Episode 48: Star Wars Unlimited CCG

Transcript

I grew up playing Magic the Gathering. It's a strategic card game. Really, probably the original strategic collectible card game.
It came out in the early 90s, 93. I wasn't playing it necessarily right in 93, but by the time 1994-5-ish rolled around,
I definitely had a set of cards and a deck and was playing a little bit here and there.
I was pretty young, but loved it from the minute I came in contact with it.
It's been out now for over 30 years, still going very strong.
In some ways, from what I understand, Magic more or less props the owning company up.
It's owned by Wizards of the Coast, who also produce Dungeons & Dragons, but then Wizards of the Coast is owned by Hasbro.
So, they have a parent company there, and from what I understand, in a lot of ways, Magic is their cash cow.
I could be wrong about that, but that's kind of what I've heard.
Anyway, so the game is still going very strong.
Over the years, I have played it on and off through most of my life.
However, I'd say that the last stint that I was playing it a bit during was like the 2020-2021 COVID kind of times.
You know, locked in the house, kind of playing a little bit with my kids.
And I gotta say, I don't know, in some way, I will always love Magic.
However, in some ways, I have fallen out of love with Magic.
There's just certain things about it these days that bug me.
And most of it doesn't have to do with the gameplay.
The gameplay itself, it's still a very solid game.
Although it has a few things that, as the years have gone on and other card games have come into popularity, that I do think feel a little outdated.
But that's just the nature of a game that's been around for 30-something years.
And the things that bother me about it, when I was in college, I was able to, I didn't have, when I was in college, I would work in the summers.
And I sort of worked part-time a little bit while I was in, like, during the school year.
But I didn't have very much money.
With that said, I was able to keep up with the game.
And by keep up with the game, I mean keep enough of a collection going where I could build decks, play tournaments, have fun with the game, right?
And that was able to be done on a very minimal budget, from my perspective.
Typically, there were three to four sets being produced per year.
So once every three or four months, a new set would come out, you'd get what you needed out of it, you'd build your decks, things were good.
In recent times, they've really over-monetized, and they are over-producing sets, in my opinion.
There are so many sets that come out.
And even on an adult, very, pretty good salary, in order to, quote-unquote, keep up with the game, in a way that I like to keep up with the game,
which pretty much means I can build decks in different formats, and play tournaments, and do a little bit of, you know, kind of pimping out the cards kind of thing.
I mean, I could spend my entire discretionary income on that.
I mean, it's just that the monetary part of it has become crazy, and the number of sets that come out now, I mean, there's got to be 12 products a year at this point.
And in order to get kind of the cool-looking cards, which I do like, they're even more money, you know, it really has gotten out of control, from my perspective.
With that said, I love strategic games, as I've mentioned on this show before.
And I, in particular, love strategic card games.
There is something about the form factor of holding cards in my hands, like that type of form factor that I really like.
It's also a little more portable than, say, some kind of miniatures game or something.
You know, I like a good card game, and I like a collectible card game.
I do like to, you know, obtain a collection of these sorts of things.
So, while I have kind of drifted from magic, I was kind of primed and ready for something new.
Something that was, you know, going to kind of scratch that itch.
So, about a year ago, on a whim, I took my son, and we went to play a brand new game coming out called Star Wars Unlimited.
Now, let me start all this by saying, I'm not a Star Wars mega fan.
I don't consume every piece of everything that Star Wars, you know, produces.
In fact, when it comes to things like card games and or role-playing games, I prefer a game that's kind of not tied to an IP so heavily.
Because I just feel, I like a more general fantasy setting than a very specific IP setting, personally.
So, you know, picking up a Star Wars game is not something that I would naturally do, necessarily.
But it came at just the right time, and there was like a pre-release or something for the very first set.
So, we went and checked it out.
And I gotta say, this game is a blast.
Just, if you ever, if you're a card game player, or like a magic player or something, I would recommend checking this game out.
It's really cool.
Very strategic.
Very, um...
Plays out in a way where there's a very concerted back and forth between you and your opponent.
It's a very, uh...
It's not interactive, quote-unquote, the way that, say, magic is, where you're responding directly to things that your opponent does.
But it...
The way that turn sequencing, it moves back and forth between you and your opponent.
So, you kind of always...
You always have something that you can play off of from when the opponent did their last thing.
So, from a...
Kind of a strategy standpoint and a turn order standpoint, you feel like you're actually playing much more of the game, I think, than magic.
Whereas sometimes, you know, if you ever played magic, there are those games where, you know, you do a thing,
and then your opponent does things for the next 15 minutes, right?
And, like, it's just a non-stop chain of events and their turn goes on forever.
That's not how this goes.
And that kind of plays into one of the pieces that I think this game really has going for it.
And I don't think it's unique to this game.
I think it's just a byproduct of newer games in general.
Newer games have had a chance to learn from the shortcomings of magic.
And games like magic from, you know, 10, 20, 30 years ago.
Newer games are much more about the back and forth between you and your opponent.
They...
Many...
I've played several games in the last few years that are, like, newer designs.
And it's much more...
You pass the turn sequence back and forth.
