Star Wars Destiny - These are the Cards You're Looking For

Another new game to talk about this week - Star Wars Destiny! I have to say upfront: I am not a card gamer. I haven't regularly played a card game since Decipher's Star Wars CCG in middle school. My opinions here are mostly as a casual player who loves Star Wars - so understand that is where I'm coming from.
Fantasy Flight announced Star Wars Destiny over the summer and to be honest, I wasn't interested. I'm not super huge on card games, like I said. My friends I regularly converse with on Hangouts were extremely into it, though, so I allowed myself to jump aboard the hype train a few weeks before the pre-release.

To summarize the game shortly: you pick out some characters that total up to 30 points, build a deck of 30 cards that match the colors from your characters (or use neutral color) and then play.

Rey costs 9 points, or 12 points for her two dice version

There are three colors, blue for force users, red for command, and yellow for rogue. In my dark side cards, for instance, I have blue Kylo Ren, red General Grievous, and yellow Jabba. You can only include colors of cards that you have characters for in your setup.

The gist of how it works is that each player alternates taking an action. 

Actions are taken by a player whenever it is their turn. On a player’s turn, they must take an action or pass. The different actions are listed: play a card from hand, activate a character or support, resolve dice, discard a card to reroll dice, use a card action, claim the battlefield.

The dice are used for characters and upgrades or equipment that they can use. You roll the dice during your turn to either provide resources, melee attacks, ranged attacks, or a few other mechanics. It's really super cool - it definitely adds another layer beyond the usual "tap X land for Y mana, play Z card".

There are also not a lot of ways (if any?) to interrupt stuff. When its my action, its my action, I get to do three damage to you. The three different colors definitely have different themes - but honestly I haven't played enough to figure them quite out yet.

You do direct damage to characters by either using cards or 'resolving' your die facing with melee or ranged damage, choosing a target. Once all of a player's characters have been removed from the game the other player wins.

The starter comes with 24 cards and nine dice, and all the tokens you'd need. There is a Kylo Ren one and a Rey one - I have one of each. Each one comes with two dice for the main character (Kylo or Rey). You may have seen above where I had listed that you can have two dice for one character but it costs more - this means you can pay more points and 'deploy' that character with two dice, instead of one. When you roll that characters dice, you roll two.

My favorite card right now - I was super happy to pull this guy in my first six boosters!

The starters cost $14.99 and the boosters (five cards, one with a die) cost $2.99. It isn't badly priced, especially when you consider you only need thirty cards for a deck. Most stores will have something this Thursday, though I've heard it will be in huge demand.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the quality of the product. While some of the art is recycled from other games, the cards themselves are beautiful. The dice are top notch - they're not just stickers on big dice, they're actually pressed into the plastic.

Unlike many games, the dice in Star Wars: Destiny do not use stickers. Instead, the dice are plastic-injected like normal dice and rolled in a tumbler to add a fine, smooth polish to every die. The images on each side are then physically heat-pressed onto the dice, essentially printing the artwork directly onto the plastic. Finally, the die is covered in a scratch-resistant coating, allowing you to roll these dice without their quality deteriorating.

And we know, thanks to a deleted tweet on the FFG twitter, that Rogue One is already slated for the first expansion, called Spirit of Rebellion. 

Click here for more information on Destiny. There is a Destiny Michigan group here. The full rules are here in case you wanted to get a better idea of what the game is like.

There are a lot of reasons I'm excited about this game, but mostly its just refreshing to play a CCG that has a lot of layers to it. Alternating activations are cool, and the different actions you can take and choices you have to make to play make it very strategic. We've seen this with a lot of more modern games - you rely less on randomness and more on strategic decision making.

Check out the gameplay tutorial above and grab a starter kit this week - the Force calls you!