EDIT: Here's a link to a TON of card images. This did a lot to ease my worries. There's a ton of theme just through the cards themselves, which we couldn't really get a good look at in any of the videos people posted. Take a look:

www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/index.html/_/star-wars/star-wars-the-card-game-images-galore-r273

Mattr0polis said:

I played a game of Star Wars LCG at Gencon and absolutely loved it. I can't wait to get to play more.

First, it should be stated that I am an avid player of the Game of Thrones LCG and have been playing for 9 years. I have also dabbled in some other games like MTG, Overpower, and others over the years.

Second, when playing a PvP card game based on an intellectual property, there are times you have to suspend direct storylines from the books and ask yourself if it is capturing the "feel" of the intellectual property.

For instance, in Game of Thrones, there have been many times when my Eddard Stark kills your Joffrey Baratheon (Spoiler Alert: this action is the opposite of what happens in the books), but yet the game still captures the Valar Morghulis theme of the books: All men must die.

Likewise my first Star Wars LCG game felt just like the movies! I was playing Dark Side, my opponent was playing Light Side. My Light Side opponent was less worried about destroying my characters, and focused on hitting my objectives fast and hard. However, I built up a large board position, eventually getting out Darth Vader and was killing all of his units as fast as possible. We were nearing the end of the game, we both had lost 2 objectives, and the Death Star Counter was up to 9 or 10. I had complete board control with 5 or 6 units on the board while my opponent had none. But he had maintained the lead in the force battle through my last turn, so on his last turn, during the Balance phase he put the last damage token on my objective winning himself the game. The game absolutely felt like it captured the feel of the movies.

Another friend of ours watched the game and all three of us are eager to get another chance to play.

Thanks, Dobbler. That is at least a little reassuring, as I was thinking of starting up GoT LCG for quite a while, until I heard about this Star Wars LCG.

I hear ya with theme, and I agree with you about having to forget about movie canon. I guess I just mean, the iconic battles (and other non-battle happenings) of Star Wars will be reduced to a generic battlefield where everything is fighting at once, ships and people. While this is okay, games like Decipher's Star Wars CCG nailed the feel and themes of Star Wars perfectly, while also letting things play out differently than the movies. I guess that game has just spoiled me a bit of what to expect for a Star Wars game and for something that FFG told us would become one of their greatest products ever.

We'll see what happens I guess.

Dobbler said:

I don't think getting results that are "opposite" to the original material, in the sense that it's the same general scenario with the other side winning, is the problem. If Jek Porkins survives the trench run, or if Boba Fett knocks Chewie into the Sarlacc pit, that's great. We're still on theme.

What we don't want is a Wampa destroying a Sandcrawler to disrupt Luke's Jedi training. Or Lando and swarms of Ewoks taking on Grand Moff Tarkin and some Sandpeople to blow up the Death Star. Or Jabba and some stormtroopers gunning down a squadron of X-Wings to bring down the Hoth energy shield.

cyberfunk said:

This.

Example wise, I guess I more mean things like C-3PO blocking a TIE Fighter. That's just weird.

I will say this, which is keeping me optimistic though: many of the people who actually got to physically play the demo themselves seem to be saying it's fun. So that's good. And I do like the few Eric Lang games I've played. We really will just have to wait and see more info, I guess.

I have not played the demo, but I feel 100% the same way about the game as Mattr0polis. When I read that Star Wars: The Card Game v.2.0 was being unveiled at GenCon, I was suddenly very sad that I couldn't get to go this year. I mean, it's been a year since the initial announcement of the IP acquisition, and I'm a HUGE Star Wars appreciator, and would have LOVED to see this game in action! Excitement abounded as I followed the link to Team Covenant's website.

But a good deal of that excitement trickled away as I watched the demo video. Like Mattr0polis has said, it's just kind of in a jumble. The Death Star Dial is thematic and fits with what I think of as Wars-y, and the decision to make winning the game dependent on Objective cards was the correct one IMO. Edge battles are cool and add an element of strategy to the battles. But there's not much else I can say for the game that is positive. It just doesn't "feel" like Star Wars - yet. I do feel it would be possible to achieve the appropriate feel with the current system; it just needs some tweaking. I'd be willing to wait another year if it meant the system's flavor could be sufficiently improved from its current incarnation so as to fulfill FFG's February statement. But I suppose any further delays would destroy their credibility.

Oh, and the deckbuilding mechanic got a rare expletive reaction out of me.

