Star Wars Galaxies™ Trading Card Game: Champions of the Force: Overview

A First Look at Star Wars Galaxies™ Trading Card Game
By Chuck "Shocho" Kallenbach, Game Designer at SOE-Denver

Coming soon to your galaxy is a new online strategy game based on the universe of Star Wars Galaxies™ Trading Card Game (TCG)! Take part in the battle between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance in this exciting trading card game. Begin with a starter deck of cards and then build your own deck with more cards from booster packs. Our tutorials and scenarios will be your basic training and soon you'll be ready to battle against your friends and compete in tournaments!

This article provides an overview of the Star Wars Galaxies TCG, and we'll be providing more articles in the coming days detailing important aspects of the game. You'll find familiar characters from the films and the Star Wars Galaxies MMO, and the things that make online play great: a helpful deck builder, a terrific collection manager, creating your own avatar cards, and lots of tournaments and other online events. Of course, there'll be exciting new loot cards for you to claim for your Star Wars Galaxies MMO characters!

The original illustrations from our other TCGs have been highly praised, but we think the Star Wars Galaxies TCG has the best yet! Get ready for a whole new look at the Star Wars universe with hundreds of never before seen Star Wars® art pieces. We'll show you a few previews here, and more in upcoming articles.

Choose your path
Your deck building choices include Rebel, Jedi, Imperial, and Sith decks, and each has its own special flavor of gameplay. To get you started we've created four 58-card starter decks, one for each archetype. SWG subscribers will receive one free starter deck the first time they log in. Go to your Collection to choose which starter deck you want and open it. Additional starter decks are available through the Station Store.

When you've sampled single-player formats like tutorials, scenarios, and skirmish games, you can try some practice games against another player. After a few games in our casual lobby, you might want to explore our multiplayer formats like a two-versus-two team game or a heroic encounter in which four players team up against a single computer opponent!

Feel the power of each side of the Force™
In our story-based single-player campaign you'll be battling light side against dark side, just like the defining conflicts in the Star Wars saga. Our first scenario comes in two chapters. You'll play one with your light side decks (Rebel and Jedi) and the other with your dark side decks (Imperial and Sith).

A powerful Jedi holocron
The scenarios begin with your light side character discovering an ancient Jedi artifact called the Codex of Tython in a hidden cache on Dantooine. It's a holocron which contains a massive store of knowledge. Unfortunately, there are several fragments missing from its many facets, and you'll be travelling across the galaxy to find the parts to complete it.

Scum and villainy
Along the way, you'll encounter lots of fantastic characters from the Star Wars Galaxies story. Once you've completed the Codex in the first chapter, you'll switch to your dark side (Imperial and Sith) decks in order to steal the holocron and use it to build a secret Imperial superweapon. One of your adversaries is a small-time smuggler on Kashyyyk named 'Shady' Pers. He has a Krayt pearl you'll need to acquire in order to complete the Empire's new weapon.

This is the rule of two
Along with a streamlined costing system and a unique concept for questing, Champions of the Force introduces two new "keyword mechanics" that complement each other. Keywords can be found on lots of cards – just look for a clickable text link located on the card face. Each Keyword has a different and powerful function, and can turn the tables of battle in one manuever. One of the new keywords for Star Wars Galaxies TCG is called Evasion, and it's shown here on the Blackguard Minion unit card from the Sith archetype. The rules text for this keyword is as follows: Evasion: Whenever combat begins involving one or more of your combatants that have evasion, you get +1 total defense.

When keywords collide
The flip side of this coin is Strikethrough, the keyword shown here on the Imperial Marksman unit from the Imperial archetype. Strikethrough adds to your total attack in the same way that Evasion adds to your defense. Even though these keywords don't stack (multiple combatants don't add to their effects), when used in the right situation they save your combatant's exertion to use for something better; like damage bonus. Of course, when these two keywords clash, they cancel each other out, so that's an important consideration for deck building.

Lots more to come
We'll be rolling out more articles describing the features of this exciting new TCG. Stay tuned to find out more about this new addition to the online strategy games from SOE!