About Wayfinder News

Wayfinder News covers the Star Wars: Unlimited competitive scene with data-driven analysis, weekly newsletters, and real-time meta tracking. Every number on this site is computed from actual tournament results and match data gathered from around the web, online gaming platforms, and even YouTube.

Wayfinder News is from the team behind Protect the Pod, the Star Wars: Unlimited Limited Simulator. Join the conversation on our Discord.

Agentic Newsroom

Wayfinder News is written, fact-checked, and edited by an autonomous multi-agent newsroom — a coordinated pipeline of specialized AI “droids,” each owning one phase of editorial production. The full chain runs end-to-end on every issue:

Pitch — scouts the latest meta snapshots and tournament history for newsworthy signal: archetype shifts, breakout decks, dominant pilots, cards on the rise.
Research — assembles a verified claim ledger by querying the data platform directly. Every number that will appear in the article is computed, named, and held in escrow before a single word is written.
Draft — writes the article against a strict template where every statistic is a token bound to the claim ledger. Prose cannot invent numbers — it can only reference them.
Fact-Check — cross-references every numeric claim, set reference, card mention, and entity attribution against the underlying data. Anything that doesn't verify gets blocked.
Editorial Review — judges clarity, voice, structure, and adherence to the house style guide. Returns findings for revision.
Markup Validation — runs deterministic checks on token resolution, widget syntax, and structural completeness for both on-site and email renderings.
Hero Image — generates a polished prompt for the article's cover art based on the angle and thesis.
Retrospective — after publish, captures what worked, what slipped, and what the next run should do differently. Feeds back into the pipeline so each issue improves on the last.

A publish gate sits at the end: no article ships unless every phase signs off. If a fact fails verification or a rubric returns FAIL, the gate refuses to open and the issue is routed back for revision. The result is a publication where the editorial standard isn't “the AI wrote it” — it's “the numbers check out, the structure is sound, and the voice is consistent, every time.”

Data Platform

Behind the newsroom is an expansive data platform that aggregates, normalizes, and canonicalizes information about Star Wars: Unlimited from across the competitive ecosystem. At its core is the Wayfinder Platform — a purpose-built data lake that resolves entities (players, decks, archetypes, events, cards) into a single source of truth, then layers on analytics: ELO and Glicko-2 ratings, meta snapshots, matchup matrices, archetype classification, and card-level performance signals. The platform is powered in part by SWUAPI, our canonical SWU data service that handles entity resolution and reference data across the ecosystem.

The platform is engineered to handle the messy reality of competitive data — fragmented sources, inconsistent naming, late corrections, missing fields — and produce clean, comparable, queryable facts. It's the data backbone that powers every chart, every statistic, every ranking, and every article on this site. The same infrastructure that publishes Wayfinder News also drives the live meta dashboards, player rankings, and tournament coverage you see across the platform.

What We Cover

Weekly Newsletter — Meta snapshot, tournament results, deck breakdowns, and card-level analysis every Monday.
Meta Dashboard — Live archetype win rates, tier list, meta share, power rankings, and trend charts updated after every event.
Player Rankings (ELO and Glicko-2) — Player skill ratings across tournament and online play, tracked separately by format.
Tournament Results — Top 8 decklists and placements from major events worldwide.
Card Usage Trends — We analyze inclusion rates, play rates, and performance to surface the cards driving meta shifts.

Subscribe to the newsletter to receive weekly issues via email.

Coming Soon

New article formats and recurring columns we're building out as the data platform deepens. These represent the editorial roadmap for what the agentic newsroom will publish next:

Deck Deep Dives — Evergreen, per-archetype strategy guides. Each one covers a single deck end-to-end: headline stats, full matchup matrix against the top of the meta, a card-by-card breakdown (staples, common flex slots, key tech cards), representative decklists from top performers, and the best video content on the archetype. Refreshed in place when the meta shifts.
Tournament Prep — Tier-scoped “what to play, what to expect” guides for PQ, SQ, RQ, and GC events. Every stat is filtered to the relevant tier, with a US-vs-EU regional comparison section that surfaces when the same tier plays out differently across the Atlantic. A primary pick and 1–2 alternatives, with explicit reasoning.
Limited Focus — Dedicated coverage for the Limited format. Archetype distribution, cards that over- or under-perform vs constructed expectations, and a separate meta read that doesn't get drowned out by Premier.
Card Watch — A recurring editorial column on cards that matter: 3–5 cards per issue around a unifying theme (rising, underplayed, format-defining, rotation watch), each with inclusion rate, WAR (win-rate delta when played), and which top decks lean on it.
Karabast Roundup — Online-format intelligence framed as “what you'll face”: opponent archetype distribution, prevalence, and how to prepare for the actual ladder, not the in-person meta.

In Development

These products are under active development — some in beta, some still in early build. Expect rough edges, fast iteration, and frequent shipping while we get them to v1.

Wayfinder Live — Real-time tournament coverage with live standings, brackets, feature matches, and minute-by-minute meta tracking as events unfold.
Wayfinder Pro — A premium tier for serious competitors prepping for major events: deeper analytics, advanced data tools, and more frequent intelligence drops. Think Bloomberg Terminal for the SWU competitive grinder.
Wayfinder Companion — A browser companion that pairs with online play to capture matches automatically, recording your decks, opponents, and results so your stats follow you wherever you grind.
Wayfinder Replays — A replay viewer for studying your own games and benchmark matches from the top of the meta — step through every action, every card play, every decision point.
Wayfinder Mobile — Native iOS and Android apps for tracking the meta, your rating, your matches, and event coverage on the go.