I have just bought a starter and a small collection on ebay. I have some questions about getting started and the general power level of the game.

How easy is the game for new players to pick up?

About how many turns does a game typically last?

How reliant is the game on random chance?

How good is the balance between the factions?

Does this game take the paper, rock, scissors approach to balance, where everything has a counter?

I have heard that some cards can swing a game one way or the other. How powerful are the power cards?

What are the most powerful cards and what makes them so good?

Any help is appreciated.

1) I'd say it's a lot like Magic: The Gathering - if you try to teach everything at once, the new player is going to be overwhelmed. If you only teach the basics and introduce new rules as they come up, it's far more manageable. The first game usually takes about an hour to ninety minutes in my experience.

2) It depends on the decks being played. An Imperial Navy deck tends to push for the win when the Death Star dial is at 6, which tends to be from turn 4-6, and that's a fairly good metric of when most games end. Of course, if you have Sith control matched up against say Force Lock, the game's going to last longer.

3) Surprisingly, not very. You have near perfect information on your opponent's deck due to the objective set system, and the sheer amount of cards you see means most of your losses are going to be from misplays or poor matchups rather than luck of the draw.

4) Conventional wisdom tells us it's currently skewed. Jedi are considered to be the best faction at the moment, followed by Sith. Smugglers and Spies and the Imperial Navy are still good enough to compete, but Scum and Villainy and the Rebel Alliance are relegated to being splash factions. Of course, with today's release of Between the Shadows, that's subject to change, and the world champion acknowledged directly his Jedi/Trench Run deck was weak to Imperial Navy TIE strategies.

5) Yes, pretty much every strategy has cards it's weak to. Sith control is weak to Jedi control. Jedi control is weak to TIE swarm. TIE swarm is weak to Rebel Assault. Rebel Assault is weak to Sith control. And so on.

6) Generally not so powerful that they win you the game outright the turn they're played, but powerful enough that your opponent has one or two turns to find an answer to them.

7) There's a lot, so I'll try to hit the highlights. Emperor Palpatine (Core Set) is probably the gold standard of a "power card", as not only is he a difficult to destroy unit with a lot of tactics icons, but every card in his objective set is powerful. Yoda (Join Us or Die), is a similarly powerful Light Side unit, with the ability to destroy basically any unit in the late-game. And Twist of Fate is an incredible card with the potential to win an edge battle pretty much off of it alone. As a rule of thumb: unique units tend to be powerful enough to at least look at, there are few truly bad Enhancements or Events, and Fate cards are universally powerful if played correctly.

Hope this helps! Always happy to see someone new pick up the game.

Very helpful, thank you.