As has been said several times in this thread and in the article and on the products website, Yes. The 6 new objective sets are Limit of 1 per objective deck but usable in the standard game.

Usable, yes. But that doesn't mean useful. There's probably a lot better Objective Sets to use instead, at least when it comes to Mara's set.

I like the concept of flipping the Death Star II card to make it operational. If the dark side player can defend his objectives long enough to bring the space station into play, he should be able to achieve victory. I wonder if there is any way for the light side players to knock out the Death Star II's shielding, representing the sabotage of the Endor shield generator.

I am excited about the 2vs2 game because I always loved multiplayer in other games. I am a bit concerned about the sharing cards and with similar decks could cause for not knowing whose were whose. But we will see.

JH

After reading more into both multiplayers formats- I am intrigued- although I am little unclear on how Luke wins only when the dark side players reserve decks are emptied. There must be new deck building strategies with the challenge decks. Or am I still just as a confused.

But excited for the Dash Rendar and Mara Jade, and the new imperial Palpatine.

Is it me or does the new Obi-Wan have the same abilities as the old Obi-Wan in the core set?

I can't read any of the cards on the product information page. Do they appear somewhere else at a higher resolution?

I can't read any of the cards on the product information page. Do they appear somewhere else at a higher resolution?

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_npm_sec.asp?eidm=200&esem=1&epmi=s

Is it me or does the new Obi-Wan have the same abilities as the old Obi-Wan in the core set?

Same Combat Icons, the difference is that it looks like the new Obi-Wan Kenobi has what appears to be a Reaction. I could be reading it wrong, considering the tiny, blurry text but I believe that says Reaction.

Oops, sorry, I was referring specifically to Obi-Wan, Palpatine, and the new Rebel event card. I read into earlier posts and got the idea that these were readable somewhere; I guess not though? :3

I'm hoping that the "full-bleed" card art of the Death Star II seen on the announcement page represents the idea that a unique card back will accompany the cards in a particular challenge deck: either a duplicate of key artwork from the deck itself, as in this case, or a unique piece. If the cards can't be mixed into the general card pool anyway, it seems like the perfect opportunity for cool artwork, instead of the boring "Star Wars" logo that we see on all the other cards.

Oops, sorry, I was referring specifically to Obi-Wan, Palpatine, and the new Rebel event card. I read into earlier posts and got the idea that these were readable somewhere; I guess not though? :3

I'm hoping that the "full-bleed" card art of the Death Star II seen on the announcement page represents the idea that a unique card back will accompany the cards in a particular challenge deck: either a duplicate of key artwork from the deck itself, as in this case, or a unique piece. If the cards can't be mixed into the general card pool anyway, it seems like the perfect opportunity for cool artwork, instead of the boring "Star Wars" logo that we see on all the other cards.

Not that I'm aware of.

Mara looks amazing for team play and still pretty **** good for standard 1v1.

After reading more into both multiplayers formats- I am intrigued- although I am little unclear on how Luke wins only when the dark side players reserve decks are emptied. There must be new deck building strategies with the challenge decks. Or am I still just as a confused.

But excited for the Dash Rendar and Mara Jade, and the new imperial Palpatine.

Is it me or does the new Obi-Wan have the same abilities as the old Obi-Wan in the core set?

Each Challenge Deck is preconstructed and is kind of like a wargame scenario - each side has its own unique victory condition rather than using the standard victory conditions for multiplayer play. The decks themselves can't be changed (and judging by the news article, have unique card backs), but are designed to stand up to three opponents.

Also, since the delay seems to have been caused by deciding to incorporate 2-vs-2 play as well as the 1-vs-all play that was advertised, I approve.

I´m still a bit undecided about this, based on the given information. I was very much looking forward to see the multiplayer rules enabling our casual gaming group of three people to play 1 vs 2 against each other somehow with our standard decks. Now it seems that the only way three players can play is by playing those special challenge scenarios. But if 2 vs 2 can be made to work for three somehow by having one side play two-handed, that´s fine by me.

That said, I am looking forward to those challenge decks. Looks like an intriguing concept...

I've done that in Summoner Wars. It was decidedly un-fun. :\

I´m still a bit undecided about this, based on the given information. I was very much looking forward to see the multiplayer rules enabling our casual gaming group of three people to play 1 vs 2 against each other somehow with our standard decks. Now it seems that the only way three players can play is by playing those special challenge scenarios. But if 2 vs 2 can be made to work for three somehow by having one side play two-handed, that´s fine by me.

That said, I am looking forward to those challenge decks. Looks like an intriguing concept...

If one player is adept enough to play two decks, then I'm pretty sure you can manage a "2"-vs-2 game. But that depends on your group. If not, I'm sure that the Challenge Decks will be fun to play against for a while, and the cards that were designed with 2-vs-2 in mind that have been revealed so far still look worth picking up for duels. Mara can pull off a pseudo-Luke (ironic, no?) even if you don't have another player to pass her to, and Supporting Fire lets you hold back a high-Force card in the edge battle until you know you're going to need it.

