Okay. So. Twin Suns recently got a whole new set of leaders specifically designed for multiplayer, and I have been doing what I always do when new Star Wars cards drop, which is read them and stare at the art for an unreasonable amount of time feeling things.
The TS26 precon decks gave us eight Clone Wars-era leaders built from the ground up for the format. But Twin Suns has no rotation, which means the entire card pool is on the table. So this isn’t strictly a “here’s what’s new” list. This is more of a “here’s what’s living in my head rent-free and why” list. And be warned, I care a lot more about flavor than power.
Seven entries. Lucky number. Let’s go!
1. Anakin Skywalker — Protect Her At All Costs (TS26 | Vigilance/Heroism)
Protect her at all costs. That is the entire tragedy of Anakin Skywalker in four words. His fall didn’t begin with ambition or cruelty. It began with love that curdled into obsession, with the desperate need to protect Padmé from a death he saw in his dreams. Every line he crossed, he told himself it was for her.
His leader ability gives a Shield token to a friendly unit when two or more friendly units have entered play that phase, so he needs something worth protecting before the protection even activates. And once he deploys, he has Sentinel, which means enemy units in his arena must attack him when they attack you. He is, literally and mechanically, throwing himself in the way. The art shows him mid-battle on a speeder, lightsaber lit, urgency in every line of the image, going toward the danger because standing still feels like losing her faster.
Shields absorb one hit and then they’re gone. They buy time. They delay the inevitable. Anakin couldn’t stop what was coming any more than a Shield token stops a determined attacker permanently, and the card doesn’t pretend otherwise. He just keeps generating them anyway, standing in the way, until he can’t anymore.
His partner in the precon is Padmé. I will not be okay about this card. That’s fine. That’s the correct response.
2. Count Dooku — Offering Aid (TS26 | Vigilance/Villainy)
Here’s the thing about Twin Suns that makes it different from every other format: you have three opponents instead of one. And Dooku’s leader ability is built for exactly that. He exhausts to choose two players, not everyone, two, and each of them heals their base and gets a Battle Droid token. Selective generosity in a multiplayer game is an entire political toolkit. He can reward the player who left him alone last round, shore up a threat that keeps someone else busy, or make you feel like an ally while positioning you as a buffer.
The art shows him in a civilian setting, shadowed figures behind him, one fist closed and held forward, not attacking, not retreating, performing. The Battle Droids matter too. They are the most expendable units in the Star Wars universe, built to absorb fire while the people pulling the strings stay comfortable. Dooku handing you a Battle Droid isn’t generosity… it’s condescension dressed as generosity. Here. Take this disposable thing.
Once he deploys, his unit side has Restore 2 and creates two Battle Droid tokens on attack. He never stops making droids. He never stops healing himself. Perpetually generating resources and perpetually appearing helpful, which is deeply, perfectly Dooku. The man ran the Separatists as Sidious’s visible villain while Sidious played the Senate as Palpatine. He offered aid. He was patient. The whole thing was a performance buying time for something else, and in multiplayer, that’s actually the correct strategic approach. You don’t want three people targeting you in round one.
3. Chancellor Palpatine — Playing Both Sides (TWI | Cunning/Heroism … Cunning/Villainy)
Both sides of this card share the same subtitle. Playing Both Sides. He was never hiding what he was doing. He just knew nobody would figure it out in time. Most leaders flip once to a deployed unit, but Palpatine never deploys at all. He flips back and forth between two leader faces indefinitely, always at a remove, always pulling strings from outside the frame. The Darth Sidious art renders him as a hologram, blue-white and intangible, projecting from somewhere nobody can reach. He is never actually there. He is still the most dangerous person at the table. That is such good design and I love it completely.
Now read the flip conditions, because they are the entire Clone Wars in two sentences. Chancellor Palpatine flips to Darth Sidious when a friendly Heroism unit is defeated, drawing a card and healing his base off their death. He needs his allies to fall, and when they do, he benefits. Every Clone Trooper who died in the war, every Jedi who trusted the Republic, he needed them, used them, and came out stronger when they were gone. Then Darth Sidious flips back when you play a Villainy card, the moment the darkness acts the mask goes back on, but before it does he creates a Clone Trooper token and deals 2 damage to every enemy base simultaneously. One signal. Clone Troopers appear. Everyone takes damage at once. That is Order 66 as a card mechanic and it is kind of brilliant honestly.
The Cunning aspect persists through both faces because the manipulation never stops, it just changes costumes. In Twin Suns you have three opponents, which means three bases taking 2 damage at once when Sidious flips back. I would genuinely hate to play against this card. I mean that as the highest possible compliment.
4. Rex — No Other Option (TS26 | Aggression/Heroism)
No other option. Go watch the Siege of Mandalore arc. Watch Rex in the moment he realizes what Order 66 is doing to him, what he has to fight against from inside his own skull. The programming was built in. The choice about whether to warn Ahsoka, to find her in time… that was his. He chose the harder thing when the easier thing was hardwired.
