flexibility in deckbuilding, allowing you to incorporate it into almost any build. There are several ways that you may incorporate Smuggle into your deck, even if you aren’t focusing on the theme or mechanic.
One of the decision points you’ll occasionally struggle with is deciding which of your cards you’re willing to give up to set as a resource.Smuggle alleviates a lot of that struggleby allowing you to set expensive cards like Pirate Battle Tank as one of your resources, and then play it later for a slightly higher cost. That way you don’t need to worry about whether you should hold on to a strong but expensive unit or set it as a resource early.
Just like smugglers bypass trade laws and tariffs,Smuggle also allows you to bypass aspect penalties. For example, Tobias Becket has the Cunning aspect, so he costs two more to play in a deck where neither the leader nor the base has the Cunning aspect. However, his Smuggle cost includes the Vigilance aspect, sohe can be Smuggled into play in a Vigilance deck with no aspect penalty.
Finally,some cards feature an additional ability that triggers when they’re Smuggledinto play. Privateer Crew has two Power and two HP, which is okay for a vanilla unit that costs two resources. But if you Smuggle it in for six resources, it gains three Experience tokens, making it a much stronger five Power, five HP unit. This allows Privateer Crew to be useful both early and late in the game.
Best Cards With Smuggle
The Hotshot DL-44 Blaster, the same model carried by infamous smuggler and part-time nerf herder Han Solo, isan excellent upgrade in Aggression and Cunning decks. It only costs one resource to play from your hand, as long as your Leader or Base has the Aggression aspect, but if you Smuggle it for three resources you canimmediately attack with the unit you equip it tobefore your opponent has a chance to react.
Bazine Netal demonstrates another important aspect of the Smuggle mechanic: hiding your important cards from your opponent’s attempts to make you discard them. By setting her as a resource, if your opponent attempts to discard a card from your hand, they won’t find her. Then, later, you canSmuggle her into play and force your opponent to discard the important cardthey’ve been holding onto.
Usually, units enter the arena exhausted, but Timely Intervention allows you to play a unit and give it Ambush, allowing it toattack an enemy unit immediately. Playing Timely Intervention for its Smuggle cost is slightly more expensive than playing it from your hand, but setting it as a resource allows you to safely hide it away until you need it. After all, you may not have the means or the need to Ambush something in the first few turns.
Tech should work in any Heroism deck, because it allows you toplay all of your resources as if they had Smuggle. This effectively makes your resource area a second hand, relieving all the concern about setting a resource and losing a card. Any card granted Smuggle by this effect is treated as having a Smuggle cost two higher than the normal cost.
Lando Calrissian, another famous smuggler, is a Cunning / Heroism leader thatyou can exhaust to reduce the Smuggle cost of any unit by two, at the additional cost of defeating one of your own resources. For some of the inexpensive Smuggle cards, such as Timely Intervention, this can make them free, allowing you to surprise your opponent by playing a card without any resources available.
