By Noxm June 6, 2025 | 15 min read
Joshua Freeman-Birch at OPE - Premier Event - Manchester August 2024
yehosera : My name is Joshua Freeman-Birch aka yehosera and i’m 31 years old
yehosera : London, all the local London LGS - Bad Moon (Monday), Dark Sphere (Tuesday), Brotherhood Games (Wednesday), Spellbound (Thursday)
yehosera : I started with Yu-Gi-Oh in secondary school, and then did 1 year of Magic The Gathering at University, then when I moved back to London, I went back to Yu-Gi-Oh and Hearthstone online a lot. Then my favourite cards in Yu-Gi-Oh got banned so I moved to FFTCG (Final Fantasy Trading Card Game) that had just come out when the cards got banned, and then FFTCG entered a horrible aggro format at the same time that SWU came out, so I moved onto SWU. I also played a lot of Legends of Runeterra from when it came out to when they announced they were stopping constructed support.
yehosera : Yu-Gi-Oh, I was just getting into the regional circuit when I stopped, FFTCG I’ve been to every worlds except the one in London that I did commentary for and have no placed lower than top 16 at worlds, with 3rd being my best achievement. In MTGA (Magic The Gathering Arena) I hit mythic, Runeterra Master and Hearthstone Legendary.
yehosera : I got to play this really cool leader called Boba Fett, and when I cast Resupply on the second turn, on the third turn I had access to 8 mana while my opponent only had access to 4 mana. This insane swing turn was what first got me excited to play the game. Beyond that, the mechanics are very back and forth and the each player takes turns simultaneously means that a lot of over powered strategies in other games are self regulated.
yehosera : I loved episodes 1-3 when I was growing up, the actual C H I L L S when Maul pulled out the second beam on his lightsaber is something that I won’t soon forget. I also sunk countless hours into Lego Star Wars, I remember pretending to be ill so I didn’t have to go to school to play a full day of the second Lego Star Wars game (don’t tell my parents please). Beyond that I recently really enjoyed watching Andor, I highly recommend that to people who haven’t seen it as the force stuff is basically non-existent and instead it’s just a well written narrative about rebellion.
yehosera : I don’t think that can be answered in word form very easily. The biggest thing that I’ve done is simply play countless hours of TTS (Table Top Simulator). Then the second biggest thing I’ve done is not be afraid to try new things out. For example at the Manchester event, I sided in 8 cards and went up to 62 cards in deck and decked out my opponent, this wasn’t a strategy I’d tried before, I just figured it would work in theory and wasn’t afraid to try it.
yehosera : To start with SWU draws 2 cards per turn and has no limitations on your resources. So you need less consistency because you always have resources and drawing 2 means you gain a lot of consistency innately. The other thing is that a lot of the cards are functionally the same, so even if you lose consistency on a specific you’re usually gaining consistency overall. A good example would be Resupply vs Super Laser Technician, they’re functionally the same, both of them have slight merits, but I wouldn’t cut either in order to go down to 50 because I don’t care which I see I just want to see one. It also lets you pre-sideboard for matchups and free up sideboard space, so you essentially get to run a larger sideboard, which can help more than the slight consistency hit. My decks are usually pre-sided for aggro and take a full 10 cards to side for control, in order to do this I generally need a larger total card count. Also because it’s fun !
yehosera : Long story short, I played a lot against Luke1 Data Vault and I thought what it was doing was very powerful, but the leader ability was lacking against aggro decks. So I swapped the leader to the most defensive one I could find and built the deck to be as defensive as possible and thus Rey Data Vault was born.
