Silver bullets

For the 2006 Players Committee printable slips, see Defensive Shields.

Fear Is My Ally, Dark Starting Effect.

Silver bullets (also called teching) are Star Wars CCG cards printed to counter other cards and strategies. Decipher used them so that no one deck stayed the best deck, and so the game would not need a banned list. The printed line grew from specific interrupts in the 60-card deck into start-of-game Effects. Reflections III: A Collector's Bounty then moved many of those counters onto Defensive Shields played from a side pile.

No banned list

Decipher's policy was to fix problem cards, not ban them. In 1998 the designers said the only card Decipher had ever banned was from Star Trek Premiere: "We want to make sure that every card you have, you can play." See Design of Star Wars CCG.

A Path Unlike Any Other says Star Wars CCG has no restricted list and no banned list. It says Decipher wanted to stay different from Magic: The Gathering on that point. Overpowered cards and strategies instead got silver bullets.

Jim Colson said the options were banning cards or issuing a mountain of errata. The first formal errata was a picture, then Asteroid Sanctuary. Physical replacement cards brought in "Nada. Zero. Nilch" in revenue. He said Decipher did not have the stomach for massive errata.

Early counters

Monnok and Grimtaash punish a large hand and duplicate copies in hand. A deck of many copies of one unique character is legal. Those two cards make that plan risky.

Disarmed is a counter to a character holding a weapon. It also shuts off cards that need a weapon, such as Lightsaber Proficiency. Undercover spies stop Force drains at those sites. Later cards then counter the spies, and further cards counter those counters.

Out Of Commission and Who's Scruffy-Looking? are early interrupts that cancel named cards. They sit in the 60-card deck. Sense or Alter can cancel them in turn.

• 
  Monnok
• 
  Grimtaash
• 
  Disarmed (Light)
• 
  Elis Helrot
• 
  Out Of Commission
• 
  Who's Scruffy-Looking?

Mother May I

Sense cancels an Interrupt or a React. Alter cancels an Effect. Control, from Dagobah, cancels Sense and Alter. Colson said players called Sense, Alter and Control "Mother May I" cards. Jerry Darcy later said he "utterly failed" his goal of avoiding permission decks such as Sense and Alter, and spent the rest of his time trying to fix that mistake.

Those universal counters can cancel a silver bullet that is not immune. The Teching Overview calls that a fundamental design flaw of the early counters, which "should have been made immune to Sense and Alter".

The Jedi Pack (April 1996) printed For Luck and Dark Forces. If Sense or Alter was just played, the owner may use X Force to exclude X Jedi or Dark Jedi from being the highest-ability character.

A New Hope added grabbers: There'll Be Hell To Pay, Tentacle and Grappling Hook. Premiere-only games are unbalanced without them.

Dagobah added Do, Or Do Not and There Is No Try. Sense and Alter become Lost Interrupts, and a successful destiny for them costs 2 Force. Special Edition Immediate Effects let a grabber play for free and send a canceled card to the Used Pile. Reflections II: Expanding the Galaxy printed combo cards that did both.

• 
  Sense (Light)
• 
  Sense (Dark)
• 
  Alter (Light)
• 
  Alter (Dark)
• 
  Control (Light)
• 
  Control (Dark)

• 
  For Luck
• 
  Dark Forces
• 
  There'll Be Hell To Pay
• 
  Tentacle
• 
  Grappling Hook

• 
  Do, Or Do Not (Dagobah Effect)
• 
  Do, Or Do Not (Shield)
• 
  There Is No Try (Dagobah Effect)
• 
  There Is No Try (Shield)
• 
  Wise Advice (Special Edition Effect)
• 
  Wise Advice (Shield)
• 
  Oppressive Enforcement (Special Edition Effect)
• 
  Oppressive Enforcement (Shield)

Building up a bullet

Decipher often started with a weak counter and later printed a harder one.

Never Tell Me The Odds and 3,720 To 1 are insert cards. Jabba's Palace then printed Ultimatum and Resistance, which cap Force loss to an insert while the owner occupies battlegrounds. The same set printed Torture and Don't Forget The Droids, which cancel those inserts as they are revealed and are immune to Sense. Death Star II printed Your Insight Serves You Well and You Cannot Hide Forever as Effects that start the game in play.

