Hey all! Dan AKA KennedyHawk here to talk about some of my favorite Star Wars games of the past as we count down the days to the “2024” release of Star Wars Unlimited – today’s topic is Star Wars LCG.

As I walk down memory lane discussing games I want to highlight certain features and points in each game that inherently felt “Star Wars” to me and then speculate a bit on how we might see similar things in Unlimited!

It was over a decade ago when Star Wars LCG first hit my table in 2012 and to this day we still shuffle it up on occasion. This was an asymmetric competitive LCG where a Light Side deck would always face off against the Dark Side while it had a bit of simulation play there were a lot of abstract things going on.

In the SW LCG each card came in an “objective set” a set of 6 cards that were tied together for deck building. When building a deck you’d pick 10 objective sets. Mix the objectives together to form a 10 card deck, and the player cards together to form a 50 card draw deck. That pod-based deck building meant each decision was weighted much greater in building – we don’t see evidence of this in Unlimited but it was one of my favorite deck construction and card balance mechanisms in LCG history.

As the light side and dark side duked it out – the light side player would try to defeat 3 dark side objectives, and the darkside player would try to advance a death-star “count-up” dial to 12 (by either destroying objectives or slowly turtling up and controlling the force). By far my favorite objective was how embedded bluffing was in a game of Star Wars LCG. The game wasn’t played in a your turn, my turn fashion except for during combat.

Before each combat there would be an “edge battle” which would determine initiative for the combat. Players would take turns building a stack of face down cards – fully committing the card to the battles edge-outcome. Whoever bid more “force icons” (the little grey circles on the cards above) won edge. They got to strike first and enable several other abilities and icons on their cards. There were even fate cards that could resolve abilities during the edge battle. Mastering the Star Wars LCG required a keen skills of bluffing and deciphering your opponent’s bluff.

Combat proceeded in a your-turn my-turn fashion until all units in the combat were exhausted. We don’t see any evidence of bluffing in Star Wars Unlimited (yet) but I think there is some inherently built into a your-turn my-turn fashion system. As with the combat and edge stacking in Star Wars LCG you were not just placing cards face down but also playing a game where you wanted to avoid revealing information to your opponent. The same is likely to be a key skill for Unlimited players.

As turns passed back and forth during combat in the LCG you would always have tricks up your sleeve and a key skill was not revealing those or giving away information about your plan to your opponent. In just the first preview of Unlimited we’ve seen units and event cards spoiled. I’m excited to see some gameplay footage or learn more about the game as deciding what action to take when – and how to mislead your opponent with your actions is sure to be a fun bluffing game in the Unlimited galaxy.

While we see no evidence of direct bluffing in Star Wars Unlimited – I really hope we have a way to scratch the same itch. Fooling the opposing player into thinking they have the upper hand and then turning the tables leads to incredible cinematic Star Wars moments that I hope to emulate in Star Wars Unlimited.

Hopefully you enjoyed my rambling about my favorite features in Star Wars LCG – what mechanics, features, and concepts in the LCG felt right on theme for you – and which ones do you hope to see updated and reused in this upcoming game with Unlimited potential? Let us know as we all wait for news on the next Star Wars hit.