Star Wars: Destiny has been out now around a month, and people are starting to get their hands on it. My family is one of those, as Santa was very generous. Destiny is a collectible, trading card game recently published by FFG. In the game, you take control of one or more of your favorite Star Wars characters, and using the cards in your deck as well as some associated dice, try to defeat the characters your opponent is playing. If you’ve played Magic: The Gathering, or Pokemon, or Android: Netrunner, you’ve played a similar game. Fantasy Flight Games has another card game for Star Wars, but this game is definitely different.
A while back, Dave Villegas wrote a fantastic review of the new game. What I’ll do here is go over what to expect if you’re looking to get into the game. I’ll talk about what to buy and things to consider when shopping for the game, and what is important to know when you’re just starting out playing.
First of all, I am not a competitive gamer. Sure I want to win, but I mean I consider myself a “casual” player as opposed to a tournament player or one that takes his decks to the game store on Friday nights. I enjoy gaming with family and friends. So perhaps this examination is for those types of folks. I can say though, if you want a fun game that is fairly inexpensive to get into for your family or gaming group, Star Wars: Destiny is one you should look at seriously. My children asked for a game they could play that didn’t take several hours, the way X-Wing, Armada, Imperial Assault, or a Roleplaying game would. So I picked up Destiny and could not be more pleased. If you’re interested in a new game, here are things to understand or consider.
Appropriate Ages for Star Wars: Destiny
Fantasy Flight indicates that Star Wars: Destiny is for ages 10 and up. I would agree, but with some caveats. The text on the cards can be fairly complicated with some words that are difficult. My daughter is 11, but if she were not an advanced reader, I think she would struggle playing. My son is 13 and is ok. Sometimes I needed to explain what cards did to them, however. So I would base age level on reading ability to be honest. I wouldn’t worry about the numeric value of the child’s age.
What to Buy to Start
People have differing opinions on this, however, I’m going to tackle this from a casual gamer perspective, rather than a tournament or store player. First, definitely buy both starter packs. There’s really no way around this at the present time. Both the Kylo Ren and Rey starters have decks to play your first games with right out of the box. Now, you really don’t need to buy anything else and you can play the game. For many people and families, this would be okay for a while. But to really start playing, you need to buy some booster packs. The boosters come with a few cards and at least one card that has a die accompany it. These boosters are just a few dollars, and they are blind purchases in that you do not know what cards you’ll get when you purchase them. If you’d like to start building some different decks or add things in and out of the starter decks, at least 10 boosters would be what I’d aim for. If you get 20 boosters, you start being able to build entire new decks, and it goes up from there. If you want to be serious about it right away, about 20 boosters makes sense, but if you want to just spice up the starter decks, 10 is perfectly okay.
Dice are Important
So when you get into the game something you need to understand: dice are critical! They are generally how you attack your opponent and inflict damage to his or her characters. If you field decks with not many dice, you can end up on the short end of the stick. So any card that has an accompanying die becomes quite important to any game. With that said, be prepared to buy boosters. Boosters have one card inside that supports having a die. To get more, you need boosters. Another thing to understand is that each character you have for the game has two versions you can use: a single die version, and a two-dice version. However remember, boosters come with one die. So if you get a card like Han Solo and he has a die in the booster, you have to find a second copy of Han to be able to use his two-dice version. I didn’t realize this and when I built my first deck, I tried to add a two-dice version of a character to my deck, but could only find one die. That was my first bummer moment. Not only do you need to get each card, but for the most options, you need to get each card with a die twice.
Characters are Sparse
The game’s two starter decks come with a few characters: Rey, Finn, Kylo Ren, and a Stormtrooper. Two characters per team. All other characters must be found in boosters at the moment. But after opening 20 packs, we only got 2 more characters. The point of the game is to field characters and use them to kill the other person’s characters. So, while we now have many options for supporting cards, even after a fair amount of money being dropped on boosters, our options are limited. You may get lucky; however, be prepared to have to buy a lot of boosters for every one character you find. Not only might it be one you already have, that might be a good thing because don’t forget you need two of a character to get both his/her dice to use the character’s two-dice version in the game. Characters like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are already going for almost $30 in the singles market. So while I enjoy a bit of a collector’s element to the game, I am a bit put off by how rare it will be to really change our decks with new characters. Even after a lot of boosters my family must play with Rey and Finn, or we won’t have enough characters to compete with the other side.
Starting Costs
You don’t have to drop a fair bit of money to get into the game. If you’re just starting out, each starter deck is around $12 – $15, which is not bad at all. It’s the boosters that get you. If you just want to buy a fun new card game for your child, get both starters and you’re all set. Booster packs run from $2.50 – $3.00. So expect to spend another $25 – $30 to get about 10 booster packs to give you some more options. But you’ll want to drop at least $50 or $60 if you want to really get a good starting lot of cards. So, I do like the fact the boosters are relatively cheap, it just takes a bit to build up in the beginning.
So there you have it, a beginner’s guide of what to expect if you want to get into Star Wars: Destiny if you’re a casual gamer looking to try out a new, trading card game. It is quite enjoyable and my family has liked it a lot. We have many games that take several hours to play, and Destiny takes only 30 minutes or so. I highly recommend giving it a go, and hopefully the above information will help out.
Scott Alden
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