Star Wars Unlimited recently received its 4th set named Jump to Lightspeed on March 14, 2024. Recently, we reviewed the Villainous leaders of the set, and today we'll be going over the Heroic leaders!

So, let's travel through Space and go over these Heroic figures.

Vigilance Heroic Leaders

We'll start off by going over a great friend of Han Solo:

Lando Calrissian - Buying Time

Lando Calrissian is an interesting Leader with a fair amount of requirements to fully benefit from his ability. Lando Calrissian's leader ability is "Exhaust this leader; Pay one resource: Play a unit from your hand (paying its cost). If you do and you control a ground unit and a space unit, give a Shield token to that unit." As an epic action, after you have placed down 7 or more resources, you can flip Lando to his Unit side or as a Vehicle upgrade since Lando is a Pilot leader. Lando's unit side is a 5 power 7 health leader unit with Sentinel, however Lando's vehicle upgrade reads as "Attached unit is a leader unit. Attached unit gains Sentinel. When deployed as an upgrade: You may give a shield token to a unit in a different area."

This leader clearly wants you, the player, to ensure you have both a Space and Land unit working together in unison. But that requires you to keep your units on your board. This does make it hard to maximize this leaders value unless you plan on popping out as many units as possible... As fast as possible. Piloting units work VERY well with this leader. So, I'd highly recommend Cloaked StarViper, Gold Leader - Fastest Ship in the Fleet, L3-37 and Cassian Andor

Now, we do have another Vigilance Heroic leader that isn't a pirate and requires only one kind of unit.

Lets talk about the maintenance tech:

Rose Tico - Saving What We Love

Rose Tico is a leader that encourages you to play with as many Vehicles as possible and hopefully keep them on the board. Rose Tico has a leader ability of "Exhaust this leader: Heal 2 damage from a vehicle unit that attacked this phase." which promotes more aggressive play with your ships on your board. As an Epic action, Rose Tico can deploy as a leader unit once you achieve five or more resources on the field. Rose Tico, leader unit, has 4 power and 6 health and has the ability of "On Attack: You may heal 2 damage from a Vehicle unit."

Swing with Vehicles, heal vehicles, swing the vehicles again. While pilot units are useful with this leader, this leader really wants a majority of Ships and Vehicles. So, let's talk about Vehicles.

Admiral Yularen, Red Squadron X-Wing, You're All Clear, Kid, and Silver Angel work very well with Rose Tico.

But those are just our Heroic symbols within Vigilance... One aspect covered, another 3 to go.

Aggression Heroic Leaders

Much like the Vigilance Heroic Leaders, there are two Heroic leaders within Aggression... unlike the Vigilance Heroic Leaders, they are both PILOTS! What Pilots are these? Well... Iconic Pilots within their own trilogies. Lets talk about these pilots and start off with an original,

Luke Skywalker - Hero of Yavin

Luke Skywalker is a leader that, you guessed it, wants you to ATTACK. But... not with Vehicles. Luke Skywalker's leader ability is "Exhaust this leader: If you attacked with a Fighter unit this phase, deal 1 damage to a unit." In Aggression, 1 damage adds up to the elimination of your opponent's units... Even so, Luke Skywalker has an Epic action that allows you deploy this pilot either as a Leader Unit or a vehicle upgrade as long as you have 6 or more available resources. Luke's leader unit is a vanilla 5 power 6 health leader unit, however his vehicle upgrade is more than worthy of deploying. As a Vehicle upgrade, Luke Skywalker's abilities read as "This upgrade can't be defeated by enemy card abilities. Attached unit is a leader unit. If it's a fighter, it gains: 'On Attack; You may deal 3 damage to a unit.'" and provides the upgraded unit with +4 power and + 5 health.

Luke clearly wants us to Fight... I mean it's in the promoted unit's name! So, what do we fight with?

Some excellent options from Jump to Lightspeed to include in your Luke deck are Blue Leader - Scarif Air Support, Adept ARC-170, Red Squadron Y-Wing and Red Five - Running the Trench.

But there's more to these Aggrerssion leaders than just fighters in the air, right?

Forget the transition, lets just talk about:

Poe Dameron - I Can Fly Anything

Poe Dameron is a leader who really promotes more of a pilot based strategy rather than a purely ships and airstrikes strategy. Poe Dameron has a leader ability of "Action; Exhaust one resource; Exhaust this leader : Flip this leader and attach him as an upgrade to a friendly Vehicle unit without a Pilot on it."

Poe Dameron's pilot upgrade side reads as such "Actions ; Exhaust one resource : Attach this upgrade to a friendly Vehicle unit without a Pilot on it." and provides the upgraded unit with +2 power and +1 health. Some important things to note with this upgrade, and leader ability.... The Leader ability is not an Epic Action, so this function can be utilizing multiple times within a game. The Upgrade also does not turn the upgraded vehicle unit to a Leader-Unit meaning removal pieces that specify "A non-leader unit" can still target the upgraded unit. Even so, once you reach 5 or more resources, you flip Poe Dameron to his Leader-Unit side as an Epic action. Poe Dameron's leader unit is just a vanilla 4 power 6 health ground unit.

So... What vehicles really make the cut to be a part of Poe Dameron's fleet? Coming out of Jumpstart to Lightspeed, I'd recommend the following vehicles for this leader; The Starhawk - Prototype Battleship, Raddus - Holdo's final command, Black One - Straight at them, and Tactical Heavy Bomber.

That's alot of dogfighting for these aggression leaders..

How about we make some commands?

