The Inside Scoop on Gaming

WARNING

The following review contains minor spoilers for Attack of the Clones, limited to vague name-dropping when referencing a card.

Overview

This is a review of the Star Wars TCG released by Wizards of the Coast. The first set for this TCG is the Attack of the Clones set, and it contains 180 cards, divided into Light Side, Dark Side and Neutral cards.

The SW:TCG is distributed in three ‘levels’ of play: the beginner game box, which consists of a fold-out playmat with all the beginner rules on each side of the playmat and two thirty-card decks, one Light and one Dark. It also contains six-sided dice, damage counters, and a force counter.

The ‘advanced’ game is billed for experienced TCG gamers, and is distributed as two 40-card pre-built decks, which do not contain a playmat or counters, but does contain the game’s official rule book.

Finally, ‘expert’ level boosters of 11 cards are being sold. These boosters contain no playmats, counters or even rules.

The Anatomy of a Card

SW:TCG cards are laid out very logically and in an easy to read fashion. In the top left corner of each unit is that unit’s build cost. On the opposite corner is a light side, dark side, or neutral icon. (As expected, you can’t mix Light and Dark cards in the same deck.)

There are only three more relevant numbers on a unit card. Down the left side are the units speed, power, and health. Speed is how soon in a turn a unit moves. Power is how many dice of damage a unit does in an attack, and health is how many hits a unit can take before it gets discarded. Power and health range from 1 to 12. Speed is doled out in multiples of 10, and ranges from 10 to 60. For example, a unit’s speed may be 40. The only reason I can tell for the multiplier is to keep speed easy to tell apart from power and health at a glance. The gambit works, and speed is never confused for power or health. Just in case there were any doubt, however, Wizards has been thoughtful enough to place the letter S next to the speed rating, P next to the power rating, and H next to the health rating.

Many cards also have special game text on them. I’ll cover some of these special abilities later.

Cards also have an image of the unit centered on the card, and some italicized flavor text below that image.

Now, all that just describes unit cards. There are two other types of cards in the game – battle and mission cards. More about those later.

(Whenever I mention a unit card in this review, I will list these four number in brackets after it. For example, [4-30-2-1] would mean a unit has a build cost of 4, speed of 30, power of 2, and health of 1.)

(A full spoiler list, complete with card photos, is available in Issue 10 if Star Wars Gamer Magazine.)

Game Play

The core conceit of the SW:TCG is that the game represents the final composite battle scene of the Star Wars movies. In these scenes, there is typically a battle going on on a planet’s surface; another battle in space; and yet a third “character battle” of individual Jedis.

The game is set up the same way. There are three zones – a character zone, a ground battle zone, and a space zone. You will deploy units to each of these zones and duke it out until one player has sole control of two of the three zones at the end of the turn.

Gameplay consists of a series of simultaneous turns. Each turn, there is a ‘ready’ phase, then a ‘build’ phase, next comes the ‘retreat’ phase and finally the ‘battle’ phase. The battle phase is the most important phase, and where most of the game time takes place as your units fight against your opponent’s units.

Before normal game play begins, there is a special setup stage. Each player draws seven cards from his shuffled deck. Each player, starting with Dark, may then ‘mulligan’ any battle or mission cards from his hand to his discard pile and fill his back up to seven cards. It is usually better to take the mulligan than not to, as having more options in the setup phase can slant the game in your favor from the beginning.

Now, the Dark player lays out a unit to one of the zones. (I’ll note at this point that your units come in three flavors – one for each kind of zone. You can’t place characters in the ground zone, or space units in the character zone, etc.) Next, the Light side player places units into any zone or zones until the total cost of all of his deployed units exceeds the total cost of Dark’s deployed units. Dark and Light keep alternating in this manner until each has deployed thirty build points worth of units. During this special stage only, whenever a card gets played, a card is drawn.

(Unused build points are never saved from turn to turn. However, players may partially build units. Partially built units are kept face down in the build area. In fact, you do not need to reveal a unit when it is fully built. You may keep it face-down until you choose to deploy it during some later build phase. You can also bluff by putting more build points than you need on a card. These extra build points are wasted.)

