I bought the card game recently and played it for the first time yesterday. So far, I have the core box and the Edge of Darkness. So, I guess I have the basic Objective sets for the six Affiliations.

My friend and I played two games. In the first game, I had Imperial Navy and he had Jedi. Dark Side won, but we made a crucial rules blunder. We didn't realize that units committed to the Force could not lend their Force icons to the struggle if they were exhausted. The Deathstar dial sped along too quickly because of it.

In the second game, I had Smugglers and Spies and he ran Sith. Mid game, he rage-quit because he wanted to commit his only unit in play to the Force during my turn, and I explained he could only do that during his own turn. Ah well... (He also rage-quit with only one mission left in the campaign when we played Imperial Assault too.)

I would like to know what the play styles are for the different Affiliations. From playing Imperial Navy, I gather they are a vehicle-heavy attack deck. I'm guessing Rebel Alliance is similar. I see in the Scum and Villainy cards, there are a lot of gimmicks to capture the opponent's forces and, presumably, deplete his deck.

What is the general gist and style for each Affiliation?

Keep in mind that individual decks might play differently - an Imperial Fighter deck plays very differently from an Imperial Capital Ship deck, for example - but here's the basic gist.

Jedi are all about powerful individual units. A Jedi deck wants to get out one or two really powerful units, use Enhancements to make them even stronger, and protect them both with the actual Protect keyword and events like Lightsaber Deflection and Counter-Stroke.

The Rebel Alliance are all about synergy - Jan Ors lets you return a character to your hand to do things, and Leia and Han have abilities that trigger when they leave play, Pilots act as powerful enhancements for your Vehicle units, and then Desperation lets you destroy all units that don't have an enhancement on them. Commando Raid lets you discard a Fate card to use its effect outside of an edge battle, and Page's Commandos recover the topmost Fate card in your discard pile. All kinds of 2+2=5 combos.

Smugglers and Spies are full of tricks, focused on manipulating every aspect of the game to their advantage - moving focus tokens around the board, moving combat icons from one unit to another, returning cards to the owner's hand, adding or removing units from an engagement after attackers and defenders have been declared, that sort of thing.

Sith are, as you'd expect, a dark mirror of Jedi, except they focus on extremely powerful Events rather than Enhancements. They're the most traditional control deck in the game, with direct unit damage, spot removal, and even full board wipes backed up by powerful Force Users and plenty of draw.

The Imperial Navy focuses on rapid acceleration of resources, and using those resources to deploy a massive army, whether through a lot of individually expendable Fighter or Trooper units, or through a fleet of massive Captial Ship units. They also have the ever-entertaining Superlaser Blast event, which just straight up destroys any one objective for 4 resources, no questions asked.

Scum and Villainy are...sort of a budget Smugglers and Spies. They are the Dark Side faction that makes the most use of the capture mechanic, and a Black Sun deck can have a resource curve rivalling that of Big Navy, but even with two Deluxe Expansions half-dedicated to them, don't really have much focus. That lack of focus, however, gives them a very wide variety of tricks, so they make an excellent splash faction. And if your opponent turns up all green objectives, you can never be quite certain what all they're capable of.

Thank you, Sir Sevus. That clears up a few things and helps me decide which Affiliation to play if I want to create a deck to lug around with me at cons and such.

I concur that was a good assessment. Play a few more games IRL or online and really see what they each do. You will find that for big turns, it is generally the Navy and Rebel affiliations that do that best, for overall control and feats of magic and wonder Sith and Jedi reign and for a rollercoaster ride of tricks and deceit Scum and Smugglers are your guides.