I've only had three games so far (and I'm dying for more!). I still haven't got the wife in on playing it yet. I have only played with starter decks so far and I love it. I'm planning to keep playing with starter decks until I start to get bored with it, and then I'll build some decks. Part of the reason is that I don't see much point in building customized decks with only one core because I feel like (and this is opinion only) that I need duplicates of some objective sets if I'm going to improve on the starter decks. If I just mix affiliations from one starter, I feel like the deck will be just as random as the starter is, so I don't really gain anything from doing that. But the randomness of the starter decks is part of what gives it a lot of appeal. Each game has felt quite different because of the variety of cards in each deck. In any case, my order got messed up and my two core sets were sent to different places, so it'll be another week before I have both of my cores.

As for gameplay, my biggest fear was the edge battles. They're just so intense that I knew I'd put a lot of emotional investment in each one and I was afraid of that leading to sour games. However, I've found that they're actually quite fun.

One thing I love about the game is that it's Star Wars and the theme (for a fanboy like me) is so entertaining that I've really enjoyed my games even though I've won one and lost two. I really do feel like the game designers found a way to make it cinnematic. It was so thrilling to strike with my A-wing to take out a TIE Fighter and then have the A-wing make a Heroic Sacrifice by crash into an AT-ST and clearing all opposition from the target objective. I lost that game, but only just. As others have said, most of the games have been pretty close.

The cons: Now I'm not trying whine here, I'm just being honest about my impressions. Both of my Interrogation droids had these strange scratches on them. It's like someone already played with them [gasp] without sleeves! And I really wish the center column in the box was wide enough to fit sleeved cards. I'm not sure if it's just mine, but if I force my cards to sit in that area straight, it bends the edges of my sleeves, so instead my decks are at angles inside the box.

Quite trivial things to be disappointed with, eh? My overall impressions for this game are very positive.

Played quite a bit now, with custom decks going on 20+ games. I no longer feel as though the DS is op - its just seems daunting as a rebel to see the deathstar at 6-7 and have not taken out an objective it leads to the scoop impulse.

As for the cinema aspect to the game i have really fallen in love with the edge battle, the joy of baiting out some ones vader or destroyer with a twist of fate adds a replayability to the SWCG's that i have not enjoyed before in games like magic were you can almost math out your victory a few turns in advanced. Sometimes i see my plans fall apart infront of my eyes as 1 failed edge battle leads to a game playing catch up or gives way to an explove rebel assult on my objectives as i have opened a unforseen hole in lines thinking i would destroy targets that i could not due to the lost edge battle.

Over all, its the most fun i have had with a CG in awhile, i did not play netrunner i heard its fantastic but i did alot of shadowrun in my youth and i have had my fill with hacking and corp wars. (plus thats gunna be america in like 20 years so why play the game now when i can just live it then ;-) )

Magni

Budgernaut said:

I recommend not using the box for storage. It really is more a showpiece than meant to be anything practical.

I've played two games. Bother were with the Imperial Fleet. My opponent used the Rebellion and the Jedi, and both times were just a no contest for the Imperials. I chalk it up to first time players playing the game. I do like that the game was incredibly easy to learn. I own Netrunner…and that took a lot of work with my friend and I to get going correctly. I have high hopes for this game, as I love Star Wars. So I plan to get more games in and see where my opinion is then.

I played another game last night with the Core set and found that as the LS, I was looking at Deathstar dial at 7 and destroyed two objectives and got the third on my following turn. This game can putter along then wrap up rather quickly. To me, that's exciting!

I have really liked the game so far. I played 3 games so far. One as Imperial Navy and two as Jedi. I really like that the factions play significantly different. Jedi really are about controlling the boad where as Imperial navy is just straight up blow things up. (there may be more finesse to it but that is my initial impresssion). I really like the fact that this game seems to play pretty quick. I do not think any of my games have take any more than 45 minutes which is nice especially if you are trying to play both sides. I am certainly looking forward to my next core set and the Hoth cycle.

I played my second game last night, and it was a completely different play experience than my first - the obvious thing now was that in my first game the DS dial was being advanced every balance phase, not only on the DS turn, so that definitely explains why it only took about 10 minutes to play!

Using the deck lists advertised here and here, and playing as the DS this time, it was really lots of fun, particularly the edge battles, with the fate cards messing things up and whatnot. The fact that the edge-enabled icons seemed to be dominating made me really want to win the battle, sometimes throwing people like Vader into the stack to ensure a victory. In the end, it was a very close game, with the dial being I think two turns off giving me a victory when my third objective was destroyed, so I lost again but still enjoyed it much!

