Gameplay overview and Images

By Darksbane, in Star Wars: The Card Game

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

Thanks Darksbane, it is certainly sounding better than LotR and that they learned from their mistakes with that one. The base, resource and developments reminds me of W:I, the pre-play of up to 7 resources reminds me of AGoT. The AI with this one certainly sounds a lot better. Hopefully the missions as well are better and more replayable than LotR's are.

Interesting, I wouldn't have made the pre-play connection with AGoT. With my gaming background, it more readily brought to mind the 30-point setup in Wizards' take on Star Wars (as that was among the first CCGs I played). :)

Thank you for posting that! But is it just me, or is anyone else having trouble loading those pictures? My Safari just gives me the loading icon endlessly. Trying to glean the details from those thumbnails is hard work! lengua.gif

They didn't work for me until I logged into the site.

Well one thing I *really* like is the existence of the Reserve zone, just because it makes complete sense and I don't know why something like it doesn't show up in more CCGs. In fact the one CCG that I recall it *did* show up in (ironically it was the "Reserves" ability in SWTCG), it made one brief, excellent appearance in the Jedi Guardians expansion and then disappeared for the remainder of the game's pre-IDC lifespan.

On the other hand, there is a flavor-related question I have at this point. Conceptually, what do the resources represent? I thought from one of the other reviews they were called Influence? Not true? If it is true, I don't understand why only ships can produce it. Politicians and war heroes should produce Influence too, since they are able to inspire greatness in people.

On the other hand, if the resource isn't called Influence and is instead some nebulous value that you use to buy things with, then it makes complete sense, since only ships can be used for smuggling operations between star systems. But if that's the case then the Millennium Falcon should produce a LOT of this resource. But even Han gets boarded sometimes. :)

I. J. Thompson said:

Thank you for posting that! But is it just me, or is anyone else having trouble loading those pictures? My Safari just gives me the loading icon endlessly. Trying to glean the details from those thumbnails is hard work!




Sorry about that. Accidentally set permissions wrong. Posting from my iPad is hard sometimes. Should be fixed to be viewable by guests now.

Ah I can see them now. Great pics. Thanks :)

Woho, thanks. Finally I could look at the pics gran_risa.gif

Maybe the ships go recruit people. Even if a character is an influential politician, he isn't going to be able to carry a new recruit on his shoulders from one system to the other. The idea of a starship being "influential" is odd, but I won't think about it too much.

Adam said:

Maybe the ships go recruit people. Even if a character is an influential politician, he isn't going to be able to carry a new recruit on his shoulders from one system to the other. The idea of a starship being "influential" is odd, but I won't think about it too much.

I, on the other hand, will obsess and grieve about it endlessly, ignoring to the fullest extent of my power the fact that it is just a game. :)

I kid, of course. Actually, I like that explanation a lot. Because something can "produce influence" without necessarily being "influential." A fleet of Star Destroyers, for example, can influence a world to obey the Empire. Probably not the best example since this game is about the Rebels, not the Empire, but I think that's the kind of influence that is being represented here. A lot of people joined the Alliance after their heroic victory over the first Death Star, something that could not have been done without ships.

Darksbane said:

Sorry about that. Accidentally set permissions wrong. Posting from my iPad is hard sometimes. Should be fixed to be viewable by guests now.

Thank you, and enjoy the con! gran_risa.gif

[EDIT: Wow, those are really some great pics. It's funny... I could see even in the thumbnails that they'd used some old Ralph McQuarrie concept art for the cards. But what I didn't expect was that they'd be using art from prior Star Wars games! The picture on the Imperial Star Destroyer card, for example, is taken from the cover of this book from the Star Wars RPG by West End Games. Not sure how I feel about that; it just caught my eye...]

On the other hand, the artwork is generally phenomenal. The Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight artwork had better be available as an avatar one of these days.

I think the Time and Progress dials ought to be intertwined, so that the players can tell at a glance how well they are doing and whether they need to speed things along.

Finally, and I know this brings me dangerously close to nitpicking, but I feel the TIE Interceptor should have different flavor text, seeing as the quote is made in reference to regular TIE Fighters, and the TIE Interceptors had yet to be developed. Still, if that's the worst thing I'll have to complain about with this game, I will be a happy boy. :)

FFG do state that the art for the cards is not finalised.

