Did anyone else get a chance to play the demo during Gen Con? I did and I'm torn.

First off, there's no doubt in my mind I'll be purchasing this when it comes out (man, Q4 2012 is going to be expensive for me…), but some of the game mechanics really threw me for a loop.

Right now I play the Lord of the Rings living card game and I absolutely love it! One of my favorite games ever, and it turned me on to the idea of LCGs after my experiences with Star Wars Miniatures really burned me out. I have everything FFG has published for that game thus far and I want more!

I picked up A Game of Thrones LCG core set and played it a few times. While I enjoy it, I find it really plays better with more people involved and it's very involved. I understand the need for that level of intensity, but wow!

For my buddy and co-hort in gaming's birthday, I game his Call of Cthulu. It's fun and not as involved as AGoT, but we didn't like it as much as LotR.

At Gen Con I picked up Netrunner, but shamefully, I haven't had a chance to play it yet.

Enough of the exposition…

Now, Star Wars LCG is upon us and after my demo play through at Gen Con, I really torn.

What I liked:

Locations both sides are vying to destroy. That's incredibly fun.

The Death Star mechanic for the Empire. A great way to put a time limit on the game without being an actual time limit.

Seeing so many characters/places/items I love from the saga.

The back-and-forth of the turn order and how that plays out. (Feels like CoC, but I'm okay with it.)

What I don't think I liked:

Initiative - it felt like I was wasting cards, which I hate doing.

The Force - I'm still not sure what that was all about…

Battles between vehicles and individuals felt…weird. You mean Leia can shoot down a TIE Fighter? Uh…okay…?

Again, I'll pick it up, but can someone help me with the above? "You're my only hope!"

Brev929 said:

I think the fact that you got to play the game at GenCon makes you more qualified than the majority of folks who post on these forums to answer this question

Maybe… But I'd love some more points of view. Did anyone else get a preview at Gen Con?

I did 2 demos and watched about 4 more. I'm not quite sure what you are asking for though, just likes and dislikes?

I liked the game overall, I thought it was fun and had some interesting choices and mechanics. The only two issues I had was the space/character combat that pretty much everyone complains about and it has alot of tokens on cards. 3 different types of tokens to manage is just alittle cumbersome IMO.

I played at GenCon.

Personally I did not like the time limit mechanism, but I can understand why some people might. We'll see how it actually works in practice. It's hard to tell whether such a limit is interesting or not without more time with the cards.

By initiative I assume you mean the edge battles before combat. For me this was one of the more interesting aspects. It means that you will rarely draw into a terrible hand. Even if it's not a great hand, it will hopefully give you enough fodder to win the edge battle and either minimize your opponent's attack or enhance what little attack you have. Since you automatically redraw to your hand limit each turn, wasting cards isn't a big deal. Plus, the pod mechanism for deckbuilding means you will often be stuck with a few cards you are less enthusiastic about, so being able to burn them with a purpose is good.

It was hard to understand the significance of the Force battle from the demo. Presumably it adds another decision to make - do I use my best units to attack or to maintain control of the Force?

I don't think anyone likes the fact that characters, creatures, land vehicles and space vehicles attack each other. Some people have even written the game off already on that aspect alone. Clearly that mechanism is in place to simplify combat for the more casual crowd who will be buying this game. It seems like a lot of interesting things could have been done with a more complex battle system, but they decided against it. I have a feeling games will be so quick and units will die so often that the silliness of some conflicts will be easy enough to overlook. I believe the official explanation is that when Leia destroys a Star Destroyer it's not because she herself fired a gun and blew it up, but, simply, that she contributed in some way to the overall war between the Rebels and the Empire and one result of that overarching war was the destruction of a Star Destroyer.

Ultimately, if the game's interesting then I'll overlook thematic abstractions even though I feel that this is a game that could have been very thematic if it wasn't being marketed to more casual gamers.

It's because of the watered down theme and over simplification of combat and deckbuilding that I won't be picking this game up. I was so excitied when it was first announced. What a shame.