I lost count of the different versions of the main characters in the old Decipher version.  Luke, Han, Leia, and Lando experienced so much character growth that different versions are a must. I love random Stormtrooper 7 as much as the next person, but the big names are what drive the story.

cleardave said:

I'm not sure why, but I always imagined once one of your objectives is destroyes you do not replace it. You would just lose the recources and benefits it gives you. I'm even quite sure there is a specific objective that gets replaced after being destroyed, as an exeption. 

 For what it's worth, Eric Lang's preview article says re: deckbuilding, "Choose at least ten different objectives, each linked to a set of five more specific cards…" (emphasis mine)

This would lead me to believe that running duplicate objective sets will require you to play a larger deck. Seems like an interesting wrinkle to me, as you obviously won't want to run 2x *all* your objectives, but you will certainly want to play a duplicate of at least one. If you really want Vader swing his lightsaber, then you play 2 of the Vader/lightsaber set. If you really want Vader and the Emperor on the table, then you throw in a duplicate of your favorite Emperor set. But you have to stop somewhere or you won't find that Vader. How bad do you need General Veers?

I am assuming that eventually you'll be able to use more than one objective to get a character in your deck, but I wonder if it will be that way initially? 

Interesting catch there, but I doubt that'll actually be the case. Here's how the AGOT core set rules describe plot decks, which are very broadly equivalent to objectives:

"Your plot deck must consist of exactly 7 different plot cards."

There are three plots that you can include twice in a plot deck, but these cards don't mean you can bump your plot deck up to 8. 

Budgernaut said:

You are probably right. But in that case how exactly does destroying an objective help the dark side win?

Fbaranow said:

The Death Star dial says Hello!!! (and I'm sure you replace the destroyed objectives at the start of your turn)  Each time you destroy an objective card (if you are the Dark Side player) you advance the Death Star Dial more.  Something along the lines of first objective = one click, second objective = 2 click, third objective = 3 click and so forth.

I agree that it's not going to be your primary objective to destroy (I'm talking about the objective that Budgernaut talk about), but if you can destroy this objective and put the pressure on the light side, all the better.  Even if this pesky Rebel can choose his next objective, you still advanced the Death Star dial a couple of click or more (I don't know the exact # of click) or you could even win the game by destroying this objective.  And on the plus side, maybe the Rebel player will not protect this objective very well because he thinks it's good for him to lose it… but you'll still have destroyed one more objective so the others will make your Dial click more.

*I hope we'll have another update today, like last week… rule book anybody??? (from what I know, the first Star Wars tournament is this weekend?)

Meaxe said:

This is what I remember from the demo videos and reviews. So a game starts off with basically a 14-round limit; when the Death Star Dial reaches 14, the game is over. The Death Star Dial advances at the end of each round (or after the Dark Side player's turn?). But if the Dark Side player has destroyed an objective, the dial increases by two every round thereafter. If you've destroyed two objectives, it advances by three every round. So if a Dark Sider got lucky and destroyed one objective in the first turn and a second objective in the second turn, the Rebels would have only 5 rounds to take out three Dark Side objectives (or meet some other game winning objective like taking over Coruscant or destroying the Death Star). So destroying Rebel objectives could be really important for Dark Side players.

Budgernaut said:

I'm pretty sure you are wrong (no offence).  From my understanding:

- At the start of the Dark Side player, the dial advance 1 click.

- If the Dark Side player has the force with him (has won the force struggle), the dial advance 2 clicks at the start of his turn.

- If the Dark Side player destroy an objective card, the dial advance # clicks where: 

  # = first objective destroyed = 1

  # = second objective destroyed = 2

  # = third objective destroyed = 3

  etc…

P.S. I'm not sure about the numbers, it could be more than that, but I'm pretty sure it was explained somewhere (article or video); so if someones remembers the exact numbers that would be great.  And a link to the article or video even greater.

Or we could just wait for the rulebook as those numbers may have been tweaked since the demo.