Ok, I guy on BGG just posted a link to a TON of pictures from the demo decks (like 70 pics) and while I still have some reservations about this game, the pictures of some actual cards go a LONG way to adding some thematic value to this. Check some of them out. Some real cool stuff in there:

www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/index.html/_/star-wars/star-wars-the-card-game-images-galore-r273

The videos people put up are nice but we just couldn't get a very good look at many cards. I'm genuinely kind of excited about this game again after looking at these.

Well, that does help, but I'm not sure I'm keen on the idea of being able to play a Jedi Mind Trick on the Emperor.

One thing I'm noticing as I read more and more of the Objective cards, is that some of them feel like they would make more sense if the rules for Objectives worked a bit differently from the way they do currently. For example, Last Minute Rescue remains in play until it's destroyed by the Dark Side (assuming I'm understanding the rules correctly). Is there any way to "complete" your own Objectives, in order to reveal the next Objective in your stack, and/or receive some bonus? I think that there ought to be, as it gives you something to do other than throw attackers at the opponent's Objectives. Saving Luke before he falls from Cloud City (a.k.a. your opponent destroys Last Minute Rescue)? Now THAT sounds like the Star Wars flavor I've been craving!

Also, the more I think on it, the more I realize that I have too much faith in FFG's design teams to think there isn't already some rule in place preventing Characters from blocking Vehicles unless a card says otherwise.

I was in the same boat. I felt that the demo really left me cold as far as interesting gameplay goes. But reading the cards makes me excited as well. The funny thing is, if you say the game is all about attacking and defending objectives, it doesn't sound like Star Wars, but the objectives themselves really do seem to bring a lot of the theme to the game where the gameplay itself does not. Maybe I won't cancel my preorder after all.

I guess my problem is that the Objectives don't seem to do a whole heck of a lot, except being there for the opponent to damage, and occasionally to provide some gameplay effect, and to annoyingly indicate the identity of some of the cards in your deck.

Yeah, when I heard the term "objective" I was imagining some sort of goal to complete (a la the SWCCG objectives). These objectives are only objectives in that you want to destroy your opponent's. For you, they're more like locations.

dbmeboy said:

Yeah, I really feel that the "Objective" title is a total misnomer. They do nothing as far as gameplay goals for the player. Also, the 3 you have give away 15 cards you have in your deck. There is no surprise.

They could rename them "base" cards or some such thing. That would makes thematic sense for both resource generation and target for opponents.

It may not be the norm in day to day conversation, but I think objective is actually the proper term, especially when discussing military targets.

binarymelon said:

"Ojective" seems a fine term for me. However, it would be also a good feature if at least some of the objectives of its own side could be fulfilled in some way, be it to deprive the enemy to opportunity to thwart it (destroy it), or to gain some bonus. Based on the pictures of the cards posted elsewhere on the web, I think that it would be thematic that Objectives like "Last Minute Rescue" or "A journey to Dagobah" could be achieved by the Light side player.

binarymelon said:

"Objective" seems also a suited term for me. However, it would be also a good feature if at least some of the objectives of its own side could be fulfilled in some way, be it to deprive the enemy to opportunity to thwart it (destroy it), or to gain some bonus. Based on the pictures of the cards posted elsewhere on the web, I think that it would be thematic that Objectives like "Last Minute Rescue" or "A journey to Dagobah" could be achieved by the Light side player.

Edit: sorry for the double message. i'm new to this specific forum!

Yes, objective is what you'd call your targets, but the light side player's objectives aren't their targets, they're the dark side player's targets. If it's my objectives deck I want it to be my objectives.

Possibly, but that would add another mechanic in an already cluttered game. I am very interested in this, because…well it's Star Wars, but it's toeing a very fine line.

binarymelon said:

What about being able to "attack" some of its own Objectives? (adding a different type of counter (advancement instead of damages) to the card, and letting the adversary player the possibility to "defend"). The same mechanism could be used to avoid too much cluttering ; also, maybe not all the Objectives could be affected by this feature (the Coruscant objective would not make sense being fulfilled by the Dark Side for instance) but this would both gives some control on its own objectives and a new way to fight against the opponent (fulfulling its objectives would be a way of protecting them). As the victory conditions appear to be asymmetric, this could be made with limited change of the game balance: if the Light Side fulfills its objectives, he is not progressing toward victory; if the Dark Side fulfills its own, he might occupy (focus) valuable assets that would not be available for defense against the Light side.

