I was going to write about another budget deck to bring to events, but there was a large discussion about FFG and Players and what not so I started to think about things. “Why Do I Play Star Wars Destiny?” and the realistic answer for me boiled down to “expectations” and “the community”. I absolutely love the community; most of you all are great and whilst there are some “bad apples” let’s not focus on them. One of the last times I wrote about stuff like this, I talked about the things we (the players) needed to try to do to grow the community. This time around, I’ll be talking about the things that would get me to go to events (as an existing player and if I was a potential new player) and I’d like there to be a big discussion on those and what things would get you all to play so that hopefully we can cement some strong concepts to send them up the ladder to potentially get things done.

As An Existing Player

FFG has been doing much better with the available promos and them being actually playable cards, but is that enough to make someone travel an hour or two to locals that wouldn’t normally go. For me, it’s definitely not enough; half an hour I’d do no sweat, but 2 hours travel to play for maybe 3 just isn’t the most appealing thing, especially for just a couple of promos. I’m old though and don’t particularly care about the cheap swag alt / full arts of some cards that I have a million of already. Now let’s change it up a bit, if they were instead some of the harder to get super playable staples that we put in like every deck that only came in Starters, or the Draft kits, then i’d definitely consider it. Entangles, Crash Landings, Hidden Motives, and Hired Muscles are cards that we can’t have enough of. with some being better than others. In general, cards like Forsaken and Easy Pickings came from actual sets but having more of those is useful for the veterans and if we have a bunch of extras, it means that we can give them to the new players that can’t purchase tons of product too.

Large events have the absolute worst prizing I’ve ever seen. No ifs, and, or buts about it; Don’t worry, this mini paragraph vent is just to put things into perspective for those of you that aren’t familiar with it and don’t let it poo poo on the overall concept of what I’m trying to get across. At National level or higher events, one may find themselves Flying out and staying at a Hotel or an AirBnB for multiple days to participate, often requiring an event badge purchase and quite frankly, it costs a lot. As most of you know, my team frequents many of these events and we do quite well for ourselves having won 4 of the 9 majors in the United States (only attended 8). Outside of the flight and accommodation prize (which only went to 8 events I think, sorry Drew), everything else is garbage. A couple of play mats, some tokens, some cards, a medal maybe, and a trophy. Money doesn’t drive everybody, but it does drive me, so if we saw at least a few grand going out for National level and higher events, it would give people a bit more reason to go to events. I’ve been playing Argent Saga as of recent and the two literal reasons that I decided to play are monthly events like this scattered around the USA and that BobbySapphire was jumping into it to jam with his buddy.

That isn’t a regional, but it’s also not their Nationals. I don’t think they have a “Worlds” set up or planned yet, but I could easily see being able to recoup a lot of expenses making at least top 8 and that would make flying out to events much more worthwhile. Also, they are giving away tons of boxes of product which is definitely useful for getting people to travel a few hours out, especially those who don’t have sets of cards already. That can go a super long way to getting players more invested in the game as they have so many cards / want to use them and it’s something that we don’t have right now. I’d love to see more product being given away at all levels of the game. The On the Hunt guys had an event at a Brewery and were giving Starters out and I definitely handed mine off to some people that were interested in the game. Them not having to spend the $15 for the starters helps break that entry barrier and gets them that “first free hit” on the dice addiction that is Star Wars Destiny.

For New Players

Kits having some swag for new players could also be good. Stores might not be ecstatic if starters were tossed into the kits because it would devalue their inventory, but there is probably stock sitting at the warehouse gathering dust and it could be strong motivation for people that don’t play, to jump in. I’m big on metaphors, but I’m bigger on the truth, and that is that we’re a dying game. We had a huge infusion during the 2 Player Starters days, but we haven’t seen anything like that again. Do they have things in store, maybe, but why hope and pray for it. Let’s tell them what worked to get US in and maybe they can do it again to get others like us in.

Getting back to the 2 Player Starters, those were actually playable right out the box for the most part in comparison to the actual Starters that we get. I think we need better Starters or some new “type” of starter that is much more competitive. Some of the other games I’ve played have printed “Structure” decks which are much more competitive and usually are modeled after some popular deck in the format or a deck(s) that won a major event. I don’t know the inner workings of how Destiny is done or the dice, but something to that extent would likely be capable of driving New Players to events and not leave them getting curb stomped by the Tier 1 decks or well at least allow them to hang around a bit longer. Maybe even have a conversion write up to let them know what other cards they’ll need to get that are missing (assuming they don’t want to take Legendary card prices via the “reprints”). Games seem to live and die by the viability and availability of Starter Decks. Yu-gi-oh, Pokemon, and Magic the Gathering have a TON of Starter / Structure / Introduction, or whatever you want to call them, decks available and maybe that’s a driving factor for getting in new players. With the amount of delays that we have and the lack of meta “shake-ups”, introducing those with new playable cards could also cause splashes that keep the veterans playing and the meta “fresh”.

Share The Wealth (of Information)

Let me (and others) hear your thoughts on the matter. What is the driving force for you? Do you have any ideas that could be done to get New Players playing? What changes for major events would get you to fly out half way across the US (or other countries) or driving a few hours to play? What things did I share that you liked or hated and why? Now is the time to pool our thoughts and have real civilized discussions. We know Holland is watching and reading and he’s been as open a book as he can be. Let us try to take some new steps forward and actually get this ball rolling. When a plant is dying, you cut off the dead parts so that it may live. Let’s not lament about our dying plant and then eventually honor it in our memories, let’s cut the dead parts, get it some new water and fertilizer and try to have it grow.

~HonestlySarcastc