I'm fairly new to the Star Wars LCG, though I've been playing other games (L5R and Magic) for a while. I'm just wondering what the enviroment for the game looks like right now and what play deck types/styles work for each of the factions. I always find this the hardest part about starting a new game - just figuring out what to do with the cards.

I can give very general intros to the style of each affiliation, if that helps.

Navy: Aggressive, lots of resource ramping into big vehicles and units. Think red and green from Magic.

Sith: Card drawing and board control. Good defensive cards. Black and blue.

Scum: Capturing effects, tactics icons. Mostly defensive at this point, but some heavy hitters.

Jedi: Protecting and enhancing big units. Some good countering and damage redirection. Like white and green.

Rebel: Tactical and combo-oriented, with weenie rush. Kind of like white and red.

Smugglers and Spies: Pretty broken right now. Excellent combat tricks and rule-bending in general.

Thanks.

The smugglers and spies thing sounds interesting. What objective sets generally go into that deck, how is it tricky, what does it try to do?

Smugglers and Spies can do a lot of crazy things.

Han Solo deals one damage to any enemy unit when it enters an engagement (battle)

Echo Caverns allows you to steal a combat icon of your choice from any unit (friendly or enemy) and put it on one of your units.

Lando Can spend a resource to pull one of your guys out of an engagement, allowing you to bluff an attack with a strong guy.

You can return the Millennium Falcon to your hand to put a unit in your hand into play for free.

When Lobot is in an engagement, he makes all combat icons for all participating units edge-enabled.

They also have a lot of events and units that will move focus tokens around or send enemy units back to their controller's hand. I suppose any kind of event could give you that surprise "tricky" feel, but there's something different about how Smugglers and Spies do it. It's like their effects "break the rules" more than other factions.

They also have a lot of events and units that will move focus tokens around or send enemy units back to their controller's hand. I suppose any kind of event could give you that surprise "tricky" feel, but there's something different about how Smugglers and Spies do it. It's like their effects "break the rules" more than other factions.

Well the Affiliation is kind of based upon Characters who lie, cheat, and steal so....

Smugglers and Spies can do a lot of crazy things.

They also have a lot of events and units that will move focus tokens around or send enemy units back to their controller's hand. I suppose any kind of event could give you that surprise "tricky" feel, but there's something different about how Smugglers and Spies do it. It's like their effects "break the rules" more than other factions.

I think the key is smugglers focus removal tricks are just in more commonly used sets.

The bother affiliations have great events as well though., light saber deflection, rebel assault, adaptive strategy are all great cards.

Jedi have Trust your feelings, force rejuvenation, and calm.

Also Heroes & Legends and Secret Guardian, to get more mileage out of the units you play!

If anyone on here does/has played Magic as well you probably know when you buy the Deckbuilders tool box (the beginner set) you get a nice fold out with it that reviews several (8-12 I think) deck types. What they do, key cards you want, the colours that power them etc... It really gives new players a lot of direction. Introduces some play styles and gives them a place to start building.

I think a sticky thread on here that can be updated that does the same thing would be a great resource for new players. Go through 6-8 Deck types, their affilication, how they play, the key objective sets for them etc... Just give new players who find their way on here a good start on their deck building.

I think that is a splendid idea and would love to see it happen.

Majestaat posted an article on CardGameDB that provides an overview of the Imperial Navy archetypes and details several variants of the Trooper archetype. It's an enjoyable read, so I'd recommend it if you're interested in deck archetypes.