Star Wars CCG

Master Bob · Post by **Master Bob** » 2005-12-04 11:25am

Does anyone else still play the Star Wars CCG? It was discontinued before AOTC came out, but it was an awesome game.

So, like I said, does anyone else still play?

Necromancer of Rath · Post by **Necromancer of Rath** » 2005-12-04 05:33pm

Which one would you be refering to? I believe there were three different ones.
Anyway, I used to play the one by Decipher and still have the cards. Of course, when I can hardly find people around who play Magic, I don't bother with the Star Wars.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2005-12-04 05:35pm

Off to Gaming and Computers.

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2005-12-04 05:45pm

Used to "play" (really, more collect), until I realized that I was wasting money on a really bad game. It really just started getting out of control with all the countless victory conditions/strategies, where you could play a game and never interact with your opponent. And the equally countless "cancel X or Y obscure card that nobody plays" cards wasting space in every pack.

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2005-12-04 06:31pm

A problem leading to this non-interaction was the asinine "Force Drain" rule: a planet you controlled could be used to erode your opponent's Force Total = cards in the deck. Result: bunker in (without risk) and force drain your opponent. Boooring!

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2005-12-04 11:28pm

Lord Zentei wrote:A problem leading to this non-interaction was the asinine "Force Drain" rule: a planet you controlled could be used to erode your opponent's Force Total = cards in the deck. Result: bunker in (without risk) and force drain your opponent. Boooring!

A championship deck was actually made using this strategy. Since the Dark Side couldn't deploy directly to Dagaboh, you could just deploy Yoda and Son of Skywalker (one of the various versions of Luke) there and Force drain with impunity. This deck didn't require a lot of expensive cards, so I was able to easily copy it. It pissed the hell out of my brother and friends.

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2005-12-05 12:17am

Jim Raynor wrote:
Lord Zentei wrote:A problem leading to this non-interaction was the asinine "Force Drain" rule: a planet you controlled could be used to erode your opponent's Force Total = cards in the deck. Result: bunker in (without risk) and force drain your opponent. Boooring!
A championship deck was actually made using this strategy. Since the Dark Side couldn't deploy directly to Dagaboh, you could just deploy Yoda and Son of Skywalker (one of the various versions of Luke) there and Force drain with impunity. This deck didn't require a lot of expensive cards, so I was able to easily copy it. It pissed the hell out of my brother and friends.

Exactly. Or playing a space deck against a ground deck. Or playing a deck full of all those cards from one of the later sets (that I thankfully didn't buy) that won the game through senate politics... and if your opponent wasn't playing the same deck (and therefore probably didn't have a single politician in their deck to oppose you), guess who won! They put in so many alternate win methods that you were really unlikely to face a deck you'd actually have to interact with.

So most of the "strategy" came down to whose combo/deckbuilding was faster and won. Why not just skip the whole opponent part and just play solitaire and compare win speeds with everyone?

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2005-12-05 12:22am

I collected it for awhile. Never really played properly since the rules were so silly. What really ticked me off was the lack of weapons, I'd have half a bazillion Star Destroyers, TIEs, etc., and about one turbolaser between them.

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2005-12-05 01:39am

But don't forget, you could still kill the other side's ships through attrition losses! So I guess in the CCG universe, battles really do consist of "ram them until they give up!"

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2005-12-05 02:32am

Oh, yes, dear god the lack of weapons...I'd forgotten about that. So awful. I think that starter set is still in a closet somewhere, unplayed with...

avatarxprime · Post by **avatarxprime** » 2005-12-05 03:13am

Really hated the lack of weapons, I remember going to card shops that sold singles just to get my hands on enough weapons to arm my ships. I still only have one laser cannon for my snow speeder fleet. Not that it really matters anymore. The only person I can play against is my best friend and he has a space deck just like me.

