Tag: Birthday Week

Hey everybody,
As part of my tenth anniversary year, I thought I would plunge through the archives and look at the game posts I find myself continually referring back to, and basically revise them with the benefit of experience. A lot of these game posts tend to be first-impressions or similar, and I think it would be useful to have a new peg from which to launch myself for the next decade. As this week is the Birthday Week, the only possible game that could be coming under the spotlight is, of course, the Star Wars LCG from 2012! As with other posts like this, this will be a long one, so buckle up!

First of all, I cannot believe that it’s been twelve years since this game came out. I can vividly remember my excitement when I finally got my hands on this thing – coupled by my disappointment when nobody around me was interested in playing the game. At first, I’d thought maybe Tony was just being ‘funny’ because he knew how much I was in love with it, but he genuinely had no interest in playing the game. I did have some hopes when the manager of my local games shop seemed to be getting into it, but that came and went, too. 

The game came out in 2012, and came to a close six years later, along the way giving us six full cycles of six Force packs, plus five deluxe expansions, one of which gave us the option for multiplayer games that never seemed to quite get off the ground. However, I think ‘never quite getting off the ground’ sums this game up pretty well – it made a number of innovations in terms of card games in general, plus was almost simultaneously released alongside Android: Netrunner LCG, which exploded at GenCon and was one of the best-selling games ever (at least, it seemed that way!) So it not only played with peoples’ expectations of what a customizable card game should be, but it was released in competition with one of the best card games you could ever hope to experience. 

There was some residual baggage from the game, as well, as it was initially demoed at the previous year’s GenCon as a co-operative card game, where you played as the Rebels trying to stop the Empire. Feedback was mostly negative, as a lot of folks weren’t too happy that they couldn’t play as the Empire or Sith, which led to a bit of a panicked redesign of the game that, I suspect, was the reason for so many delays hitting the game during its first cycle. To some degree, it’s almost infamous now, but the Hoth cycle was initially meant to tell the story of the Rebels establishing their base, being discovered, and then escaping the ice planet, but in a co-operative way. Having to redesign the core set was one thing, but then trying to redesign the first cycle left a lot of issues, and ‘the Hoth deck’ that the game seemed to have been pushing from the first pack didn’t really become playable until pack 5 or 6 came out, meaning players were left dissatisfied with it.

As an aside, I would have absolutely loved a co-operative Star Wars game. At the time this came out, I was hugely into Lord of the Rings LCG as a solo experience, and the possibility of replicating that in Star Wars was more than my little fanboy mind could cope with. It could have been amazing, and even now, I maintain the hope that they will someday bring us this sort of game, even if it’s a non-expandable format. But I digress…

More delays plagued the game throughout its run, and it arguably only became stabilized a year or two before it ended, but so many fans had left the game before then, never getting to see the better designs. It also had the problem of being mainly confined to the era of the original trilogy, including some Rebels and Rogue One content by the end, as well as mining the Expanded Universe for material. However, in 2014 Disney wrote off the EU as ‘Legends’, and in 2015 everything was geared towards The Force Awakens, meaning that this game was somewhat caught behind the curve. X-Wing, at the time the most popular miniatures game (it genuinely toppled 40k back then) was re-tooled for the Resistance and First Order, but the LCG was left as it was. Maybe if it had also had a re-launch, things might have been different? 

Of course, it wasn’t long before FFG moved away from the LCG model entirely, first with Destiny, the dice/card game that had the collectible, blind-buy model once again. That game ended with the pandemic, and it has taken them a while to give us any meaningful kind of Star Wars game, but we’ve recently had the ‘new’ CCG come out, Star Wars Unlimited, which you can read more about here.

It’s always with a heavy heart, then, that I talk about this game, because I’ve always been utterly fascinated with it, and I think of all the games that have come and gone for me, this is one of those that I wish I had had the opportunity to play more. At least with Android: Netrunner, I was going to tournaments and stuff! The Star Wars LCG seems to have just existed with a bit of a whimper, and it does make me a little sad to be honest. But anyway, that was a very long preamble, so let’s get into it!

