I recently came to the realization that lately I hadn’t been doing much gaming at all, so I’ve decided to start going to the gaming shop on Sundays. This week, that coincided nicely with the Star Wars Destiny launch event.

If I’m honest, I wasn’t particularly excited by the series of preview articles by Fantasy Flight Games. I think this is because of a mixture of ‘yet another Star Wars game’ and also that I’m still pissed about Warhammer 40,000 Conquest LCG being discontinued (I know I should stop moaning about it, but it was my favourite card game, and I’m still annoyed about FFG’s handling of the news regarding it’s demise).

The first comments from most people looking at this game are regarding the dice. Just in case you haven’t read the preview article (or can’t be bothered to read this link):

“Unlike many games, the dice in Star Wars: Destiny do not use stickers. Instead, the dice are plastic-injected like normal dice and rolled in a tumbler to add a fine, smooth polish to every die. The images on each side are then physically heat-pressed onto the dice, essentially printing the artwork directly onto the plastic. Finally, the die is covered in a scratch-resistant coating, allowing you to roll these dice without their quality deteriorating.”

In short, they don’t have stickers and they’re excellent.

I ended up enjoying this A LOT more than I thought that I was going to, so after I bought the Kylo Ren starter deck, I decided to pick up a second one for extra copies of the First Order Stormtrooper and Mind Probe (along with a load of booster packs). There was lots of deck-building going on during the event, as you can see in the pictures above and below.

After finding the rules text for the cards from the set (courtesy of the very handy site, swdestinydb.com), I started coming up with lots of different team ideas. Basically, I was hooked!

Once the shop had closed (and we’d bought as many packs as we could), a few of us went back to mine to continue playing. We lent each other some cards and dice so that we could get our teams closer to what we wanted them to be, as we’re all shameless optimizers (we also proxied a second die for any character that we wanted to try the two-dice version of).

I also introduced the game to my house mate, who for a long while has left collectible games behind, but was also a Conquest LCG player and might be open to another game to sink his teeth into. He enjoyed SW Destiny, but it remains to be seen if he’s hooked like I am (not long until official release though!).

So far I’ve only mentioned that I really like it, but I should tell you how it plays. The first game people will try and compare it to is Dice Masters, but I don’t think that is a good comparison. I’d be more inclined to compare is to Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, as SW Destiny is a card game that also uses dice.

I think the Ashes comparison is better, because as in that game, players take it in turns to do lots of little actions. The game sequence is very back and forth, meaning that short and long-term decisions are important (do you use up your high value ranged damage die now, or wait until you’ve activated another character/support who has a chance of modifying that ranged damage? However, if you leave that die in your pool, there is a chance that your opponent could remove it.).

Customizing your deck of cards that go along with your characters also has plenty of scope for depth. If your team consists of different classes of character (represented by the different colours in game) then you have a wider variety of cards available, but sticking to one colour opens up other options (some cards reference how many of a particular colour upgrade you have in play, for instance).

I’ve decided that I’m going to collect the Villains in SW Destiny, as a friend of mine is only interested in the Heroes, so we’re going to split a booster box upon release. I’ve got a few teams in mind already (one of them is definitely featuring Jango Fett, as he’s great!) and am very eager to get my hands on some more boosters!

Cheers!