On a side not, remember Decipher's Star Trek CCG? A friend and I created a set of cross-over rules so that we could play against each other. First thing to go was the Trek point system of winning and every non-combat based method of Wars winning.

mjn6172 · Post by **mjn6172** » 2005-12-05 08:25am

I used to play it pretty regularly for 2 or 3 years back in college. There was a group of us that used to meet at a coffee house on Wednesday nights to play the Decipher Star Wars CCG, along with whatever else people brought to play (chess, different strategy games, things like that.) Looking back on it, the game itself was pretty terrible but we had a lot of fun times.

I think we stopped playing a little while before the Endor set was released. I do still have most of my cards in a big box in the closet, along with some of the Star Trek CCG cards. I may even have a few decks still made up in there. My cloud city mining deck was a thing of beauty, when it really got going I could force drain an opponent for 15-20 cards per turn (1/4-1/3 of their life

)

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2005-12-05 12:02pm

Ah, it appears that you are alone here in liking that game, Master Bob.

PainRack · Post by **PainRack** » 2005-12-05 06:02pm

Stopped playing essentially once the Btech CCG came out. My brother continued to update his lightside collection for a while, but let's face it. When an Endor set deck is losing to what is essentially an ANH dark side deck......... you'screwed.

The game just got extremely absurd at the end. Especially once the deck had a starter scenario.

I still recall the most obscene game I ever played was to deploy Kuat, various death star locations(without the DS system) and then pump out large numbers of generic stormtroopers, ISDs with TIE fighters and then not fighting a SINGLE battle. I had essentially two systems where the Empire had additional force drain + 1 ability on top of that and I could simply drain the opponent to death just moving around, running away from battle. And since Kuat and that other Sienar system allows for faster deployment of TIEs and cap ships, I could generally gain space superority and add additional power on forces on site, thus screwing up the opponent. My brother who chose to deploy an Endor system deck got screwed when 4 ISDs(Devastator, Avenger and IIRC Stalker plus generic ISD),3 TIE fighter and Black 3 with approiate pilot secured the Endor system, then my 4 stormtroopers armed with one transport vehicle started moving around at random.

And let's not mention Dejarik. Geez, a card which combos as either used/lost interrupt or a creature? Thank god my brother never managed to get a mixture of Dejarik and "real world" units right.

Necromancer of Rath · Post by **Necromancer of Rath** » 2005-12-05 06:13pm

Lord Zentei wrote:Ah, it appears that you are alone here in liking that game, Master Bob.

I wouldn't say he was alone. I liked it, though that very well might be because I never really encountered the cheap-ass deck types that have been talked about. In fact, might have actually been a good thing that my friends and I never went out of our way to learn the rules correctly.

Definitely wouldn't want to play it now though. And I'm glad I stopped playing and collecting when they brought out TPM cards and such. Would have been a horrid waste.

Re: Weapons
The idea that the characters didn't have weapons was stupid indeed. But doesn't the thought of Vader punching out a few rebel troopers at least try to make up for it?

Master Bob · Post by **Master Bob** » 2005-12-05 06:42pm

bah!

I loved the game. The reason for this was that my brother and my cousin(my two chief opponents) aggreeed with me that the lame-ass force drain decks sucked. Anyway, I still enjoy playing with my friends, but sense I've been collecting sense I was around 6, I have the best cards. Still, the game is really cool.

Archaic` · Post by **Archaic`** » 2005-12-06 03:12am

The Decipher Star Wars CCG is amazingly still supported and played. It's "governing body" now is some sort of players council, which regulary publishes new card sets. You simply print out the card text, and put them over the correct cards from Decipher's sets in sleaves. I don't know if they ever fixed the problems with the mechanics though.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2005-12-06 06:33am

I'm really fond of the Star Wars CTG by WotC, although I sorta killed the local environment.

Having come from other CCGs, I really liked the way the game enforced deck diversity by having three contested arenas and granting victory if you control two of three.

And hey, throwing handfuls of dice = good, especially since you're throwing so many that it's less about fluking and more like understanding averages.

Problem is, I got psycho nuts into the game while my mates were all casuals, and after I stomped their decks with Light Side pilot and Jedi decks, they started bitching that "The Light Side is broken."

So I stomped their Light Side decks with my Dark Side deck, and everybody just stopped playing.