The Star Wars LCG is an asymmetric card game for two players, where one player takes the role of the Dark Side power, and the other plays as the Light Side. It’s your basic good vs evil, symbolised by six factions. For the Dark Side, we have Sith, the Empire, and Scum & Villainy; the Light Side is represented by the Jedi, the Rebels, and Smugglers & Spies. The Dark Side has a dial that is advanced each round, and when it reaches 12 the game is over and the Dark Side wins. I guess this is meant to represent them achieving their goals, and has the visceral representation of the Death Star coming online. For the Light Side, they have to destroy three Dark Side objectives, which represents the Light Side achieving a strategic goal and hampering the Dark Side’s plans. 

Objectives, you say? Yes, the game has a unique deckbuilding system, based around objective sets (or ‘pods’, as we called them back in the day). Rather than building a 50 card deck, and changing the makeup of that deck on a card-by-card basis, cards come in groups of six – an objective card, which is printed horizontally, and five other cards linked to it. These other cards can be characters, events or attachments (called enhancements here), in any mix. To build your deck, it can be as simple as selecting ten objective cards, and their associated cards will build your 50-card draw deck. Of course, the skill in deckbuilding for the game comes in evaluating how each set of six cards works with each other set of six cards.

It’s something that caused a huge uproar in the card gaming community at the time, with players feeling insulted that they had these ‘training wheels’ on their decks. But over time some people came to realise that it actually requires more skill to work with, as you can’t just add in the best cards, but instead you have to evaluate groups at a time. I wasn’t one of the people who felt insulted, but I definitely came to appreciate the nuances of looking at a deck in pods of six, and seeing how good each set would be in combination with others. The usual rule of three is out the window, as well – while in other FFG games, you can’t include more than three copies of a card, here you’re limited to no more than two copies of an objective, but other cards were printed across multiple pods, meaning you could have five or six copies of some cards, because of the pods you used.

I love it, though. The designers have done a very good job of building these pods intelligently, so you might have a card like Darth Vader comes in a set that also includes his lightsaber and his signature Force Choke move. Force Choke is an event card, which deals one damage to a target unit; Vader’s passive ability deals one damage to a target unit when an event card is played. So you’re likely to want to include these cards in combination anyway. Emperor Palpatine is a six-cost character, so in his set you also get a Sith Library which generates a resource, to help you pay for him. He also comes with a Royal Guard unit that can help to Protect him, and the set further includes another copy of Force Choke, but also a 3-cost event called Force Lightning, which destroys a target exhausted unit. His objective set lets you lower the cost of the first event card you play, though. As you’ll likely want to play Vader and Palpatine together for theme, they work well as a team here. The Emperor furthermore lets you return an event card to your hand from the discard pile when you destroy an objective – between the two sets, there is five blast damage (if you have the edge), which is normally enough to one-shot any objective from the table.

In this way, decks almost build themselves. If Vader and the Emperor are working well with events, you may wish to go heavily into that route. There are some very useful events in the Sith faction that you’d be getting double-duty from thanks to Vader’s ability, and then the Emperor brings them back to your hand for you to do it all again when you destroy an objective.

So once you build your deck, you’re ready to play the game. The Dark Side always goes first, and ticks the dial up one point. In order to play cards, you need to generate resources, which you do by focusing cards. The Star Wars LCG doesn’t use the exhaust (tap) mechanic that other games do – nothing turns sideways here! Instead, you place a focus token on the card to show that it has been used. These are removed at the start of your next turn, but there are card effects that can place additional focus tokens on cards, meaning you have to wait a longer time to use them. There were a couple of deck archetypes around that did this, famously a Jedi deck that used Yoda, and I think a Sith deck featuring the aforementioned Emperor. It’s a nice representation of a character exerting his or her control over the situation, so the Emperor is stifling Luke’s ability to do anything because of his exertion of will – that is, because he’s placed four focus tokens onto Luke’s card. Of course, there are ways and means to clear these and ensure your guys are kept in the fight, but it’s a great fundamental of the game.

On the first turn, the Dark Side player cannot attack, however after the conflict phase there is a Force phase, which represents the factions’ struggle for dominance in the galaxy. Each card will have a number of circles down the left hand side, which is used for Force struggles as well as the Edge battle, which I’ll get to shortly. To commit a character to the Force means you can’t really use them in conflicts, because when a card is exhausted (focused) it doesn’t count its icons. It’s a huge trade-off, because the Emperor has five icons for the Force struggle, so he could potentially keep the balance of the Force with the Dark Side for the whole game, but it does mean you’d be losing out on all of his combat ability. There are a number of cards that let you count icons when exhausted, of course, and couple of objective sets have an ability that counts them as contributing an icon to the struggle, especially in Jedi and Sith.

