Oh I see. Yeah, that's pretty simple. I could see that happening later in the game's life. But I suppose that most of the new versions would be superior.

Budgernaut said:

The new version would either have to be superior or very different.  It could still be a good way to bring old objectives back into people's decks after newer objectives have mostly obsoleted them.

after reading this thread i am much more drawn to the block / pod deck building idea. when i first heard about the block idea i instantly saw a new possible solution to playing a game. now i have played MTG / WoW on and off for many years now and i will agree that deck building is a massive part of the those games, how ever in the area where i play it actually boils down to a single thing, who has the biggest wallet, the person with the biggest wallet could buy the cards to make these "Kick Ass Decks". i aint saying its a bad thing and with it being a LCG that aint really going to come up much in this game except who buys expansions and not.

Now to the bare bones, a block or pod as they are referred to as is an amazing concept, yes the deck building process has been constricted how ever that still will not stop over powered decks from being built. many times in this thread an example of the "Luke block" has been used, now i havent seen any card listings my self how ever i cant see there being an issue with this, yes Luke is bent as all sin in the demo video i watched, but where does it ever say that all the other cards in that lock are going to be a disadvantage. i see that this block could not just contain Luke but possible his lightsaber, or R2D2 or even events that compliment him well. If the cards in that block are not actually linked to Luke then they will be easy combined with other blocks to produce a great combo.

Another aspect i love of this block / pod building is a group of friends can sit down and each build a deck in about 10 - 20 mins and then play. it also adds a nice house rule that i am going introduce to my play group, randomly assign sides, randomly deal out the locations, boom, decks are built, get your blocks and play. This automatically changes how you would usually play cos you aint got a clue what you have in the game meaning you need to work out what your doing on the fly instead of pre planning, almost like dominion really, you dont know what kind of game your going to play till cards are out.

i myself find that this new deck building system is a great concept and will actually work well in producing a actual fun game, rather than having a deck that instantly wins all of the time and that no one will play against you can actually have a game where everyone is on even footing and actually have fun. plus i had to take apart that deck now, no one likes to play a turn 1 9/9 annilator 3 eldrazi in MTG it just makes the game not fun.

Just my two cents,

I like the idea of deck building with pods. It is something unique, and offers another way to enjoy a customizable card game.

I know I may be flamed for saying this, but I think the pod building concept helps to legitimize sub par cards.Sub par cards exist in EVERY card game I have ever played. They sit in binders, never being played, because they just can't earn a spot in a  finely tuned deck. With pods, as long as the pods are balanced, there is no need for every card to be a winner. Sure, if you want that new version of Skywalker in your deck that's great.. but now you need to include those two ewok scouts that share the same pod with him.

Also, I think pods can be used to help keep thematic decks competitve. If the pods are tied together with theme, you have whole groups of cards that work together.

What a paradigm shift for me. If you read my first post in this thread, and this one, you can see my outlook on the pods themselves has shifted drastically.

One strong hope I have for the pod system, though, is that each pod be consistent within its own continuity, and be as open as possible for chronological appropriateness. Basically I don't want to play a pod that forces me to use cards that don't belong together in a deck that's themed to fit the canon. I have a bit of flexibility here; for example, I'm fine with the Emperor's artwork being set during/after Revenge of the Sith in a game set during the Classic era, because he's still the same person during that time period.

I guess that's one of the reasons I am so pro FFG's focus on the Classic era for this game. I'm sure it's fairly obvious at this point that I'd be happy to see them expand to other eras in the future, but for now, I like the fact that decks are going to be mostly in line with continuity, in a semi-vague period of time around the Galactic Civil War. I think that pods can be used as a way of further encouraging this type of experience, without limiting the potential to go wild and play whatever you like.

Dietcokeofevil said:

From what I could gather from the card list I compiled, the groups of cards for each Objective are all linked together thematically, and are a combination of characters, enhancements, fate cards, etc.  For instance, it looks like Luke Skywalker is in a group with "Old Jedi Lightsaber" and "Trust Your Feelings", as opposed to being randomly saddled with some deck filler.

The "Heart of the Empire" Objective is paired with Coruscant Defense Fleet and (probably, it's hard to tell from the card picture) the Emperor.

That said, it would be pretty funny to have a C-3P0 card that came paired with Ewoks, representing how the Ewoks mistook Threepio for their God.

cleardave said:

All shall bow before the Golden One.

The news that the pods are actually thematic is definitely good. I was mildly concerned that we might get cards that don't logically or necessarily follow being grouped together, but this seemed to be lost among the more general argument that the pod idea in and of itself is rubbish, ad infinitum. Whether the game will eventually expand into other eras, and whether this will necessitate any special rules for what pods can be played together in a deck, will remain to be seen. Perhaps they'll just give us something as I believe they've done with the Hobbit expansion for LotR, giving a couple of decklists with recommended deck-builds based on era or whatever (because there does seem to be no place for era symbols on these cards). 

