When our monthly game night fell close to Star Wars Day earlier this month, we had to dive into some Star Wars games.
We enjoy a number of Star Wars games, but they aren’t all well-suited for a group game night. For example, Star Wars: Rebellion is amazing, but it’s best played as a 2-player game and lasts a couple of hours. I also love playing Star Wars: Imperial Assault, but that’s best played over a series of encounters in a campaign with the same players.
So with an unknown number of players coming over, it was a perfect time to play Star Wars: Destiny!
It’s a 2-player card and dice game battle that we have tons of cards for – so we could set up multiple head-to-head battles among everyone that would come. Plus, it can be played in 30 minutes and then we can be on to the next battle against a different opponent.
That’s also when I realized that even though we’ve had the game for a number of years, we haven’t posted our full review of Star Wars: Destiny yet.
That changes today!
Star Wars: Destiny is a collectible card game that also includes big chunky dice. The game combines dice-driven combat with faction-driven card management. Players create decks that include characters from every faction and any era, as long as heroes and villains are on opposite sides of the fight.
However, rather than needing to create your own deck right from the start, you can dive into the game with a Starter Set or the Star Wars: Destiny Two-Player Game which comes with 2 starter sets in it (one for you and one for your opponent).
Each player will have either 2 or 3 character cards (heroes or villains) on their team plus a deck of 30 cards. Each character card also comes with a special die for that character. And many of the cards in the deck will also have an associated die with them.
When building a deck, players can only add the color of cards to their deck that match the color of characters on the team (or neutral grey). For example, if you have a blue and yellow character, you can only have blue, yellow and grey cards in your deck. No red cards for you!
In the top right corner of a character card is their health value. The goal of the game is to knock our your opponent’s characters by dealing hit points equal to (or exceeding) their health over the course of the game.
After placing their characters in front of them, and gaining 2 resources, players draw a hand of 5 cards from their personal deck and they’re ready to begin.
On a player’s turn, they perform only 1 of these many possible actions and then it’s the other player’s turn to take 1 action.
- Play a card from their hand: Pay the cost in resources listed in the top left of the card to put it in play. If it’s an Event card, its action is done and the card discarded. If it’s an Upgrade card, it’s equipped to a character. If it’s a Support card, it’s placed next to the characters in the play area.
- Activate a character or support: This is when players roll dice. The player turns the card sideways to show it’s exhausted and rolls all the dice associated with that character and their upgrades or support.
- Resolve their dice: This is when players use the dice from their dice pool that they’ve previously rolled. The player may resolve any number of dice in their pool displaying the same symbol. Each die symbol has a different effect (see below).
- Discard a card to reroll their dice: If players don’t like their dice results, they may discard a card from their hand to reroll any number of dice in their pool that they wish.
- Use a card action: Some cards have actions listed on them. A player may use their term to do what the card says after “Action” in bold.
- Claim the battlefield: The player immediately uses the ability listed on the battlefield card, moves the card to their area, and is done for the round.
- Pass: A player may choose to pass instead of take an action. When it comes back to them, they may take an action. If both players pass consecutively, the round is over.
Since so much of the game comes down to the dice results, here are what the various symbols on the dice will cause to occur:
- Melee Damage (sabers icon) – deals the number of damage listed on the die to any character.
- Ranged Damage (blaster icon) – deals the number of damage listed on the die to any character.
- Indirect Damage (grenade icon) – deals the number of damage listed on the die to characters of the defender’s choosing.
- Shield (helmet icon) – give any character that many shield (each character may have a maximum of 3 shields at a time)
- Resource (square icon) – gain that many resources.
- Disrupt (spark icon) – the opponent loses that many resources.
- Discard (slit card icon) – the opponent randomly discards that many cards from their hand.
- Focus (2 circular arrows icon) – turn that many dice in your pool to a result of your choosing.
- Special (star in a circle icon) – uses the special ability listed on the associated card.
- Blank (red minus icon) – no effect.
Between rounds, players reset their exhausted cards and return any dice still in their dice pool to their cards. Each player also gains 2 resources and may discard as many cards from their hand that they wish and then draw back up to 5 cards.
The player who controls the battlefield begins the next round.