As I said earlier, the game ends when the Dark Side reaches 12 on the dial, or when the Light Side has destroyed three enemy objectives. The dial will tick up each round regardless, so at maximum you have twelve rounds of play. However, if the balance of the Force is with the Dark Side, the dial will tick up two each round (for a maximum of 7 rounds), and each time they destroy an objective, the dial will tick up a number of times equal to the number of objectives they have destroyed, so while there isn’t really any reason for the Dark Side to go on the offensive, it can pay to do so, as you can shorten the game dramatically by destroying objectives and keeping the balance tipped towards the Dark Side.

The Light Side, by contrast, must be on the offensive from the off. There’s a certain tension that comes in here, where you may want to play the flashy Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan Kenobi, but the odds are you’ll only be able to afford to play one of them each round. Instead, you might want to play a couple of smaller unit cards, which lets you get a presence on the board, and can help to defend when the Dark Side attacks from round two. You might find yourself in a bit of a bluffing game, if the Dark Side decides not to attack though, but that might then give you the time you need to build up your board. There’s something to be said for playing Luke or Obi-Wan first, but committing them to the Force rather than attacking, meaning you keep the balance with the Light Side as you build up the army. I’ve always favoured more of an aggressive play as the Light Side, but honestly, it might not be the best play in the world at times!

Let’s get into the conflict phase, then. 

During the conflict phase, you begin by declaring which objective you’re going to attack, then you declare your attackers; your opponent can then declare which characters (if any) will defend. I think this is somewhere else that the LCG didn’t gain many fans, as it was a little too abstract – you’re not seeing Luke Skywalker dueling Darth Vader, you’re seeing Luke attacking ‘The Emperor’s Web’, and Vader happens to be in the way. It’s all a bit weird at first, but the conflict is representative of the power you can bring to bear to achieve your goals, and while you might see Luke and Vader dealing damage to each other, you’re just as likely to see a random Kuati Security Agent deal damage to him.

Characters will often have a series of icons across the middle of their cards – a blaster, an explosion, and a targeting crosshairs. These icons represent unit damage, objective damage, and ‘tactics’, which deal damage in the form of focus tokens. These icons can either be in black or in white – white icons only apply if you win the Edge Battle, whereas the black icons are always on.

So what’s this Edge Battle I’ve been talking about? 

Once you’ve determined who is involved as attackers and defenders, the players start to bid cards face down in an edge stack. When both players have passed, the stacks are turned face up; whoever has the most icons on the left hand side (the same icons we were counting for the Force struggle I mentioned earlier) wins the battle, and ‘has the edge’ for the coming conflict. In the case of a tie, the defending player wins. There is another kind of card that we’ve seen in a couple of these objective sets I’ve shown off, the Fate card. This is the only time such cards are played, and they can have effects that resolve here to help you, such as Heat of Battle which can deal one damage to a participating enemy unit, or Target of Opportunity which deals one damage to the objective you’re going up against. You can only damage characters who are participating, so if your opponent declared no defenders, Heat of Battle doesn’t come into play (but it does still count its icons). Each Fate card also has a number in the top right corner, which are used for determining the order in which they are resolved – you’ll see cards like Heat of Battle in both Light and Dark Side decks, but the Light Side version always has the lower number.

This aspect of the game can be a little off-putting for a lot of people, especially when you’re new to the game, because you may not want to pitch Obi-Wan Kenobi into an edge stack – but he has 4 icons, so he might be the difference between winning and losing. There is also a Fate card called Twist of Fate, which discards the current edge stacks and starts a new battle. If your opponent has only played one card into the stack, can you be sure that it isn’t a Twist of Fate?

Anyway, once that has been resolved, and the edge stacks discarded, you go on with the conflict, starting with the player who won, and deal out your damage alternating between participating ready units. Blaster icons deal out one damage per icon to a defending unit; explosion icons deal out one damage per icon to the engaged objective, and the crosshairs deals a focus token per icon to any enemy unit. This is perhaps where the power of the crosshairs icon comes in, because if your opponent is keeping a character back to strike on his or her turn, you can drown them in focus tokens and they might not be able to do anything. It’s equally important, though, to try to focus down defending characters before they have a chance to deal their damage back to you, as the character must be ready (not exhausted/focused) to do so. 

