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

Article Published: 09/03/2008

Custom Build
by Evan "Heimlich" Lorentz, Game Designer at SOE-Denver

Building your own deck can be one of the most fun aspects of a trading card game. Each game you play is a lesson learned: "maybe one more copy of that card," "would this other card I wasn't using have saved me in that game?" Seeing your killer deck take shape is a rewarding thrill.

The centerpiece of that killer deck is your avatar. Your deck contains only one avatar card. You start a game having already "played" it, and you lose the match if all its health is depleted. It represents you in the game; it's your "character," in MMO terms. And just as you build your own character in Star Wars Galaxies, you can do the same in the Star Wars Galaxies™ Trading Card Game (TCG).

In the Deck Builder, where you assemble cards from your collection into the decks you want to play, there's an option to create your own avatar cards. It's an easy process where you answer a short series of questions. Your answers will determine everything about your avatar, including its game text and attributes. It's your chance to design your own card.

To show you how it works, let's step through the process.

When you click the "Create Avatar" button, you're first asked to choose a species. With the first set, Champions of the Force, you have four choices: Human, Twi'lek, Zabrak, and Sullustan. (You can expect even more options to be added when future expansions are released.)

Each species will eventually lead you to three different choices for game text. With a little experience playing the game, you might make your choice here knowing exactly what game text you want down the road. Or you might choose based on personal taste, to mimic an existing Star Wars Galaxies character you've been playing. In this example, I'm choosing to make a Zabrak avatar.

Next, you'll be asked to select gender: male or female. This choice will have no effect on the gameplay of your finished avatar; it only affects its portrait.

You'll then need to select an archetype for your avatar. There are four archetypes in the game: Jedi, Rebel, Imperial, and Sith. No matter which species you selected earlier, you may pick any of these archetypes. This choice is perhaps the most important one in the avatar creation process because it limits which cards you can place in your deck. While generic cards can go in any deck, most cards have an archetype, and those you use must match the archetype of your avatar. (You can't put Imperial cards in a Jedi deck, for example.) This time, I'm choosing to make a Rebel.

The next question to answer is "How do you handle yourself?" This is the question that determines the game text on your avatar card, so play around with the different choices and read the results on the sample card before you lock in.

Looking through the Rebel cards, you may notice that a lot of them have to do with units. You can easily heal units, boost their effectiveness in combat, and generally "lead" them to victory. Because of this strong connection between Rebels and units, I'm going to choose the first answer to this question, "I am dedicated." It gives my avatar extra attack for every quest where I have units, and that seems like a bonus I'll be able to take advantage of easily.

Once you make it this far into the avatar creation process, you're done with all the really tough questions. All that remains are a few easy questions that will add some points of attack, defense, or health to your avatar. The number of these questions (and thus, how high your attributes can go) changes a bit from avatar to avatar, depending on what game text you've given it. (Some text is not as useful in as many situations as others, so it gets better numbers to put with it.)

But even the choice of which attributes you boost here lets you personalize your avatar. Is your strategy going to be one of "endurance," trying to finish quests for victory? You may want to boost your health as much as possible. Are you looking to play aggressively, or are you seeking more protection from your opponent? That could be the difference between boosting attack or defense with these questions.

In this example, I know I'm getting some extra attack from the game text I picked, but I want even more. I want to crush the other side when my avatar gets into combat. So I'm going to choose answers that boost my attack a little more, and give me some extra health just to be safe.

The last step is simple. Just choose a unique name for your avatar and click Save.

The finished avatar card then appears in your collection, where it can be added to any deck you're building. You can create more than one, each for different strategic approaches to the game, or even for specific decks.

Together, your "custom built" avatars and custom built decks add up to an enormous variety of ways you can play Star Wars Galaxies TCG. Have fun exploring them!

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