Players continue alternating turns until either one player’s characters are knocked out or a player doesn’t have any more cards in hand or in their deck. In both cases, the other players wins!
You can also play Star Wars: Destiny in free-for-all mode where you play with more than 2 players and it’s everybody against everybody else. The last team standing wins.
Can the whole family enjoy Star Wars: Destiny?
Star Wars: Destiny is a fun game to play and can be enjoyed by Star Wars fans everywhere.
While the basic game play and flow is straightforward, the challenge lies in understanding the abilities of the cards, the various dice results, and when to take different actions. The game also requires a fair amount of reading because every card is packed with text explaining its ability.
Thus, your first few games will take a bit of getting used to. But it’s a fun process in learning what power the cards in your deck hold and how they can be used well together.
All of the cards that have an associated die also show the distribution of the die results on the card itself. This can be very helpful in knowing which weapons and items to equip to different characters on your team.
Because each player only does 1 action before it’s the other player’s turn, the game can clip along nicely. But that also takes a bit of getting used to because it also means there’s a delay between when you roll the dice and when you can use your rolled dice.
And often you’ll want to activate multiple characters and support to build up a bigger pool of dice to use before you start using any of them.
However, this is also part of the beauty of the game because it means your opponent (or you to your opponent) can thwart your plans. You’ll be able to see what your opponent’s dice results are and then take an action of your own before it goes back to them and they can use those dice.
So, for example, if they roll a couple of blasters, you’ll be looking at damage to your team pretty soon. But if you have a card or dice results that can impede the use of those dice (like forcing them to discard those dice or turn them to their blank side), you can use it on your turn before their blasters take effect.
The tough part in the game comes when one of your characters gets knocked out of play. Because when that happens, you lose the die associated with that character as well as any dice that were equipped to that character. And then you’ll have less dice to roll on your future turns. Hopefully though, you’ve been dealing damage of your own to your opponent and the battle goes down to the wire with the last character standing.
Before I wrap up this section, I have to give a tremendous shout-out to these dice!
They’re bulky dice that feel awesome and have great artwork right on the dice themselves!
And because there are so many dice, we’re glad that in addition to the artwork they also have numbers and icons on them that match up with their associated cards – which is very helpful when you have a lot of them.
As much as we enjoy Star Wars: Destiny, we know it probably doesn’t hold much appeal for non-Star Wars fans. But if you’ve got some Star Wars fans in your family, we’d recommend trying Star Wars: Destiny.
Should you watch out for the “collectible” bug?
Now, the real question to ask is if you’ll be able to hold yourself back from going crazy with collecting a gazillion Star Wars: Destiny cards to expand your battling fun.
For me, the answer was, No.
And first, let me tell you where I’m coming from. I’ve never gotten into any collectible card game (like Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, etc.). Frankly, I’d never been attracted to any of them. And the thought of getting sucked into an endless draw to buy more cards was appalling.
However, when I visited GenCon in 2016 and Fantasy Flight Games had just published a Star Wars card game with awesome dice, I was drawn like a fly to a zapper.
I heard it was a collectible game, but I just brushed that aside. I wanted to play it.
Of course, since then, Fantasy Flight Games has continued to release tons of booster packs and cards that expand the game.
And yes, the booster packs are such that you don’t know which cards you’re getting when you buy the pack. Instead, you get the adrenaline rush of opening the packet to see which 5 cards and 1 die you’ve just gotten.
Well, opening 1 packet here and there gives a little rush. But then I discovered that I could buy a whole booster box!
These are the display boxes that retail stores have – each containing 32 booster packs!
That means each box holds 160 cards and 32 dice. And when I saw them on sale on Amazon.com, I couldn’t resist and bought 4 booster boxes.
Yep, that’s right. I’d been struck by the collectible bug.
And now I had more than 640 cards to sort and figure out how to use them in different decks. Oops – what have I done?!
That’s because before sitting down to play, players can construct their own 30-card decks. The amount of possibilities is endless (and a bit overwhelming).
But that’s how we attacked our game night a couple of weeks ago. I had constructed a number of character teams and associated decks and players could choose which deck they wanted to use as we dove into battle for our Star Wars Day game night.
It made for a fun night – and we see more such nights with Star Wars: Destiny ahead.
