Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
Debrief: Star Wars Deckbuilding Game: Clone Wars Edition
The Operation Game Night crew finally reunites to dive into the latest Star Wars tabletop offering that's taking the deck-building world by storm. Fantasy Flight Games has delivered a knockout with Star Wars: The Deck Building Game - Clone Wars Edition, a standalone expansion that might just outshine the original.
What makes this game special? It perfectly captures the essence of the conflict between the Republic and Separatist forces through brilliantly designed faction mechanics. The Republic harnesses the Force and deploys specialized clone troopers alongside powerful Jedi like Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Meanwhile, the Separatists overwhelm opponents with waves of battle droids that can be continually recycled from discard piles - creating that authentic "they just keep coming" feeling from the films and animated series.
The game's brilliant Galaxy Row mechanic sets it apart from other deck-builders. These dual-purpose cards create constant tension - do you purchase a powerful character for your own deck, or prevent your opponent from acquiring it by destroying it first? This push-and-pull dynamic, combined with the Force tracker that slides back and forth providing bonuses, creates deeply strategic gameplay that remains accessible for newcomers. Even the implementation of Jar Jar Binks as a zero-cost card that players pass back and forth to clog each other's decks shows the designers' thoughtful attention to thematic details.
Whether you're a Star Wars enthusiast or simply love well-crafted card games, this Clone Wars Edition delivers exceptional value with its perfect balance, thematic immersion, and surprisingly reasonable price point. Grab a friend, choose your faction, and may the Force be with you as you battle for control of the galaxy!
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welcome to the operation game night podcast. We're back, and better than ever, because there's three of us finally, oh my gosh podcast.
Speaker 2:I can't believe it, here we are how long has it been, yeah, as always.
Speaker 1:These guys, Clay and Jared, welcome.
Speaker 2:Hi, travis Hi.
Speaker 1:Travis.
Speaker 2:We're here.
Speaker 1:I'm excited that we're all here together today. We are talking about a very exciting game called Star Wars, the deck building game Clone Wars Edition.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, Nothing gets me going quite like a deck builder.
Speaker 1:This one is great.
Speaker 2:Nothing gets me going like Star Wars IP, so Okay, so.
Speaker 1:I'm fired up For those that don't know anything about this. This is published by Fantasy Flight Games. It is a kind of reskin reimplementation of Star Realms, which is a two-player-only card-battling deck-building game. And, for those that are unaware, this is a new reimplementation of the Star Wars deck-building game standalone edition, and this is a expand-alone, meaning that you can take these different factions and mix them in to compete against the other factions in the core star wars deck building game, or you can play this on its own. You can buy this box. It is complete on its own, uh, and this one is just as good as the last one, if not better, better.
Speaker 1:So in this game, what you are doing is you are building cards, buying them from what they call the galaxy deck, which are these either neutral or faction-based cards out in the middle. You're earning resources, you're doing combat, you're influencing the force to either your side or the opponent's side, and you are playing Playing these cards To these different Opponents, ships or bases, or to cards out in the galaxy row that can do damage and earn you, eventually Blowing up the enemy's bases, which is the end game condition. So Core game is, you know, empire versus Rebels, so you got lots of characters like your Darth Vader's your, luke Skywalker's, your, leia's your, you know, boba Fett's. All that good stuff, right? Classic Star Wars Somehow no droids in the original set. That was like a glaring omission. No C-3PO, no R2-D2. Where are the droids?
Speaker 2:Not one.
Speaker 1:Like a pretty blatant omission. This edition. Tons of droids. You've got Separatists and the Republic. The Separatists are the guys that are producing all of the droids. Right, they're on the outer rim. They're farming these droids out of these factories to go out and fight in the Clone Wars. And you've got the Republic that has all the clones. They've got all these specialty clone troopers that are in their deck. And this game is so sharp and so perfect. I really enjoyed the original one, but this one just implements everything so much cleaner.
Speaker 1:There was kind of a big complaint when the first game came out that unless you played one of the extended versions of the game which means that you're applying to more of the so you win the game by blowing up the opponent's bases. Right, you've got a little deck of bases that are cars that each have special abilities and I have to kind of fight my way through all of their, like protecting ships that are surrounding their base to get to their planet. That's really what the base is, and when I can do enough damage to those planets which are, you know, anywhere between 10 and 16 damage, I blow it up and I take their card, their base card, put it in front of me. That's kind of my scorekeeper, and once I blow up five planets then I win the game. And in the original game, the big complaint was the Empire. The Empire unless you're playing one of the more extended versions, the Empire just rolls over the Rebels. This game feels so much more balanced than the original and the cards do some really cool stuff that you know that I feel like was implemented better in this one and just more interesting abilities.
