spalanzani said:

While that is an interesting concept, and something very in keeping with the mythology, I believe you may have misunderstood. What it sounds like to me, is that the Light Side player will have his Hoth objectives, and the Dark Side player will have his. Both sides will have cards that look to see who currently has more Hoth objectives on the table. Thus, if you find you have an equal or lesser number of Hoth objectives than your opponent, you are encouraged to "battle for Hoth," represented by focusing your attacks on his Hoth objective(s). There is the possibility that Hoth objectives themselves may change ownership during play, but this is not necessary for driving home the struggle over the system.

I'm beginning to see the value in the set-based production. It's really an ingenious way to capture the tone of galactic conflict, without the need for a dozen cards cluttering the table. It's also a broad concept to build upon, in that objectives can represent anything, not just planets like Hoth, but long-term goals, Force-sensitive ideologies, and so forth.

spalanzani said:

I'm not sure what you are referring to. Where does it talk about objectives passing to your opponent?

MarthWMaster said:

You are most likely entirely right! It was very late, and I was very excited 

Darksbane said:

I may have misinterpreted! Reading this:

While the light side controls more of the planet than its foes, their new Hoth objectives grant them protection from dark side assaults, advantages in edge battles, and other benefits.

in conjunction with this:

A number of light side effects, like that on the Hoth Operations card, are dependent upon the light side player controlling more Hoth objectives than his opponent.

made me think that the light side player only will have Hoth objectives, which the dark side player can "capture" (half-remembered mechanics that involve the text on the Princess Leia card) objectives for their own nefarious purposes. In the cold light of day, however, I have since seen this:

additional Force Packs will introduce more Hoth objective sets to the environment for both the light side and the dark side,

which really flies in the face of what I was thinking last night. Please disregard my previous, over-excited ramblings 

There will likely be a Darth Vader and/or a Luke Skywalker set in this cycle, since it's the game's post-Core debut. I wonder if they will have identical gameplay but alternate artwork from their predecessors, new gameplay, or both? Personally I'm hoping at least one or the other will play the same, mainly because I want to see the precedent firmly set for familiar cards showing up in different sets. I like to think that the way sets work shall make it possible for the same cards to have greater longevity, and while I'm sure we will eventually see characters with different gameplay (Luke Skywalker in A New Hope should hardly be the same card as Luke Skywalker from Return of the Jedi or later, for example), I would prefer not to see them go out the door with alternate-play duplicates. I wish they would have gone with subtitles for unique cards (à la Call of Cthulhu) in order to eliminate the frustration of trying to discuss choices between versions of a card by set name (à la A Game of Thrones). Ah well.

Anyway, it will take some time adjusting to set-based deckbuilding in the first place. We shouldn't have to decide which version of Luke to play right away, too!

 One thought that occur to me after some pondering on this hoth cycle is that FFG will have to be very careful. Much of the point seems to be to have  "more" hoth objectives among your three on the table to attain some powerful bonuses and that in turn adds theme to the hoth struggle. 

As far as I understand these cycles are usually six sets, I'm a little concerned that you could eventually build an entire objective set with nothing but hoth objectives (taking duplicates of sets into account), thus rendering the struggle for "most control" moot by always guaranteeing three hoth objectives in play. 

Let's hope that they have considered that :-)

AshesFall said:

I'm sure that will be an issue during the cycle. Of course each Hoth objective a player keeps in his stack will dictate a portion of his deck's contents, and there is likely a balancing factor involved with this. There could be consequences for playing entirely within the theme. Still, I hope this is not a game that will crucify you for doing so.

AshesFall said:

All that aside, how cool will it be to play an all Hoth light side deck?

qwertyuiop said:

I was already planning on doing the same.

I imagine that there'll also be some potential downsides to controlling Hoth as well. It's Hoth, after all, it can't all be rainbows and puppies, it's a frozen ball of death. There will probably be some trade-offs, strengths you gain from controlling Hoth counter-balanced by weaknesses the planet exposes.

 I find that somewhat doubtful. Challenges presented by Hoth will more likely be represented by the dark side player's cards; to wit, The Desolation of Hoth itself, belonging to the Sith faction.

alpha5099 said:

Go ahead. Tell me my tauntaun will freeze before I make it to the first marker. I dare you!

MarthWMaster said:

That's certainly possible, but it seems to me that, at least from a thematic perspective, there HAS to be some built-in draw back to running a Hoth deck, it can't all just be negative effects from your opponent's deck. For the reason that what then happens if the Dark Side isn't running any Hoth tech, either because they don't want to or because most of the tech is in a faction they aren't playing? It's not like you can just bunker down on Hoth and reap the innumerable benefits of the planet, it's a harsh, frozen, desolate world. I would hope that there're some vulnerabilities to committing to Hoth, even if the benefits might outweigh the drawbacks.

Perhaps the Hoth objective sets do not all complement each other equally, such that to build a deck using exclusively Hoth objectives, your build ends up having less synergy with itself than if you were to deviate on some objectives that were more in line with what you wanted your deck to do. As a result, a Rebel player may have a firm hold on Hoth that is immune to Imperial entanglements, but he is unable to do much with it, since his deck is pulling him in different directions despite having a unified objective theme.

AshesFall said:

I'm really hoping that the Hoth synergy they're going for isn't too gimmicky.  I would hate it if after the first 3 or 4 force packs the game boils down to nothing but hoth decks for the next year.