The idea of this game growing to encompass the prequels and more is something I've been chewing over, both silently and on these here forums, since the game was announced back in August last year. The fact that it calls itself "Star Wars: The Card Game" strongly suggests, to me, that we will see pretty much everything that has been sold under the Star Wars brand represented, should the game grow legs enough to support it. Which I hope it does. But the particular style of marketing FFG is going with does strongly contradict this, by having images from the classic-trilogy only on the core box. 

I've been thinking of this game in terms of the WotC miniatures game for a while now, mainly because that was the one game I got heavily into as an adult SW fan. So I've been kinda expecting this factions thing for a long time. But selling the game in this way just makes it so much easier to add in stuff from multiple eras at later stages by just slipping in another faction - and FFG are no strangers to this, looking at the way Cthulhu was sold as the strongest point of reference, having seven factions right out of the box and an eighth join them almost halfway through the game's development. While currently all the evidence points to the SW LCG following the release pattern of Warhammer, with four factions right out of the box and two more coming in a subsequent deluxe box, I suppose it wouldn't really be outside of the realms of possibility for them to say, maybe a year or so down the line, that they'll be adding two more - Republic and Separatists, most likely. As the WotC miniatures game showed, "Sith" as a faction can be used to stable folks from multiple eras without any major problems arising. 

So, feasably, we could get an expansion into TOR territory, through the already-established Jedi and Sith factions, and why not use the Smugglers and the Scum factions for the extra bits. We can get Dooku and Sidious through the Sith faction too, and Mace and all the other folks through the Jedi faction. Swap out Rebels and Imperials for Republic and Separatists, as mentioned, and we have a prequel-era game. Maybe the New Republic will develop as a faction subtheme within the Rebels, much like the lesser Houses and Bannermen are seen in A Game of Thrones - the Empire that the NR fights for most of its history can remain within the Imperial Navy, with maybe appearances by Joruus C'baoth and Kueller, maybe even the ghost of Exar Kun, in the Sith faction. 

The all-encompassing title of the game suggests it will include everything, and as a LCG I suppose it could almost be said that the model is designed for that. But I just feel somewhere that they are only intending to cover the period of the classic trilogy with this game. While there is a wealth of material out there that can be converted into this game, thanks to folks from West End Games and Bantam, largely it seems to be unnaturally stunting to limit what is supposed to be a living card game to just four and a half years of in-universe history (at the very shortest guess). 

I seem to have completely derailed this thread here. Sorry about that…

 Yikes, this place is crawling with prequel-fans… I have a bad feeling about this.

 If they had prequel stuff from the beginning, I could take it. I accept it all as Star Wars. However, they have explicitly stated that this game is based on the original trilogy. I can't imagine they would say that if they had plans to expand in the future. I'm confident we'll get much more than one year of OT before the prequels get introduced.

As a counter point, however, LotR was supposed to take place between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, and then they released a Hobbit expansion that reimagines the events from the book. So they could decide to throw in prequel stuff. I just really think it's gonna be a while before it happens. I hope it takes a while.

Budgernaut said:

Have they said this since the re-development though? I don't think I've heard this since then.

Mattr0polis said:

From the "It Is Your Destiny" article:

"With its layered resourcing, tactical combat, and exciting edge battles, Star Wars: The Card Game immerses players in fast-paced confrontations set during the timeline of the original trilogy."

Yeah, but that's an article just talking about the core set. Hard to take that as 100% never Prequel or New Republic stuff.

I would be shocked if we don't have a deluxe big box expansion with Republic/Separatist or like New Republic/Yuuzhan Vong within a year of this releasing.

Mattr0polis said:

I would be shocked if we DID see anything outside of the era of the Original Trilogy.  If they stick to one pack every month, with 6 to a cycle, and a box between cycles, if we get to the end of 2013 with a Core Set, 6 packs and a box, I'll be impressed.

Within that, I'd imagine that there will be a slow trickling of cards to support the Smugglers/Scum factions, as well as fluff out the rest of the existing factions with more support and flavour.

What are the chances that we'd get Luke (as a pilot), Wedge, and Biggs, all in the Core Set, PLUS their matching X-Wings?  We know Red Five is in there, from there demo.  Also, Red Leader and his X-Wing.  Then there's a Rogue Squadron deal with Luke and the guys and Speeders.  Han, Chewie, the Falcon.

Cards for a Rebel Strike Team kind of deal.  Lando for the Falcon, Lando as a traditional combat guy, various Rebel capital ships, and then you have to flesh out the Dark Side accordingly.

There's plenty of material to work with without going out of the original trilogy up to the first box.  The only thing outside of that I can see being in the Core, or early on, is Mara Jade, since there's a card title that references her; Blessing of the Hand if I'm remembering right.

Anyways, I'm not knocking plundering the EU to keep the game fresh and full of content; there's certainly enough to work with.  I just wouldn't want anyone to get their hopes up while the collective FFG nerdgasms are still happening.

