Bolfa Fluffbelly said:

You're not the first one I've heard complain about the objectives being stale, resource-generators, but I disagree. From the cards previewed at GenCon, it seems that most of the objectives have some kind of ability attached to them and they can be pretty powerful. Mission Briefing lets you draw a card at the end of your turn, which is great since your hand will be smaller at the end of your turn if you chose to battle and played a lot of cards in the edge battle. Mission Briefing will give you an extra card that may or may not have a lot of force icons, but it will make your opponent think twice about what to commit to the edge battle on their turn.

Mobilize the Squadrons is a great card for resource acceleration since it lets you remove a focus token from an objective or enhancement. Say you focused a 2-resource objective, (if I remember correctly) it takes two focus tokens, so you can't focus it again for 2 rounds. If Mobilize the Squadrons is in play, you cut that down to one turn.

What's even cooler to me is that because your objectives are random, each time you play the same deck, it could be completely different because of the choices you make based on your objectives' effects. For example, if you got Mobilize the Squadrons, you may play more toward getting units on the table because you can afford them, whereas if you had Mission Briefing, you may play more to maximizing the attack power of the few units you have by trying harder to win the edge battles.

It's so exciting!!!!

Budgernaut said:

FFG… is that you?

I still don't see why you don't like the Death Star Dial, other than it being "meh", or whatever. Is it because you want a game to go on forever until you have beaten all of the cards in your opponent's deck? So many other card games can be like this, though. I think putting a timer on the game works well because the films are, primarily, the conflict between Rebels and Imperials (whether on a personal scale or a more grand sweep), and the Rebels always have to do something before the Empire will win, be it blowing up Death Stars or escaping planets. It's all about the race against time. Showing the timer as a Death Star is about as cheesy as most of the dialogue in the films, anyway, so it does seem to fit in that respect. 

I do hope the objective cards become something more than they are currently. This has been hashed out already, of course, but having objectives that you can complete would be a major step forward in my view, and I do have some hope that the game will evolve to include this soon. Quests in Warhammer Invasion were pretty bland things at first, but have since evolved to be cards that you want to interact with etc, so I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility for the future. 

I just think FFG are making this a straightforward game to appeal to the widest demographic possible. And they'd be stupid not to, really. 

 As a long time casual gamer ( I play a lot but do not go to any events) I must say I like the deckbuilding mechanic very much. I think it's great that reconstructing the deck between friednly maches will take 5 minutes and not 30. It should make the game much more thematic. I already want to try out several concepts just for the fun of it, like: Darth Vader leading an attack of 501 legion stormtroopers or a fleet of all best pilots and fastest ships the rebel alliance could find in the outer rim. I hope that the objective set mechanic will make such decks effective in an actual play.

The Death Star Dial doesn't bother me at all. hanks to it the rebels will not have time to build a great force that matches the Empires forces. They will have to make due with what they have. The light side player will have to take risks and attack. That combined with edge battles mechanic should provide an interesting situation: Rebels have to attack, have to win edge battles not to get crushed by the Empire so they must use up powerfull cards for force points. Rebels do not have time to build the strike force they would want. Desperate times…

Bolfa Fluffbelly said:

So if he's FFG are you their biggest competitor?

I was discussing the deck building with my play group in the area and while, its not a deal breaker to us, a few players did bring up some good points. Basically, when I sit down across from my opponent, I'm going to immediately know fifteen cards they have in their deck. After they play one card that doesn't come from one of their revealed objectives, I now know four more cards in addition to that one. So, its not unreasonable after turn one to know over 50% of what my opponent brought to the table. I think this is going to make deck building way less important to the game than playing. An experienced player can beat a superior deck, but inferior player simply by knowing what his opponent's options are. 

I find it kind of interesting that FFGs other latest release, Netrunner, prides itself on the hidden/bluffing aspect of card games. Its a game that's full of surprises and great plays. It seems to me like Star Wars will be the exact opposite. So long as I've done my research on what cards are in what pods, I'll be able to predict my opponent's options and play around them.

gokubb said:

True, but in many other TCG's I could give you 80% of the deck by seeing the first card they play. Information overlaod can have a negative effect on you as well. The higher variance in this game means you should probably be more proactive than reactive.

And if more games are won based on play decisions and not deckbuildings decisions, isn't that a good thing?

They are customizable games for a reason. I love deck building. Coming up with combinations that others have not thought about is as much fun as playing to me. If I merely wanted a playing experience, I'd play a board or video game.

We already have many, many games that are pick every single card. And really a lot of those devolve to the same card 3 or 4 times depending on the maximum allowed. Something different is nice to see.

spalanzani said:

Well, at least someone agrees with something i think.