Speaker 1:Um, you've got cards that play off one of another one another. I felt like there was really good balance between, like, the cards that you're playing in your hand or the ones that you are like building your deck with, versus playing against cards in the Galaxy row. So, like the Bounty Hunters tons of Bounty Hunters in this one I found so many times when I was playing a card that said, like you know, if there's another Bounty Hunter in the Galaxy row, it gets plus two combat or whatever. Whatever the bonus was, Stuff like that like really occurred very often and it just felt so much more engaging and it I don't know. I just feel like this one had a lot more life to it. Um, are you guys familiar with this game? Clay, I know that we've played it before.
Speaker 2:Heck, yeah, we've played it, travis. Um, I remember really liking this game when we played it, and I I'm not alone. I remember really liking this game when we played it and I'm not alone.
Speaker 2:I think one of the things that is universally praised about this game is that galaxy row, yeah, and the fact that they're facing different ways, yeah. So if you're able to buy the card, you see the cost for you to get this card on your side and then the person sitting across from you sees the cost of how much it would take to defeat that card. So you can be like there's no way I want Jared to be able to buy Anakin, so I'm going to spend my turn defeating Anakin from the galaxy row. And that was just such an interesting dynamic of that galaxy row being both both like a market and kind of a a fighting ground where I haven't seen that in other. You know almost pure of these deck builder, battler games there's quite a few of them out there, but that was kind of the the hook of this game that really kind of set it apart from some of the other ones.
Speaker 3:So each side has their own galaxy row, and how is that correct statement there?
Speaker 1:is one singular galaxy row of seven cards that are laid out. Then you've got a pile of outer rim pilots which are kind of just a freebie Like I have nothing else to spend my money on, I'll get that. But in the galaxy row the cards are colored differently depending on which faction you're playing, as you kind of orient them towards whichever faction is going to be able to buy them. The cool thing is, upside down on the other side is a bonus with a health. So if I'm playing as the Separatist and the Republic has something that they could buy but I want to destroy it, I have a bonus that is facing me. So if I can do enough damage to it, not only will I prevent the Republic from getting that card, I will also get a bonus from it, whether it's resources, additional combat power.
Speaker 1:I can influence the force, I can exile cards, which means like kind of thin out my deck. So there's like this really cool push and pull on this Galaxy row. You can feel it when you flip a card and Count Dooku or something comes out and it's the big boy card somebody's going to have serious. Pull Mace Windu's in this one when you flip over Mace Windu and he's out there sitting at 8 health or whatever, and 10 attack power or whatever. People are hyper-focused on that and you might be able to out-strategize and sneak some additional moves, while your opponent is focusing on procuring that or destroying it. And man, that push and pull of that Galaxy Row is so sharp and it really makes this game come alive yeah, well, and the other cool thing was you.
Speaker 2:You just mentioned it again. I don't know if you talked about it in the, uh, the overview you gave, but that, um, force tracker, right, yeah, like you can be I can't remember exactly, it's been a while since we played it but like, do certain abilities become active when you have the force more on your side versus the other?
Speaker 1:yeah, so the force track is something that is set on the side of the board and it's just this kind of sliding scale that's tracked by a little cube and the republic will start with the force all the way on their side. And it's kind of a way to balance that starting couple of turns, because the republic takes some time to get going and you will play cards or you will attack uh, opponent's cards or cards will let you move that force tracker towards your side of the board and when you like, the the verbiage is kind of weird, but it says like when the force is with you, which means that that force tracker is all the way on your side of the board as far as it can go. You get an additional resource per turn and cards get bonuses. So, like, people will get additional attack power. It'll let you, you know, draw an extra card. It will let you pull things out of your exile deck which are like your thinned-out, like extra cards that you are no longer using. You're thinning, you're thinned out like extra cards that you are no longer using.
Speaker 1:Um, the cool thing about this one is the republic has a lot of you know, when the force is with you cards. Um, the separatists do not right. But the separatists are also thematic because they are so droid, combat heavy base and they all of their bases and their like mega ships are all about producing droids. You can continually like go back to your discard and your exile piles and keep pulling droids out. Oh jerry, oh man you're just.
