Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game – Clone Wars Edition

I bought it mainly for the kid, because Clone Wars is his favourite Star Wars era. Star Wars: Unlimited has become quite a bit more complex, and I could see it was starting to tire him out, so a deck-builder with that look and that familiar universe seemed like a much better fit for our table.

At its core, it is a deck-building game: you begin with a basic set of cards and, over the course of the rounds, try to improve it by adding more useful options. The cards you play determine what you can do on your turn, while your deck gradually changes as the older cards cycle back into your hand alongside the new ones.

The interaction comes through that race to build the most effective deck and make the best use of the options that become available. Still, it was not the way it plays or the details of its turns that stayed with me most; for our group, its main virtue was that it offered a lighter, more immediate Star Wars framework than the one SWU now gives us.

It is a cute game, and it did its job as a more relaxing Clone Wars option. Even so, I cannot say I was blown away, or that I completely understood all the buzz and glowing reviews. I may simply be a little burned out on deck-builders: for a game in this genre to impress me now, it has to bring something genuinely distinctive to the table—like Mistborn, for example. This one is pleasant; it just did not stay with me as something particularly special.