After the setup stage, normal gameplay begins. Each turn begins with a ready phase. During the ready phase, each player draws one card from his deck, untaps all his tapped cards, and gains 4 force points.

Next comes the build phase. The Light side player rolls one die and both players then receive that many build points for the current turn. If a player has units in all three zones at this point, that player receives one additional build point.

This rolling for build points accomplishes three things. First, it removes the uncertainty of relying on resource-generating cards, meaning that all the cards in your deck actually do something to move the game along, rather than being a roadblock to gameplay. .Secondly, it keeps things fair. A player cannot complain of loosing because he lost the resource war. Thirdly, the extra build point for having units in three areas ensures that the tactic of ignoring one area completely and putting all your units in two areas has its downside compared to a more well rounded strategy.

After the build phase, each player (starting with Dark) may retreat any of his units in any of the three zones back to his build zone. Units in the build zone cannot attack, be attacked, or use special abilities.

Frequently, one player will recognize the fact that he is hopelessly outnumbered in one of the three zones and retreat all of his units out of that zone. Although this essentially gives his opponents complete control of one zone (meaning his opponent only needs to take one more zone for the win), it also gives him the hope of building up a larger force to go back and retake that zone in a later turn.

The last phase, but most important phase, of each turn is the battle phase. Each zone, starting with Space, then Battle, and finally Character, is looked at in turn. Units in each zone act in order of decreasing Speed. The Dark player, who up to now has been disadvantaged by having to play first in each phase, gets his advantage – if two units are tied for speed, the Dark units goes first. This means that if each player has four units in the Battle zone, and each of those units has a speed of 40, all the Dark units will get to act before any of the Light units do.

Unless a unit has a special ability it can take instead of an attack, you will be attacking with each unit when its Speed comes up. To make an attack, you simply choose an enemy unit in the same zone, and roll a number of dice equal to the attacking units power. Each die that rolls a 4, 5, or 6 counts as one hit. Damage counters are placed on the attacked unit; if the unit takes as many hits as it has health, it is discarded.

Many units have special abilities that come into play during the battle phase. For example, the ground unit Chancellor’s Guard Squad [2-30-2-2] has the special ‘Critical Hit 2’. When attacking, if any of the dice roll a natural 6, the attack does an additional 2 hits.

Another unit, “AT-TE Walker 71E” [6-60-5-4] has the special ‘Shields’, which means that any unit attacking it has its power reduced by 1 during the attack.

There are defensive special abilities as well. ‘Evade’ allows a unit to ignore a certain number of hits per attack. ‘Deflect’ not only ignores hits, but redirects the damage back to one of the attacking player’s units in the same zone. Evade and Deflect always have a cost in Force Points associated with them.

Battle cards are special cards which a player can play during a battle. For example, there are cards which allow you to Evade or Deflect damage for Force Points. But there are many special purpose combat cards. “Attract Enemy Fire” is a combat card which allows you to respecify which unit of yours your opponent is attacking after they have declared attacker and target but before any dice are rolled.

Mission cards are played during the build stage, because they have a build cost, just like units do. Once built and revealed, they take affect immediately. These effects range from the mundane (yet very useful) ‘Return to Spaceport’, which allows you to heal a unit in play, to the special purpose “Tyranus’ Edict”, which redirects all enemy attacks in one zone this turn to a unit you specify when you reveal the card. (Acting like a more powerful version of the “Attract Enemy Fire” card.)

It should be noted that while many Battle and Mission cards are Neutral cards, the more powerful and interesting ones are Light or Dark side specific, lending to the unique flavor of each side.

The Balance of the Force

An important issue in TCG design is balance. Each faction should be balanced against each other faction. Additionally, no card or combination of cards should dominate the field. Every card should be useful.

SW:TCG achieves the first goal, side balance, by making the Light and Dark sides almost equal in capabilities. There is enough difference for there to a be a noticeable flavor to each side, but not enough to run the risk of major balance issues.