Anyway, it's just some of the rambling thoughts I had reading about the demos and looking at the videos posted.

herozeromes said:

I kind of have a problem with people saying this, as I've seen this brought up a few times now. Yes, they will know 15 cards in your deck, but that really is no different than many other card games. Good players will know the good combos and know to expect them as they start seeing pieces of your deck. In Decipher Star Wars CCG, for example, once you saw someone's starting Objective, you are going to know an equal portion of their deck in tournament play. Same in Magic TCG, where once you see the colors of mana, you are going to know some things to expect, powerful combos for those colors at high level play.

So yeah, this is no different. And it's still only 15 cards out of about 50 or 60. Though just like those other games, you'll probably be able to get a decent idea as to what other batches work very good with those ones and thus a few other things to watch out for.

Mattr0polis said:

Yes, but Objectives were essentially a type of interrupt that allowed you to put a certain set of cards into play before the game even started. There were also Starting Interrupts. These gave a tactical advantage by allowing the player to get a jump start on playing cards. Yes, they know what cards are in play, but only because you put them all in play at once. In the LCG, you put out three objectives, and it reveals 1/4 of your (as of yet) hidden cards.

herozeromes said:

I'm not talking about those cards. I'm talking about, if I saw you were playing Hunt Down objective, I know that you are almost certainly running 4-6x Vaders, 2-3 of his lightsaber, 2-3 Visage of the Emperor's, many of the interrupts that target Vader like I Have You Now and/or Focused Attack, etc. And depending on your starting effects chosen, I'll know a bunch of other info. Same for any of the objectives. About 1/4 of your deck.

The issue with objectives revealing a portion of your deck from the start is one that worried me at first, but then I thought "how likely is it that I will get to know every single card and which objective they are associated with, and what they do, when I have to know my own deck?" I mean, the guy I play AGoT with always plays as Stark, and has done for years, it's really no surprise when we play what cards I'm going to come up against, but then, I lose as often as I win, so even knowing what you're going to be up against doesn't necessarily mean your game is ruined.

I do like this other idea about having objectives you can complete yourself. I find them analogous to quests in W:I, another Eric Lang creation, and whether it's just me or not, I feel it took them four battle pack cycles and three deluxe expansions to really figure out just how good quests could actually be in that game, so maybe we will get objectives in future expansions that have this mechanic. Or maybe there already are, but we just didn't see them because they're in the Rebel deck, not the Jedi deck. Or whatever. I'd have thought it would be pretty standard fare for a card game to have such devices anyway.

I just hope that objectives aren't more analogous to story cards in CoC, which would mean we'll be stuck with the same ones for a full year or more of expansions. My initial idea of what Force packs (or whatever they're going to call them now) will contain was ten new objectives, with the associated card pod, per pack - 10x6=60, after all. So hopefully we'll get a glut of these things with a whole host of awesome new mechanics to entertain us! The way the pods are numbered, it can't be that a Force pack will just provide more cards to flesh out each one, as they've already been numbered "1 of 6" or whatever. And the way it seems to be structured, the "x3" rule simply has no place here (thank goodness for that!) Of course, I'm sure if the "10-objectives" approach is the one they go with, and as Corey mentioned you can't have more than two of the same objective in your deck (though some are limited to only the one), then people will complain they have to buy Force packs in duplicate, as if FFG send people round to hold a gun to your head until you buy that third core set and the like.

Ahem!

I think we may be missing the interpretation of what the Objectives represent?

Let's use "Last Minute Rescue" as an example.

As the Light Side player, it is "my Objective' in the sense that it goes in the stack of cards I bring to the table. Each turn, it lets me pull a damage token off a character.

As the Dark Side player destroying it, they have effectively thwarted my "Last Minute Rescue" of my character, preventing my character from getting the much needed healing.

As the Light Side, destroying "The Heart of the Empire" and winning the game sounds exactly like what you expect to happen if you took out Imperial Centre.

Destroying "Cruel Interrogations" is basically letting the Light Side do a jail break and free your captured POW's.

As the Dark Side, destroying "Jedi Training" will obviously prevent the Light Side from growing stronger in the Force, this making your bids for control of the Force each turn more effective.

There are a few that aren't as themey as those, like destroying "Hit and Run" doesn't really equate to something as grandiose as a jail break scenario, but for the most part, MY Objective cards are essentially YOUR Objective goals to defeat in the game.

It's certainly different than the SWCCG Objective cards, which were most definitely about you, not your opponent, but in a way, the bonuses you'd get for flipping the card required your opponent to attempt to stop you from flipping, thus making it an Objective for them too, in a roundabout way.