Friday, October 19, 2012

Riding the Star Wars High

Like I said before, the X-Wing miniatures game is pretty cool.  Plus there's a player at work who's picked it up(typically miniature games haven't been popular with the other gamers I work with).

FYI, The Indy Knights are putting on a sort-of-tournament for X-Wing at the South side GP on Saturday.

X-Wing has got me craving all thing Star Wars(except the prequels.  Never Again!).  I read "Choices of One" and "Outboud Flight" by Timothy Zahn, and I'm re-reading Stackpole's X-Wing series.  I also dusted off my old collection of  Star Wars CCG cards.  The good Star Wars CCG; the one printed by Decipher back in the late nineties.

The Star Wars CCG was what got me into gaming.  I saw a commercial for it during afternoon cartoons back when I was in 7th or 8th grade.  I bought it with birthday money, and tried to inflict it on some of my friends.   I'd never played a game like it before, and most of the concepts where difficult for me to pick up at first.  My friends never really got into it.  They liked Star Wars as much as me, but they where strictly in to computer and console games at the time.  I went to a small private grade school, so there wasn't a big pool of potential gamer nerds to draw from.  I continued to collect and build decks over the next few years.  I pretty much only played them against myself.  I didn't really know about the whole FLGS scene, or where to look for tournaments.  I found one other player at the larger, but still private, high school I attended.

In 99 I got my first job at a local Fazoli's.  I met two guys there name Jared and Jason.  They where only a year older than me, and they happened to play Star Wars too.  After that I finally had some regular opponents to play.  They also happened to play this cool miniature game called Warhammer 40,000 at the local game store every weekend.  My bank account has never been the same since.

I really loved playing the Star Wars CCG back in the day.  It was a very cool game, and it competed well with Magic.  So much so that WotC decided to just to buy up the Star Wars license for themselves, leaving Decipher out in the cold.

Surprisingly though, the game is still alive.  Decipher ceded the game to an independent player's committee.  And they have kept the game going by running tournaments and releasing virtual expansions.  The game is not as popular as it once was, but it's doing better than any other OOP CCG I can think of.  Probably better than some in print ones too.

I'm working on building some updated decks.  Hopefully I can find some new people to inflict the game onto.

4 comments:

  1. Hey There - I'm the largest seller of Star Wars CCG - http://CategoryOneGames.com - we were the first site on the web that was dedicated to just selling Star Wars CCG and I've been involved with the Players Committee since 2003.

    You'll have to look to see if there are any players in your area and get some games in when you have a chance. The game is still a lot of fun and the Virtual Cards add a lot to the game. It's kept it fresh and cheap to continue playing, instead of having to buy boxes of the new set four times a year.

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  2. I still have two decks laying around here somewhere; a DS bounty hunter deck and a LS Chadra-Fan swarm deck.

    Back in the day I used to play in tournaments about once a month in South Carolina and North Carolina when I moved from the former to the latter. I played in a few tournaments here in Indy and Kokomo once I moved back, but when the Episode I sets started coming out, I started hating the game and ended up quitting.

    I sold my whole collection (10,000+ cards) a couple of years ago when I couldn't get anyone else interested in playing.

    Man, I miss that game. Sure, it had some issues with the possibility of winning without ever having to involve your opponent (Force-draining from Dagobah), but being able to build a fun deck based on Tusken Raiders was a reward in itself.

    If it weren't for the fact I am going to a WarmaHordes tournament in Cincy today, I'd totally come play X-Wing. I have a good bit of the stuff, but have only gotten to play a few games.

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    Replies
    1. A lot of the cards the players' committee added have helped move the game away from the decks that just hid from you. There are tons of cards that limit the damage they can do, and ways to deal damage to decks that hide from you.

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  3. It is cool to hear about your past. I would be interested in testing the game if you want some weekend at G2D4. You would have to bring everything tho.

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