Line #61 TabletopGame/StarWarsCustomizableCardGame


1	First made available in 1995, the Star Wars Customizable Card Game was one of several FollowTheLeader games released in the wake of ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' and the (practical) invention of the CollectibleCardGame. Unlike most of those other games, however, ''SW:CCG'' was actually good and enjoyed a decent player base, coming in second only to ''Magic'' itself on the popularity (sales) charts. Decipher managed to release expansion packs for Episodes IV, V and VI, and then spent some time in ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'', which at the time had just received an infusion of popularity from the release of the Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy. Yes, there is a "Grand Admiral Thrawn" card. They were working their way through Episode I when the game was canceled (more on that later).
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3	The game reproduced, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin guess what]], ''Franchise/StarWars''. Players built a deck that was affiliated with either the Light Side or the Dark Side, and duked it out to see who'd win. Unlike ''Magic'', physical location was represented: each "Site" card had an assigned place on the "Space Line", and there were rules about moving to and from various places. {{Mana}} was also handled differently: each Location would passively generate a certain amount of "[[AppliedPhlebotinum The Force]]" every turn, which each player could activate at the beginning of each turn and then depleted in order to: deploy characters, ships, creatures and weapons; move between locations; attack the enemy; pay damage penalties from battle, and; draw cards (you drew from your Force pile).
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5	The "Force Pile", plus its two attendant graveyards, the "Used Pile" and the "Lost Pile", was the real heart of the game, and created all sorts of cool loopholes.
6	* The objective of the game was to force your opponent to discard all his remaining deck to the Lost Pile. Abilities that attacked it directly were critical to success.
7	** One way to do this was to "Force Drain", which you could only do if you had characters at a Site that had Force icons of the ''other'' side, but no ''characters'' of the other side there. This allowed CherryTapping by spreading your forces really thin... with the caveat that your opponent could probably break those defenses pretty easily, and start Force-draining ''you'' in return.
8	** Another way is to engage him in battle. All character cards come with four statistics: physical "Power", mental "Ability", a "Deploy" cost in Force, and a "Forfeit" value. Ability counts when doing things like trying to aim a blaster, but a "vanilla" battle is resolved by comparing the total Power on both sides. Whoever has the lower total can discard either Force (from hand or deck) or enough characters that the total Forfeit covers the deficit.
9	* [[invoked]]As mentioned, you drew cards into your hand from the Force Pile, as many cards as you wanted... but you couldn't put cards back ''out'' of your hand (unless you had a specific Event in play), and drawing too many could leave you "Force screwed", with cool cards in hand but nothing to purchase them with.
10	* When you used Force to do something, it went into the "Used pile", which would eventually cycle back under your deck; some Interrupts (read: spells) went there quite specifically for [[ChekhovsBoomerang re-use]], while others went to the Lost pile.
11	* When you drew Destiny, it went to the Used Pile, meaning there was a ''built-in'' LuckManipulationMechanic as you cycled Force to get that high-Destiny card back to the top for your next important endeavor.
12	** Destiny was another signature mechanic, and a brave attempt to avert BribingYourWayToVictory. Whenever a character attempted to aim a weapon, resolve an event that involved random chance, or even just win a fight, the Force was allowed to intervene, in the form of drawing the top card of your deck and checking its "Destiny" value. Rarer / more powerful cards ''always'' had low Destiny values—for instance, [[PowerTrio Luke, Han and Leia]] were ''always'' Destiny 1 (with one exception, an ultra-rare GameBreaker version of Luke). In the ''Franchise/StarWars'' setting, UnderdogsNeverLose because the Force is with them; Decipher built this into the game's rules by putting higher numbers on weaker cards.
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14	As you can see, we are talking about LoadsAndLoadsOfRules here. ''Magic'' was the game {{TabletopGame/Pokemon}} players went to when it got too simple; ''Star Wars'' was where ''Magic'' players went if they thought ''it'' was too simple. Nothing has really replaced it in the realms of NintendoHard [=CCGs.=] Of course, that difficulty curve worked against it; it was expensive to get into, hard to play properly, and required you to bring at least two decks to a tournament, since you couldn't guarantee whether you'd be playing Light Side or Dark Side in any given match.[[note]]In fact, official tournament rules stated that you had to play one game as each side. What happened if each player won one match? If your opponent won the first round with, for example, 8 force remaining, you could win the overall match if you won the second round with 9 force remaining or more.[[/note]] Nonetheless, the game's popularity suggests that the audience liked it anyway.