There is also a bit of an art to understanding when to defend, because if you have no defenders left at the end of the conflict, it is said to be unopposed, and the attacker deals one bonus point of damage to the objective. So an element of strategy comes into play as there’s possibly no reason to chump block, if that blocker is going to die anyway the conflict is going to be unopposed anyway, and you’ve thrown away a unit for no reason. Often, the more important battle is the Edge Battle, because you can declare no defenders but still play cards into this, to deny your opponent the edge. This may be the difference between receiving two damage to your objective, or having that objective destroyed.

If an objective reaches its damage threshold, then it is destroyed and placed in the winner’s victory pile. If the Dark Side won the battle, they immediately move the dial one point for each objective they have destroyed, whereas as soon as the Light Side has three objectives in their victory pile, the game is over and they have won.

If the game isn’t won by this point, we proceed to the Force phase as described before, and then the game continues on.

There are a lot of subtle rules and effects that I haven’t talked about here, which affect the game in various ways, but this is the core of the game, along with my rambling explanations of it! As we know from any card game ever made, there will always be cards printed that trump the main rules to some extent, so the rules say you only remove one focus token when you refresh (unless the character is Elite, in which it removes two), but the Sith enhancement The Hand’s Blessing allows you to remove them all. There are rules for bodyguard units, for shields to prevent damage, and even for targeting characters not in the conflict. As we have bounty hunters as part of the Scum & Villainy faction, we also get rules for capturing characters at objectives, and for subsequent rescues. 

And this is just from the core set. With six full cycles of further development, we have plenty of additional rules that were added to the mix, such as Pilots being played as enhancements to starships, and so on.

While it is always interesting to see how a game develops as the product line increases, something that has always struck me about the Star Wars LCG is just how good the core set is at covering all the bases. We don’t get every character of course, but you can build decks with the core set that function quite beautifully. The product design is classic FFG of course, in that we only get four of the six factions, plus a single objective set for Smugglers and for Scum, then the first deluxe expansion, Edge of Darkness, gave us the cards we wanted to flesh those factions out. Between the two, though (two copies of each, naturally), you could quite happily have a fun and deep card pool that you can enjoy for years.

Star Wars is all about the characters though, and all the fantastic stuff that goes along with that. So you’ll want to keep buying the packs to get your favourites, like Wedge, Thrawn, or Mara Jade. The fact that this game uses art, as opposed to movie stills, allows for the entire depth of the expanded universe to be plumbed for content, and the result is quite beautiful. The game was naturally limited by its narrow focus, of course, but I’ve talked before how that focus has led to some quite incredible world-building that existed hand in hand with the RPG they were publishing at the time, as well. The Jedi faction in particular had some really interesting stuff going on, like that ‘Believer in the Old Ways’ and whatnot. It really opens my imagination to thinking how the Jedi were still around in the era of the Galactic Civil War, they were just hiding out because it wasn’t safe, and stuff. Truly amazing to have this kind of thing explored.

It’s fascinating to me to think about how my attitude towards the game has not changed at all in the last ten years, then. If anything, I’ve only come to love it more in the last few years. I have tried to convince my wife to play it, and we did actually get a couple of games in a while ago, but I don’t think she’s the biggest fan, either of the IP or card games in general. It’s a shame, but I suppose I’ll just wait until the kids are old enough, and maybe then I can convince one of them to try it out! There are some solo variations out there that I have to try, as that could be an interesting way to play it, although I have been known to play it ‘straight’ solo as well, just so that I can experience the game and enjoy some time with these beautiful cards! I’ve talked about this before, though, as well, and while it does scratch an itch to some degree, nothing can really compare to playing the game properly!

At any rate, this has been an exhaustive blog post of almost 4000 words, so I should probably try to draw things to a close now! It’s the Birthday Week, though, and it’s the Star Wars LCG, so it was always going to be quite the epistle! Even though the game has been dead for six years, it is still something that I have immense fondness for, and I keep the faith that one day, I’ll be able to play it properly and enjoy it. Until then, however, I just flick through the cards and set up games to look at how amazing this game is on the table. 

One day…