It's nice to see so many people enjoying the game on here though, as I feel like I read through two or three months' worth of folks disparaging the game based on the gencon previews. I'm really pleased with the way it's turned out, and am rabidly looking forward to the expansions to get more cards! I think the only sore point I have is that it's a 2-player game, and seems impossible to solo, so I can't play as many games as I want to, as I'm having to arrange for people to come over etc. **** people having real lives of their own!!

Finally got to play my first games today. My core sets arrived just before I had to travel for the holidays, and I brought my cards with me hoping to find some people to play with. Can't wait to get home and play more with those of my regular gaming group who have picked up Star Wars.

I played four games today, alternating between the sides. My first game was Jedi v. Scum; second was Navy v. Smugglers (though it was largely Rebel Alliance cards); third was Rebel v. Navy (my opponent started with the Sith affiliation card, but we realized he'd included The Ultimate Power in his objective deck so he swapped out his affiliation during the first turn); and the final game was Scum v. Jedi. Light Side won the first three games, while our final game was the only time the forces of tyranny finally got to triumph.

The least fun game was the second one, where I was just torn apart by my opponent's Smuggler/Rebel deck. He got out a Battlefield Engineer and Heavy Blaster Emplacement out right away, and good god did that combo ruin my game. With absolutely no extra resources (or least any non-character resources, I did have a very short-lived Tarkin and Duty Officer) and crap draw, I could only get one or two units out a turn, none of which were long for this world. I think by the end, my opponent had at least eight units out. The other games were far closer, which were much more enjoyable. I think the best game was our third, the Rebel v. Navy game. I pulled ahead near the end, destroying two objectives to win the game, but up until then things remained quite neck and neck.

As I think others have noted, momentum is certainly an issue right now. I'm not sure what I could have done to stop my opponent's inexorable bulldozing of my forces. Coming from AGOT, I'm used to resets being a big part of the environment; being able to clear the board (and knowing how to bounce back from a cleared board) is a huge part of AGOT. Perhaps Star Wars doesn't need anything quite as extreme as Valar Morghulis (which kills every character), but I do think that every faction needs to have access to a reset. Currently I think Rebel and Sith are the only ones, with A New Hope and There Is No Escape (if there're other resets I've overlooked, let me know; I'm still learning all the cards). Affiliation-specific resets might be nice and thematic, though it could also be helpful to have a Neutral pod for each side with a reset.

One thing I will definitely need to adjust to is some of this game's terminology. For example, there were several points where I realized I had misinterpreted a card because I was thinking in terms of AGOT jargon. For example, things that targeted Character units, where I found myself thinking of all units as Characters; sadly Boba Fett is not able to capture Redemption. I also got tripped up a bit by enhancements, which cover the card-archetypes of AGOT's location and attachment cards. For whatever reason, I mainly think of them in terms of attachments, overlooking that the location-like enhancements are also enhancements; during a game, I suddenly realized In You Must Go would affect Dagobah Training Grounds, for instance.

The most egregious problem: the name for Blast Damage, and the icon for Unit Damage being a blaster. I couldn't count how many times during our games that my opponent and I fumbled over those two, confusing each other and ourselves.

Played a bunch of games today for the first time using constructed decks.

Love the game, there is far more to it than I thought there was. Some definite times where there was brain drain for optimizing moves. With just a core set and small pool of cards, there is alot of room for this to LCG to get as complicated -- maybe even more so -- as AGoT.

Some gripes I have

• Realistically only going to play 5 of your objectives making that first 4 extremely important and there's no mulligan!
• Too fiddly with all the chits (mainly bothered by focus tokens)
• Focus chits and damage chits are the same color (red) and I get confused sometimes knowing what I have ready or not

Things I noticed

• Light side card targeting effects are more generic than Dark side. Target UNIT for Light side and target VEHICLE / CHARACTER / DROID for Dark side. Makes Light side much more versatile.
• Factions seem equally balanced currently as each deck type has a counter (although tactic icons are universally strong). I thought my Imperial deck would crush and it definitely crushed Rebels and Jedi, but it fell short versus Spies/Smugglers (yes, I faced a constructed Spies/Smuggler/Rebel deck and it was really strong). I still need to play through all the factions to get a better feel for their match ups…

Playing some more in a few days so I'll have some more thoughts later…

FiendishDevil said:

I don't mind the abundance of tokens, but I agree that the damage should have been more visibly distinct from the focus. Blue for focus, red for damage, white for shield (or something like that). I love the mechanic connected to the focus tokens, but I do occassionally mistake them for damage chits.

Ever since fokus tokens were first explained I saw them as yellow for some reason. Blue is a calming color, which echoes the protection shields provide. Red is universally the color of damage tokens in any game.

You're not alone with yellow for focus. The demo they ran at gencon used yellow tokens for focus, red for damage, and blue for shield. I'd imagine that the final product for focus tokens was to help link with the tactics icon.

dbmeboy said:

True, but you'd think they could preserve the same (+) shape but with yellow instead of red.

