It’s nice to see packs coming out regularly on-schedule again. People complained about Imperial Entanglements being “late” because it was pre-released at GenCon, but it came out two months after the last Rogue Squadron pack, which was technically right on time. Now Worlds has come and gone and we’re ready to get our feet wet again with the newest cycle. This is the pack that introduces us to the Endor cycle, showing off the new Mission mechanic, providing some strong Ewok support, and providing some “out-of-faction” punishment that herald the new mechanics to come. If you’re interested in Ewoks, Droids, or Rebel Characters, this is a pack you should check out. Even Troopers get some support, though whether it’ll help to make the Trooper deck into a fighting force remains to be seen. I think this is a pack that everyone can find something they’ll like, and even the super-vanilla dark side neutral pod is incredible in the right matchup. So let’s get into it!

Continue Reading

Deckbuilding is one of the most unique and interesting pieces of this game, which is why I wrote a whole article three weeks ago digging deep into it. But beyond just the way objective sets change how you evaluate cards, the objectives themselves fill a familiar yet unique role. While it’s remarkably similar to Call of Cthulhu and Warhammer 40k Conquest, with a deck dedicated to randomizing your victory point cards, I find myself comparing Star Wars’s objectives to A Game of Thrones’s plots more often. Yes, they’re your victory point cards and you need to score three to win, but you get to choose what you bring to the table, and they can represent some of the most powerful effects in the game. Anyone who’s played Star Wars even a little understands how tremendous an impact these cards can have on the game, whether they’re altering how units can act or changing (or breaking!) some of the fundamental rules of the game. They can be so significant that some decks are even built around having a specific objective in play, such that when that objective doesn’t show up, they’re struggling to keep up against their opponent. As objectives literally are the… er… objective… of the game, I wanted to discuss them in depth, and analyze how objective design has changed since the core set. So if you’re interested in the politics of Turn Zero, stick around!

Continue Reading

And here we have it… the much-lauded rise of the Imperial Navy. As I said in my last intro, I expect people will (and should) buy this expansion explicitly for the improvements it brings to the last straggling affiliation, as the importance of the Navy improvements far outweights the mediocrity of the Smuggler sets. It is awkward, however, that every dark side set (including Sith and Scum) except one gets a better grade than the best light side set from the box, and the best Smuggler set is only equivalent to the worst dark side set. Now that this game has officially released, the era of light side dominance has likely ended and the Imperial Navy may prove to be the most powerful affiliation. So what cards could shake up the game so much? I’m glad you asked…

Continue Reading

Pre-released at GenCon, we finally have our next faction-based Deluxe Box, and this one has a much larger impact than the last one. It’s been on OCTGN already since GenCon, so people have been able to play with a lot of these cards already for a couple months and see just how powerful the Imperial Navy has finally become. If you have any interest in playing Star Wars: The Card Game, you absolutely must purchase this box. What it does for the Dark Side to counter what Jedi has become, and especially for the Imperial Navy (who up until now have been the red-headed stepchild of the game), is just so important to finally make all the affiliations balanced. Ironically, what you’ll see after the jump, is that this box was likely playtested during the heydey of Sleuths and Freeholders, back when Smuggler Superfriends decks (Han, Chewie, Falcon, etc) were ruling the roost on the light side. This is evident when you consider how I’m going to rate the light side and dark side cards, because where the Imperial Navy gets a ton of insane objective sets in this box, to compensate for their relative weakness at the time of design, the Smuggler sets in this Smuggler theme box are some of the weaker sets we’ve seen in recent memory, as they were already the most powerful faction at the time of design and they likely weren’t considered to need any pushing. Instead what we get are trick sets, support sets, and gambling sets, all of which are potentially fun to play but not the kind of thing you’d bring to the World Championships. That said, there’s some fun stuff in this box, even on the light side, so let’s get into it.
Continue Reading

Welcome back to another Release Review! This one closes out the Rogue Squadron Cycle, a cycle that at first looked like it wouldn’t do much to change up the metagame from the Echoes of the Force cycle but which contained a few sleeper hits and a few all-star champions. If you’ve been following the Imperial Entanglements spoilers at all, you know that my lackluster review of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s set was pretty immediately made irrelevant by giving Navy an in-faction way to increase the Noghri’s damage output, which will make that objective set from the last pack one of the most meta-defining sets of recent history.

What I want to know is whether this pack will bring anything on the scale of Rahn, Rogue Squadron, Boba, or Thrawn. The answer is probably not, but it has a ton of very juicy cards, and I especially am exceptionally excited to finally get my hands on Arden Lyn. Those events are so much fun! I suspect the Rebel Heroes set to end up stronger than they read, though being all-unique will be problematic, and I think a lot of people will have higher hopes for Han than what ends up playing out. Being in-faction with All Out Brawl and The Slimiest Scheme has the potential to make Guri very strong, but both she and the equally high-potential Arden Lyn may end up too inconsistent to ultimately work out. However, even if this pack doesn’t end up as powerful as the other expansions of the cycle, it’s easily one of the most fun!

Continue Reading

This article, in addition to being a couple months late, also needs to begin with a concession: when I first reviewed The Survivors, I thought it would be occasionally run as a singleton replacement or addition to the traditional protectors pod (The Secret of Yavin 4

The Survivors

Force Rejuvenation

Force Choke

Heat of Battle

Continue Reading