Get Off My Lawn is a series of articles from guest contributor Ben “ObiWein” Weiner.
Get Off My Lawn is a series of articles from guest contributor Ben “ObiWein” Weiner.
Extra of something is generally good. Extra money. Extra ice-cream. Extra credit. Extra days off. Extra lives (Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A).
Extra turns are good too.
Collectible card games have always seemed to have this idea of an extra turn as a card. Those cards have tended to be extremely powerful. Magic the Gathering had the earliest example of this with the card Time Walk back in the Alpha set in 1993. This card is considered one of the power nine cards and is one of the most valuable in collectible card game history.
It was so powerful and fun of a card to play that I used to count how many times I cast it. One of my first deck boxes was actually a beige index card box that I would carry not only my deck but also a Sharpie marker. After casting Time Walk I would add another small hash mark to the outside of the box similar to the way fighter pilots would mark dog fight kills in World War II on the sides of their planes.
Time Walk was so good that it was quickly restricted, along with other way too game breaking cards, to only allowing one copy in a deck. Later it was relegated out of the standard format (called Type 2 at the time).
Eventually other attempts were made at similar game effects to grant that same extra turn, but either making the cost significantly higher or by adding some drawback to the card that might make a player think twice before playing that card in a particular game. Final Fortune was one such example which attempted this by granting that extra turn but then if you could not win before the end of that turn, you would instead lose the game.
Star Wars Destiny, FFG’s last foray into Star Wars Card games, took a similar stab at this concept. The card Final Moment allowed you to ready all of your characters but then you would lose at the end of the action phase.
The new Star Wars: Unlimited set, Shadows of the Galaxy, continues this trend by giving us the closest thing to an extra turn that may be possible in this game and it is worded extremely closely to its predecessor from FFG. With the way the rounds are structured and the concept of alternating actions between players there really is no concept of a turn. Final Showdown gives us the capability of readying all of our units for one more swing into our opponents base with everything thing we’ve got. It either works or we lose.
Imagine playing a deck where you have some units on the board and have ticked away some damage on your opponent’s base in the first handful of rounds. Let’s say you could then all out attack your opponent’s base in the next round to put an additional 10 points of damage on the base leaving them at 20+ point of damage already done. They claim the initiative. Final Showdown, ready everything you have, and all out attack again for the win.
Any double Cunning aspect deck would run at least one of this new powerful legendary card and possibly two or three. It’s a powerful enough effect that it could easily see play for 8 total cost in an off-aspect deck with the 2 cost penalty.
It’s great to see this type of card make its way into SWU. Final Showdown is powerful. It’s going to be fun. I cannot wait to use it. However nothing will ever beat that original. Get off my lawn.
Ben is a technology professional by day. He has been an avid gamer for 40 plus years spanning everything from Dungeons and Dragons, board games, and through multiple past and present collectible card games. His non-gaming spare time is spent with his family and playing guitar. Warning: Do not play Jenga for money with this person.
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