Star Wars CCG: Battle Phase Explained

I recently read the rules on the Battle Phase for the Star Wars CCG. Its a pretty complicated sequence of events that I thought could use some clarification. I managed to get confused multiple times with the concepts of weapon hits, attrition, and battle damage. I'm writing this for me but since you've dropped in maybe you'll find it helpful as well.

As is typical with the internet you can find this information in several places such as Boardgamegeek.com or the Star Wars CCG Community. Why would I bother to write it down if examples exist elsewhere? Well its for me really. The internet does a great job of providing information but not such a great job organizing information and since this is my gaming blog I'm putting it here.

How Battle Works

To even start a battle the attacker needs to spend 1 Force (moving from Force pile to Used pile) and both players need to have presence at the location, meaning an ability of 1 or greater.

Before we get into the details of weapon hits and attrition lets just focus on the basic mechanics. Battle is resolved by comparing Power to Power. Each of you adds up your power and adds any "battle destiny" to achieve their total. A player may draw one "battle destiny" if they have a total Ability of 4 or greater present at the site. To draw battle destiny flip over the top card from your Reserve pile (to your used pile) and note the number in the upper right corner, that value is your battle destiny number.

Total Power = Power + Battle Destiny

The loser of the battle loses Force equal to the difference of (Power + Battle Destiny) versus (Power + Battle Destiny).

Now instead of losing Force from your hand or one of your piles you may forfeit a card on the table to reduce the loss of Force by that card's forfeit value. The forfeit value is located in the lower left in the black rectangle. If the forfeit value is greater than the Force loss required then you still forfeit the entire card (goes to the Lost pile) and the difference in value is lost. If the forfeit value is less than the Force loss required then you must make up the difference by losing additional Force or forfeiting another card from the table.

Now lets talk attrition. Do you remember the Battle Destiny draw earlier? Each player's total Battle Destiny causes attrition for the other player. Each player must forfeit enough cards (including hit cards - we'll get to that in a bit) to satisfy attrition. Even the winner is affected by attrition. If you have no cards left to forfeit or your remaining cards are immune to attrition then any remaining attrition is ignored. Note that some cards say "immune to attrition < x". In this case "x" is the total attrition value.

Weapon hits are resolved at the beginning of the battle phase. You do not need a weapon to initiate a battle. If a character, starship, or vehicle is hit by a weapon then it is turned sideways and must be forfeited as part of battle resolution. Any cards forfeited as a result of weapon hits also count their forfeit value toward attrition.

I'll give some examples shortly but first I want to clear up some confusion I had about weapon hits. When I read the rules I was concerned about weapon hits being too powerful. I mean couldn't I lose Vader to a blaster shot? Well you could but not likely. Weapons are pretty well balanced because of the way they work. Most weapons require you to draw destiny (note this is not destiny that counts toward Battle Destiny). If the destiny drawn + some modifier is greater than the target's defense value then your target is hit and turned sideways. The defense value of a character is equal to its ability. Lets look at the Vader example. Let's say I use my blaster rifle to target your Vader. I need to draw a destiny value of 6 to remove Vader from the table. The average destiny value of a card from Premiere is 3. Odds are pretty good that your high Ability characters are going to be safe from unmodified blaster fire.

Before we move into examples i wanted to mention something about destiny modifiers. Some cards allow you to modify the destiny value by either drawing another card or modifying the number. "Add one destiny" means that an additional destiny card is drawn and added to the total destiny. "Add 1 to destiny" means that +1 is added to the total destiny.

Battle Example 1

I took this example from a post on Boardgamegeek because I thought it was pretty clear.

Let's say you attack me with Darth Vader (Power 6, Ability 6) and a Stormtrooper (Power 1, Ability 1). All I have at that location is Luke Skywalker (Power 3, Ability 4). We each check to see if we have Ability of 4 or greater; we both do (you have 7 total, and I have 4).

You draw your Destiny, and pull a Location card. Notice that Location cards have no Destiny number on them; this translates to "0". However Vader adds 1 to destiny so your Battle Destiny is 1. Luke gets lucky and pulls a card with "2" as its Destiny value. We each place our revealed Destiny in the Used Pile. Your total Power is 8 ( 7 + 0 + 1 ); mine is 5 (Luke's 3 power plus the "2" for Destiny I drew). Subtracting 5 from 8 is 3 which is the amount of Force I have to lose for the difference.

I do not have to lose force, I could choose to sacrifice Luke, who has 7 Forfeit. This doesn't allow me to win the battle; the extra Forfeit is lost...but all I lose is Luke, and no cards from Hand or one of my piles. I will probably chose to lose 3 Force just the same as I like Luke.

Next up is attrition. Your battle destiny was 1 and mine was 2. I have attrition to satisfy but Luke is immune to attrition < 3. You also have attrition to satisfy. You must forfeit a value equal to or greater than 2. Now Vader is immune to attrition < 5 so you are not required to forfeit him. The stormtrooper on the other hand is not immune to attrition and must be forfeited.

Battle Example 2

Now lets say you attack me with Darth Vader (Power 6, Ability 6), two Stormtroopers (Power 1, Ability 1) one equipped with a blaster. All I have at the location is Luke Skywalker (Power 3, Ability 4) and Kal'falnl C'ndros (Power 1, Ability 1). We resolve weapons first. You activate your blaster, target Kal'falnl C'ndros and draw destiny getting a value of 2. Kal'falnl is hit and turned sideways for later resolution.

