Ok, so here are some of my ideas that I was discussing with my brother for what they are worth.

OBJECTIVE SETS:
The concept of the objective sets (OS) may in time prove to be a cool idea however right now I don't see the point. The reason is that I guess I expected much greater synergy with the objective and the cards in the set. Right now it seems more to be a way to force players to build deck with certain less stronger cards or to force a mix of certain card types (for example, you could not make an all unit deck because there just are not OS that are like that). So, I am curious to see how this plays out and I truly hope that there is a greater plan and we will see more cohesiveness with the future OS between the cards in them and inter-synergy between OSes that are similiar in nature.

OPEN PLAY:
I had a thought on the concept of open play. For example, my brother and I were discussing having a house rule where you did not have to follow the rule of OS. You will still have to resource match but you would not be limited to have to take all the cards in an OS but could mix and match. This would be for fun only but the idea kind of got me thinking.

TOURNAMENTS:
What if FFG decided to have a two tier system for their tournaments. Where tier ONE would be everything as it is in the rules (and the upcoming tournament rules). This would be where the big prizes were for sure. Then have a tier TWO where we could follow the OPEN PLAY concept and the objective set rule for deck building is removed. The winner here might inspire some future combinations of OS seeing what type of cards this person was able to pull together from the complete availability of cards on that side (or that affiliation). Again, this is just tossing out an idea for fun.

MULTIPLAYER:
I have seen that it appears that multiplayer will be multiple LS against a super DS player (or automated player). I think this is a left over concept from the fact that the game was going to be a cooperative game to begin with and I am not super keen on this. It may work and I am totally liking the concept of multiplayer. But I would much prefer to see that the rules incorporate a MATCHING amount of LS and DS players (ie 2 LS against 2 DS and so forth). Of course, whatever they do, we will use and have fun with.

Anyway, jsut some thoughts. What does everyone else think. I am sure that some will like my ideas (we will call them Light Side people) and some will not (we will call them Dark Side people) … LOL!!!

JH

Multiple formats with different deck construction rules is silly. Besides, it would really break the game.

Guess I am on the dark side as I don't like any of those ideas.

jesterhawk said:

I think that's exactly what FFG was going for. Star Wars is high fantasy in the style of Lord of the Rings, despite being set in space. It takes legions of stormtroopers to ultimately fail to prevent a tiny strike team of rebels from destroying the Endor shield generator. Obviously, this kind of disparity between the power level of generic characters characters vs. heroic/villainous characters cannot be presented faithfully without the game similarly favoring the big heroes and villains, and most players either leaving out the mooks or playing only mooks (no named characters), and losing. All previous card games set in the Star Wars mythos have nonetheless done this, for the sake of play balance. Instead, FFG went in a direction that forces players to use elements of the setting that are less formidable and might not see play in a traditional CCG or LCG, and most players now agree their design in no way sacrifices the strategy of deep deckbuilding, or it won't at least, once more objective sets are added to the overall pool. Right now the selection is limited, so the ability to customize decks to suit one's own playstyle is similarly limited.

JMCB said:

But I think it is too early to tell whether it would break the game or not. I don't think there is enough cards to be able to see if it would break anything especially since resource matching would still have to take place. All it allows is streamlining the decks from fluff cards that have been put into the objective sets.

And there would always be the "standard" style of play that will follow all of the normal deck rules.

JH

The problem with the open play concept, aside from the fact it invalidates the entire deckbuilding style that Star Wars: The Card Game revolves around, is that the game simply isn't designed to handle it.

For example, generally, you can only include 2x of a card in your deck. But if you have an objective set that includes a card twice, or two different objective sets that include the card, you can have up to 4x. And then you have cards like Tarkin, Red Five, Coruscant Defense Fleet, or Trench Run which can only be used if you have the correct affiliation. Taking that a step further, you can have 4x Control Room, Twi'lek Loyalist, or Rebel Assault, or 6x Sith Library, but only if you're using the correct affiliation card. Not to mention Fate cards! You can have 5 Target of Opportunity if you're playing Jedi, 3 if you're playing any other Light Side faction.

