Game Speed

By RendTheHeavens, in Star Wars: The Card Game

Quick question,

how long do games usually last? I've watching a few videos online and it seemed like things progress pretty fast. How does this affect the ability to develop strategies throughout the game? It seems like with having to discard a lot with edge battles, and the death star dial ending the game in 12 rounds no matter what, there isn't much room for indepth games?

We play in 30 - 45 minutes. We should be able to get to 20 minutes when we get things down. It's comparable to magic. He depth comes for the weight of the decisions. Every choice is pretty important, now it's tough to know what the best play in a given situation is due to the edge battles and nature of card draw. It's very tactical. Strategy comes from the deck design.

20-45 mins

depends on if it is a new deck and what type of deck - aggressive decks tend to make the game go faster, unit heavy decks can, depending on the draw of cards take longer, Vader/Emperor Turtle strat decks tend to draw the game out

Our games are around 25-40 minutes per game.

25-50 minutes here. Depends on who I play against. New people take longer time of course :)

Ravncat said:

It's very tactical. Strategy comes from the deck design.

I want to echo this sentiment. You form a strategy when you build your deck -- you design it to work a certain way or accomplish certain goals in a particular manner. Once the game starts, accomplishing your goals is a matter of tactics. While games can be short, they always hinge on important tactical decisions.

The edge battles really add a lot of strategic depth. The way you play them depends on what you've seen, what you expect, and what your deck's plan is. Of course this is on top of necessity and opportunity. I feel like there's so much to learn about how to play edge battles optimally. In any case, there is no way that edge battles do anything close to taking away from in-depth games.

In terms of time, I am running around an hour with newer opponents and around half an hour with more experience. Experience meaning not having to read the cards to know what they do and knowing what our plan to win is. We do still spend some meditative time assessing the board.