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16	The game was notable for its madcap sense of humor; much of the game seem to have been written by a DeadpanSnarker. I mean, come on, [[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cardlists/images/starwars/Dagobah-Dark/large/imbalance.gif]]. As did [[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cardlists/images/starwars/Dagobah-Light/large/throughtheforcethingsyouwillsee.gif]]. (No, you're not seeing things, all the text ''is'' printed upside down.) And this is just from the "Dagobah" expansion.
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18	The SW:CCG sidesteps TheProblemWithLicensedGames, as did the ''Star Trek Collectible Card Game'' and ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' Movies CCG. All three were made by Decipher Inc. However, Decipher's next two ''Star Wars'' games, the "Young Jedi" CCG and the "Jedi Knights" TCG, both fell squarely into TheProblemWithLicensedGames. This probably has something to do with why [[Creator/GeorgeLucas Lucasfilm]] revoked Decipher's license at the end of '01. Expansions for Episodes II and III were never released, though the [[http://www.starwarsccg.org/ "SW:CCG Players Committee"]], an unofficial fan group, has kept the game alive, updating old cards to work with power seep and, in some cases, creating entirely new ones (such as a card for the main character of ''VideoGame/TheForceUnleashed''). A similar committee has done the same for the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' CCG since its cessation in '07.
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20	Creator/WizardsOfTheCoast were the ones to get the ''Star Wars'' license next, and they released a game that was designed by ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' creator RichardGarfield to be similar to a tabletop miniatures game. While this was a cool idea, the end result was that [[LuckBasedMission dice-rolling]] was the heart of the damage system, so of course you wanted the rare/powerful cards... and that meant BribingYourWayToVictory. This, combined with CCG players' general dislike of dice-rolling, led to the game being canceled within three years, though at least it managed to release a set for all six movies before it went. Meanwhile, Decipher revived ''this'' game's engine in the "Wars TCG" card game, which basically tanked, probably due to the complete lack of brand-name recognition. As of 2006, the ''Star Wars'' CCG and all its derivatives were officially a thing of the past.
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23	!!This game provide examples of:
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25	* AndZoidberg: Death Squadron Star Destroyer says "...boasts the finest captains of the Imperial fleet—and Ozzel."
26	* AwesomeButImpractical: things like the ''Executor''. The one from Death Star II expansion costs ''12 Force'', which is 20% of your deck. The one from Dagobah expansion costs ''15 Force'', which is 25% of your deck.
27	%%* BigNo: [[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cards/cc/ls/noooooooooooo.gif NOOOOOOOOOOOO!]]
28	* BrickJoke: Rycar Ryjerd shows up in the very first set of the game as an effect that trains other characters to become smugglers. In the Dagobah expansion, he got a reference in the Utinni Effect "Rycar's Run", with the flavour text, "The infamous smuggler Rycar Ryjerd does this all the time. He's an idiot." Two expansions later, in Jabba's Palace, we get the card Rayc Ryjerd, with the flavour text, "An 'honest' smuggler. Working for Jabba to pay off debts for his ship. Rycar's son. Even more of an idiot."
29	* BribingYourWayToVictory: Zig-zagged.
30	** Common cards have higher destiny numbers than rare cards. Epic Events are Destiny 0, and the best cards are usually 1 or 2. This plays into the fact that, for most destiny draws, you ''want'' a higher number.
31	** On the other hand, core characters, while in play, are ultimately strong enough to overcome the higher-Destiny advantage of a less-rare deck. Sensing the shift in the wind, Decipher eventually released [[PromotionalPowerlessPieceOfGarbage watered-down versions]] of core characters which could be purchased directly. While you still had to spend money, at least you were spending quite a bit less of it, averting the spirit of the trope if not the letter.
32	* CastFromHitPoints: How the game works, in a sense. Your deck (a.k.a. your Reserve Deck) and its two attendant piles that cards cycle through (the Force Pile and the Used Pile) doubles as your life total, and the game ends when one player no longer has any cards left in any of the piles. Each card that a player draws or plays shrinks that player's "Life Force", reducing the amount of damage they can take from the enemy before they lose the game.
33	%%* {{Calvinball}}: Constantly.
34	%%* CCGImportanceDissonance
35	* ChekhovsGun: Luke's ''Dagobah'' version, Son Of Skywalker, can deploy only to Dagobah or Cloud City. But since it's harder than hell to get off Dagobah (or to move to Dagobah from somewhere else), he's practically useless. Enter the next set, ''Cloud City'', which had Cloud City.