Next we draw battle destiny. You draw your battle destiny and pull a 3 and then add Vader's 1. I draw battle destiny and also pull a 3. Your total power is 12 (6 + 1 + 1 + 3 + 1); mine is 7 (3 + 1 + 3). I lose and need to pay 5 force either by losing cards from my pile or forfeiting cards in play.

Since Kal'falnl is hit I must forfeit her even if there was no attrition for me to pay; i do not have a choice. When I forfeit Kal'falnl her value will count toward attrition and battle damage. She has a forfeit value of 5. Your battle destiny total of 4 means I must forfeit a card worth at least 4 to cover attrition. Forfeiting Kal'falnl will satisfy this since she's worth 5. Since I lost the battle by 5 forfeiting Kal'falnl will also satisfy my battle damage total.

You must also satisfy attrition by forfeiting cards worth at least 3 due to my battle destiny draw. Since Stormtroopers only have a forfeit value of 2 you must forfeit both to satisfy attrition.

Nostalgia Strikes Back: Star Wars CCG

I imagine every game player goes through this. At some point you think back to games gone past and wistfully wish you could experience or play them again. There are a lot of games from my early days of game playing that I think back fondly on. Some of them were just plain terrible but I enjoyed them just the same. I remember playing a lot of The Dragonriders of Pern Boardgame, Dungeon!, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (first and second editions), Talisman (I had all the expansions except the Dragons one), and Battletech.

The topic for today harkens back to my college days and it is none other than Decipher's Star Wars Collectible Card Game. This came on the scene when I was heavily into Magic The Gathering and as a result I never played a lot of Star Wars as my slim hobby budget went to Warhammer 40K and collecting the MtG power nine and every multiland I could get my hands on.

A friend of mine really got into Star Wars CCG and as a result I played a decent amount using his cards and I really enjoyed the game. A big part of that enjoyment comes from the mix of design and theme. I really like the hand management and using cards as currency aspect. Add in a theme that works well with that mechanic and you've got a pretty well designed game.

Late last year I made a decision to resurrect this game within my local gaming group. This was purely going to be my pursuit as my gaming buddies were busy chasing other gaming goodies like Android Netrunner and Warmachine / Hordes. I did get commitments that they would play the game if I put together some balanced decks so I set off to plan on putting the Star Wars CCG into my collection.

So how does one set about the task of re-introducing a game of this magnitude into his group? Very carefully. The first thing I decided on was how much of the game I wanted to tackle. The game boasts somewhere around 2500 unique cards. Fortunately I only wanted to play the game I remember from its early days in 1997. I settled on limiting the game to its initial releases Premiere, A New Hope, and Hoth. As a stretch goal I am considering adding Jabba's Palace and Special Edition for the extra aliens and "tutor" cards. I think the dark side should get to play with the Executor from Dagobah as well but I don't want the set as Dagobah wasn't good for the game IMO.

I was happy to discover that the game is not dead. There is a small community supporting the game and they still run tournaments and produce virtual cards. The articles there are pretty good like this little gem on getting back into the game. So armed with determination I set out on my mission. There were two hurdles I had to overcome, the first was getting cards and the second was building balanced decks my group could play.

I thought about buying a bunch of sealed boxes and assembling sets but quickly threw that idea away when i calculated how random (and expensive) that could be. Instead I focused on buying completed sets, that way I could control my costs and card count. Sets of unlimited Premiere sell on eBay for around $65 so getting enough to build the kinds of decks I wanted to play was going to take time and money.

I ended up buying 4 complete sets of Premiere to ensure I got the rares needed to build thematic decks. Nobody wants to play without the main characters so I needed at least three to four copies of certain core characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Vader. I supplemented this with two additional sets of Premiere Commons & Uncommons. Sets of common and uncommons are very cheap and I'm thinking about adding more. This provided me with a solid base of Alters, Senses, Corvettes and other basics.

I am still working on assembling sets of A New Hope and Hoth. A New Hope looks to sell below $50 but Hoth is pricey landing in the $60 to $70 range. I believe I only need two sets of A New Hope and three of Hoth. This trip into nostalgia isn't for the feint of heart.

Building balanced decks based on cards from Premiere, A New Hope, and Hoth is the bigger challenge. I have little game experience and don't have buckets of time to experiment. Even if I did there isn't a large, accessible community where I live that can help me hone my decks. There are decks posted at Star Wars CCG Player Committee and Deck Tech, however is very difficult to find designs using cards only from Premiere, A New Hope, and Hoth. I found a few on Deck Tech and I'll give them a whirl but I'm not sure they are balanced against each other. To ensure balance my plan is to research decks that were at the top of the tournament scene in 1996 - 1998. In theory the top players from that period should have produced the most balanced, competitive things around.

Finding information on those early decks wasn't as easy as I thought. Google searches only yielded decklists for the winner of each Worlds tournament. I could not find any information online about the runners up who must have had some decent decks. Even Decipher's old site is gone and would be gone if it hadn't been for one fellow who reproduced it here and even he wouldn't have been able to do that had he not found another who saved the content on his hard drive. In the days of the internet nothing is forever. If you see anything you like on the old Decipher site you should copy it because who knows how long the mirror is going to exist.

To help me in my quest for competitive decks from 1996 - 1998 I researched the dates of some issues of Scrye magazine and bought them from Troll and Toad. Chronologically issues #14 - 20 represent the timeframe I am interested in. I am not sure if they will yield anything helpful. A couple of the covers claim to have winning deck lists. If I find anything useful I'll post it; perhaps some enterprising soul may find my backwater blog and use the info.

As for the decks I want to build. I figure two from each side is a good goal. When Hoth came out the game divided into ground and space decks. I like that and want to put together a ground and space deck for each side.