The game does this by establishing one hard and fast rule which applies to each side equally: one build point is worth 10 Speed, 1 Power and 1 Health. This rule is reinforced two ways. The first is with regards to the stacking of unique units (see below.) The second is by the use of neutral units, many of whom stick exactly to that ratio.

Still, not every card is created equal. Dark’s low-budget space unit, the Droid Starfighter DFS-4CT [2-50-2-1] is distinctly inferior to Light’s N-1 Starfighter [2-60-2-1].

Also, there are a few cards that make you go “huh?”. For example, Light’s Hyperdrive Ring [3-30-1-3] is noticeably overpriced. Why would anyone choose to place the Hyperdrive Ring in a deck when they could place some Jedi Starfighter 3R3s [3-50-3-3] in it?

(Yes, Hyperdrive Ring does have a special ability. It gets 2 Power if Light has any Starfighters in the space zone. Which still makes it less valuable than a Jedi Starfighter.)

So, how does the game regard card balance? It does very well in this respect as well. Since each unit may make only one attack per turn, a large number of small ships has a good chance of taking out a smaller number of larger ships. More units gives you greater fighting flexibility. Expensive, powerful units may strike hard, but they can only strike once, whereas several weaker units can strike several times. And since the smaller units typically (but not always) have a higher Speed, they get to attack first.

Since each player receives the same number of build points each turn, either strategy is given a fair chance.

Unique Units and Stacking

Wizards faced a design challenge when making the new Star Wars TCG. See, everyone wants to play with the face characters of Attack of the Clones – Padme, Annakin, etc. But should they make these cards common, and thus appeal to the casual gamer but not the collector (who prizes his rare cards) or make these cards rare, appealing to the collector but alienating the casual player. Furthermore, should they make these characters simply powerful or very powerful?

Wizards jumped this hurdle in a most satisfying way. For many unique characters from the movie, there are multiple versions of that character, marked A, B, C or D. Certain of these unique cards are common and less powerful; others are uncommon or rare and more powerful. (Balanced by Build Cost, of course.)

Here’s the cool part. While there can only be one copy of each unique card in play, multiple versions of the same unique stack. There are some ornate yet cleanly designed rules to handle this stacking, but the basics go like this: a character stack has the cost, power, health, speed and special abilities of only the top most card of the stack. Each additional card in the stack adds 1 to the cost, and gives the card on top 10 speed, 1 Power and 1 Health.

Currently, while there are unique Battle and Space units as well, only unique Character units come in multiple versions. And while only a few of the unique characters come in multiple versions, the door has been left open for further versions of the characters in the future.

Experience the Force

So far, I have talked only about the construction of the gameplay. But how does it feel in play? There’s a lot of die rolling; are things too random?

I have played three games so far. I have to say that a good strategy is very helpful, but the randomness can throw any well designed plan off. But, given the sheer number of dice being thrown in the game, the odds tend to balance out after only a few turns. You get lucky and your opponent gets lucky by turns. In fact, if there were no dice involved, the game would be an exercise in mechanical predictability. The dice are an integral feature of the game.

This game is very simple to learn. I went from knowing nothing about the game to teaching other gamers how to play after just one game. Unlike many other TCG’s, the rules are minimalist and clean. There are no hordes of exceptions and special cases that plague so many other TCGs, and the simple design of the game shows that Wizards is serious about trying to keep SW:TCG simple throughout its lifespan.

This game gets a 4.5 out of 5 for presentation – it has the cleanest card layout of any TCG I have ever played. The visuals from the movie are artfully captured, generally. However, certain card images are grainy. There are also some “shiny” cards, but the shiny makes the underlying picture hard to discern.

It gets a 4 out of 5 for gameplay. Easy to learn, fun to play, with enough strategy to keep most TCG fans happy for some time to come. Well designed rules and carefully balanced cards make for a wide variety of viable strategies. The starter decks are well designed and balanced, and all by themselves make for a fun game.