Speaker 3:I'm growing my love language right here yeah drawing cards yeah bonus cards oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So like, the droids just keep coming back and there's one of their bases that lets you like, uh, you, let's say you get a bunch of resources. You can pay those resources instead of buying things from the uh, from the galaxy row like you normally would with resources. You can spend those to pull droids out of your discard pile straight into your hand, and so typically when you buy from the galaxy row, it goes to your discard pile. So you might not see it for a couple of shuffles, but if you can put something straight into your hand from your discard or straight into your hand from purchasing, it's like a huge advantage. And so I had, uh, the base that lets you spend those resources to pull droids back into your hand and I just like, let it rip. With like 10 droids, I did tons of damage. It felt so good like an army of droids all at once. So stuff like that is super thematic and awesome.
Speaker 2:I love it do you think this is more like an increase in complication from the original star wars, the deck building game, or is it more just new cards, characters, like other new mechanisms that would make it like you shouldn't play this before you've played the other one no, not at all.
Speaker 1:I this and, honestly, like if I was between the, if I did not own the original and I was between one of the two, I didn't know which one to get I would honestly recommend people get this one. I think the, the factions, are more thematic. I think the actions on the cards and the special abilities and stuff are more interesting in this one. I think it's more balanced, um, because there's nothing in the original rule book that says, hey, we recommend that you play this one first, but you know, if you want a more balanced experience, play this one or this version of the game. Rather, um, but this one, right off the bat, this one being the clone wars edition, is so right off the bat, this one being the Clone Wars edition is so tight, right off the bat and it's not more complicated. I just think it's more interesting, honestly, and that interesting comes from the balance, gameplay and the thematic factions.
Speaker 3:Is the timeline here? On BGG, how would you say that?
Speaker 1:that's a pretty wide range 30 to 90, I feel like, for a deck, for deck builder, it should be no pretty tight, yeah, and I, to be fair, I've played this a lot, um 90 I don't know if I've ever gone 90 minutes. Uh, I think, because there's different modes that you can play maybe that's a better word for it like the different modes that you can play maybe that's a better word for it, like the different modes that you can play widely range. Right, if I'm playing first to three bases destroyed, the game goes super fast, like it flies by. If I'm playing the entire base deck, which is, I don't know, maybe seven, eight cards, then it might take a little bit longer, but I have never gone 90 minutes. I think the the right, like the sweet spot is you play first to five bases in both the original and this, uh, clone wars edition, because it just like it allows the republic to get their wheels going a little bit.
Speaker 1:And when we played this and to be fair, I've only played this once it came down to the last, the very last card played. Like if I had one more card, or if I like would have done one more thing, I would have won. And I think my brother-in-law won, I think, and I had like, just like, gone for broke. One last card would have done it for me and he was like, oh, you don't have any ships guarding your base. Like here's one card. And he like destroyed me by one perfect health. Like it was yeah, it was so tight, so close, so well balanced, well balanced game. Yeah, I mean this. These games have like received lots of praises.
Speaker 2:I think they are phenomenal 8.0 rating I mean that's anything above 8 is something to take a look at, in my opinion yeah, and these are like readily available too.
Speaker 1:Like I know that fantasy flight and like asthma day kind of some of their games are harder to get your hands on. But star Wars deck building game I've seen it like in. It might be in big box. I'm pretty sure. I've seen it in target and stuff. So I with an IP like star Wars, it's readily available and you can go out and pick it up and it's not all that expensive and you can get so much bang for your buck out of this game. I really enjoy this one now, how was the play?
Speaker 2:all right, you played it with your what you said, brother-in-law. Yeah, what did he think?
Speaker 1:Oh, this is probably his favorite game. Oh really, he's a big Star Wars guy. He loves Star Wars, loves the IP. He is very passionate about the Clone Wars, particularly Loves the Clone Wars. He got a what is it? The Venator ship, like the big red Republic ship, and he was so hyped up he's like I'm going for the senator like spent all of his resources on it, like he's getting all excited about all the characters and they came out, um, that's perfect. Uh, the funny thing about this one I you had it pulled up earlier, but uh, jar jar binks is a free, is a free, it does not cost any resources, and what you do is when you play him, you can play him and then, when he's done, you can throw him into your opponent's discard pile to clog up their deck and you're just passing this Jar Jar Binks card back and forth.
