Bored? Game! – Star Wars: The Card Game

Charlotte doesn’t like card games. “But it’s not one of those card games”, I explained. “No dealer, Jokers or Aces. Plus, there’ll be wine”. Bribery. If you want reluctant people to play games with you, always go for the bribery.

To say Star Wars: The Card Game comes in a really nice box will no doubt make me sound rather silly, but the box is really nice. It’s matte. Not shiny. Something that makes a difference especially when stacked up against what now seems to be the tacky laminated thick card coverings of my children’s board games. It’s a grown up’s game, in a grown up box. We had grown up wine glasses and everything.

Set during the original trilogy Star Wars: The Card Game is for two players only, and sees one player taking control of the Light side, and the other taking control of the Dark side in a fight for the fate of the galaxy. Each player receives decks of cards that correspond with their chosen side. For example, the Light side will get a deck of Jedi cards and the Dark will get Sith. Decks contain unit cards, which are characters and weapons, and objective cards, which set the scene of the game at the beginning. Each time the Dark side takes a turn players advance a Dark Side Dial which begins at 0 and, if the Rebels don’t do enough to damage the Empire’s objectives, ends at 12, meaning a Dark Side win.

All in, SWTCD is good fun, especially so if you have even the slightest soft spot for the universe characters, as it’s beautifully illustrated, and can really get exciting and make feel like you’re part of the struggle. You don’t have to be a super fan as this is a well organised and wonderfully crafted strategy game in its own right, with very decent replay value due to the extra decks that can be purchased and mixed in with existing cards to customise your decks once you’re familiar with the running order of things.

But that might be a while, if like me, you are a strategy card game newbie. Despite being undisputed champion of Monopoly in my house from 1988-1991 I am quite embarassed to say that this was trickier than I had assumed to get to grips with, and I soon realised I was in way over my head.

The instruction manual’s size was intimidating to (a tipsy) Charlotte, and me, and we muddled through the game at times back tracking, and skipping turns because we’d done something incorrectly. If you’re not familiar with strategy card games I’d definitely recommend watching this here video tutorial:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9dWPwoUQ-Y[/youtube]

Number of Players: 2
Length of Game: 30-90 mins
Complexity: Medium/Heavy
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