That was how my probelm started with the dial, besides me not being a dial-person. I just thought it was unnecessary, ugly and i couldn't understand why it wasn't incorporated into the objectives. i would rather have different game-winning objectives than one single ds-dial.

But it is what it is. I will probably use a proxy instead of the dial. Just because.

gokubb said:

It's just a new and different set of limitations than previous games. There will still be penty of customizations opportunities to suit those that enjoy deck building, but it's more of a macro approach verus a micro one.

gokubb said:

The thing is, people will get to know what cards do. I play a lot of Warhammer: Invasion with a friend who always plays High Elves - he has never played anything else. I now know exactly what is in his deck, and can build decks with the other five races that counter more or less than what he's going to be up to in the game. With Star Wars, however, yes you'll get to know what cards you'll be coming up against, but your opponent can either use those cards as their intended unit/enhancement/whatever, or in the Edge Battle, so you won't quite know what will happen with those cards, even though you know they're lurking there somewhere. (The same thing can be said of cards in Warhammer being used as developments, of course, but in this case, I know my friend's deck doesn't involve development-exploitation, so it's rather moot). 

The same friend has always played Stark in A Game of Thrones, and always has exactly the same tactic in each game. Knowing what's in your opponent's deck isn't a problem that will be exclusive and unique to Star Wars.

 So having played this at GenCon, here's my impression.  The sets are thematic and mechanically tied enough to give lots of unity.  That being said, if you don't like having to take Red-Shirt number 4 with your Darth Vader, it's cool because you've got options.  Maybe it has force icons, and so you can use Red-Shirt to edge.  Maybe the force is not strong with the Red-Shirt.  Use it to bluff.  When your opponent has three battles to fight (against each of his three objectives) he's going to be worried about burning his hand too early and not being able to compete later on.  So drop two cards into an edge battle and scare him off.  He doesn't know you just dropped BS.  Or maybe try to shine him on.  Get him to over commit.  Let him win the edge battle 6 vs 0.  See where that leaves him the next combat.  At the beginning of your turn you always draw back up to a full hand, so there is a lot of throwing cards, which gives low power cards lots of use.  Just looking at a nice full hand against you will make you think twice about how you commit to stories.

So don't be so freaked about about FFG trying to give you something new.  Any good card player knows that you can't build a deck of 50 Luke Skywalkers.  FFG knows this, and so they are doing something different.  They are giving us a thematic game, complete with ewoks and that jerky storm trooper who can get bluffed by c3po.

And btw, my game came down to the last round.  11 clicks on the death star dial, 2 imperial locations destroyed, the third heavily damaged.  Yoda killed a Rancor (which was bad ass), but it was an edge battle that won the game.  Some crappy one force- icon dude won me the initiative to make the final kill.

The Red-Shirt won the game.

houjix1138 said:

It's a great thing in my opinion. That is one of the factors that cought my attention to this geme. In many older titles like M:tG or CoC you have very limited options for playing cards from your hand. Often you just play the best card you can afford this round without even thinking of it. Almost every player will play the same card from a given hand. Here the situation should look much different thanks to the Edge Battle mechanics and refreshing your hand to 6 cards. Since every card can be used in two different ways (standard play and Edge Battle), and every card used gest replaced the next round the focus is shifted from deck building to actual gameplay. The first 6 objectives the players draw tell them both what kind of battle to expect. They know if they will be defending against a massive fleet invasion or performing a covert op. It's something different than what CCG and LCG players are used to, but I personally don't want yet another game that plays the same but has different graphics. If you don't want to take a risk and create something new it's best you do nothing at all. 

An aspect of this deck building concept I have not heard much chatter about: your ability to deceive your opponent regarding what sort of deck you are playing

- At the start of the game , your opponent sees three objectives and therefore knows 15 of the cards in your deck.

- Each time a card is played, your opponent knows 4 additinal cards that are in your deck. (perhaps 8 for cards that shared between objectives)

Manipulating these two sources of information for you opponent could put the initiave and timing in your favor

Example: if "The Bespin Exchange" is not an active objective, don't play "Blaster Pistol" because it "might" help in the next conflict. Instead, keep the fact that Boba Fett is in your deck hidden until that critical point where he comes out and helps win you the game (with blaster pistol in hand).

I suppose that as more combos are discovered that this will become more important. If your opponent is not able to deduce that your deck could muster a certain combo, they will not prepare for it. Even better, by carefully showing only certain cards, you can dupe your opponet into thinking that other combinations do exist.