Star Wars Trading Card Game
Star Wars Trading Card Game Playtest Review by Jake Baker on 06/05/02 Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty) A well-designed and simple TCG from Wizards. Product: Star Wars Trading Card Game Author: Richard Garfield, et al. Category: Card Game Company/Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Line: Cost: Variable Page count: n/a Year published: 2002 ISBN: n/a SKU: Comp copy?: no Playtest Review by Jake Baker on 06/05/02 Genre tags: Fantasy Science Fiction Space	WARNING The following review contains minor spoilers for Attack of the Clones, limited to vague name-dropping when referencing a card. Overview This is a review of the Star Wars TCG released by Wizards of the Coast. The first set for this TCG is the Attack of the Clones set, and it contains 180 cards, divided into Light Side, Dark Side and Neutral cards. The SW:TCG is distributed in three ‘levels’ of play: the beginner game box, which consists of a fold-out playmat with all the beginner rules on each side of the playmat and two thirty-card decks, one Light and one Dark. It also contains six-sided dice, damage counters, and a force counter. The ‘advanced’ game is billed for experienced TCG gamers, and is distributed as two 40-card pre-built decks, which do not contain a playmat or counters, but does contain the game’s official rule book. Finally, ‘expert’ level boosters of 11 cards are being sold. These boosters contain no playmats, counters or even rules. The Anatomy of a Card SW:TCG cards are laid out very logically and in an easy to read fashion. In the top left corner of each unit is that unit’s build cost. On the opposite corner is a light side, dark side, or neutral icon. (As expected, you can’t mix Light and Dark cards in the same deck.) There are only three more relevant numbers on a unit card. Down the left side are the units speed, power, and health. Speed is how soon in a turn a unit moves. Power is how many dice of damage a unit does in an attack, and health is how many hits a unit can take before it gets discarded. Power and health range from 1 to 12. Speed is doled out in multiples of 10, and ranges from 10 to 60. For example, a unit’s speed may be 40. The only reason I can tell for the multiplier is to keep speed easy to tell apart from power and health at a glance. The gambit works, and speed is never confused for power or health. Just in case there were any doubt, however, Wizards has been thoughtful enough to place the letter S next to the speed rating, P next to the power rating, and H next to the health rating. Many cards also have special game text on them. I’ll cover some of these special abilities later. Cards also have an image of the unit centered on the card, and some italicized flavor text below that image. Now, all that just describes unit cards. There are two other types of cards in the game – battle and mission cards. More about those later. (Whenever I mention a unit card in this review, I will list these four number in brackets after it. For example, [4-30-2-1] would mean a unit has a build cost of 4, speed of 30, power of 2, and health of 1.) (A full spoiler list, complete with card photos, is available in Issue 10 if Star Wars Gamer Magazine.) Game Play The core conceit of the SW:TCG is that the game represents the final composite battle scene of the Star Wars movies. In these scenes, there is typically a battle going on on a planet’s surface; another battle in space; and yet a third “character battle” of individual Jedis. The game is set up the same way. There are three zones – a character zone, a ground battle zone, and a space zone. You will deploy units to each of these zones and duke it out until one player has sole control of two of the three zones at the end of the turn. Gameplay consists of a series of simultaneous turns. Each turn, there is a ‘ready’ phase, then a ‘build’ phase, next comes the ‘retreat’ phase and finally the ‘battle’ phase. The battle phase is the most important phase, and where most of the game time takes place as your units fight against your opponent’s units. Before normal game play begins, there is a special setup stage. Each player draws seven cards from his shuffled deck. Each player, starting with Dark, may then ‘mulligan’ any battle or mission cards from his hand to his discard pile and fill his back up to seven cards. It is usually better to take the mulligan than not to, as having more options in the setup phase can slant the game in your favor from the beginning. Now, the Dark player lays out a unit to one of the zones. (I’ll note at this point that your units come in three flavors – one for each kind of zone. You can’t place characters in the ground zone, or space units in the character zone, etc.) Next, the Light side player places units into any zone or zones until the total cost of all of his deployed units exceeds the total cost of Dark’s deployed units. Dark and Light keep alternating in this manner until each has deployed thirty build points worth of units. During this special stage only, whenever a card gets