Star Wars: The Card Game - Tips & Strategies

A solid strategy, no matter which side you are playing, is getting the balance of the force on your side and keeping it that way.

This is especially critical for the Light Side player. Taking out 3 objectives in 12 turns is easily accomplished, especially when you are receiving the additional perk of 1 objective damage every turn. But trying to get 3 objectives in 6 turns without any bonus damage is extremely difficult. If you find you are losing often as a Light Side player, reconfigure your primary goal to keeping and holding the Force, then pick up the slack later in the game when you have additional units to commit to battles.

If you are a Dark Side player then all of the above reasons are exactly why you need the balance of the force on your side. It denies the Light Side of the thing they really need the most… which is TIME!

I’ve been playing the new Star Wars LCG about once or twice a week since it was released. I have completely fallen head over heels for this game. I wish I could play ever day and that there were more people into it. I’m sure people will get into it more, but surely, it will never be Magic: The Gathering, the World of Warcraft of card games.

I have now tried a number of different deck themes and strategies on both the light and the dark side. I have definitely found that Control decks are the most reliable and powerful way to go. This is often the case with PvP games like this. Being able to control or manipulate the other players actions and disrupt their strategy is just a great way to foil any good deck of any other type.

For the Star Wars LCG, this is no exception. The Dark side benefits heavily from using characters like Emperor Palpatine and all of the Force power event cards.

Yoda might not have any good control abilities (other than his one tactics icon), but he is great for the light side to try locking down control of the force. Even the light side can win in a mostly defensive, control battle overall. If you keep the force on your side during the whole game, you only need to launch a couple of successful attacks against objectives to win the game.

Keep in mind that the Tactics icon on cards is a very powerful control element. Cards like the Twilek Loyalist are a great example that when you first look at a card, it could look weak, but then when you see how it plays out on the table, it is very powerful. With this guy only costing 1 and having a character damage and a tactics, you could win a fight against two enemies or take out one guy and lock down someone not in the fight, sacrificing this cheap, but awesome, character.

In Star Wars LCG, having a bunch of cards saved in your hand when your opponent takes a turn is incredibly powerful. I thought, when the game first came out, that it was best to play down to 0 cards by the time your next turn came around. There is still a lot of merit to having the control to save cards and wait to use them properly, and have tons of cards to win fate battles with when it is not your turn.

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This isn’t really a gameplay tip but rather a tip about organization that will help reduce the time needed for setup and reduces confusion. I’ve come across quite a few people who don’t realize that you can use different colored sleeves for your objective deck, command deck, and the force commitment/faction affiliation cards.

For example, I put all of the cards that go in the command deck in black for the DS and white for the LS. Then I used some extra red and blue sleeves from Netrunner for the DS and LS objectives, and I put the force commitment and affiliation cards in clear sleeves I had from some other game. This way, it’s easy to keep everything straight when I pull it out of the deckbox (or out of the cardbox if I’m deckbuilding), and if something gets shuffled into the wrong deck after a game, it is easily noticeable.

It may be a hassle to keep up with multiple colors of sleeves if you don’t already have them on hand for different games, but keeping things easily identifiable reduces frustration and wasted time when things get shuffled together and makes deckbuilding go smoother.