I participated in a Star Wars Destiny pre-release event over the weekend. I'm sold. 100% sold. The game is amazing. It's everything I liked about Magic, with nothing I didn't like.
A couple of quick thoughts...
- It's pretty hard to get "mana screwed". You get two resources at the start of each game round, and these stick around if you don't use them. In that way, if you need to play an expensive card and you're not rolling resources, the worst case scenario is that you just save up for a round or two.
- Alternating activations make the game go super quick. Most card games require you to just sit there while your opponent plays out his entire turn. In this game, player's alternate performing actions, with most actions taking mere seconds. I don't think I ever had to wait more than 30 seconds for my "turn" to start again.
- Opening packs is awesome. My first pack had Admiral Ackbar in it. That was cool.
- The tokens really aren't that bad. FFG tends to go token mad, but you really don't need that many for this game.
- Card collections are easy to manage. I suspect that the dice collection is going to become an issue. I'm going to have to seriously consider how to properly sort the dice.
- A full play set is two of each card. That's a lot easier to collect than Magic, where a full play set is four of each card.
- You'll only ever need one of each location card.
- A full play set of character cards depends on the price of the card. As an example, First Order Stormtroopers are 7 points. I can fit 4 in a list, so a full play set for them is 4 cards. A full play set of Admiral Ackbar cards is 2... 1 to play with and 1 for the second die you'll need to play an elite version.
I ended up making a force wielding villain deck featuring Vader and Kylo Ren as my characters. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to getting more cards and being able to properly build a deck. The game doesn't come out until 12/1. Sigh. Soon..... Soon...