Addressing each of your points in turn: 1) I don't think anyone here is arguing that all games that limit 3x/4x copies of a card are poorly designed, and that Objective Set play is the "one true way" to build a deck. My personal argument is that having a flat limit shifts the power grossly towards the more powerful unique cards. The primary advantage of the low-cost units is that you can play more of them in a deck - you can have 4 TIE Fighter, 4 X-Wing, 4 Jedi In Hiding, but only 2 Luke Skywalker or Emperor Palpatine. If the limit is flat, then that advantage evaporates. As another consideration, if the limit per deck is more than 2x, then you also require an additional 1-2 Core Sets as well as an additional Force Pack to play in a side format - not an insignificant investment. 2) Agree, official tournaments should be standard rules, with "Open Play" as a side event, if at all. 3) Again, my point wasn't "hurray, now you have to use the cards you'd otherwise leave aside!" but rather the Objective Set system lets FFG govern how many of a given card your deck can contain on a card-by-card basis, within the structure of the core rules. Yes, you can use 4 Rebel Assault, but only if you are willing to use the Rebel Alliance affiliation. And since the two objective sets that include Rebel Assault both favor a Vehicle-based strategy, you can only use 4x of the best burn card in the game if you're willing to commit to 40% of your deck being very Vehicle-based. Trying to explain that kind of rules structure in traditional deckbuilding would be labrynthine, but it's inherent to Star Wars: The Card Game through simple virtue of the Objective Set system. 4) I disagree, I believe that edge battles were a periphrial concern when designing objective sets - I would argue the primary concern was creating a cohesive mechanical and narrative theme throughout each objective set and encouraging cinematic moments when those cards interact with one another.

Budgernaut said: Now hold on a minute. I, like most of you, don't have any interest in playing an unlimited format without objective set deck building restrictions. However, if the OP is abolishing those rules for his mod, he could make new deck building rules. Maybe it goes back to 3x like most LCGs, maybe you can only include cards you get from a complete play set. While I agree that this open format isn't appealing, I think it's wrong to say that it won't work because of deck building when you're imposing your own deck building scheme instead of one the OP suggested. The crux of my argument was that the concievable deckbuilding restrictions are either complicated ("You may use up to two copies of each card from objective sets 1-16 and 19-34, and one copy of each card from objective sets 17, 18, 35, and 36. Treat cards with the same title but different objective set numbers or different sequencial numbers within the same objective set as different cards for the purpose of deckbuilding. If you use cards from objective set 4, 13, 22, or 29, your deck's affiliation card must be Jedi, Rebel Alliance, Sith, or Imperial Navy, respectively.") or weaken cards that appear in multiples ("You may use up to 2(or 3) copies of a card with the same title in a deck."). Either way, it's a drastic shift in the balance of the game, and one that the game is not really built to handle.

Budgernaut said: Now hold on a minute. I, like most of you, don't have any interest in playing an unlimited format without objective set deck building restrictions. However, if the OP is abolishing those rules for his mod, he could make new deck building rules. Maybe it goes back to 3x like most LCGs, maybe you can only include cards you get from a complete play set. While I agree that this open format isn't appealing, I think it's wrong to say that it won't work because of deck building when you're imposing your own deck building scheme instead of one the OP suggested. The crux of my argument was that the concievable deckbuilding restrictions are either complicated ("You may use up to two copies of each card from objective sets 1-16 and 19-34, and one copy of each card from objective sets 17, 18, 35, and 36. Treat cards with the same title but different objective set numbers or different sequencial numbers within the same objective set as different cards for the purpose of deckbuilding.") or weaken cards that appear in multiples ("You may use up to 2(or 3) copies of a card with the same title in a deck."). Either way, it's a drastic shift in the balance of the game, and one that the game is not really built to handle.

XWing32 said: I have some good news. According to the local comic book shop, I was told that according to the distributor, Feb 26th is the release date for the first force pack. Can anyone confirm this or have heard this date as well? That's extremely optimistic. Even if the shipment were to reach the Fantasy Flight Warehouse today, it's supposed to take about 1 to 1 1/2 weeks for the cards to get in the hands of store owners.