I'm thinking - or, perhaps, hoping - FFG have actually put a lot more thought into this game than people seem to have been giving them credit for. They have, after all, had a good number of months to come up with it. I'm actually pretty excited for it, despite still being in mourning for the game-that-was. 

MarthWMaster said:

I would love for Ewoks to get some bonus off C-3PO. That would make my day :)

spalanzani said:

I think that organizing the the card groups the way they apparently have, in the examples I listed above is a good sign that this deck building system won't hinder player options too much at a competitive level.

If you think back to SWCCG, in a good Objective-based themed deck, you were basically forced into this anyways if you wanted a decent chance at winning the match.

So a "Court of the Vile Gangster" deck would usually have the same mainstay units with little variation;

Jabba's Palace locations/Great Pit of Carkoon

Jabba, Bib, Ephant Mon

Scum and Villainy

The Rancor/Sarlacc

After that, you can decide what you want to run.  In my deck, I typically added in Bounty Hunters with permanent weapons, so you'd see Boba, Iggy Pop, Dengar, etc, as well as the support cards like "Jabba's Through with You" and "All Wrapped Up" to get extra combat power and make capturing opponents characters easier.

Then, with captives in hand, you feed them to the Rancor or Sarlacc to cause crazy damage to the opponent's Life Force.

With that design, 70-80% of my deck is already predetermined, so to translate to the LCG, I'd already know I'd be taking 6-8 specific Objective cards to make that work the way I wanted.  After that, the last few cards are just personal choice/flavour, so in the LCG, just pick whatever else looks good to you.

Put the cards together, shuffle, play, have a great time.

The big difference is, in SWCCG, this would take a lot longer to do, so if I a friend came over and wanted to play, I could run my "Court" deck, which was already put together.  But, what if I decided I wanted to switch gears and run a "Endor Operations" deck after a match or two?  Well, there goes an hour of time while I try and cobble together the cards from all the different long boxes I kept the sets in.  Or I may not even have all the cards I need, because I'm buying random booster packs and don't have one of the (rare) Effect cards I need to fully pull off the deck well.

With the LCG, i'd just grab the appropriate Objectives and that's it; done.  You even have the option to do a random Objective draft game, like someone else suggested, which would take no time at all to put together.  I'm finding as I continue to play more and more card and board games, our group favours games that don't take a long time to set up, so this is going to be a slam dunk for us.

 While we're on the topic of card organization, has anyone thought about the pods and some handy ways of keeping the related cards together, for ease of switching up decks on the fly? Any advice would be appreciated.

MarthWMaster said:

I've seen some people who play games like Dominion buy those penny sleeves and put a whole Kingdom card batch in one sleeve so that they can grab the whole thing easily at once. That wouldn't be a terrible idea for this.

Some sort of tab dividers with the pod number and faction symbol up top wouldn't be terrible either. Though we'd end up needing a ton of them.

I'm sure I'll come up with some decent way to do it as I'm terribly OCD when it comes to these things.

MarthWMaster said:

I will be using the same style that i did with my copy of dominion, buy Card sleeves in bulk, then i will make my own dividers. using the block numbering system which i will place on an additional index card. There are a good number of different places where you can get all these, Index cards from any office store, and the sleeves along with a box to store upto 500 standard sleeved MTG cards can be bought on ebay for rather quite cheap.

MarthWMaster said:

Check out the Nightmare and Outbreak expansions for the Resident Evil Deckbuilding Game over on Board Game Geek.  They came with a box insert that allows you to store every card in the series, and they included index cards for every card stack in the game, retroactive to the first set, all the way through Nightmare.

That was the most helpful and cool way to organize your gaming materials that I've ever had come included in the game itself.  Usually the hidden cost of these games is a trip to Wal-Mart to get a mini tackle box to sort the counters.

Anyways, on topic, I would say cut out 2 strips of cardboard the length of the box bottom, and as wide as the box bottom is tall.  That should give you 3 columns worth of sleeved cards, laying sideways.  From there, buy a stack of index cards (which might be like $1-$2 for 50-100), cut them to fit, and write the appropriate info on the top; faction, set, etc.

Should be easy to deal with, until the the set expands to be so vast that you'll need to get another box or what not to carry it around in.

Ideally, for a few years at least, the Core Set box, and a little tackle box for sorting tokens, should be all you need to carry it around in.  Even better, instead of needing separate space for your decks, just make a quick "shopping list" for your favourite decks and leave that sheet inside the box, with the cards.  Just follow the list to put whatever deck you need together in 5 minutes.

Thinking again about the "pack" deck-building system (or is it "pod" ?), I like more and more this idea. On top of some aspects already discussed (access to the game made easier to casual players ; less time devoted to build decks, more to play ; possibly lower number of un-used cards), the fact that the themes can be build in the packs is good for this game, it would increase the thematic coverage -- an important feature for all Star Wars games!