played, a card is drawn. (Unused build points are never saved from turn to turn. However, players may partially build units. Partially built units are kept face down in the build area. In fact, you do not need to reveal a unit when it is fully built. You may keep it face-down until you choose to deploy it during some later build phase. You can also bluff by putting more build points than you need on a card. These extra build points are wasted.) After the setup stage, normal gameplay begins. Each turn begins with a ready phase. During the ready phase, each player draws one card from his deck, untaps all his tapped cards, and gains 4 force points. Next comes the build phase. The Light side player rolls one die and both players then receive that many build points for the current turn. If a player has units in all three zones at this point, that player receives one additional build point. This rolling for build points accomplishes three things. First, it removes the uncertainty of relying on resource-generating cards, meaning that all the cards in your deck actually do something to move the game along, rather than being a roadblock to gameplay. .Secondly, it keeps things fair. A player cannot complain of loosing because he lost the resource war. Thirdly, the extra build point for having units in three areas ensures that the tactic of ignoring one area completely and putting all your units in two areas has its downside compared to a more well rounded strategy. After the build phase, each player (starting with Dark) may retreat any of his units in any of the three zones back to his build zone. Units in the build zone cannot attack, be attacked, or use special abilities. Frequently, one player will recognize the fact that he is hopelessly outnumbered in one of the three zones and retreat all of his units out of that zone. Although this essentially gives his opponents complete control of one zone (meaning his opponent only needs to take one more zone for the win), it also gives him the hope of building up a larger force to go back and retake that zone in a later turn. The last phase, but most important phase, of each turn is the battle phase. Each zone, starting with Space, then Battle, and finally Character, is looked at in turn. Units in each zone act in order of decreasing Speed. The Dark player, who up to now has been disadvantaged by having to play first in each phase, gets his advantage – if two units are tied for speed, the Dark units goes first. This means that if each player has four units in the Battle zone, and each of those units has a speed of 40, all the Dark units will get to act before any of the Light units do. Unless a unit has a special ability it can take instead of an attack, you will be attacking with each unit when its Speed comes up. To make an attack, you simply choose an enemy unit in the same zone, and roll a number of dice equal to the attacking units power. Each die that rolls a 4, 5, or 6 counts as one hit. Damage counters are placed on the attacked unit; if the unit takes as many hits as it has health, it is discarded. Many units have special abilities that come into play during the battle phase. For example, the ground unit Chancellor’s Guard Squad [2-30-2-2] has the special ‘Critical Hit 2’. When attacking, if any of the dice roll a natural 6, the attack does an additional 2 hits. Another unit, “AT-TE Walker 71E” [6-60-5-4] has the special ‘Shields’, which means that any unit attacking it has its power reduced by 1 during the attack. There are defensive special abilities as well. ‘Evade’ allows a unit to ignore a certain number of hits per attack. ‘Deflect’ not only ignores hits, but redirects the damage back to one of the attacking player’s units in the same zone. Evade and Deflect always have a cost in Force Points associated with them. Battle cards are special cards which a player can play during a battle. For example, there are cards which allow you to Evade or Deflect damage for Force Points. But there are many special purpose combat cards. “Attract Enemy Fire” is a combat card which allows you to respecify which unit of yours your opponent is attacking after they have declared attacker and target but before any dice are rolled. Mission cards are played during the build stage, because they have a build cost, just like units do. Once built and revealed, they take affect immediately. These effects range from the mundane (yet very useful) ‘Return to Spaceport’, which allows you to heal a unit in play, to the special purpose “Tyranus’ Edict”, which redirects all enemy attacks in one zone this turn to a unit you specify when you reveal the card. (Acting like a more powerful version of the “Attract Enemy Fire” card.) It should be noted that while many Battle and Mission cards are Neutral cards, the more powerful and interesting ones are Light or Dark side specific, lending to the unique flavor of each side. The Balance of the Force An important issue in TCG design is balance. Each faction should be balanced against each other faction. Additionally, no card or combination of cards