The problem with the open play concept, aside from the fact it invalidates the entire deckbuilding style that Star Wars: The Card Game revolves around, is that the game simply isn't designed to handle it. For example, generally, you can only include 2x of a card in your deck. But if you have an objective set that includes a card twice, or two different objective sets that include the card, you can have up to 4x. And then you have cards like Tarkin, Red Five, Coruscant Defense Fleet, or Trench Run which can only be used if you have the correct affiliation. Taking that a step further, you can have 4x Control Room, Twi'lek Loyalist, or Rebel Assault, or 6x Sith Library, but only if you're using the correct affiliation card. Not to mention Fate cards! You can have 5 Target of Opportunity if you're playing Jedi, 3 if you're playing any other Light Side faction. So your options are to limit every card to a fixed number per deck, in which case the duplicated cards suffer since their one advantage - consistency - is shot, or to have a very complex set of rules that govern how many copies of a card can be put into a deck, in which case you may as well stick with the objective set system anyways.

XWing32 said: XWing32 said: I see a lot of people play multiple copies of the same objectve in their decks which seems pretty standard. Can you play multiple cards outside the objective cards such as character cards like Yoda? Not sure if this is legal or sensible to do. I am an idiot =). If you have multiple copies of the same objective of course you are going to have duplicate copies as the cards are tied to the objectives =). I hope I got that right.. Oh mondays.. Pretty much. If you have two copies of an objective set, you will have twice as many of each card in the objective set.

Force packs. Edge of Darkness isn't expected until 2nd quarter, and is still in development.

Personally, I really don't understand the love the Decipher game gets. I never got the opportunity to play, but looking over the rules and the cards I do have, the game always seemed to me to be too focused on simulating the Star Wars universe, to the point it forgot to be a game. Of course, just my two credits, and no insult meant to anyone who enjoyed the CCG.

@ Bomb: It's all right, it's really easy to read false intent in someone else's post, so I try not to. No harm meant, no harm done, and sorry if I came off as defensive. @ Magni: I agree, fleshing out the two "rogue" factions will add a lot of variety to deckbuilding, and while a part of me gripes that I'll need to buy two, having 22 unique objective sets instead of only 11 is worth it to have those factions fleshed out properly. That being said…if I remember correctly, Edge of Darkness is supposed to have starter decks for Smugglers & Spies and Scum & Villany in the same vein as the Core Set. So hypothesizing here, there should be 7 S&S objective sets and 7 S&V objective sets, leaving 4 sets for each side. We've already seen cards for the Rebel Alliance, Sith, and Imperial Navy factions, so my guess is that there's one objective set for each of those factions, plus Jedi, and then 2 Neutral objective sets for each side, one of which finishes the starter decks. Or there could be no Neutral objectives, two objective sets of each non-rogue faction, and the starter decks use Hit and Run and Reconnaissance Mission, but that feels somewhat less likely to me.

Bomb said: I am not sure i agree with what you are seeing on that card compared to what I am making out of the blurriness. Where you see "are", I see "your". Some of the other text could be destroyed instead of damaged. It really is too hard to read to be as certain as you seem to be. I'll concede that all I can be sure of is that it reads "Reaction: After an objective is damaged during an engagement, destroy it if…engagement." However, it cannot read "…After an objective is destroyed…" because the card would then make no sense in context, I can clearly read "destroy it" as the two words following "engagement" on the second line. You are of course, free to not believe me, I can hardly prevent that.

Sabotage says "…destroy it if…" so it can only refer to the object that was damaged. The only game objects that can be damaged are units and objectives. The word I think is objective is too long to be unit. I agree, it seems absurd, but the version of Sabotage on the mini-site conditionally destroys an objective that was damaged during an engagement.

Toqtamish said: It is probably something a bit more tame like do an extra point of damage. I'd agree, except I could clearly read "destroy" in the card text.

Looking very carefully at the image on the website, I could make out enough critical letters in the words to piece together what they are, and context gave me what I was missing. For the record, I can't clearly read "objective," or "you are attacking," those are too blurred. But the word I think is objective is too long to be unit, the only other game object that can be damaged. You're right, scaling it up would just make it a big unreadable blob rather than a tiny almost-unreadable blob.

Yes, after resolving Fate cards is still "during an engagement." Also note that Sabotage doesn't say "After the engaged objective…" but "After an objective…" So you can combo it with Rebel Assault or situationally Battle of Hoth to destroy an unrelated objective during the engagement . Assuming, of course, my eyes aren't lying to me. I really didn't think Light Side would get an effect that allowed them to outright destroy objectives.