Fun fact: During Day 1 of the Lille Regional, a U.S. player named Pasqwalle was watching your game on stream. Your gameplay convinced him to play the Rey/Datavault deck at his Planetary Qualifier the very next day. He managed to build the list just by watching you play — and guess what? Next day he won the PQ Newington (114 players)
yehosera :
Leaders :
Bases :
+ The other bases aren’t really fun, they just give you a colour and some extra health sometimes
Cards :
+ Any token, as I can use whatever sleeves I want on them
yehosera : One of my favourites is definitely in set 1, my first tournament the Twickenham launch event. I’d played about 3 games on TTS (Table Top Simulator) just to learn the rules so the event was my first time playing in paper. So round 1 game 1, first time playing, I hit 7 mana, player a Vader and pick up my deck to search for a 7th Fleet because in FFTCG there are no check top 10 they’re all search your deck, then later in the game I got my opponent to 25 damage on base and packed up my cards, because the only games I’d played previously were against 25 health bases so I just didn’t know 30 health bases existed and thought I’d won by dealing 25 damage. The absolute clownary in my first paper game is hilarious I couldn’t ask for a better start to SWU.
yehosera : I like that they do suspensions, and that they’re quick to do them. The timing of doing them after the PQs but before the SQs seems really good because they actually have data to go with to inform their suspensions.
yehosera : I prefer the double loss system. This is because top cut is basically secured if people ID correctly on the last two rounds. This is awful for the players that are on the bubble and fighting for their tournament survival as they’re just dead in the water and either do not know, or simply cannot do anything about it because of IDs. I know other games have IDs and people seem to like them in other games, but just because it’s considered normal in other games that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t innovate and strive to do better
yehosera : Every single set has a huge impact on the meta (other than set 3 before Boba got banned) and I expect the new set to do the same, the new Force mechanic is going to be way more impactful than Exploit and Coordinate were. About the leader representation as a metric, I think that’s more a metric that describes how successful FFG have been with implementing new leaders and mechanics.
Ultimately right now, the strongest decks are not ones that pull from new mechanics but instead are the ones that simply play strong overall cards. This is why Spark of Rebellion (Set1) and Shadows of the Galaxy (Set2) are the most represented because those sets did not have themes. Twilight (Set3) and Lightspeed (Set4) have specific force and vehicle themes respectively. These not being popular is more a failure of those mechanics than the sets themselves being bad. Currently force is just a nice additional trait and not something to build around, same with piloting effects, there is currently one top tier piloting effect (Vader4’s flip), and the rest of the mechanic is underwhelming. Instead the strong neutral cards from those sets are utilised a lot to buff up the strong neutral leaders from previous sets.
yehosera : I use your website when looking for popular decklists to test against. For example, if I need to practice against Han2 Data Vault, I just take a quick search for the latest top decklists of that archetype and queue up against it. For analyzing the meta I feel like speaking to people is the best thing you can do. The reason for this is that usage is generally a very strong indicator of strength. I find that Pokemon’s (not the TCG) tier system is the best one around and it’s based on usage of individual Pokemon. Knowledge of what’s considered strong, even if you don’t agree with it, should inform your testing more, because if people believe something to be strong and bring it to events, even if it’s not strong, you still have to be prepared for it.
yehosera : "I got these two Goofy Goobers in my discord" The courage they have to every week ask me about General Grievous, Thrawn, and Cad Bane is insane. They do not falter, every single week there are new requests for those decks, and that’s what it means to be a real TCG player. Not caring what anyone thinks and simply running it down with the leaders that you like to play. Kane and Reshi are my inspiration when it comes to SWU.
yehosera : I will be attending the Galactic Championship. I aim to day 3. I think winning events is luck based, but making final days and top cuts is the hallmark of a strong player, so that’s what I aim for! I am a part of a team called Black Vault Syndicate. We do a bit of testing together, but it’s pretty casual and that’s why I like the team. We mostly just do our own things and bounce a few things off of each other. It’s more like a nice community to spend time in and deep dive serious TCG theory from time to time.
yehosera : So my articles on Metafy are the starting point. They are always free and usually very informative. Then from there, there’s my discord which is pretty active and has a lot of helpful players that enjoy talking SWU. It’s a very friendly place and I’m active there as well answering questions and such. The next step up is that there are livestreams on discord, completely free to join and it’s pretty much just a casual hang out Q and A type deal, it’s kind of hard to describe, people just sort of chat SWU and ask me questions and it’s a good vibe. Then if people require more help playing SWU I also on weekends when I’m not travelling for an event do seminars where I do deep dives on specific decks and ideas.