Meaxe said:

So it's not cumulative? That changes things. I'll have o think on that more.

And no, Houjix, I'm not going to just wait for the rulebook. I've been on these forums speculating about this game since the announcement that FFG got the SW licence back in August of 2011. I'm not about to stop now just because the rules release is imminent.

 Meaxe has it correct as of what I demoed at Gencon. The only number I'm not sure of is the 3rd objective, for some reason i'm remembering it being 4 clicks on the dial, but I could be mistaken.

The gory details:  Light side must destroy 3 objectives to win.  Dark side must advance their Death Star Dial to twelve.  The Dark Side's first objective kill accelerates the clock by one click.  Two clicks on the second objective and so on.  If the force is on the Light Side at the beginning of the light side player's turn, the Light Side player gets to assign one damage to an enemy objective.  If the force is with the Dark Side at the beginning of the DS player's turn, the DS player gets to accelerate the dial by an extra click.  Thus if the Dark Side can gain and hold the force, the game will only last for six turns instead of the normal 12.

Up to two clicks a turn plus clicks for destroyed objectives? What is this? Warhammer: Invasion?

We'll really have to wait on the rule book for objective limitations, though with the new cycle information about objective set releases…. if there are objectives which can be taken twice, they seem to be designed to be part of a 50 card(10 objective) deck.If this is true, it's possible to assume that if one of these objectives gets destroyed, the other copy in the objective deck is still usable. It may even already be in play unless it is unique. Ruling an extra copy of an objective as dead is a bit anti-mechanical considering the streamlined approach to design we've been told about. If you have 5 Vaders in a deck somehow and one of them dies, you're still going to be able to play another one. It's a little silly to lose 8% of your deck's playability because Vader got kicked in the goodies by a tauntaun. Keeping all copies of an objective live, and usable in a streamlined 50 card deck seems like part of the design for this streamlined game, especially if the dark side can potentially win fairly quickly. I think some might be reading a bit more into Mr. Lang's words. 10 different objectives are probably just 10 objective cards. This was a write up for the game and not the rule book. But! Objective decks are different from play decks, so we will see. 

qwertyuiop said:

I'd imagine, if you had to discard Vader from play because he was defeated in a battle, there would be no reason why you couldn't play another one.  SW:CCG was all about multiple copies of your main characters, because it not only helped you get them out faster, it also let you play them again if one was lost from the table.

In effect, being "Lost" didn't necessarily mean "killed" in the abstract sense.  It could represent anything you want to imagine it would, along the lines of recovering from an injury, escaping to fight another day, etc.

The only time you could have a main character be truly "killed" in SW:CCG were the more rare events and situations that specifically say "place out of play", which would then render any extra copies you have of your main character useless for play, but at least you could still use them for Force Drain fodder.

The same applies to this game.  If there are cards that would actually "kill" Darth Vader, and stop you from deploying another copy in a future turn, you don't have dead weight in your deck, because you can use the other Vader cards for the Edge battles.

The thing with stacking many copies of Uniques in your deck is always that it accelerates your ability to get a powerful character out on the table, but at the expense of the overall number of characters you can theoretically have on the table at the same time.  If there is a "place out of play" style effect that shows up in this game, then you will just have to take that risk into account when you decide to go all-in on multiple Vaders (or whatever persona you want to over-indulge in).

We can hypothesize that the Darth Vader card in the Core Set will be part of an Objective set you can take twice, and the Hoth preview article mentioned another Vader character in that cycle, so assuming that Vader card can also be taken twice by way of two copies of that Objective set, you now have 4 Vaders in your 50 card deck.

Whether or not that becomes practical for game purposes will of course need to wait until we have all the rules and cards and actual play experience under our belts.  The dilemma looks like it can come down to whether or not you want to hang onto those other Vaders in your hand to replace him if he's lost from the table, or use him in an Edge battle to clutch out a win that way.  Who knows, maybe we'll see some serious "place out of play" cards, like an Epic Duel type scenario, in the future.

Cloud City cycle perhaps?