Now that most details surrounding the 2 Player Starter Set have been revealed, it’s a good time to talk about what makes a quality starter set- and how this one is shaping up. I think 5 key elements determine how good or bad a TCG starter is:

• Interesting/Thematic/Fan Favorite Leaders
• A full gameplay experience in 1 box
• Doesn’t require multiple purchases of the same product
• Price
• Competitiveness

Interesting/Thematic/Fan Favorite Leaders

To keep it simple, next to nobody is looking to buy a Star Wars game that is Naboo Handmaidens vs. Trade Federation Leaders. Starter sets are billed to be exactly what they’re named… a Starter set. Nobody wants to get started in something new that pulls from the waste pile of their fandom. People want big, exciting, thematic names fighting it out. FFG couldn’t have done better in this regard than selecting the classic Luke vs. Vader fight of the Original trilogy.

A full gameplay experience in 1 box

Nothing frustrated me more playing Star Wars Destiny than every start of a product wave, having to buy not 1… not 2… but 4 starters (2 of each hero/villain side) to get the full experience of a Star Wars Destiny game from the starter product. FFG did better with the release of the 2-player box (but it still required 2 purchases). With the details posted last week, we know we are getting two, fully-legal, 50-card decks with 2 battlefields and the Vader/Luke leaders. I can go to the shop on release day, buy 1 starter, and instantly start playing a normal game of Star Wars Unlimited. That is fantastic, and I love that I can easily recommend or gift 1 box to new players to get the full experience of playing Star Wars Unlimited.

Doesn’t require multiple purchases of the same product

We touched a little bit on this above, but in Destiny especially, if you wanted a full playset of cards, you needed to buy at least 2 of every box product (starters, draft kits, etc). On the 2 Player Starter Reveal stream, FFG employees clarified that all cards found only within the starter (4 in each + Vader/Luke) will have the full 3 copies of those cards included in the starter set. So it’s confirmed that you only need to buy 1 of this box! There will certainly be a few people out there that still buy 2+ to have extra copies, but realistically you can use proxies, or a note in a sleeve, for your extra decks and just move the original copies as needed for tournaments. Another big win for FFG!

Price

This is where we creep into unknown territory. We do know FFG has a stream on September 27th discussing product offerings and pricing, so we should have a better idea then. Ultimately, looking at the product listing of two, 50-card playable decks, Quickstart Rules, tokens, paper playmats, and a couple of cheap deck boxes, I would hope the box lands in the $30-40 price range. If we look at the Star Wars Deckbuilding game that came out last year, it has 140 playing cards, a Balance of the Force board, and several plastic cube and tokens at a MSRP of $37.99. That feels like a pretty similar amount of content, so I’m hopeful the starter box will land in the $30-40 range and likely around $35.

Competitiveness

The guys over at Roll On Gaming brought this up as well in their recent podcast, but one of my favorite things about the 2 Player Starter box in Star Wars Destiny was that a newer player could buy it, have a playable deck, and show up to a weekly event without being handicapped. It was a good competitive experience, that could be tuned further, and was successful in the Star Wars Destiny meta. We’ll ignore that Kylo/Phasma effectively got nerfed when the product released, but Rey/Poe was a competitive staple for the whole regional season following release and had many top finishes and wins. I would love to see that experience replicated where a player could pick up the 2 Player Starter, and main a Vader or Luke deck for several months.

So far, FFG has knocked the Starter set out of the park on 3/5 key elements, with the jury still out on the last two.

Is there anything else you hope to see from the 2 Player Starter? Do you think it’s a good Starter Product compared to other TCG’s?