Originally posted at CardGameDB
I've posted the following gameplay overview and about 50 images of varying quality on CardGameDB Star Wars LCG article.
So I got to play the Star Wars LCG at Gencon today and I quite liked it, perhaps even more than Lord of the Rings.
Two demo decks were available (Military and Rogue). The game starts off drawing a hand of 7 cards. You then may play 7 cost worth of cards out to one of 4 zones.
The space zone holds your ships, ships are also the cards which produce resources, defend against imperial space attacks, and attack the encounters ships. You must protect against the space attacks because 10 damage to your base and you are out of the game.
The Reserve zone has cards which are generally support in nature the most frequent ones you play will draw you extra cards.
The Mission zone holds the characters which go on the mission to try to get progress tokens to advance to the next stage.
The Combat zone holds your attackers which you use to attack the encounter deck's characters.
Once you have played your cards you draw back up to 7 and begin with the first phase Draw. You draw 1 card off the top of your deck and may exhaust any cards at this time in your Reserve zone which allow you to draw extra.
Phase 2 is Mobolize. You play your cards from your hand during this phase and my place one development under your base. Each development under your base allows it to generate that many resources. In addition you can exhaust your ships to produce more resources.
Next is the Encounter phase. Each player reveals 2 cards off of the top of the encounter deck and adds them to the appropriate area resolving any when revealed effects as they come up. The Flashpoint keyword on some encounter cards making it so you can't discuss this with your partner can make this phase very tricky.
Phase 4 is the strategy phase where a random Imperial strategy card is revealed. This card leads to phase 5 the Conflict phase, and also can allow the Imperial space fleet to attack at times.
The Conflict phase is where most of your combat happens, each strategy card will tell you the attacks and the order they are to be made in. Imperial characters are broken up into 3 groups. The names of the groups escape me but the first conflict is always the imperials attacking one of the rebel zones. The Players defend as a group and must assign the damage the imperials deal as they see fit. The next conflict is rebels attacking the zone of their choice. Once that attack is done the Imperials get another attack and finally the rebels get the chance to go on a mission as the last conflict, being opposed by one of the imperial groups.
The imperials will be attempting to find and deal 10 points of damage to the Rebels base via their space fleet. The Imperial ships don't attack each turn though, so you really have to balance what you use your ships for, either attack, defense, or resources. Let the Imperials build up too big a fleet and when they do attack there will be no stopping them.
After Conflict is done you reach the last phase Regroup. In this phase you ready all cards, move the time counter up by one, each player may move one character to a new zone, and first player gets passed.
I'll be back there tomorrow if anyone has any questions or wants a better look at anything let me know