I'd just like to point out that I'm colorblind (well, red-green color-deficient) and I've only once confused the Focus and Damage tokens. Don't know what's the matter with all you "full visible spectrum" people

I love this game. I threw together a couple decks in no time flat (not my best work, but they function)., and am looking forward to tweaking them, especially when the force packs start hitting.

I don't understand what the problem is with distinguishing between the tokens…

Color similarities or not, how can you mistake a grey octagon with a red 1 or 3 (which are larger than the focus tokens, too), for a small circle with a red crosshair? The shapes alone should be distinguishable enough, even without the fact that the design on the focus tokens matches the tactics icon almost perfectly, while the damage provides numbers for easy quick reference.

stormwolf27 said:

When I'm consciously thinking about the differences between them, it's obvious. But during play I prefer to have my thoughts on what my opponent is doing, and how I will respond. When there gets to be a pile of tokens that fall in the same region of the visible spectrum, in two varieties that have nothing to do with each other, I instead have to make the same conscious consideration that I do outside of play, and this would not happen for me if the focus tokens occupied a different area of the spectrum. I know this because I have not once mistaken a shield token for a damage token, but have done so several times in the case of focus tokens versus damage tokens. Again, my attention has to be focused (pun not intended) on the tokens in order to reliably add or remove the right kind, and I don't like this.

I bought the core set yesterday and I've played a couple of games so far and I like the game more than I thought I would. After having some experience of the LOTR LCG I was expecting the game to play more like that but there is a lot of things about the system which I like.

I bought the core set yesterday and I've played a couple of games so far and I like the game more than I thought I would. After having some experience of the LOTR LCG I was expecting the game to play more like that but there is a lot of things about the system which I like.

Played more yesterday, and although I enjoyed it greatly, I definitely found myself frustrated again by how hard it is to overcome momentum. My friend and I played six games--Jedi v. Sith, Navy v. Rebel, Navy v. Rebel (this was the only game I won), Sith v. Jedi, Rebel v. Sith, and Jedi v. Navy--and ever game fundamentally came down to who got out a hard-hitting unit out within the first turn or two and pulled so far ahead their opponent was effectively locked down.

In particular, I discovered just how obnoxious Protect Character is. The game needs more removal options, events and effects that can help you deal with your opponent's Luke or Emperor, and it's incredibly frustrating to realize that you will never, ever be able to hit their sweeper because they've got Royal Guard or Guardian of Peace out to eat any or most of the targeted damage you might be able to put out.

Some of these issues can no doubt be accounted for with better deckbuilding. As I was introducing my friend to the game, I opted to use the baseline 8-objective decks. Doubling up on the sets with important characters is obviously going to help with the arms race to establish your board position first, and there are certainly sets that wouldn't make the cut. The inability (or at least extreme difficulty) of making a comeback in this game is definitely its most glaring flaw, and adding more removal options and resets to the card pool would hopefully help.

I dunno, I've played 4 games and every time it's gone down to the wire--whoever wins would've lost in the next turn or two.

Hans Chung-Otterson said:

Ive played several games now, i like it but not nearly as much as the Decipher ccg. I dont say this just cuz im an old timer, i do think this game has its unique coolness, but comparison between the two i think the other is just a better game in general. But like i said this is still a fun game, i do think it would have been much better had they stuck with the co-op/solo mechanic. But i understand they wanted pvp circuit so. I am most looking forward to seeing forcepacks and getting to see cards from the EU. We have already had a few small glimpses into EU, such as blessing of the hand, Kuati security team, Despayre, Dathomir and the nightsister even the darkside apprentice. Thats my main reason for supporting the game and gettin my friends to play it instead of just the old decipher ccg. It will give us a chance to go into different elements of the mythology.

Far as the deck building mechanic im still not liking it as much as just single card deck building. I mean all my friends still gotta read everycard in a pod and then it seems a bit harder for them to decide which pods to choose then just finding a single card they like and throwing it into the deck. (They r playing and building off my 2 core sets).

The other thing im most excited about is the mutliplayer rules coming out, though im a bit worried how 3 light players r gonna gang up on 1 ds player. But well see how it works out.

alpha5099 said:

Building your own decks will help with this quite a bit. There are plenty of good removal options available, though each side does it a little differently. Sith manage removal the old fashioned way - Force Choke and Force Lightning. Imperial Navy tends to want to just overwhelm the LS with fast damage with a little bit of capturing thrown in if you want. Scum has the capture mechanic. The LS factions all have plenty of ways to place focus tokens (works pretty well as removal) plus Luke and Han with their targeted strike goodness. So far, I've found the game very swingy - getting the early board position certainly helps, but my opponent is rarely out of the game. Even the big blow-outs I've had can generally be traced back to one edge battle that would have completely changed the game had it gone the other way.