Command Heroic Leaders

More like our Vigilance leaders, Command has one Heroic pilot and a Heroic leader without pilot. Let's talk about them, starting with

Admiral Holdo - We're Not Alone

Admiral Holdo is a resistance / official leader that has the leader ability of " Exhaust one resource; exhaust this leader: Give a Resistance unit or a unit with a Resistance upgrade +2/+2 for this phase." . It is important to note that Holdo states for the phase, not the turn. Admiral Holdo also has an Epic Action that you can activate as long as you have six or more available resources and allow you to deploy Admiral Holdo as a leader unit. Admiral Holdo's leader unit reads as follows "On Attack: You may give another Resistance unit or a unit with a Resistance upgrade on it +2/+2 for the phase" with 3 power and 8 health. Holdo pretty much does the same on her unit side as she does as a leader and, much like some of the other leaders we have discussed today, wants you to play with Resistance units. Fairly straight forward as far as leader effects go; Play a resistance unit, buff them, swing them. So... what cards go well with Admiral Holdo?

Poe Dameron - One hell of a pilot, Snap Wexley - Resistance recon flier, BB-8 - Happy Beeps, and Black Squadron Scout Wing.

Our next command leader falls within a different time line from Holdo however with our Rebel pilot,

Wedge Antilles - Leader of Red Squadron

Wedge Antilles is our Pilot leader for Command and has the leader ability "Action; exhaust this leader; Play a card from your hand using Piloting. It cost 1 resource less for the phase." As long as you have 5 or more available resources, Wedge can deploy as either a Leader unit or a Vehicle upgrade. When deployed as a leader unit, Wedge is a vanilla 3 power and 6 health unit. However, Wedge's piloting upgrade reads as follows " On Attack; The next Pilot card you play this phase cost one resource less to play." So... Wedge demands that we play pilot. His upgrade specifies Pilots but his leader ability specifies the Pilotting ability making him oddly versatile yet... restricting? Lets talk about some excellent Pilots that would work very well with Wedge.

Some to take note of are Chewbacca - Faithful first mate, Biggs Darklighter - They'll never stop us, Anakin Skywalker - I'll try spinning, and Sidon Ithano - The Crimson Corsair.

Command may not be as vehicle intense as our Aggression leaders are, but we still have one more aspect to go over for our Heroic leaders today.

Cunning Heroic Leaders

Som let's talk Cunning. Much like how there are three Aggression Villainous leaders coming out of Jump to Lightspeed, within Cunning we have three Heroic leaders to discuss. To of them Pilots, and one non pilot and iconic figure.

Let's talk about the one of none pilot:

Admiral Ackbar - It's a Trap!

Admiral Ackbar has the leader ability "Exhaust one resource ; Exhaust this leader:

Exhaust a non-leader unit you control. If you do, it's controller creates an X-Wing token". Admiral Ackbar can be deployed to his leader unit as soon as there are 6 or more available resources on your field. Admiral Ackbar leader unit is a 3 power 8 health leader that has the ability " On Attack: You may exhaust a unit. If you do, it's controller creates an X-Wing token" So... seems like Admiral Ackbar wants us going wide. Needing an extra unit on the board just to make the X-Wing token nonetheless.

For reference, Xwing Token. This leader has a group hug feel to it if you were to play him in the Twin Suns format, however... we aren't here to discuss Twin Suns rather the leader himself. Lets talk about some excellent units that work well with this leader coming out of Jump to Lightspeed.

Some to note are; Veteran Fleet officer, Resistance Blue Squadron, Bunker Defender, Supporting ETA-2, AT-DP Occupier, and Home One - On my mark.

But lets talk about some other Cunning leaders that are less admirals and more . . recognized within the Star Wars franchise as

Han Solo - Never Tell Me the Odds

Han Solo has a leader ability of "Action: Exhaust this Leader: Reveal the top card of your deck, then attack with a unit. If the revealed card and unit have different odd costs, that unit gets +1/+0 for this attack." Once you have 5 or more available resources, Han Solo can be deployed either to a Leader Unit or a Vehicle Upgrade. When deployed as a leader unit, Han Solo is a vanilla 3 power 7 health unit. However, as an upgrade Han Solo reads as " Attached unit is a leader unit. When deployed asn an upgrade: For each friendly unit or upgrade that has an odd cost, ready a resource." This is definitely Unique.... Certainly, odd. We want Odd costs and Odd things within Solo, and we can utilize our resources based off odd costs to bring out more things. What things could they be? Lets go over some excellent options of THINGS we could put into a Han Solo deck from Jump to Lightspeed.

Cassian Andor - Threading the Eye, Chewbacca - Faithful First Mate, Red Five - Running the Trench, Hounds Tooth and Radiant VII are all excellent options for Han Solo.

As ODD as Han Solo may be, there is one last leader for us to go over... and he's pretty unique himself.

Our last leader is the Protagonist from the Star Wars Resistance series:

Kazadu Xiono - Best Pilot in the Galaxy

Kazadu has an activated ability of "Action: Exhaust this leader: A friendly unit loses all abilities for this round. Take an extra action after this one." Once you have 4 or more available resources, you may deploy Kazadu for either his unit or upgrade side. Kazadu, as a leader unit is a 2 power 5 health leader unit with "On Attack: Choose any number of friendly units. They all lose abilities for this round." as where Kazadu's upgrade side reads as follows." Attached unit is a leader unit. It gains 'On Attack: Choose any number of friendly units. They lose all abilities for this round.'" Interesting. In most cases, this leader would have a down side but there are some cards that we can utilize to their full potential without restriction with this leader. But let's just go over some cards, not just units, that really benefit from this leader.

Some to take note are; Contracted Hunter, Rafa Martez, Retrofitted Airspeeder, and Trench Run.

But what do YOU think? Any of these leaders catch your fancy?

May we meet again, fellow Space Journeyers!