Star Wars: The Card Game (with Edge of Darkness Expansion & 2014 Regionals Playmats)

I’ve never really been a card game player. I spent a lot of time in comic book and game stores as a kid and young adult, but that was before games like Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering came around. But I have recently become obsessed with Hearthstone, which is a streamlined and computerized version of these kinds of games, so I thought I might give a more traditional card game a try. The fact that there were some Jabba-themed accessories for this year didn’t hurt, either…

It turns out that Star Wars: The Card Game is significantly more complex than Hearthstone — or maybe it’s just that you have to keep track of all the game mechanics yourself using counters and the like, rather than having the computer do it for you. There are so many phases and rules that I found it rather difficult to keep track of everything. My eight-year-old son and I tried playing for a couple of hours, but we had a hard time getting a handle on it and eventually gave up. I think with this kind of thing it really helps to be shown the ropes by people who already know how to play. I do like the game as a product, though. The cards have nice artwork on them, and it’s all stuff from the original trilogy. The main set doesn’t have any Jabba-related cards, but you can get that in the “Edge of Darkness” expansion, which is really just two additional decks of cards. For example:

They also have a nice set of protective card sleeves that use the same artwork as the Jabba the Hutt card. These are thin plastic sleeves with artwork on the back and a transparent front, allowing you to view the card while the sleeve is still on.

Since I never fully figured out how to play, my chances of winning a regional tournament are rather low, but thanks to eBay I was able to get a couple of the special playmats that they gave out to the top players in the regional tournaments. From what I understand, there are 8 regions in the US and each region can hold up to two tournaments. Since these mats were given out to the top 8 players in each tournament, I guess that’s a theoretical maximum of 128 of these that were given out, although I think it may have been quite a bit less than that. It’s roughly 1 foot by 2 feet and is made of a rubbery material like they use for mouse pads. I really like the artwork on them. They also gave away things like a limited edition version of the Jabba the Hutt card with alternate artwork, and acrylic damage counters.

This playmat is in French. I initially thought that it must have been used in Canada (the seller I got it from was in the US) but the URL appears to point to a European company. I wonder if they made versions in other languages.