So your options are to limit every card to a fixed number per deck, in which case the duplicated cards suffer since their one advantage - consistency - is shot, or to have a very complex set of rules that govern how many copies of a card can be put into a deck, in which case you may as well stick with the objective set system anyways.

I think that game designers use the OSets to balance the game.

For example, the card Rebel Assault is pretty powerful - pay 2 resources (one must be rebel) and deal 2 damage to anything (but the death star dial w/trench run). The event is included in 2 different OSets, meaning that it is possible for the LS player to have up to 4 in their command deck. This is balanced in the fact that you must play the Rebel Affiliation for one of the OSets, which means that if you are trying to splash the DD cards in your Jedi deck, you now cannot include OSets that are Jedi Affiliation only - namely "A Journey to Dagobah", which includes the important Double Strike, a Fate card AND Red 5.

PS - totally ninja'd!

D.Knight Sevus said:

That's a good point. The game has no traditional rule to establish the maximum number of copies of the same card in a deck. So here's the decklist I would use to break Open Play:

10x Darth Vader
10x Emperor Palpatine
20x Force Choke
10x Target of Opportunity
(Sith Affiliation, 10 objectives with 2+ resources)

It gets worse. I'd play something like this. You could just completely lock them out every turn with Interrogation. Also, Interrogation Droid is immune to Jedi Mind Trick, which everyone would be running a rediculous amount of.

Objectives: 3 Emperor's Web, 4 Consul of the Sith, 3 Heart of the Empire

4x Emperor Palpatine
5x Advisor of the Emperor
14x Dark Precognition
8x Interrogation
8x Interrogation Droid
7 x Twist of Fate

Or you can do stupid stuff with Dark Precognition and Duty Officers…

Long story short, this is a very bad idea.

Now hold on a minute. I, like most of you, don't have any interest in playing an unlimited format without objective set deck building restrictions. However, if the OP is abolishing those rules for his mod, he could make new deck building rules. Maybe it goes back to 3x like most LCGs, maybe you can only include cards you get from a complete play set. While I agree that this open format isn't appealing, I think it's wrong to say that it won't work because of deck building when you're imposing your own deck building scheme instead of one the OP suggested.

Budgernaut said:

The crux of my argument was that the concievable deckbuilding restrictions are either complicated ("You may use up to two copies of each card from objective sets 1-16 and 19-34, and one copy of each card from objective sets 17, 18, 35, and 36. Treat cards with the same title but different objective set numbers or different sequencial numbers within the same objective set as different cards for the purpose of deckbuilding.") or weaken cards that appear in multiples ("You may use up to 2(or 3) copies of a card with the same title in a deck."). Either way, it's a drastic shift in the balance of the game, and one that the game is not really built to handle.

Budgernaut said:

The crux of my argument was that the concievable deckbuilding restrictions are either complicated ("You may use up to two copies of each card from objective sets 1-16 and 19-34, and one copy of each card from objective sets 17, 18, 35, and 36. Treat cards with the same title but different objective set numbers or different sequencial numbers within the same objective set as different cards for the purpose of deckbuilding. If you use cards from objective set 4, 13, 22, or 29, your deck's affiliation card must be Jedi, Rebel Alliance, Sith, or Imperial Navy, respectively.") or weaken cards that appear in multiples ("You may use up to 2(or 3) copies of a card with the same title in a deck."). Either way, it's a drastic shift in the balance of the game, and one that the game is not really built to handle.

To elaborate on the general mood stated by others earlier in the thread, I think the idea is that limitations force more complete and thoughtful deckbuilding. If you want Rumors at the Canitina to help supplement a diverse deck, you have to suffer what is in my opinion one of the worse set of five cards in the game so far. Generally, the design seems to me to be one of: you want this really strong objective, or set of cards, we're going to force you into also building around these other more mediocre cards.

In other card games, specifically mtg (for full disclosure I was a long time mtg player but a combination of the game and the people that I had to play with forced me out of it), so called commons, uncommons, and even the ocassional junk rare tend to see very limited play because frankly why would you play a worse card if you can avoid it?

Essentially, the deckbuilding in this game I find cuts out the problem of half if not more of the card pool being irrelevant because of sheer power. There are going to be "bad" cards that get played because they get paired with the truly outstanding ones, and there are going to be "good" cards that get passed over because of the crummier cards that are along for the ride. In this way the deck building in this game is one of the most interesting I've ever seen.

