Finally we know what a Womp Rat looks like!
Decipher's Star Wars CCG expanded to the point where every character, ship, creature, location, object, or spoken word in the original trilogy was on a card somewhere. The Phantom Menace expansion came out and had everyone enjoying Darth Maul and Qui-Gon, but then apparantly Decipher could or would not continue their liscencing agreement and this great game abruptly died.
THE GAME: One person plays a light side deck, the other plays a dark side deck and you switch after each game. Decks are exactly 60 cards, because the goal is to totally deplete the other guys deck (drain all their Force in Star Wars talk). The most enjoyable way to do this is of course to slaughter the other guy in a battle, but you can also slowly drain a deck just by having characters on sites where your opponent doesn't. Also adding to the challenge is whenever you draw cards or use disposable interrupts, you are actually also depleting your deck and getting closer to losing if you're not careful.
CONS: It's the most complex CCG I've reviewed by far. Cards tend to contain paragraphs worth of effects instead of simple stuff like "add +1 to some skill". It takes a while to figure out the fighting system, where you are firing weapons, comparing power, "drawing destiny" if you're allowed to, and then deciding which characters have to die and if any additional Force needs to be lost. The game is loaded with complicated rare interrupts and effects which are only useful under very specific conditions, such as "if Han and Chewie are in a battle together". There's even the game-within-the-game of Sabbacc; I don't even recall when or if it's mentioned in the movies, but if someone plays a Sabbacc card you'd better break out the rulebook and figure out what the hell is going on.
Interrupts with 2 or 3 very different uses, characters with lots of conditional powers, and most of all Sabbacc make it a little complicated to play
EPIC EVENTS: Depending on your point of view, Epic Events could fall under either "why it's fun" or "cons". It's cool that you can blow up the Death Star, blow up a planet with the Death Star, blow up the Endor shield generator, or train Luke on Dagobah like in the movies. However it takes a lot of cards and a hell of a lot of planning and luck to actually accomplish them. Doing so normally gives you some good bonuses, but it's much easier to just play huge characters and ships and beat the crap out of the other guy.
WHY IT'S FUN: Star Wars + CCG = nerd heaven. It's fun when you finally figure out how to string together combos of all the crazy effects rather than just deploying all the main characters you can get your hands on. It's challenging to make a balanced deck that can attack and defend both the land and outer space locations. It's fun to pull out some alien that was on-screen in the movie for 1/8 of a second who winds up being as good as a Jedi in the CCG. It's even fun to try Epic Events and fail horribly.
MEMORABLE GAMEPLAY: Luke's Aunt and Uncle successfully kill Vader for invading their moisture farm. Vader misses a generic Rebel Soldier with his lightsaber twice. Sending Leia to the Rancor. All this and more, in the (sadly defunct) Star Wars CCG!!!
WHAT THE HELL? While it's intended to have Yoda train the Dagobah expansion Luke, you could technically have Luke's uncle train a Jawa in the Jedi arts.
2 comments:
As one of those nerd/fanboy/people (I guess) I honestly wanted to play this game with my friends but it wanted to much from my pocket to even START UP! X|
And it's overly complicated, in my opinion, for no reason other then to replicate in movie/book events in awkward/fun manners... which a fanfic could do anyway.
Maybe I'm jaded? XD
Yeah all these games are $$$ intensive in their heyday, doesn't help that you need to make a whole light and dark side deck. SWCCG was the only one I bought a lot of while it was still going strong, and even looking on ebay the best sets are still expensive for booster boxes. Expansions with very limited use like Jabba's Palace, Hoth, and especially Dagobah are like $1 a pack or less.
One of the best Star Wars CCG ideas was the "enhanced" characters, guys that had their signature weapon built in. So you could finally get a starter where you're guaranteed to get a good Luke, Vader, Lando, or bounty hunter.
Also you're right Dudel, they not only replicated but expanded on movie situations. Example: Luke says the filler text "I'm going to Toshi Station to pick up some power convertors". So they create the cards Toshi Station, power convertors, some effects that work if there are power convertors at Toshi Station, a Dark Side card to counter that, and some random characters and droids that have powers at Toshi Station.
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