Zach Bunn on Board Control in STAR WARS (TM): The Card Game

“Impressive. Most impressive. Obi-Wan has taught you well. You have controlled your fear. Now, release your anger. Only your hatred can destroy me.”
   –Darth Vader, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

In the tumultuous battles of Star Wars™: The Card Game, controlling your opponent is critical. If you can keep your opponent from establishing a firm presence in the game, your path to galactic dominion is assured. Whether you close off any escape route with the galaxy’s bounty hunters or fool your opponent with a Jedi mind trick, controlling your opponent brings you massive advantages.

Today, guest writer Zach Bunn explores how to best control your opponent’s options in Star Wars: The Card Game.

Zach Bunn on Control in Star Wars: The Card Game

As I’ve often said, Star Wars: The Card Game is a very different kind of game. After you play enough card games, you start to see threads of similar ideas, concepts, and methods of winning. What I’ve found extremely appealing about this game, however, is how different its fundamental ideas are from so many other card games I’ve played.

Recently, I’ve had plenty of time to really consider what control means in Star Wars: The Card Game, and I’ve realized just how important it is in this game. To put it bluntly, control is the single most important concept in this card game. I’m serious. If you don’t understand how to control your opponent’s options and his units in this game, you’re going to lose to good players almost every time.

You Must Learn Control

Have you ever encountered a situation in Star Wars: The Card Game where you look across the table and you can’t see a way to do anything beneficial? You can’t win an edge battle, so attacking would be a waste with the units you have. You can’t take the Force or do anything that positively affects your position, other than play a few units. Your opponent might even have units with targeted strike, such as Luke Skywalker (Core Set, 92) or Mara Jade (Lure of the Dark Side, 529), and anything you can play will surely die before your next turn.

This is a very clear example of your opponent having control of the game. The idea of control is simple. Controlling the game means using the cards at your disposal to actively disrupt your opponent, whether by destroying units, consistently winning edge battles, or neutralizing attacks before they even begin.

Of course, it’s possible to win a game and never truly have control, especially when playing as the light side. Inversely, a dark side player can win purely through controlling his opponent’s options, since slowing an opponent and letting the dial tick up ends with a win for the dark side. For a long time, the power of Sith decks was based on their heavy control effects, and they were seen by many as the dominant dark side deck.

Building for Control

But how do you get to the point where you can control the game? Learning how to achieve control is a critical skill that can greatly increase your win percentage, but before we discuss gaining control, it’s important to discuss what leads to gaining control and what cards you can add to your deck to help gain that control.

The largest part of establishing control is, obviously, how you play your cards during the game, but there are two elements you need to include in your deck if you want to be able to seize control.

1. Resources – Having enough resources in your deck is a primary avenue towards gaining control of the game, because the more resources you have in play, the more units and events you’ll be able to afford each turn. Cards like the Deneba Refueling Station (Knowledge and Defense, 555) that remove a focus when you win a Force struggle are fantastic because of their ability to push your resources ahead of your opponent. Developing a resource advantage immediately puts the pressure on your opponent, because you’ll be able to play more than him every turn. The ability to play several units in one turn, or to play units and still have resources for events, is absolutely important.

2. Card draw – In most card games, having access to more cards grants you a huge advantage. In Star Wars: The Card Game, this isn’t less true, but the types of preferable card draw are very specific. Since both players draw to their reserve on their turns, both players often see a similar number of cards and have a similar number of cards in their hand over the course of the game. This means that cards that increase your reserve or reduce your opponent’s reserve, such as The General’s Imperative (Assault on Echo Base, 267) are very important. Card draw outside of the draw phase, such as from Counsel of the Sith (Core Set, 27), can be extremely important as well.

The number of cards you see or don’t see affects everything as you try to seize control of the game. If you are able to see more cards than your opponent, you’ll have more potential units and events to play, more cards to use in edge battles, and more access to your all-important resources. You need to get to the cards that will help you disrupt your opponent’s plans, so card draw cannot be underestimated.

Seizing Control

Controlling the game and reducing your opponent’s options on a significant level doesn’t happen by accident. It starts with the cards that you put into your deck and ends with how well you use those cards. Grabbing control of the game isn’t complicated in theory, though. You’re trying to actively deny your opponent the conditions he’s built in his deck to create a win. For example, your opponent may be relying on Character units to win the game. Playing Force Lightning (Core Set, 60) to destroy an exhausted Character can help you control your opponent’s path to victory.

Newer players tend to focus purely on how much damage they can deal to objectives every turn. It might seem harmless, but thinking that way focuses on the short-term, and it won’t lead to victory if you’re playing a good player. Once you shift your focus from dealing as much objective damage as you can to gaining superior positioning and control throughout the game, you’ll begin playing quite differently. You begin to see the long-term game perspective and you learn how to bend it to your goals. In actuality, most games will end before turn six. Though Star Wars can be a short game, giving up long term board positioning early to save or deal a few extra damage to an objective is typically a bad decision.

In a lot of games, one player will attack the first turn that he can, while the other player will begin building a board of units, starting to establish control of the game. It may seem that the player who dealt first damage won the exchange, but over the course of most games the player who began establishing control on the first turn is the player who ends up winning.

In my next article I’ll showcase an example of control at work and illustrate that sometimes the obvious plays aren’t necessarily the right ones! Until then, may the Force be with you.

Zach

Battle for the Galaxy

Thanks, Zach!

Zach Bunn is a Star Wars fanatic, a lead member of Team Covenant, and a member of the winning team from the Star Wars multiplayer tournament held at Worlds. In coming weeks, stay tuned for more Star Wars guest articles from Zach and other writers!

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