That seems to be a common thing that many of these games do now.
Whereas magic was sort of one person does all of their actions at once, and that's their turn.
And then they pass the turn back to their player.
And they do all their actions at once, and they pass the turn back.
So you get to...
You don't sit around not playing for so long.
And I think that, among other things, makes the game feel more modern.
And I was wary of this at first.
Because I thought...
I've always had this mindset of, like, magic is a near-perfect game.
And I would sort of hold that up.
I would sort of still point at that as a truth from me.
Like, I do think that magic is pretty close to a perfect game.
It's almost perfect in its imperfections, I suppose.
It was also, like, the original.
You know, even if there were things before it, it was the first thing that really came into the, you know, kind of mainstream gaming world of this sort of card game.
So these newer games have had a chance to learn from these things.
But this back-and-forth turn sequence, I was wary of.
Because I think to myself, oh, but so much of the fun of magic is responding to your opponent and these, you know, instant speed things and blah, blah, blah.
I don't miss them at all.
Not even a little.
After playing that way for so, so long and really enjoying that way that magic interacts back and forth, this back-and-forth turn sequence, I would say, is better.
It's a different type of constant reaction.
Because you can spend any turn either reacting to something or just doing your own thing or whatever.
But those turns pass back and forth in a way that you're always engaged in the game.
And it definitely feels like a more modern style of gameplay.
The other thing, and some games have tried, most games have tried to fix this in the past.
Because magic's probably most glaring quote-unquote error.
Although from a game design standpoint, you can make an argument whether or not this is really a problem or just a feature.
Like, is it a bug or a feature kind of thing?
But the mana system in magic has some serious pros and cons.
The biggest, without going too much into the pros, the biggest con is that when your deck totally screws you over.
That usually happens in one of two ways.
Either you draw no mana, or no, you know, in that game it's their lands which produce mana.
But no mana, which is your primary resource.
Because it's random, it just comes out of your deck.
And sometimes you draw mana and sometimes you don't.
You can go through whole games where, like, you need to get to three mana and you get stuck on two forever.
Or you need to get to four mana and you're stuck on three forever, or whatever.
That's one way.
And the other way you can just get screwed over is when you draw nothing but mana.
So you draw just all the mana in your deck and not enough cards to actually play with it.
This is because of the random nature of how it just comes out of your deck.
Many games have tried to fix this mana system along the way.
You take something like Hearthstone, like the kind of digital card games that have come out,
where they just give you one additional resource every turn.
That way, you never don't have more resources than the turn before.
So that's a pro.
The con, I think, of those systems is it's kind of boring.
And you don't have to do anything.
There's no decision making there.
There's no agency from the player.
I think what Star Wars Unlimited has done is clever.
The way the resourcing works in it is that, first of all, instead of drawing one card from your deck every turn,
you draw two cards, and then you have a choice to take any card from your hand,
whether it's one of the two you just drew or one that you had from before or whatever,
and that gets added to your resources.
So you as a player, A, you get to draw more of your deck throughout the course of the game.
So that's, I think, a net positive because you're drawing two cards a turn, not one.
And number two, you always have the choice to just not put down a resource that turn.
If you want all the cards in your hand, you can also build your resources up to some numbers.
You can go to like six or seven or eight or whatever.
And then if you decide that that's all your deck needs, then for the rest of the game,
you just get to draw two cards all the time and never have to, you know, allocate that as a resource.
There's a lot of interesting decision-making that happens there.
And I think that, again, having been a huge fan of Magic for my entire life
and having, on many accounts, defended the mana system as, you know, a game design feature, not a bug,
I have to say that this way feels better.
I never really liked the Hearthstone mechanisms where it just gives it to you every turn.
It just felt like almost unearned and with no agency.
But this feels better.
This feels like a very good way to resource over time.
So, anyway, definitely a modern gameplay experience.
Definitely a strategic experience.
A strategic game.
So, if you're looking for a sort of a strategic collectible game and maybe you've found that Magic isn't doing it for you anymore
or you're just looking for some new game or whatever, I would check out Star Wars Unlimited.
The other thing I'll say is that if you're a new player walking into it, the game's only been out now for just a little over a year.
So, there's four sets that have been produced.
The fifth is about to come out.
The barrier to entry to getting into this game, because it's only been around for about 15 months compared to 33 years, much lower.
So, getting into it, A, it costs less because the products are still relatively inexpensive compared to where you have to be with Magic these days.
And, B, there's just fewer cards, less history, less mechanics.
It's just a newer game.
So, there's just less to get caught up on.
So, if you're looking for something, and again, I was set up almost in every way to not really like this, or at least not like it all that much.
It's a Star Wars property that I don't really care, and I've played Magic my whole life, and it didn't have a reaction system, and, and, and, and, and, and, right?
It did a lot of stuff that on the face of it, for years, I've kind of rallied against, but playing it just feels good.
And, and, I really enjoy this game.
So, check it out if you haven't, and if you like this kind of thing.
Star Wars Unlimited.
Definitely recommend it.
Go give it a whirl if, if you're in the market for that sort of thing.