Failure At The Cave and Broken Concentration are bullets against Jedi training decks. Ounee Ta and No Escape, from Jabba's Palace Sealed Deck, tax generic sites. The Teching Overview says Ralltiir Operations mostly disappears once Ounee Ta is available. Come Here You Big Coward cancels Asteroid Sanctuary under most circumstances. Do They Have A Code Clearance? taxes Force retrieval.

The same overview says Hidden Weapons and Fallen Portal had no dedicated Decipher counter besides Sense.

• 
  Never Tell Me The Odds
• 
  3,720 To 1
• 
  Ultimatum
• 
  Resistance
• 
  Torture
• 
  Don't Forget The Droids
• 
  Your Insight Serves You Well (Effect)
• 
  Your Insight Serves You Well (Shield)
• 
  You Cannot Hide Forever (Effect)
• 
  You Cannot Hide Forever (Shield)

• 
  Failure At The Cave
• 
  Broken Concentration
• 
  Ounee Ta (Effect)
• 
  Ounee Ta (Shield)
• 
  No Escape (Effect)
• 
  No Escape (Shield)
• 
  Come Here You Big Coward (Effect)
• 
  Come Here You Big Coward (Shield)
• 
  Do They Have A Code Clearance? (Effect)
• 
  Do They Have A Code Clearance? (Shield)
• 
  Hidden Weapons
• 
  Fallen Portal

Crowding the sixty

Every silver bullet still occupies a slot in the 60-card deck. Colson put the design problem this way: how to counter every really nasty deck and still have a deck that is fun to play, with the fun cards in it.

The Teching Overview lists the same cost. A bullet is wasted if the opponent is not on that strategy. Sense and Alter limit early counters. A bullet that is too strong can wipe out decks that would otherwise be fine. Long cancel lists are confusing for new players. The same overview says teching still keeps the game from settling on one best deck. Decipher "got more direct with their silver bulleting over time."

Defensive Shields

Reflections III: A Collector's Bounty (31 October 2001) printed the first Starting Effects, Fear Is My Ally and An Unusual Amount Of Fear. Each deploys before starting cards are revealed, with up to 10 cards from outside the deck face-down under it. Cards under the Starting Effect do not count toward the deck limit. The Starting Effect itself is the 60th card of the deck. Three times per game the owner may play a Defensive Shield from there as if from hand.

Cards with the Gungan Warrior Shield icon are Defensive Shields. The rules supplement calls the pile "valuable additional defense against an opponent's nastier strategies" while sacrificing one slot of the 60-card deck. Replica titles of earlier Effects are a different card type. The unique and restricted rule still ties the Effect and the Shield together.

Colson said that is where the side-deck concept came in with shields. He called shields "a pretty in between solution." He said other work was still needed "to either get to a second edition or something, but that became moot." For the cancelled reboot pitch, see SWCCG 2nd Edition.

• 
  Fear Is My Ally
• 
  An Unusual Amount Of Fear
• 
  Battle Plan (Endor Effect)
• 
  Battle Plan (Shield)
• 
  Battle Order (Endor Effect)
• 
  Battle Order (Shield)
• 
  A Tragedy Has Occurred (Effect)
• 
  A Tragedy Has Occurred (Shield)
• 
  Allegations Of Corruption (Effect)
• 
  Allegations Of Corruption (Shield)
• 
  Secret Plans (Effect)
• 
  Secret Plans (Shield)
• 
  Don't Do That Again (Effect)
• 
  Don't Do That Again (Shield)
• 
  Fanfare (Effect)
• 
  Fanfare (Shield)

See also

• Design of Star Wars CCG
• Defensive Shield · Starting Effect · Defensive Shields
• Sense · Alter · Control
• Errata · History of Star Wars CCG
• Jim Colson · Star Wars CCG Insider Stories with Jim Colson (transcript)
• SWCCG 2nd Edition
• Reflections III: A Collector's Bounty · Jedi Pack