should dominate the field. Every card should be useful. SW:TCG achieves the first goal, side balance, by making the Light and Dark sides almost equal in capabilities. There is enough difference for there to a be a noticeable flavor to each side, but not enough to run the risk of major balance issues. The game does this by establishing one hard and fast rule which applies to each side equally: one build point is worth 10 Speed, 1 Power and 1 Health. This rule is reinforced two ways. The first is with regards to the stacking of unique units (see below.) The second is by the use of neutral units, many of whom stick exactly to that ratio. Still, not every card is created equal. Dark’s low-budget space unit, the Droid Starfighter DFS-4CT [2-50-2-1] is distinctly inferior to Light’s N-1 Starfighter [2-60-2-1]. Also, there are a few cards that make you go “huh?”. For example, Light’s Hyperdrive Ring [3-30-1-3] is noticeably overpriced. Why would anyone choose to place the Hyperdrive Ring in a deck when they could place some Jedi Starfighter 3R3s [3-50-3-3] in it? (Yes, Hyperdrive Ring does have a special ability. It gets 2 Power if Light has any Starfighters in the space zone. Which still makes it less valuable than a Jedi Starfighter.) So, how does the game regard card balance? It does very well in this respect as well. Since each unit may make only one attack per turn, a large number of small ships has a good chance of taking out a smaller number of larger ships. More units gives you greater fighting flexibility. Expensive, powerful units may strike hard, but they can only strike once, whereas several weaker units can strike several times. And since the smaller units typically (but not always) have a higher Speed, they get to attack first. Since each player receives the same number of build points each turn, either strategy is given a fair chance. Unique Units and Stacking Wizards faced a design challenge when making the new Star Wars TCG. See, everyone wants to play with the face characters of Attack of the Clones – Padme, Annakin, etc. But should they make these cards common, and thus appeal to the casual gamer but not the collector (who prizes his rare cards) or make these cards rare, appealing to the collector but alienating the casual player. Furthermore, should they make these characters simply powerful or very powerful? Wizards jumped this hurdle in a most satisfying way. For many unique characters from the movie, there are multiple versions of that character, marked A, B, C or D. Certain of these unique cards are common and less powerful; others are uncommon or rare and more powerful. (Balanced by Build Cost, of course.) Here’s the cool part. While there can only be one copy of each unique card in play, multiple versions of the same unique stack. There are some ornate yet cleanly designed rules to handle this stacking, but the basics go like this: a character stack has the cost, power, health, speed and special abilities of only the top most card of the stack. Each additional card in the stack adds 1 to the cost, and gives the card on top 10 speed, 1 Power and 1 Health. Currently, while there are unique Battle and Space units as well, only unique Character units come in multiple versions. And while only a few of the unique characters come in multiple versions, the door has been left open for further versions of the characters in the future. Experience the Force So far, I have talked only about the construction of the gameplay. But how does it feel in play? There’s a lot of die rolling; are things too random? I have played three games so far. I have to say that a good strategy is very helpful, but the randomness can throw any well designed plan off. But, given the sheer number of dice being thrown in the game, the odds tend to balance out after only a few turns. You get lucky and your opponent gets lucky by turns. In fact, if there were no dice involved, the game would be an exercise in mechanical predictability. The dice are an integral feature of the game. This game is very simple to learn. I went from knowing nothing about the game to teaching other gamers how to play after just one game. Unlike many other TCG’s, the rules are minimalist and clean. There are no hordes of exceptions and special cases that plague so many other TCGs, and the simple design of the game shows that Wizards is serious about trying to keep SW:TCG simple throughout its lifespan. This game gets a 4.5 out of 5 for presentation – it has the cleanest card layout of any TCG I have ever played. The visuals from the movie are artfully captured, generally. However, certain card images are grainy. There are also some “shiny” cards, but the shiny makes the underlying picture hard to discern. It gets a 4 out of 5 for gameplay. Easy to learn, fun to play, with enough strategy to keep most TCG fans happy for some time to come. Well designed rules and carefully balanced cards make for a wide variety of viable strategies. The starter decks are well designed and balanced, and all by themselves make for a fun game.

Star Wars Trading Card Game