36	* CripplingOverspecialization:
37	** "Bullet" cards, which specifically counter a handful of other named cards, were generally not favoured in competitive decks unless the cards they countered were extremely common, as they relied on an opponent playing one of those specific cards; if your opponent simply didn't have that card in their deck, the "bullet" was a waste of a slot that could have gone to a more general card. Decipher eventually took notice of this and tended to give bullet cards alternate effects so they could still be useful if they couldn't be used as counters.
38	** On a deck level, decks designed around "Attack Run" (a Light Side epic event designed to destroy the Death Star) and "Target The Main Generator" (a similar Dark Side epic event centred around blowing up the Echo Base Shield Generators) tended to be this; if your opponent didn't bring along a suitable target for them (the Death Star and the Main Generators respectively), a central theme of your deck was simply rendered out of commission. Attack Run was not hit nearly as hard by this trope, as the Death Star was both relatively common for Dark Side players early in the game's run (being the only card that gave a base Force Generation of 3 for one side and none for the other) and, once the game grew, the Light Side got their own Death Star card they could play in case the Dark Side player wasn't running a Death Star deck, but TTMG never got its day in the sun, as the Echo Base Shield Generators remained a light-side exclusive card (and one that saw very little use outside of specifically-designed theme decks) for the entirety of the game's run under Decipher (the virtual cards would eventually add a Dark Side version of the card to help ameliorate the issue).
39	** Similar to the above was the "capture" mechanic, whereby the Dark Side had numerous cards and abilities focused around capturing Light Side characters and/or ships. The Light Side counter to this was a set of cards that allowed you to free captives (and sometimes rewarded you for doing so), but it was considered a far weaker mechanic than the Dark Side version, because while the Dark Side could build an entire deck around capturing and play it reasonably well, regardless of what their opponent brought to the table, all of the Light Side cards and mechanics were only really useful if you were playing against a capture deck, which were never particularly common; if your opponent was running any other deck type, the cards were wasted. This was slightly ameliorated in later expansions to the game, where the Light Side got some objectives/deck archetypes that allowed them to start with one of their characters pre-captured (typically Han or Leia) and use them to fuel the rescue cards, but outside of those specific applications the Light Side "release" cards never saw much use.
40	* DiscOneNuke: Any card that lets you add two battle destiny certainly qualifies, since these cards focus on characters with ability of at least 3. And most of them were in ''Premiere'' or ''A New Hope''. Since you typically have to have two characters (a combination of Han, Leia, Luke, and Chewie), you actually draw three battle destiny. Meaning you can potentially wipe out a third of your opponent's life force.
41	* DualWielding: IG-88. Also the B-wing, which is potentially triple-wielding, and can fire all of its weapons in one battle, whereas most characters, vehicles, and starships can only fire one per battle.
42	* EasterEgg: so, so many of these. A very basic one: [[http://starwarsccg.org/cards/dagobah/ls/yoda.gif Yoda's card]] is in Yoda-speak.
43	* ExpandedUniverse: Since each card comes with a blurb explaining what its in-universe significance is, and basically every single detail of the movies has a card, a surprising amount of it comes from this game.
44	* GeoEffects: Snowtrooper, Echo Base Trooper, Yavin 4 Trooper, Sandtrooper, Death Star Trooper, and Cloud City Trooper all come to mind. Also, Luke Skywalker can activate one additional Force when not on Tatooine.
45	* GlassCannon:
46	** The B-wing has five power and two maneuver. Also, Chewbacca has six power and three ability. (A later printing of Chewie gave him a non-standard Defense Value of 4, somewhat reducing the glassiness).
47	** Dark Side has Kitik Keed'kak, who has Power of 8, Ability of 1, plus she's instantly lost if at the same site as Light Side character Kal'Falnl C'ndros.
48	* HeelFaceTurn and FaceHeelTurn: As the Light Side, you can cross over Vader (with two different cards, one of which is a NonStandardGameOver for the Dark Side). As the Dark Side, you can cross over Luke (with two different cards, one of which is a NonStandardGameOver for the Light Side). You can also steal things. Finally, you can win ships, weapons, aliens, and droids in sabacc (sorta like blackjack). It is possible to win the ''Executor'' and Force drain every single ''Executor'' site in play.