Thanks a ton for this info. This game is going to be gnarly.

That's exactly what I thought about after I read this review. In regards to the comparison between this and the WOTC Star Wars TCG.

I actually loved that game! So I'm excited about this...and the whole solo, cooperative piece as well.

Great summary and pics - thanks for sharing. I don't generally play card games, but the branding has drawn me in. Reading through the first post makes me think I'll be getting this one when it comes out. Seems simple enough for someone new like me, but still has a variety of gameplay options.

I do like the artwork as well.

Very cool. Thanks for the pics, TC!

Surely the final artwork should contain lots of photos? Most of the pictures I have seen are practically copies of stills from the films (or advertising material), and being a movie tie in game (unlike LoTR) it kind of makes sense to me.

I doubt (and hope very much they don't) that they will use stills from the films and everything suggests they're going to be using their own artwork for the game :D

All of the card images should be consistently a combination of recycled Star Wars artwork and original freelance commissions like they do with the other LCGs. This would free them up to do Expanded Universe material without the original images looking cheesy next to movie footage. Just look at how silly it got to be when WotC's cards began using CGI rather than live actors. (Snide comment about the PT goes here.) Not to mention that in a live-action film of average length like the Star Wars films, only a small fraction of the film's frames contain footage suitable to use in card imagery. No, original artwork is the way to go for them, I think. And I hope they are allowed to use some of the artwork that has been shown on the demo cards; for instance, the picture of Han playing at Sabacc is one of my personal favorites and I think it would be excellent to have a Han Solo card with that image.

Thanks for the images, indeed. It was great to be able to see them.

I think I can give a little more info on the illustration process for the game, since I'm one of the free-lancers illustrating for FFG (some of you may know me from other boards).

No movie stills were directly used, but the licensor is very, very precise. Everything put in a card illustration must be referenced from the movies, to the smallest detail (in short, we paint shots that were never filmed). Among the images I've seen, I can say for sure that some were commissioned for the game (Wedge Antilles and Luke Skywalker are works of mine).

My guess (and it's just a guess, mind you, I don't know anything more than you do on this) is that some illos (namely those recycled from other sources), might be placeholders Lucas licensing holds the rights and has authorized the use of until the definitive image has been painted.

Or otherwise (in specific for ships) it may be that that one is the standard image Lucas wants used for that class of ship.

At this stage, I guess a lot of things are still in flux. Artwork can be moved from card to card (the art for Luke Skywalker originally was for a different card) and new art can still be commissioned, in my opinion the final core set will likely have a good percentage of the art seen in the demo, but not all.

Thank you very much for the info and educated speculation! And of course, bravo to you on the fine work you have done. happy.gif

Can't wait to play!

Tiziano said:

Everything put in a card illustration must be referenced from the movies, to the smallest detail (in short, we paint shots that were never filmed).

So we won't be seeing any Expanded Universe material? Ever? That's disappointing, especially given the fact that clearly, at least some of the missions are going to be extraneous to the films: the Rebels were never shown or referenced to be returning to Yavin (or indeed, fleeing Yavin in the first place, though that is implied by their moving to Hoth by the time of ESB). Technically though, that Han Solo image ought to be fair game, since he mentions Lando losing the Falcon to him "fair and square."

I wonder why both Wizards and Decipher got to use the EU, and Fantasy Flight doesn't get to? That's not very fair.

MarthWMaster said:

Tiziano said:

Everything put in a card illustration must be referenced from the movies, to the smallest detail (in short, we paint shots that were never filmed).

So we won't be seeing any Expanded Universe material? Ever? That's disappointing, especially given the fact that clearly, at least some of the missions are going to be extraneous to the films: the Rebels were never shown or referenced to be returning to Yavin (or indeed, fleeing Yavin in the first place, though that is implied by their moving to Hoth by the time of ESB). Technically though, that Han Solo image ought to be fair game, since he mentions Lando losing the Falcon to him "fair and square."

I wonder why both Wizards and Decipher got to use the EU, and Fantasy Flight doesn't get to? That's not very fair.

This is incorrect. FFG has rights to all the extended universe story, imagery, characters, vehicles, etc.

cP
FFG