Fantasy Flight Star Wars: Destiny Board Game Expired

For those that want more information on the game:

An official deck requires 30 cards in your deck, (no more, no less), and anywhere from 1-5 characters which are not part of your deck (and are not counted against your 30 card limit) . This set comes with 2 decks (a Hero and Villain deck), but each deck consists of 22 cards plus 2 characters (Rey and Poe Dameron for the Hero's, and Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma for the Villains), so you CAN play the game with one copy of this game, but two copies are better, because it will allow you to make two official 30 card decks, and the decks can be customized, since you'll now have 44 cards each for both Hero's and Villains, and you'll need to whittle those down to 30 each. A second copy of the game also allows your characters to be stronger, because (without getting too much into the rules) characters can have either 1 or 2 dice associated with them. One copy of the game will only give you 1 die per each of your characters, but a second copy will allow you to have 2 dice per character. Since a large part of the fun is rolling dice and resolving the resulting roll, the more dice, the more fun.

For those that want to know if it's like Magic the Gathering, yes, to an extent, in that the game is traditionally sold in the form of booster packs, consisting of 5 randomized cards and one die (each pack will come with either one Rare card or one Legendary card, and these cards always have a matching dice with them). Common cards (3 per pack) and Uncommon cards (1 per pack) do not come with dice.

You make a deck consisting of Villains, Hero's and Neutral cards (Neutral can mix with either Hero or Villain, but Hero and Villain cards may not mix within the same deck), and there are color factions within each of those, Red (symbolizing "Command", IE military forces), Blue (symbolizing "Force", so basically light/dark Jedi), Yellow (symbolizing "Rogue", the scum and villainy of the galaxy, as well as a beloved pilot of the Millennium Falcon), and Grey ("General", everything that doesn't fit into the 3 prior categories); each color comes with strengths and weaknesses.

With the exception of just a few cards, you cannot have more than 2 of any card in your deck. A game can take 30 minutes to play, +/- 10 minutes. It can be played by kids I'd say as young as 8-9ish, but they might have problems actually creating their own deck as they'd lack the ability to build strategies, but if you gave your 8 year old a deck already made, they'd likely have no problems grasping the concepts. One element of the game that's very nice is that, even though you're strategizing each turn, turns rarely take more than 30-60 seconds, so the game moves along quickly, you're not waiting while the other person takes a long turn.

As for costs...the MSRP for a pack is $3. Packs can also be purchased by the box, each box containing 36 packs, which usually retail for about $85 at the time they're released, give or take $5, so from a per-pack price point, boxes are the way to go. If you want to get a "playset" of every card, defined as 2 copies of everything, you will need to buy 4-5 BOXES of each expansion (set). However, playsets are NOT needed to have fun, but if you DO find yourself enjoying the game, expect to need at least 2 if not 3 boxes of each set to in order to be able to build competitive and consistently performing decks. New sets come out 3 times per year. As an FYI, top tournament-level winning decks can consist of cards that total $300-$400, so like Magic the Gathering it can be an expensive hobby, but a LOT of fun can be had, and you can still be quite competitive, playing with $100-$200 decks. Of course, if you're playing casually, the game does not need to be that expensive, say 2 $85 boxes of each new set, 3 times per year, means if you want to play at a mid-level power level you're looking at ~$480-$510 per year (using the previously mentioned $80-85 per box price).

So far the game has 5 expansion sets released:

-Awakenings
-Spirit of Rebellion
-Empire at War
-Legacies
-Way of the Force

There are also supplemental products: this 2-player game, a small set called Rivals, which consists of 20 cards and dice which are not needed for a beginner, and 4 Starter Decks, which are also decent introductions to the game (based around Rey, Kylo Ren, Boba Fett, and Luke Skywalker). The Rey and Kylo in the Starter Decks are different versions than the Rey and Kylo found in this 2 player game.

The game is about to undergo its first "rotation", likely in the Spring, at which point cards from the sets Awakenings, Spirit of Rebellion, and Empire at War would no longer be permitted in the most common tournament format. A good way to tell the sets apart is by their packaging: Awakenings, Spirit, and Empire are sold in black boxes; Legacies and Way of the Force in white boxes. Due to approaching rotation, boxes of those first three sets in black boxes can often be found for $50-$65, so price-wise they are a good way to get into the game, particularly if you just want to play "kitchen-table" at home with friends and family. If you're looking to get further into the game, avoid the above-mentioned Rey and Kylo decks (also sold in black boxes), as they'll be a part of the rotation coming up too. Boba and Luke (sold in white boxes) will be "legal" for some time, so those are good decks and will be tournament legal for quite some time still. It should also be noted that this 2 player game comes in a white box, so it too is safe from rotation for awhile, further making this a good buy and a safe entry point. This 2-player game and all 4 of the Starter decks contain some dice and some cards unique to them, they can't be found elsewhere such as in regular packs.

As far as this particular 2-player game being both a teaching tool/introduction to the game, AND having good cards, it succeeds admirably at both. I enjoy Magic the Gathering a lot, but for anyone familiar with that game, they'll tell you their introductory products aren't that great, from a "fun" standpoint or in terms of giving you cards that are playable once you wish to go beyond the beginner level. The cards in this Destiny 2-player game are quite good in terms of their "power level", and are definitely playable once/if you choose to get deeper into the game.