I think Mara herself is good in any format. Unit, Blast, and Tactic with targeted strike, three force points and three damage capacity for four is pretty sweet. Plus despite half of her reaction being useless in one v one (the part about giving her to another friendly player [i foresee a number of comments about the skankiness of Mara as she gets passed between the dark side players]) the first half of the reaction is another quasi elite a la Luke only hers is at the end of your turn instead of start of opponents turn. And she's the most gorgeous red-head in a galaxy far far away so that's always a plus

All that being said, it looks like she belongs to an underwhelming objective for one v one (unless the common reserve clause is somehow still effective, though I doubt that's going to be the case). So unless the rest of the pod is amazing, this one is going to be a hard include in a head to head deck as essentially a five damage capacity, one resource, and no ability objective. Especially since it's a limit one, even if you are including it only for the cards, it doesn't really give you a fair shot at them.

On a slightly related note, thank you ffg for making this one a box I only need to buy one of. It kills me that if I buy the LotR core a second time half of the cards are kindling because they're the bad guy cards that I don't need multiple sets of. If your asking me to buy multiple boxes, please make sure I have a reason to buy all of the cards again.

So to sum up: red good, blank bad, and don't waste cardboard.

Mara can pull off a pseudo-Luke (ironic, no?) even if you don't have another player to pass her to...

Her reaction is befitting for her variety and mastery of skills and her relentless pursuit to Kill Luke Skywalker.

I am allso hoping that that 2 vs 2 is more vertisale so that it will allow more variations. 1 vs 2, 1 vs 3 or even 3 vs 3...

The challenge deck system is fine, but it is allways nice to build your own deck to rule the whole Galaxy with your iron fist! So the insignificant rebels can really feel what it is to be hunted down and executed!

X vs. Y variants are allse thematic because the Emperor did give some power to his "pets" when he did dissamble the senate of the Old Republic :-)

Supporting Fire reads, "Target friendly player may place 1 non-fate card from his hand into your edge stack." Does this allow you to target yourself?

Sure does.

Supporting Fire reads, "Target friendly player may place 1 non-fate card from his hand into your edge stack." Does this allow you to target yourself?

According to the article, yes.

Mara can pull off a pseudo-Luke (ironic, no?) even if you don't have another player to pass her to...

Her reaction is befitting for her variety and mastery of skills and her relentless pursuit to Kill Luke Skywalker.

*EU Spoilers*

Until she met him and fell in love

Dash Rendar will be a playable card! That's all I needed to see!

Mara can pull off a pseudo-Luke (ironic, no?) even if you don't have another player to pass her to...

Her reaction is befitting for her variety and mastery of skills and her relentless pursuit to Kill Luke Skywalker.

*EU Spoilers*

Until she met him and fell in love

*MORE EU SPOILERS* Actually, I was just reading up on it earlier yesterday and there is more to that. She finally meets him and they are both in several situations where they have to work together to survive. Later on, she ends up killing Luke's clone, thereby fulfilling her orders to kill Luke Skywalker and breaking the Emperor's hold upon her. Even further down the road is when they get married. I'm getting a bit off-topic. I'm excited for this but now I'm hoping that they will release a light side objective set some day with Mara Jade Skywalker in it.

I mentioned in another thread that I wasn't particularly thrilled for a multiplayer expansion, given how I struggle to find even one person to play this with, but my first thoughts on seeing the challenge decks were 'can this be adapted for solo play?' Time will tell, I suppose, but if we have 154 cards in the box, 36 of which are these standard objective sets, that leaves 118, and assuming an equal split, each challenge deck has 59 cards. Which leads me to believe they won't be the standard modular decks, given that 59 isn't divisible by 6. They already said the normal rules might not wholly apply, so I'm left wondering what, exactly, will be happening in this challenge mode.

Something else I'm wondering is, where do they go from here? Will we be seeing new challenge decks every once in a while? It looks like we're only seeing Imperial Navy and Rebel Alliance, so will there be another box further down the line with Sith and Jedi challenge decks, where you have to keep Yoda hidden while he is hunted down, or where you have to recover the holocron before the Emperor and his Hands find it? Or something. This could either be very interesting or very boring. But I certainly don't think they could keep just these two challenge decks if they want the multiplayer thing to work. But given that they make it very clear that the challenge cards are not to be tournament-legal etc etc, I suppose it wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility for further challenge decks to be released POD, to stop any major backlash from players who don't want to play multiplayer having to buy further Balance of the Force-esque deluxe expansions to just get the 36 'normal' cards.

I hope we don't start seeing lots of cards that can only be played in multiplayer. AGoT has done this quite a lot, so that if you only play joust you have a lot of cards you can't use. Warhammer's Cataclysm box makes me think they'll tread a safer course with this one, and have cards that can be used in both formats but scale up the more players you have, or whatever.

From the preview:

the challenge decks are entirely self-contained (so that their cards will never enter the tournament card pool)

In other words, the Challenge deck cards are fixed and not allowed outside of that play format. The decks used by the players facing the challenge deck will be normal decks though.

can this be adapted for solo play?

No. (Unless you consider playing the current game solo a fun use of your time, I guess.)

Will we be seeing new challenge decks every once in a while?

I would think so. The 3 vs 1 format was their original concept for multiplayer, so I hope they continue with it. No idea how they would go about releasing them though. Maybe they'll do a big box like this twice a year? Maybe they'll release 1 challenge deck every couple of months, packaged like the current Force Packs?