Speaker 2:I just think it's so funny.
Speaker 1:Just little things like that bring so much character to this game. I love it.
Speaker 2:The Jar Jar Hates, crazy man.
Speaker 3:I do have one iconography question here. Yes, what's going on with the gold with the number? That's how much it costs to buy it off of the row. What are the numbers underneath it?
Speaker 1:like those are the bonus powers, I'm guessing underneath yeah, so each card has a cost associated with it, which is the gold number. Then you've got three kind of categories. You've got attack, you've got resources generated and you've got, uh, impact the force. So, like you look at ayla sakura right there, she's got two attack power. She will influence the force towards you once so you can move at one space on the scale towards you. And then she's got a special ability in the bottom, like in the actual text, and so when you play a card, you can gather resources. If it generates resources, uh, you can use its special ability and you kind of like turn it sideways to say, like I've, I've used this special ability, and then you can allocate her for attack as well and so, like, you get all the benefits of it. And, uh, it's just kind of like an order of operations thing that you kind of kind of keep, keep track of.
Speaker 1:But it's really not all that complicated. You're playing five cards out of your hand at any given time and sometimes, like, the separatists will end up with more as you're buying droids or whatever. But they're not all that complicated and the rules are very simple. The cards, I think, explain it very well. Um, there was one, actually with ob-Wan Kenobi that we got a little hung up on, but you know the internet is undefeated and we looked it up real quick and it was like an easy fix. So, yeah, dude, I would recommend this game to anybody that likes deck builders, anybody that likes Star Wars. This game is like great for beginners. Yeah, I Star Wars, the Clone Wars edition. I already own the base game and I'm probably going to pick this one up eventually because I just think this game is so tight and so perfect.
Speaker 2:Wait, this was your brother-in-law's game.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh wow, he ordered it. He ordered it to my house because he loves this game so much.
Speaker 2:So he ordered this just to play with you. Yes, wow. And he's going to keep it, then oh, I'm sure he will.
Speaker 3:I'm sure that's when you know you've made it, when people are ordering board games to your house to play with you, so then they can take it away. That's right you have. You've peaked Really, yeah really, yeah, yeah, really.
Speaker 2:What he did was just he wanted to play a game and he's like travis will teach me this game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but like, and we like I taught him the original star wars deck building game and he was like hooked immediately. Like every time he came over he wanted to play that game. And I'm like, oh, but I have all these other like cool two-player games. He's like no, we're going for star wars, so this is like his jam. Uh, and I love playing this one, so I don't mind it at all.
Speaker 3:Online adaptations any online adaptations no, I don't think so.
Speaker 1:Um, that it would be smart. I'm sure it's on a tabletop simulator or whatever. But, um man, the box is like so small, it's relatively inexpensive. It's worth picking up and just keep it on a shelf because this game is so great.
Speaker 2:Jared, if you want to come close to this, you should definitely check out Star Realms, the app Like it is. It is similar enough that you'll get a feel for like I don't know if you've ever played just like a combat centric deck builder like this, where it's just kind of like building up your own little battle engine and just cycling through the cards. But Star Realms is a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:Pokemon has always been since I was a young lad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, download Star Realms and play it. You'll dig it and you play star realms.
Speaker 1:and then this is just, in my opinion, just star realms, but a little more interesting, yeah and I feel like more engaging, because you actually know these characters or have some frame of reference for who they are, versus, like, a bunch of random aliens from Star Realms, the blob fleet or whatever the heck it is in Star Realms. That is a great digital adaptation, though. Is that Star? Realms app is really good. Yeah, yeah, so that was Star Wars, the deck-building game, clone Wars Edition. Did we do?
Speaker 3:it. I think we did it, but I just have one just quick thing. Uh, can I just quickly go over the fence and just let you guys know I am fully committed for world series of board gaming. I bought my ticket and I have a seat at the table of lost ruins of Arnak.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Nice.
Speaker 3:It's happening, boys, it's happening. I'll see you in Vegas.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, we need to talk logistics guys. Okay, well, not on this episode, not on this episode. Save the people.
Speaker 1:That was awesome, Travis.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hope you guys enjoyed it's been Operation Game Night. I have been Travis, he has been Clay, he has been Jared. We're all together finally, at last, and we're out, thank you.