Toqtamish said: Sabotage cam only be seen there. Can't make out anything sadly I can! Reaction: After an objective is damaged during an engagement, destroy it if you are attacking during this engagement. …is it just me or does that read like it's too good to be true? Also, I tried to read Bail Organa, but couldn't, all I got was that he has a passive that gives a combat icon and a Forced Reaction ability.

Gah. Ninja'd because I wanted to post some of the more common questions it addresses.

Since I didn't see it in either the rules section or here, the Star Wars FAQ is available for download here. If you don't want to click through, these are probably the answers you are looking for: 1) Effects that trigger "after you refresh" now come after step 3 of the refresh phase. 2) Effects that are cancelled are still considered to have been played. 3) TIE Attack Squadron's passive effect is satisfied even if Twist of Fate is used by either side. 4) If Boba Fett deals enough damage to destroy a unit, it's destroyed, not captured. 5) Shii-Cho Training and Targeted Strike do not work together. 6) If X-Wing Escort is sacrificed to Heroic Sacrifice, the Escort's Interrupt resolves before the target of Heroic Sacrifice is chosen. 7) The interrupt of The Secret of Yavin 4 is activated after attackers are declared, and the original objective is still considered to have been engaged this turn. The Secret of Yavin 4 is not considered to have been engaged if its interrupt is used, and your opponent may target it for another engagement this turn. 8) Shields can be used to prevent damage transferred by the Protect keyword, but do not allow the unit with the Protect keyword to transfer more damage than their remaining damage capacity. 9) While Trench Run is in play, cards that interact with objectives do not interact with the Death Star Dial. The Dial is only damaged by framework game effects - blast damage icons and the unopposed damage bonus. Note that this isn't everything the FAQ addresses, only the questions I remember seeing on the boards.

Somehow I missed that Decoy triggers off any objective leaving play. That makes it considerably better than I thought.

dbmeboy said: I tend to rate them only in the context of a particular deck's goal. A set that might be terrible in one deck might be perfect for another deck. For an example of this, Decoy at Dantooine. The objective itself is mediocre, especially since there is nothing to motivate the DS player to target it, and its good cards are situational. But if you're playing Leia combo, Fall Back and Wookie Navigator are amazing, and A New Hope is very situationally useful. This early, all the objective sets have their own niche in which they're pretty potent. Except maybe Looking for Droids and Rumors at the Cantina. And even then, I've seen people on this board swear by Viper Probe Droid.

TonganJedi said: Let's assume for the sake of argument that the DS Dial can be damaged by blast icons. (I don't care either way. I'm not using the damnable thing until a proper FAQ is released.) How would that damage be applied? Would damage tokens be placed on the dial? How many "wounds" can it take before destroyed? If not damage tokens, would the dial be rolled back per damage taken? Do you have to hit a specific target number with this dial modification? When this card came out the first time, I couldn't even get past these questions, let alone the verbose and "spirited" debate this thread has generated. Am I completely off-track with this line of questioning? It wouldn't surprise me. This card boggles my mind. Really, the intent of the card is pretty simple. Relevant Card Text: "Enhance the Death Star dial. This enhancement cannot be targeted. You may engage the Death Star dial as though it were a dark side objective (it is not an objective). If the dial has 10 or more damage, the light side wins the game." This means that Trench Run is an enhancement that enhances the Death Star dial, and while it's in play, the LS player can engage the dial as if it were a DS objective. If the LS player can deal 10 damage to the Death Star dial while Trench Run is in play, they win the game. Damage is always represented by placing damage tokens on the game object, there is no reason it would be any different when damaging the dial.

I'm really enjoying the podcast, but I actually have drawn some very different conclusions so far. First of all, I actually really, really like Jedi in Hiding. Yes, she only has one damage capacity. Yes, that means she is very fragile. But she has the very important Force User trait. That means she can draw you an extra card that you might actually get to use with Forgotten Heroes and she can carry a Lightsaber or Shii-Cho Training in a pinch. She also has a base of 2 Unit Damage, meaning that if she does live to strike, she carries the most punch out of the generic Light Side units. And if she eats a Force Choke, (or, god forbid, Force Lightning) that's one less Choke aimed at my important units. I had a lot more that I wanted to say, but I seem to have forgotten it at the moment. I'll add stuff later if it comes back to me.

ziggy2000 said: So let me see if I'm getting this straight. If we say dbmeboy's interpretation is correct, and 3 damage from (whatever) were to be dealt, that we would "assign" only 2 to Guardian (because of reasons discussed above) and 1 to the protected character. Then damage would be dealt all at once - the shield would absorb 1 of the 2 assigned to the Guardian, resulting ultimately in 1 damage token to Guardian and 1 to the protected character. Does that sound right? This is my understanding as well, though it could be argued that using Protect changes the source of the damage, so the shield would not absorb any damage reassigned with Protect. However, I believe that regardless of Protect, the source of the damage is still from the card that inflicted damage instead.

