Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game

Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game is an online trading card game available to both current and former subscribers of the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies. The first game set, Champions of the Force was released in August 2008, followed by the second, Squadrons over Corellia in December of the same year. A second expansion, Galactic Hunters, is set to be released in March 2009. The game client is available for download on the official game website, allowing non-subscribers to access a free trial mode that offers access to limited content.

Players are able to purchase virtual cards and trade them with each other. Each set includes up to 300 cards, with more sets being released every few months. Both former and current Galaxies subscribers receive a single 58-card starter deck when they sign up, all active subscribers also receive five free 15-card booster packs per month after that, with the option to purchase more available for all players.

A non-subscriber using the trial mode can sign up for at least one month subscription to Star Wars Galaxies. This allows access to the complete gameplay modes and enables trading with other players. Suspending the subscription afterwards makes the account stop receiving free monthly packs, but full access to the game content remains.

Gameplay
There are four archetypes in the game: Jedi, Rebel, Imperial and Sith. Each archetype has a unique avatar, which represents the player character. A deck cannot contain any cards of a archetype different from the archetype of your avatar. The are however so-called generic cards, which do not belong to any archetype and can be included in any deck.

Other card types include units that can fight alongside your avatar; items, which can be used to give the player avatar various bonuses; tactics, which represents one-time surprise actions in combat; quests, which represents the missions the players undertake to andvance in the game and abilities, which are used to complete the quests.

Important game mechanics include cost, which must be paid to play the card, power that is used to pay the cost, strengh and defense, which are used to resolve the skirmishes, damage, which may be used to deal more damage to the enemy unit, health, which represents how much damage a unit or avatar can take before it is destroyed, and level of abilities, which can be used to complete quests.

Each player has four quests with level numbers of 2, 4, 5 and 6 aside from his main deck, and the quests with the level number of two are played automaticlly at the beginning of the game. At the beginning of his turn if the player has an active ability in play, he can apply it to one of the quests to place tokens on it equal to the ability's level. Whoever player first places a number of tokens equal to quest's level completes the quest and places his quest with the next number in its place. The goal of the game is to complete four quests before your opponent, however the game can also be won by destroying your opponent's avatar first. To prevent that each player can deploy units to one of the quests (your's and your opponent's) that can both raid (attack) opponent's units and avatar and protect your avatar from being attacked.

Card sets

 * 1) Champions of the Force
 * 2) Squadrons Over Corellia
 * 3) Galactic Hunters

Game options
The game provides multiple options of gameplay, in both single and multiplayer modes:

Available for all players

 * Tutorial/Demo game – a guide to all basic aspects of the game, which also allows to play as a Jedi vs the Sith AI opponent using either starter or pre-constructed decks.
 * Practice game – a practice match versus human opponent, using either Jedi or Imperial starter deck.

Available only to game subscribers

 * Scenarios – story-based matches with AI opponent, who has significantly improved decks. Every new set expands Light side and Dark Side campaigns with 5 new scenarios for each campaign. Each scenario has 3 levels of difficulty, for completing scenario on each level players receive bonus reward cards.
 * Skirmish – allows players to test their new decks versus AI opponents.
 * Standard game – a basic game versus human opponent.
 * Heroic encounter – in this story-based game mode four players are working together, trying to defeat a single AI opponent with an overpowered deck. The heroic encounter of the first set, Champions of the Force, recreates the Battle of Nym's Factory Compound.
 * Official tournaments – require an entry fee to play, but offer prizes to the winners.

Star Wars Galaxies Loot
The game also features Loot cards, which are special cards for rare items, such as the Muur Talisman that are randomly found in booster packs. These can be redeemed for in-game items in Star Wars Galaxies. To start with, there are 26 such cards, with more available via special promotion actions.