“Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that’d end your trip real quick, wouldn’t it?”

–Han Solo, Star Wars: A New Hope

New versions of the Star Wars™: Destiny Holocrons and Rules Reference documents are now available to download! These new revisions are immediately going into effect. Make sure you're up to speed on all of these changes before taking on your next battle! Read on as Star Wars: Destiny developer Jeremy Zwirn talks about a new tool that has been introduced in the Standard Holocron, the Trilogy Holocron, and the Infinite Holocron to help balance the card pool and maintain a healthy, fun gaming experience with Star Wars: Destiny.

Jeremy Zwirn on the Rules Reference Update

Greetings, Star Wars: Destiny players!

Spark of Hope is upon us and features exciting new cards and mechanics for players to explore and battle with. This update includes rules and card clarifications for some cards from Spark of Hope, along with an additional tool for the Holocrons in our ongoing goal to create fun and healthy gameplay for all formats.

Since the Infinite format does not have rotation, it obviously features an ever-expanding card pool where every card in the game is legal. With so many powerful cards to use, there are bound to be combinations of cards that are unhealthy for the metagame and need to be addressed. Previously, we only had two tools at hand to deal with problematic interactions: Balance of the Force and errata. So far, we’ve used Balance of the Force only for characters, and that leaves us with one tool for all the other cards. That tool, errata, is not player friendly and should be used as a last resort. But without any other tools, that last resort is often our only option. This is one reason why we’re introducing a new tool for each of the Holocrons: a restricted list.

A restricted list is a list of cards in which, when building a deck, a player may select one card from the restricted list to use for their deck, and that player cannot use any other cards from the restricted list for that same deck. A player may run as many copies of their chosen restricted card as the rules (or card text) allow.

This new tool allows us to separate cards that have a negative play experience when combined with each other, without having to use harsh measures, such as errata. This also allows us to keep pushing the envelope by creating exciting new cards, even if there is a previous card that interacts very negatively with a new card.

For example, Order 66 (Spark of Hope, 15) and Execute Order 66 (Spark of Hope, 27) are new cards that you can build around to create interesting gameplay. However, when combined with a couple copies of Rebel Traitor (Legacies, 22), it can quickly turn to poor gameplay by removing all of an opponent’s character dice every round. By placing both Order 66 and Rebel Traitor on the restricted list, that unfavorable interaction is completely eliminated without directly affecting either card. Players are still free to use either card as printed, so long as they don’t use them together.

We look forward to seeing how the environment evolves with this update and Spark of Hope introducing new possibilities!