Mattr0polis said:

I'm not trying to be snarky when I say this, but what about the description on the upcoming page?

"The characters, starships, and situations of the original Star Wars trilogy come to life in Star Wars: The Card Game™, a head-to-head Living Card Game® of tactical combat and strategic planning that allows two players to wage cinematic combats between the light and dark sides of the Force."

It doesn't sound to me like this is talking about just the core set, even though that's the product it's describing. It sounds like the whole Star Wars LCG is set in the original trilogy. Though, as I said before, I could see them expanding in the future. But like Cleardave, I just don't see it happening in the first year.

EDIT: And from the Description page of Star Wars: The Card Game:

"The characters, starships, and situations of the original Star Wars trilogy come to life in Star Wars: The Card Game™. A game by award-winning designer Eric M. Lang, Star Wars: The Card Game is a head-to-head Living Card Game® of tactical combat, and strategic planning that allows two players to wage cinematic battles between the light and dark sides of the Force."

Now I'm not saying I prefer it this way. In fact, I'd love to see Dooku eventually, if the game went that way. I'm just saying that it seems like they're really trying to keep it to the OT at this point.

 Ok, those are all pretty good points. I'll still be really surprised if we never see them dip into these other eras, but they definitely could draw out the OT era for a while if they choose to do so.

 Haha! I just realized that the paragraph I quoted was the same on both pages. I just went to those pages, searched for the word "original", and copied the paragraph. I'll have to read more carefully next time.

Mattr0polis said:

For sure, if the game survives long enough to totally mine the Galactic Civil War of all its elements, or if sales need a shot in the arm, they'll do a box for another era, complete with new faction symbols and the like.

The ideal scenario for me is that the game is that successful that we all play the hell out of it, and it warrants expansions like that, 3 years or so from now.  We'll see how it goes though.  Ultimately, I'll be shocked if Toronto gets a tourney scene, but if it does, I'll be there to lose horribly…

cleardave said:

That's what I see ultimately happening, though the factions themselves prevent a challenging issue of play balance. The Rebel Alliance and Imperial Navy factions would not exist in, say, a Prequel-era cycle, but the remaining four factions seem, to me at least, appropriate for any Star Wars era. Being fond of symmetry, though, I don't really like the idea of the Rebel and Imperial factions not expanding at the same rate as these other four. You could, theoretically, have Rebel- and Imperial-affiliated characters in a cycle focusing on the Rise of the Empire and the Jedi Purge, I suppose, and organize faction presence in that cycle in such a way so as to put these two factions ahead of the other four, with the following cycle looking more closely at the events of the Clone Wars, and the underworld involvements therein.

That's how I would do it, anyway.

 You could just lightly sprinkle in extra cards for the Rebels and Imperials while starting up a 7th and 8th faction.  But remember, it's a "7TH AND 8TH" faction, so the game would be pretty bloated at that point.

There's no reason not to toss in EU faves like Thrawn, Pellaeon, Dash Rendar, etc, because they can be easily looped into existing factions anyways.  There's no reason that making an Exar Kun card would require another faction other than the Sith, and so on.

There's so much to draw on, and ways to categorize it all into the 6 factions that it shouldn't be a big deal.  The whole fun of the SWCCG was taking the vibe of the movies, but having all these "what if" scenarios play out.  Like using Vader's Obsession on Mara Jade to Epic Duel Luke out of the game in a Hunt Down deck.

So, while I'm not a huge EU fan, beyond say, the Thrawn stories from Zahn, it could all be worked in.  There's so much content that the game will never really have to be "reaching" for something new.  It'll probably die out long before then.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was referring to the Republic and Separatists as the two new factions.

I mean, I suppose since the Rebel Alliance's full title is The Alliance to Restore the Republic, you could argue that Republic characters would be at home in a Rebel deck. But the faction would need a better name to encapsulate the two together, and once you've done that you've pretty much departed with the game's ostensible ties to the Classic era.

It's a costly predicament, to be sure. Personally, I wouldn't have made factions such an intrinsically vital feature to the game, for precisely this reason. But take that with a grain of salt as well, since I'm of the group that supports the eventual inclusion of other eras (starting, hopefully, with the New Republic era).

MarthWMaster said:

That's where it gets hairy though; there's Old Republic, which is "Order 66 and previous" and New Republic which is "everything Beyond Return of the Jedi", which is 2 Light Side factions there.  So to balance that out, you'd need some kind of Dark Side factions to go with it.  Imperial Remnant?  The Vong, I guess.  What would the "old school" faction be; the Separatist army?  It would get pretty weighty, pretty fast.

Again, this is already in a game with 3 factions to choose from from the beginning.  And really, it's more like 2, because apparently the first wave of packs and eventual box will likely be to flesh out the smugglers/scum factions.

I'm more interested in reading the details on how mixing factions works, which will probably inform how well this faction business will play out.  It doesn't look like Netrunner, where the ID card has a very specific ability for the faction, but more like the Game of Thrones houses.