Oneabsolute said: stormwolf27 said: Darik said: After today's game where I taught my 12-year-old son how to play and saw him almost defeat the Imperial Navy with the Rebel Alliance, I'm a big fan of the X-wing Escort. Time it right and this little fighter can make them take down their own mighty Devastator. I think it could be great in combo with A New Hope because they're likely to keep their big powerful vehicle units in play, then you use the X-wing Escort's death to make them sacrifice one of the few units they still have on the table. I wonder if it would work well with Heroic Sacrifice? A combo of X-wing Escort and Heroic Sacrifice brought down my Devastator in one of my last games. The Navy had an AT-ST, Devastator, and Motti in play. The light side player used Heroic Sacrifice to take the AT-ST out, then X-wing Escort's ability to also take out Devastator. As long as it is at the right time that combo can work very well for the Light Side. The problem is that you could have simply sacrificed the AT-ST. Here's what happens. 1) The LS player plays Heroic Sacrifice, sacrificing X-Wing Escort and targeting AT-ST. 2) Because the ability of X-Wing Escort is an Interrupt, it resolves before Heroic Sacrifice finishes resolving. The DS player chooses a Vehicle unit to sacrifice, like say…AT-ST. 3) Heroic Sacrifice resolves, but its target has already left the play area, so it does nothing.

agnos said: Xenu's Paradox said: Unless you have a way of refreshing resources. Currently, the combo is Leia + 2x IBAT + Rescue Mission + any event that removes Leia from play. However, FFG now has to be very careful about introducing LS effects that refresh resources, because such a card could conceivably reduce the complexity of the combo. For instance, an event that allows you to refresh multiple enhancements could replace Leia, Rescue Mission, and the removal event, dropping the combo down to 3 cards. Fair enough. Granted I'm not sure this 5 card combo can actually win you the game even if you are able to generate infinite resources. Presumably you would have to be able to do 12 damage ( getting 3 unopposed bonus). The combo so far requires pod 7 x2, pod 10 x2 and pod 16 x2. Pod 7 gives you 8 blast icons; Pod 10 gives you 4 blast icons; Pod 16 gives you 0 blast icons. So theoretically, you can use the combo with You're My Only Hope to draw your whole deck. I think the combo can be disrupted with 1 Force Choke however as at some point you have to be playing cards out. One It's Worse also negates Leia's trigger which can prevent it from going off in the mean time. Plus the combo is so unlikely to get all the pieces at once that it's not worth playing. But as you say, if FFG makes more ways to draw cards or refresh then it could be quite possible. Don't forget that You're My Only Hope also forces the Dark Side player to discard a card each time it's used, so unless your opponent is running Looking for Droids and has It's Worse in hand, your combo is very difficult to disrupt. Additionally, you have the ability to clear the board with Heavy Blaster Emplacement, or if you'd rather have more blast damage since you'll win every edge battle anyways, you could use 2x The Rebel Fleet and 2x The Defense of Yavin 4 as your last 4 objectives.

agnos said: Xenu's Paradox said: It Binds All Things is borderline broken. It's the linchpin of the game's first infinite combo, and while said combo is extremely difficult to pull off, requiring 5 cards, it speaks to the potential of IBAT to fuel all kinds of crazy shenanigans. I wouldn't be surprised if FFG had to errata it at some point to remove the ability to fetch more than one card. Requiring 5 cards? Only requires 3: 2 IBAT and 1 useful event (Jedi Mind Trick, Swindled, Rebel Assault, etc.). The problem of said combo is that if you don't already have board control or close to it, then it's just a huge resource sink where you don't really get to see many new cards to advance board state. The definition Paradox is using for infinite combo is a loop that can be repeated an arbitrarily large number of times in a single turn. In order to do that, you need Leia Organa, both It Binds All Things, Rescue Mission, and You're My Only Hope. With those cards you may repeat the cycle until you run out of cards in your command deck. That being said, I think It Binds All Things is a very good card, but not a broken one. In fact, I'd hesitate to say that any card in the game so far is broken.