Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game – Clone Wars Edition review — Hello there!

In 2023 Fantasy Flight Games surprised everyone with the first Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game. Built on the massively popular Star Realms formula, the game offered a fast and simple way to have a Star Wars battle on the tabletop. This new edition is the same game but set in the Clone Wars era pitting the Republic against the Separatists. The gameplay hasn’t changed, but the new factions have their own unique playstyles that offer new challenges and strategies to fans.

For those not familiar with the first game or similar deckbuilders like Star Realms, let’s quickly talk about how to play. The goal of the game is to be the first player to destroy all of your opponent’s planets. The number of planets can vary depending on how long of a game you want to play, but the standard game is four. Each planet besides your starting planet has a special ability and the decision about which planet to choose after the previous one gets destroyed can have a significant impact on the game and your strategy. Gameplay follows standard deckbuilding principles with each player playing their entire hand of cards each turn. Cards are used to do damage to the opponent or purchase new cards from a shared market. Almost every single card has a special ability that will allow it to perform extra effects, buff other cards, affect your opponent, etcetera. The deck you form throughout the game will hopefully make the most of those abilities so that you are the winner. 

The shared market is one of the biggest innovations in Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game. There are cards specific to each faction, as well as neutral cards that anyone can buy. A Republic player, however, cannot buy a Separatist card and vice versa. You can kill opponents’ cards though. Targeting cards in the market row denies the other player that card but also gives the attacking player a bonus depending on the card. It could be extra credits, force points, or the opportunity to exile cards and thin out your deck. Balancing when to target and eliminate market cards and when to go on the offensive against your opponents’ planets is another big part of the game.

The Clone Wars Edition factions play differently than the original version of the game. The Separatists use expendable droids to throw a constant onslaught of damage across the table. To make it interesting, you don’t have a huge pile of droids but instead, manipulate your deck and the market row via the exile ability to power up turns and then bring droids back from the trash pile to fight again. Supplemented by fan favorites like General Grievous, Count Duku, and Asaj Ventress, the Separatists’ play style offers a lot of opportunity for strategic play and constant pressure on your opponent. 

While the Separatists are all about exiling and recycling cards, the Republic is focused on fielding squads of clone troopers that support powerful Jedi. The deck is loaded with abilities that let you manipulate the top card of your deck and either draw it or power up other cards based on what is there. Thematically, the clones bring in reinforcements and support each other while enabling their Jedi commanders to dish out big piles of damage. Strong capital ships can provide a wall to keep the Separatists’ pressure at bay while the Republic tunes their deck to take advantage of all the combo potential. 

As I mentioned at the top, the gameplay is the same as the first set but the new setting offers two really fun factions with added variety in how they play to their strengths. You can combine the sets in whatever combination you want to but I find the thematic breakdown of, for example, the Republic fighting the Rebellion to distract me too much from the game. There’s certainly room for both sets in my collection, but if you only want to get one, you can choose the setting that most appeals to you or the level of depth you want to experience. This set feels more strategic with both factions looking to manipulate their decks in different ways whereas the previous set is a more straightforward extra card draw and discard playstyle. Both are a blast to play.

There are some characters noticeably missing from the set. Darth Maul suspiciously does not appear. Qui-Gon Jinn is absent. Yoda fails to show up. Jar Jar is appropriately represented but no other Gungans can be found. I’m hoping we will see these and more in a future expansion, but for now, it’s a great game that I find myself pulling off the shelf regularly. 

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