Star Wars - Epic Duels

Last Friday was spring accountancy updates courses – a fun day of learning about new tax, accountancy and audit rules and legislation.

Not the most fun day ever, but at lunchtime I did get to wonder into Cowes High Street at lunchtime, to visit Chiverton’s, a newsagents that has a small stock of games (I’ve no idea why). They had a half price sale, so I grabbed a copy of Star Wars - Epic Duels. My girlfriend is a big Star Wars fan, and I had read that it was actually an okay game (for a licensed movie game produced by a major non-eurogame game company).

The game components consist of two doubled sided game boards, 12 characters cards (each with one major character and one or two minor characters), a deck of 31 action cards for each character pair, and 31 small plastic figures, which are actually pretty good representations of the characters. The components are pretty neat, although the lack of any sort of any sort of proper insert for storage is annoying – I can just see lightsabers and guns snapping off.

Each player starts by placing their characters in predetermined positions on which gameboard has been selected, and drawing a hand of three cards. On a players turn they roll dice to determine movement, move their characters, and then take two actions, which are to either play a card or draw a card. Cards come in three types, basic combat cards with attack and defense values, special cards with funky effects, and special combat cards that combine attack or defense (or both) with a funky effect. When attacking damage is simply equal to the attackers attack value less then defenders defense value (which is zero if they don’t defend). Characters have between 3 endurance (robot droid) and 20+ endurance (Darth Vader), and you lose when your main character is killed.

The characters vary wildly in type and abilities. Some teams consists of a main character with one strong supporting character (Han & Chewie), some teams have a main character with two much lesser allies (Darth Vader & 2 Stormtroopers). Combat cards vary from heavily offense based (Darth Maul) to highly defensive (Yoda). Some characters have ranged attacks; others have to get up close (the Jedis only get to attack with lightsabers, although there are special cards that give force lightning attacks).

The special cards include some very powerful effects, that will certainly shock you the first time somebody springs them on you, along with more basic but still useful options like additional movement or cards. Perhaps the biggest ‘wow’ value card, Darth Vader’s ‘All Too Easy’ is a special combat card with an attack value of 3 if defended against, but 20 if not defended (attack card are played face down, so the defender doesn’t know what the attack is). Twenty damage will kill anyone in one attack!

Lucy and I played the game with one set of light vs one set of dark characters. The game is simple enough for non-gamers, but I can see gamers who are Star Wars fans enjoying it as well. The basic 1v1 doesn’t seem to have much lasting appeal (it’s too limited) but you can play four player as 2v2 teams (in multiplayer free for all the best plan would almost certainly be to turtle), or just play two player with each player controlling 2 sets of characters. Having more characters in play increases the tactical opportunities for good movements and attacks, and I can see how some characters special cards might combine to create good combos.