His leader ability requires him to exhaust and ready an exhausted enemy unit, both at once as a single cost, to make his next event cost less. You are giving something back to your opponent, making them slightly more capable of hurting you in exchange for doing what you need to do. Rex had to go through his own brothers to get Ahsoka out. There was no path that didn’t cost something first. But even better, in multiplayer, you might be able to turn that to your advantage by convincing that opponent to use that unit against someone else.
The art shows him post-Order 66, modified armor, dual pistols, standing alone in a dramatically lit corridor, someone who survived something and is still moving anyway. Yeah. That’s Rex. His partner in this precon is Ahsoka, and their event synergy is built on the same trust the story is. In the game that trust is a resource. In the story it’s what survived when almost nothing else did.
5. Admiral Ackbar — It’s a Trap! (JTL | Cunning/Heroism)
The subtitle is the line everybody knows, so pervasive that people who’ve never seen Return of the Jedi can do the voice. It would be easy to dismiss it as the obvious choice, except the art shows him caught mid-warning, hands raised, eyes wide, every line of him pointed at something the player across the table hasn’t seen yet. That’s not a meme. That’s a portrait of someone who reads situations faster than the people around him and carries the weight of being right too early.
His leader ability exhausts any non-leader unit belonging to any player and gives that unit’s controller an X-Wing token. You can exhaust your own unit to slowly build your fleet, tap your opponent’s most dangerous attacker and hand them a token they have no use for, or work out an arrangement with another player entirely. Exhaust their weakest unit, help them build forces, keep them on your side for a while. Feels like you’re not just commanding your own fleet… you’re coordinating the whole battle. The Battle of Endor worked because Ackbar held the line long enough for every other piece to do what it needed to do, and that’s actually what this card does at a multiplayer table.
6. Ahsoka Tano — I Have an Idea (TS26 | Cunning/Heroism)
The game already has two other Ahsoka leaders, Snips (Aggression) and Fighting For Peace (Vigilance), and each one captures a different era of who she is. I Have an Idea is Ahsoka, but not the wide-eyed early-season version. She’s the one starting to figure out that the rules are a starting point, not a ceiling. The subtitle is so distinctly her… you can hear Ashley Eckstein’s voice immediately.
Her leader ability triggers every time you play an event: exhaust her to look at the top card of your deck, then decide instantly whether to play it cheaper, discard it, or leave it. That decision window is the whole mechanic. You see something and you choose, right now, under pressure. Ahsoka was never the most powerful Jedi in the room. She was the one who reacted faster than anyone expected and made calls that shouldn’t have worked but did, because she trusted herself to move. The Cunning aspect isn’t just mechanically useful here… it’s a description of her whole approach.
When she deploys, her unit side has Raid 1 and the same top-of-deck trigger on attack, still improvising, still finding the angle mid-swing. The art shows her in a fight, dual sabers crossed, light catching the edges of everything. She is mid-idea. Feels exactly right.
7. Obi-Wan Kenobi — Patient Mentor (TWI | Vigilance/Heroism) paired with TS26 Anakin
This one is for anyone who wants to build a deck that will hurt them personally.
Patient Mentor. That’s what he was, for years, with someone who was going to break his heart in ways he couldn’t fully prepare for, despite knowing, for a long time, that something was wrong. He kept mentoring anyway. He kept being patient.
His leader ability is almost disarmingly simple: exhaust to heal 1 damage from a unit. No conditions, no timing windows. Just steady, consistent, small acts of care that add up over time. Once he deploys he has Sentinel and his on-attack ability heals 1 from a unit while dealing 1 to a different one. He redirects harm, absorbs what’s coming for one thing and transfers it somewhere manageable. The art shows him in the desert, one hand raised in Force deflection, stance open and steady, someone who has made peace with standing in the way.
Vigilance/Heroism means he pairs naturally with TS26 Anakin (also Vigilance/Heroism). You’d be running a deck where Obi-Wan has Sentinel, healing people, staying patient, while Anakin also has Sentinel, throwing shields on units, drawing fire with everything he has. Both of them protecting. Both of them standing in the way and doing everything they can to keep those around them alive. In multiplayer, that can be a great method to convince opponents that someone else is an easier target.
Honorable Mentions
Darth Revan — Scourge of the Old Republic (LOF, single Villainy) — his art is all mask and mystery, someone who has chosen to become something beyond their original self. In lore that’s the whole Revan story. His ability grows friendly units through victory, one defeated enemy at a time. The single-aspect restriction is a real deckbuilding puzzle and I keep coming back to it.
Anakin Skywalker — Tempted by the Dark Side (LOF, single Heroism) — he uses the Force to play Vigilance non-unit cards while ignoring their aspect penalties, reaching past the boundaries of what he should be able to access. He’s still Heroism. Just barely, and just one. The other half is already gone.
Ahsoka Tano — Fighting For Peace (LOF, Vigilance/Heroism) — her ability gives a friendly unit Sentinel for a phase, spending her Force connection to put someone else in front of the danger. Pairing this version with TS26 Rex creates a different story than the precon does. Like I alluded to before, sentinel is very powerful in Twin Suns.
These eight sets contain more characters I love than any card game I’ve ever played. Some weeks that’s a gift. Some weeks it’s a lot to hold while shuffling.
See you at the table.
— Jadis
