Very good point, Meaxe. If they maintain a scenario-driven game like it was at GenCon, that's definitely the best option, in my opinion. In my post, I was assuming it had switched to a standard PvP setting where the cards are all controlled by the players.

But here's a question: is there a way to maintain scenarios in a PvP environment? I hadn't really thought of it before. For instance, instead of each player laying down various locations, could locations be part of a static scenario deck that affects the whole table? Then each time you play, you have to flip a coin or something to see who gets to pick the scenario deck. Do any other games do this?

One way it could work is to have three or so scenario decks in the core set and in each expansion. Assuming the core set was based on A New Hope, you could see Tatooine, the Death Star, and Yavin IV as locations in the deck, with different parts of each location showing up as various cards that affect play in some way. The Empire Strikes Back expansion could have Hoth, Dagobah, and Cloud City/Bespin. Maybe there'd be 6-10 cards in a scenario deck. Then, assuming they keep the same zones as we saw at GenCon, maybe the Reserve Zone could choose to exhaust X number of characters to change locations instead of increasing card draw. When the scenario deck gets depleted, it just recycles. It might be even more interesting and unique if the scenario decks had specific win conditions for each side, but I have a hunch that would reduce replayability because each side would converge on a certain strategy for each scenario, so you'd see the same cards played for each scenario every time you played that one. And if scenarios had specific win conditions, I doubt it'd be up to one player to decide which scenario. It'd have to be a mutual agreement or completely random.

P.S. I don't know why the font size got so messed up in my last post. That was completely unintentional.

If it is PvP I really like the idea of a set scenario deck that interfered with both players. It could also serve a purpose to regulate play time. 

I suppose my thinking is still coloured by what I know of the game that was initially called the Star Wars LCG, but I thought the blend of aspects from other LCGs seemed to be quite interesting, most strongly the LotR/Warhammer thing of competing against an encounter deck, completing a scenario, with cards that get placed in different zones.

This last I think would be particularly apt for Star Wars. The Battle of Hoth, and in particular the Battle of Endor, take place on numerous fronts, so having the space arena and the support arena and the ground arena seems really very fitting. Like Warhammer, it'd be nice if they could produce the cards that fulfil different actions when placed in different zones, too - like a card's power allows you either to draw a card, to gain resources, or to attack depending on where that card is placed. Of course, I don't want it to be a carbon copy of Warhammer, but I think that idea is a lot better than producing zone-specific cards, so if you buy your Force pack and you tend to use decks focused on one arena (did they call them strategies in the initial announcement?) you only get a quarter of useful player cards. 

I suppose keeping the arena/strategy arrangement would also allow best to have both starships and characters, otherwise it'd probably just look a bit weird. I know AGoT has, in the Greyjoy deck, boats as well as characters, but these boats function as location cards. Somehow, having a X-Wing as a location seems a bit daft. If they do produce starship cards, having astromech units that function as attachments to provide bonuses seems like a good idea. I just hope they don't produce one game as a character-driven game, and another for starship battles. 

How they'll produce a viable Death Star though could be tricky. 

I don't think the Force should really feature much in this game, though. Give Obi-Wan some sort of stealth ability, give Luke something, Yoda maybe functions as a Force battery, allow Vader damage reduction and to kill with line of sight, and the Emperor some sort of control ability maybe, and just leave it at that. They're the only ones we really see use the Force in the original trilogy, after all (unless you count Leia right at the end of RotJ). If we then get into the realms of Mara Jade Emperor's Hand, or perhaps Kyle Katarn or whatever, then maybe we could begin to see more Force powers, but they should only be special abilities, and the greater the ability, the greater the penalty. Yoda was, after all, exhausted by lifting that X-Wing out of the swamp. If they bring out a Vader's Apprentice that can destroy everyone on the table as a response or somesuch nonesense, then I'd have absolutely no respect for this game.

Bounty Hunters are a really essential part of Star Wars, and lead in to something I've been desperate to see since August when it was announced, a Fringe element. Some of the most iconic Star Wars characters don't have any affiliation but their own - Jabba the Hutt, Boba Fett, even Han Solo himself. While I'm always a little sceptical of Boba Fett incarnations, as most of them I've seen (primarily WotC's SW miniatures) are shameless pandering to the Fett fanboys, it would be nice to see him crop up, hopefully not overpowered insanely. I'm with most other people though in wanting bounty hunters to be a neutral faction and can be hired by any side, even if, in the original trilogy, they were pretty much all presented as antagonists. Maybe having some sort of disruptive tendency - the WotC minis idea of giving bounty hunters bonuses to attack against unique characters can't be discredited, I don't think.

I suppose, if this game does end up PvP, you could just as easily have a neutral deck that either player can include cards from, though without some sort of limitation (such as Dark Side and Light Side), you run the problem with unique cards of both players wanting to play Boba Fett, and it coming down to who can play him first, prohibiting the other player from playing his copy, and so either being forced to throw everything he has into targeting that card or being stuck with a useless card in his own deck.

This is one of the reasons why I thought the co-op version was so much a better idea than it being yet another PvP game. Playing against set scenarios, you can have an encounter deck where your band of rebels goes against Jabba the Hutt and his cronies, whether to rescue a captured friend as in the movies, or to broker an arms deal that goes sour, or whatever. I would imagine, if it is merely PvP, it'd take years for a neautral deck to become viable to play on its own, because the card distribution will most likely favour rebels or imperials, with a bare hint of any neutrals for a long while.

I am really hopeful we'll still get the scenarios, at any rate. George Lucas is a storyteller, not a fight promoter, and Star Wars is about the story for me, so I really do relish the possibility of getting new stories to play with each Force pack. Just getting additional player cards all the time to bolster existing armies of characters and materiel is a very depressing thought.

Such are my disjointed thoughts, anyway! (I had a knock on the head on Friday, so I apologise if some of this doesn't make much sense...)

 Something that is broad enough in its scope to draw inspiration from all Star Wars eras, should the design team discover a demand for it.

MarthWMaster said:

Yes! I want that too! Yet another thing to add to my massively long list of the other day...

It struck me as very odd soon after they'd made the announcement that a LCG, something that will grow and grow, presumably exponentially, should have such a narrow focus on just four years of SW history, when the universe has been exploded thousands of years in either direction from the original film. Especially seeing as how ripe for such a game some of the other eras could be!