49	* IHaveManyNames: Main characters have multiple versions of each of them released, each one suited for different situations. For instance, the following cards are all personas of Luke: "Luke Skywalker", "Commander Luke Skywalker", "Son of Skywalker", "Luke with Lightsaber", "Master Luke", "Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight", and "Luke Skywalker, Rebel Scout". Only one of these cards can be in play at the same time. It is possible to evolve characters by persona replacing one with a stronger card (higher power and ability) of the same character without any mana costs, but must obey deployment restrictions.
50	** One and the only exception is Palpatine. The game treats Chancellor Palpatine, Emperor Palpatine, and Darth Sidious as three distinct people, so all three of them can be in play at once! Well, it gives the Dark Side another Sith Master, with the associated extra Force activation.
51	* KilledOffForReal: Once a unique character goes out of play, no more copies of that character's persona can be put into play for the remainder of the game. For example, if a "Commander Luke Skywalker" was removed from the game, no player can deploy any variant of Luke Skywalker cards any longer.
52	* LoadsAndLoadsOfRules:
53	** Exacerbated by the decision not to issue errata or bans, but instead release other cards that would act as "[[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou silver bullets]]" to the problem card. This led to a ''lot'' of cards saying things like, "Do this, '''OR''' cancel [this card] '''or''' [that card] '''or''' [some other card]."
54	** Brainiac is a huge example, with a destiny of pi and a power of sqrt(3(X-Y)+2(A-B)+pi) where X is the number of cards in your opponent's hand, Y is the number of cards in your hand, A is the number of dark side Force icons, and B is the number of light side Force icons, with a power of 1 if imaginary or fractional.
55	** Just... take a look at the [[http://starwarsccg.org/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&download=23:advanced-rulebook&id=4:rules&Itemid=149 most current comprehensive rulebook]] that's 158 pages long...
56	* LuckManipulationMechanic: as mentioned, because a card drawn for Destiny goes to the Used Pile, it eventually cycles back into your deck, and you can keep an eye on (roughly) where it is and how close you are to drawing it again.
57	* MundaneMadeAwesome: Sabacc games can determine the fate of the universe. Especially if the stakes are the ''Executor''.
58	* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Just start a battle with Owen and Beru, and then start one with Luke. Oops!
59	** Don't Underestimate Our Chances and You Overestimate Their Chances can be this or NiceJobBreakingItHero, depending on the side, when one considers battle destiny.
60	* NighInvulnerable: Jedi and Sith Masters (like the Yoda card mentioned above) are typically "Immune to attrition," no qualifications. Having more Power than them won't cause them to die in battle; you ''have'' to hit them with an aimed weapon, which requires drawing weapon Destiny higher than their ability... which is 7, the highest possible. (Some weapons--lightsabers particularly--allow you to draw ''two'' Destiny, but it can still be a long shot.)
61	* NintendoHard: even many seasoned CCG players could be baffled by the game's complex rules and the intricate strategies necessary to play competitively.
62	* ObviousRulePatch: See the afforementioned "Do X or counter Card Y" cards. So obvious cards of that type cropped up ''in the very first basic set!''
63	* PlotArmor: many unique characters, especially major ones, are "immune to attrition (< X)," with attrition being a game mechanic intended to simulate random battle deaths on both sides.
64	* PowerCreep: averted by releasing multiple versions of each character, each one suited for different situations: for instance, Luke comes in "[[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cards/premiere/ls/lukeskywalker.gif Farm-Boy / X-Wing pilot]]," "[[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cards/hoth/ls/commanderlukeskywalker.gif Hoth]]," "[[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cards/dagobah/ls/sonofskywalker.gif training-on-Dagobah]]" and "[[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cards/DS2/LS/lukeskywalkerjediknight.gif Jedi-Knight]]" versions, the last of which is the Ultra-Rare GameBreaker mentioned previously.
65	* PowerLevels: Ability scores follow a strict system. Those with Force potential but no training are 4s, so {{Muggles}} like Han or Ackbar, despite their awesomeness, never get above Ability 3 (and sometimes have alternative defense values to compensate, such as Boba Fett's Armor rating of 5). [[{{Mooks}} Soldiers]] rarely rise above 1, those with command experience are usually 2, creature vehicles (Banthas, Tauntauns) have fractional ability greater than zero but less than 1 and feral creatures and droids have zero. Padawans and others with unfinished training can get up to 5, but 6 is for full-fledged Jedi Knights and/or Sith Lords, and 7 is exclusively Masters.
