It was a dark time for the Rebellion. Their champion <PERSON> had fallen at the hands of the Emperor. A rampaging Rancor had already demolished two of their once hidden bases. And the terrible Death Star was nearing completion.
Then a figure emerged from the shadows -- small, green, powerful. With a wave of his four-fingered hand, <PERSON> distracted the Rancor using an old Jedi mind trick, leaving the Imperial headquarters on Courascant open to attack. <PERSON> led the charge along with with a fellow Jedi who had been in hiding. Just as they were about to reach the base, the Jedi felt his throat tighten. The Dark Lord of the Sith <PERSON> was choking the life out of him, and without his help the mission could not possibly succeed.
But <PERSON> wasn't out of tricks yet. With the power of the Force, he was able to deflect <PERSON>'s attention, and the Dark Lord took out his fury on one of his own men instead, killing a TIE Fighter pilot who had let the Jedi slip through their defenses unnoticed. With the path clear, <PERSON> and his team laid the charges to destroy the Imperial headquarters, bringing the promise of peace to the galaxy once more...
And therein summarizes my first experience playing Star Wars: The Card Game. An eye-opening experience, not just for the story the game told, but for the whole package. Theme, mechanics, interaction... I was impressed across the board. So why are you only seeing this review now, months after the game was released?
My story is a fairly common one. I'm a huge Star Wars fan... like, named my daughter <PERSON> so I could have a little princess huge. Okay, so maybe my story's not THAT common. But like so many others I was very excited when FFG first announced they were doing a Star Wars LCG, and I salivated over the initial offerings of original artwork. And then came the waiting... 605
and more waiting... and the original project for a co-op was scrapped and the game was redesigned. More waiting... And finally the release. But by then I'd waited so long and things had changed so much that I didn't jump on the game right away. The initial reviews came in, and one common thread rose above the rest -- "The game doesn't feel like Star Wars." "The interaction of the cards is downright goofy." "The theme makes no sense." "How can you have a <PERSON> battling the Millennium Falcon" And so on and so on. But then more reviews started to come out touting the gameplay, and so I finally made the leap and bought in. And boy am I glad I did...
To thoese who eschew the theme, let me quote my review title: "I find your lack of imagination disturbing." In my first game I had no trouble whatsoever getting into the theme of the game, and I totally agree with those who say it has a strong Star Wars feel. At times you need a little imagination, but to me that just makes the game more fun and thematic, not less so. In my lead-in passage, my opponent played Force Choke which does 1 point of damage to a character, and I responded with Lightsaber Deflection, which redirects a point of damage to a different target. Strictly speaking does that make any sense? No, but from my write-up you can see it wasn't hard at all to envision another way in which those cards might interact, and to me that kind of creativity is fun.
But theme aside, the most important thing is that the theme doesn't matter... Because the mechanics are THAT good. In my time as Games Editor for InQuest magazine I played and reviewed probably around 200 trading card games. For whatever that's worth. (Note: I think it's worth at least something... if for no other reason than I have a pretty large basis of comparison.) And even after just one play I could tell that Star Wars: The Card Game was a special game. There are mechanics I haven't seen before, and that alone is saying something. Once you learn the rules (I highly recommend watching the [thread=http://boardgamegeek.com/video/24209]Team Convenant video[/thread] and then reading through the rulebook as I did), the game flows smoothly and easily. The goals are clear and you can jump right in, and since you start with most of the resource-production you'll ever need already in play, there's no slow buildup or "mana screw". You can hit the ground running, which is no small feat for a balanced and strategic card game.
Rather than rehash the gameplay and rules, which you can easily find elsewhere, let me just touch on the high points:
* Edge battles. 304