Star Wars: Customizable Card Game (Arcane 5)

For the game, see Star Wars CCG.

Star Wars: Customizable Card Game is Andy Butcher's Premiere review in Arcane #5 (April 1996, page 70). Butcher scored the game 5/10.

Butcher wrote that the game is cleverly designed and simple to play, and that the stills capture the atmosphere of Star Wars. He wrote that the game is let down by its rulebook and the distribution of the cards.

Arcane 5, April 1996, page 70.

A collectable card game
Star Wars: Customizable Card Game
60-card Starter Set £6.95 15-card Expansion Set £2.50 Decipher Inc – in the UK contact CMA 01497 847309 Out now

A long time ago in a galaxy not very far away, the most popular science fiction film of all time was released. Now, 19 years later, the collectable card game has arrived.

1996 is going to be the CCG 'year of licence'. We've had The Crow (arcane 3), Middle-earth: The Wizards (arcane 4). Now James Bond (page 68) and Star Wars are here. Star Wars is a two-player game. One controls the Dark Side of the Force, and the other the Light. The cards are split into two sets, one for each. The object is to drain the opponent's Force (represented by his deck) to nothing.

The game is cleverly designed, and simple to play. The idea of using your deck as your 'life' is an interesting one, and the game lends itself to a variety of styles and strategies. The cards themselves – all of which feature stills from the film – are well presented and manage to capture the atmosphere and 'feel' of Star Wars surprisingly well.

Which makes the game's problems so disappointing. Star Wars is let down by two things: it's rulebook and the distribution of the cards.

The rules aren't well written: to get anywhere with the game you'll need to spend some time working things out for yourself and reading through the inevitable Frequently Asked Questions list – fine for those with Internet access who can get hold of it, but not very helpful for those who can't.

The central flaw, though, is the way in which Decipher have split up the cards, with rarity equating to power. All the major film characters are rare cards. Worse, a starter deck only contains one rare for each side, and a booster only has one rare, which may be Light or Dark. In addition, many of the common cards rely on rarer cards to be useful.

The basic set of Star Wars doesn't even contain some of the film's most popular characters (to get Chewbacca, for example, you're going to have to wait for the first expansion set).

From eight starter decks and over twenty boosters, I got one big character: Luke. However, I was stuck with dozens of cards like 'Han's Back', which allows you to bring Han back into play if he's killed).

Building a tough Star Wars deck, or even one that features some major characters, will take a lot of money. The only people who benefit from this are the speculators, not gamers. It's in sharp contrast to the policy adopted by ICE for Middle-earth: The Wizards, for which even a single starter deck is guaranteed to contain at least three big characters, and where common cards are the most general-purpose, with rares being progressively more specialised. It's also exactly the same problem that Decipher had with their Star Trek: The Next Generation CCG. Some companies never learn. Andy Butcher Score 5/10

See also

• Magazines · Media · Arcane · Andy Butcher · Premiere Limited
• A Forced Effort (The Duelist) · Star Wars Customizable Card Game (Dragon 230)
• Star Trek CCG

External links

• Arcane magazine, Internet Archive (Future Publishing, April 1996)