Well, I have only played one game, with the starter deck, so I don't have a ton of experience yet, but I am rather intrigued by the unique deck building rules in this game. I think it is only going to get more interesting as the card pool rapidly grows with the Force packs. So at this point, I would not want to see any additional official deck formats introduced.

For the record, if Open Play was adopted there would have to be different deck building rules. Coming from almost 20 years of playing these types of games, I can easily see how that would work. Things like only 3x or 4x of a card are the staple in these types of games and you can't claim that all those games over all these years are bad and this is the only game that isn't. So, I could see this working.

Second, Open Play would always be in my mind a "secondary" style of play. In that the primary would always be the OS. But that this alternative would broaden deck building providing another avenue to play this game in a unique an different way.

Third, I agree that in other games there are crap cards. Personally I have always liked the challenge of building a deck and making work around some of those crap cards (I was one of the first to build a working Treefolk deck for Magic long before sapplings were introduced and I made a WHITE/BLACK pestilence/rat/bat/protection deck work when everyone said there was no way to play those two colors). So, I enjoy the challenge. And I am not sure I agree with the argument that OS are great because they FORCE you to play with crap cards. I much prefer the ability to take a crap card and see myself what I can do with it. That said, not every crap card will have a possible deck that will work.

Fourth, I think they put the OS the way they did to incorporate a set of cards that you would not mind parting with in edge battles. If that is true, then what we see here will be the pattern for all OS and I think that is weak.

All this said, I love the game and I love the LCG concept. I am just tossing ideas for fun.

Addressing each of your points in turn:

1) I don't think anyone here is arguing that all games that limit 3x/4x copies of a card are poorly designed, and that Objective Set play is the "one true way" to build a deck. My personal argument is that having a flat limit shifts the power grossly towards the more powerful unique cards. The primary advantage of the low-cost units is that you can play more of them in a deck - you can have 4 TIE Fighter, 4 X-Wing, 4 Jedi In Hiding, but only 2 Luke Skywalker or Emperor Palpatine. If the limit is flat, then that advantage evaporates. As another consideration, if the limit per deck is more than 2x, then you also require an additional 1-2 Core Sets as well as an additional Force Pack to play in a side format - not an insignificant investment.

2) Agree, official tournaments should be standard rules, with "Open Play" as a side event, if at all.

3) Again, my point wasn't "hurray, now you have to use the cards you'd otherwise leave aside!" but rather the Objective Set system lets FFG govern how many of a given card your deck can contain on a card-by-card basis, within the structure of the core rules. Yes, you can use 4 Rebel Assault, but only if you are willing to use the Rebel Alliance affiliation. And since the two objective sets that include Rebel Assault both favor a Vehicle-based strategy, you can only use 4x of the best burn card in the game if you're willing to commit to 40% of your deck being very Vehicle-based. Trying to explain that kind of rules structure in traditional deckbuilding would be labrynthine, but it's inherent to Star Wars: The Card Game through simple virtue of the Objective Set system.

4) I disagree, I believe that edge battles were a periphrial concern when designing objective sets - I would argue the primary concern was creating a cohesive mechanical and narrative theme throughout each objective set and encouraging cinematic moments when those cards interact with one another.

D.Knight Sevus said:

D.Knight Sevus said:

D.Knight Sevus said:

One thing is for sure, I love playing the game and am looking forward to years of play!

Does FFG have any policy on bringing notes to the table? I didn't see anything mentioned in the tournament rules for the other LCGs, but with Star Wars and its set structure, as soon as you see your opponent's objectives, you immediately know fifteen other cards that are in their deck. Is there anything to stop someone from bringing a card list with them for reference?

DailyRich said:

I don't know about FFG official tournament rules, but I know at my local game shop it would be pretty hard to pick up a game if I brought a quick reference like this.

And any good player remember all cards in all objektive sets in anyway, so why bring card lists?

You can expect a lot of games where opponent says something like: Hmm… So you have Luke and Home one in your deck. It does not save you!

Before playing anything else than just after revealing objektives. Be ready for real beatdown after that, because your opponent have seen the future beforehand ;-)