66	* PromotionalPowerlessPieceOfGarbage:
67	** Sometimes averted, sometimes not. Later in the game you could buy starter packs that had midrange versions of the main characters: Luke comes in "[[http://www.swccgpc.com/cards/PREMIUM/Enhanced_Premiere/lukewithlightsaber.gif I can haz lightsaber]]" and "[[http://www.swccgpc.com/cards/PREMIUM/Enhanced_JP/masterluke.gif Jabba's Palace]]" versions.
68	** There's the 2 Power, 2 Ability Han, Leia, Tarkin, and Motti. They don't even have ''rules'' text... though they're still Destiny 1. Owch.
69	** The 4 Power, 6 Ability Vader with deploy cost 7. He has 5 full lines of drawbacks in the game text - This version can only deployable on Death Star, and if opponent has two or more unique characters in play this becomes a completely useless card. And, when he loses a battle he has a small chance to choke one of YOUR imperials to death at the same site!
70	* RuleOfFunny: some cards, like [[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cards/anewhope/ls/braniac.gif Brainiac]], seem to have been written more with this in mind than with actual playability. Not that there aren't cards that are funny ''and'' playable: see [[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cards/cc/ds/humanshield.gif Human Shield]], [[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cards/cc/ls/intotheventilationshaft.gif Into The Ventilation Shaft, Lefty]] and [[http://www.starwarsccg.org/cards/cc/ls/swingandamiss.gif Swing-And-A-Miss]].
71	* SeriesContinuityError: Largely subverted in-game. One of Decipher's challenges as the game moved to later parts of the Star Wars saga was the presence of characters that wavered between good and evil, the biggest example being Lando Calrissian - what, exactly, would happen if a player tried to play a character who was already in play, but presently aligned with the other side of the Force? Lando turned out to be a relatively simple example, as the game simply made the Light Side version of Lando take precedence, but things quickly turned into a mess when Decipher found themselves printing cards for Episode I that, at Lucasfilm's insistence, had to integrate with the original trilogy cards. How were they to handle the (Republican) Senator Palpatine being on the board if the dark side player had his evil Emperor Palpatine or Darth Sidious personae in play? And what about Anakin, who was a mere nine years old in Episode I, yet could seemingly replace the evil cyborg Darth Vader? Decipher wound up ducking on both of these questions: for the Emperor, they explicitly ruled that Senator Palpatine was treated as an entirely different persona than his dark side counterpart and both could be on the board at the same time (because [[TheChessmaster Palpatine is just that good at manipulating people]]), while Anakin never received a card in any of the game's Episode I expansions purely to avert having to deal with this trope.
72	* SickAndWrong: several of the cards lampshade {{Twincest}}, such as [[http://starwarsccg.org/cards/hoth/ds/thisisjustwrong.gif This Is Just Wrong]] and [[http://starwarsccg.org/cards/cc/ds/thisisstillwrong.gif This Is Still Wrong]]. (Cards featuring Han/Leia smooches get titles like [[http://starwarsccg.org/cards/dagobah/ls/thisismorelikeit.gif This Is More Like It]].)
73	* ShoutOut:
74	** Two to Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy: one [[http://www.starwarsccg.org/gallery/var/albums/Dagobah/Light-Side/landingclaw.gif subtle]] (check the lower right of the image), one... [[http://www.starwarsccg.org/gallery/var/albums/Cloud-City/Dark-Side/mostlyarmless.gif not so much]].
75	** Bionic Hand provides a good one to ''Series/TheSixMillionDollarMan''.
76	** Major Bren Derlin has a note in his lore saying, "At the Mos Eisley Cantina, everyone knows his name"; Derlin was played in the original film by Creator/JohnRatzenberger, whose most famous role was Cliff Claven on ''Series/{{Cheers}}''.
77	* UniquenessRule: The number of versions you could have out is denoted by a bullet point; there are characters that you can have two copies of but not more. Eventually extended to the "Persona" rule, preventing there from being more than one (say) Luke Skywalker on the table at the same time. There are some exceptions; later errata, for instance, now allows both a Dark-Side and a Light-Side Lando Calrissian to be in play simultaneously.
78	* {{Unobtainium}}: Good luck tracking down the Ultra-Rare-Foils from the Reflections sets.
79	* VillainProtagonist: Since you play as the Light Side and the Dark Side in every game, and if you only win once, whoever had the highest Life Force at the end of the game he won wins, you're this half the time.

Context TabletopGame / StarWarsCustomizableCardGame