Star Wars: LCG Thought

So I took the plunge on Fantasy Flight's new living card game. I have played a few games now and I like the feel of the game so far. I think the edge and the resource mechanics make you consider the next few turns more than I did in other games. By this I mean two things resource and hand management, I have never played a game with quite this system and it is very engaging for me.

I like the resource mechanic, in that I have to consider if it is worth locking down a two resource objective(or even an enhancement or character) for two turns or possibly more. So it is a little bit of an unlearning process in that you aren't guaranteed your resources every turn, but I like the feel it gives the game.

The other mechanic that I am really enjoying is the edge battle. This determines how battles play out, if you win the edge battle you get to strike with one of your units first as well activating any edge dependent icons on your units. So you will be able to take out opposing units and deny them abilities if you win the edge battle. The edge battle goes into another form of resource management, you fight an edge battle by starting with the attacker and laying a card face down into your edge stack, then the defender has the option and it goes back and forth until both players pass consecutively. On the cards there are pip mark under the cast of the cards, this is how much force each card contributes to the edge battle. The player with the highest amount wins, this is also the only time fate cards can use their text. Fate cards are another way to deal damage to a unit or objective or even negate that edge battle. In the game you always draw back up to your hand size during your draw step so it makes cycling to cards very possible. I am always in favor of playing whatever doesn't look useful into my edge stack if I am defending because I know I will be getting a fresh hand next turn. While I am attacking I find that I am more aggressive with Light Side decks in general since their win condition is to destroy three Dark Side objectives. When I play the Dark side I tend to hedge a bit with my Sith deck and play a little looser with the Imperial Navy.

Now the third thing that is very different for me is the pod building system used for deck construction, this means that each objective has five card associated with it when you choose to put it in a deck. You can have up to two of an objective unless the objective states other wise, this means you can't just throw in four or three of a card depending on your roots and be done with it, it also means that farther down the line you could see 10 copies of a card making up part of a deck. You have to have a minimum of ten objectives in your deck. I think it is definitely something worth a serious look once the new sets start coming but for now it just locks you into some sub-par choices but the edge battle mechanic goes a long way to cycle anything you might not find useful.