Call it Swudespire

I doubt anyone still visits this blog from the CISS days, but if you do: this post is very likely a one-off. I'm just working up some numbers for my playgroup and figured I should use what I already have available here, rather than try to cram this novel into discord. I've also forgotten how to format these things effectively.

Here are the four bases that I'll be discussing in this post. I'm not about to try to remember their names, so we're going with RBYG.

Effectively, all of these bases make an exchange of health for cards - our job here today will be to see how these exchanges change certain probabilities related to card draw (for comparison, we'll also be using a "Standard Base" that has 30 health and no ability). It's unlikely that any of these exchanges will end up being directly comparable. By which I mean we won't be able to craft a perfect X cards = X life ratio that stands up through the 4 bases, much less through all the cards in SWU. But enough self limiting, lets get started!

Lets start with a Standard Base like this one (the color of the base doesn't matter here, just the stats):

We will start by looking at the chances of drawing a given card in your opening hand. SWU requires a 50 card deck and you can include up to 3 copies of any given card. So the odds of drawing at least 1 copy of a given card can be found with a simple hypergeometric distribution. The mulligan in SWU is a little different than a lot of other games, as it resets the deck to 50 cards before drawing the mulligan. This just means that we'll be calculating the hypergeo for a four card hand and then squaring it before finding the additive inverse, rather than calculating for an 8 card hand. We'll see how this matters when we get to the Yellow Base a bit later. For the standard base, the chance of drawing a given 3x card in your opening hand is 54.3%

Now lets perform that same calculation for the Red, Blue, and Green Bases. We'll also look at the Yellow Base, but I'll be calculating for a single seven card hand, instead of two hands. (ASIDE: The mulligan rules, as written, specifically state that after taking a mulligan you draw 4 new cards. However, this seems in conflict with the spirit of the Blue Base - all of the calculations in this post will assume that the mulligan for the blue base also only draws 3 cards.) Here are the chances of drawing at least one copy of a specific card in your opening hand for all 5 bases:

The first interesting point we see here is that only the Red Base increases your chances of drawing a specific card on the first turn. That's a little weird right? Because the Yellow Base costs life, while actually decreasing your chances of drawing that special card! But what we are really seeing here is a limiation on the ways we can easily parse data. The Yellow Base doesn't help you see a specific card, but it does definitely improve the overall quality of your starting hand compared to a standard base. Keep that in mind while we go along.

For our next measurement, we'll check to see how these percentages change as the game progresses. The following chart represents your chances of drawing a specific card after you've drawn a given number of cards. If you're not running any card-draw shenanigans, these values will correspond to Turns 3 and 5.

Numbers are great and all, but it may be easier to compare these bases over the course of the game by using a graph. For ease of reading, I've controlled the percentage change in the New Bases for a constant represented by the gray Standard Deck Line:

Some takeaways:
-The Red Base starts strong and stays strong
-The Yellow and Blue Bases start bad and get better with more cards drawn
-The Green Base starts bad and gets worse

Finally, let's add one more variable to the mix. Each of these bases provides an alteration to your starting Life total. When that's factored in, the efficiency chart changes a little:

To our previous conclusions, we can add:
-The Blue and Red bases provide consistent value for Life
-The Yellow Base improves the most quickly per Life lost
-The Green Base gives the worst value per Life

Of course, not everything can be dialed down to numbers and charts. So let's look at some of the more subtle aspects of these bases.

The Red Base is just very strong. It only costs you 3 life, but it drastically increases the consistency of your deck. It could cause you to deck out faster against a milling strategy, but those are honestly pretty rare at this point. The consistency advantage provided by this base stays steady across the number of cards drawn, but overdoing it - like with Cassian Andor or Pre Visla leaders - might backfire when you start taking damage for an empty deck. That said, smaller decks are almost always worth the downsides. Unless milling becomes much more popular, this base should probably slot into every deck that's currently running a Standard Red Base or Shadow Collective Camp. Even some decks that currently run Tarkin Town should probably consider this one instead.

The Blue Base is a little trickier to evaluate. To start, you're always going to be running 1 card behind your opponent - a not insignificant disadvantage. On the flip side, you are gaining five life! That's a life total adjustment equivalent to getting off an extra Vigilance every game. The Blue Base is bad at drawing specific cards and shouldn't be played by anyone trying for a combo or specific power card. On the flip side, decks that run heavily redundant lists - ones where most of your cards do the same thing - could really benefit from the increased life total (*cough* Iden Versio *cough*). Be careful about the subtle ways that being down a card can affect your game: Lt. Childsen really doesn't care for this base much, but Yoda seems right at home. Card Draw can mitigate some of the disadvantages here, but you'll never catch up to a Standard Base that runs the same amount of card draw. This one is worth testing out of Iden, Yoda, set 3 Thrawn, and possibly a couple of other control-heavy decks. (One last caveat: if it turns out that you do mulligan up to 4 cards with this base, it becomes significantly stronger and should be considered in basically any deck using a blue base.)

The Yellow Base is probalby the hardest to evaluate. It is bad at drawing a specific card, but the disadvantage there shrinks significantly as the game goes on. Conversely, it allows you to set up a very strong first hand. Three life isn't trivial, but the ability is a far better return on investment than the other non-standard yellow bases. Anyone playing a yellow base right now should probalby at least consider switching to this one. One other positive aspect of this base is that it lets you perform a little ex tempore sideboard at the beginning of every game. You draw seven, resource two, then consign 3 to the bottom of your deck where they are unlikely to ever affect the game. Decks running multiple powerful bombs (Han Yellow) or specific silver bullets (several blue leaders) should garner significant value from this base. Finally, if a true combo deck ever emerges in SWU, this should probably be the base of choice for it.

The Green Base is easily the weakest of the bunch. When compared to the Red Base, it really should increase your Life total by six, not three. Due to the increased deck size (ten cards!) it starts out with a significant consistency disadvantage that only gets worse relative to a Standard Base as you draw more cards. In addition, it competes with probalby the most versatile base currently in the game: Energy Conversion Lab. Running a Standard Base with 3x Reinforcement Walker will almost always net you more benefit than playing this base, even if you toss the Walkers on as cards 51-53. Col. Yularen, Salacious Crumb, 501st Liberator, or any card with Restore are likely to net you better value than this base as well. The only time I can see running this base is if you are: A) already running every other Life gain card you can, but still dying to aggro, B) playing exclusively against milling decks, or C) bad at the game.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!
OK, so let's summarize the New Bases:

Red Base
-Best value per life
-Best chance to draw a specific card turn 1
-Provides consistent advantage over standard bases
-Probably the strongest overall

Blue Base
-Draw disadvanatage diminishes over time
-Benefits decks with lots of redundancy (Iden Versio)
-Best value per point of Life
-Strongest against aggro

Yellow Base
-Not good for drawing a single specific card
-Improves overall quality of first hand
-Gets better the more cards you draw
-Strongest for combo decks/toolbox decks

Green Base
-Not good for drawing a single specific card
-Gets worse the more cards you draw
-Value per Life gained is bad
-Card is Bad
-Bad

Thanks for reading!