The Star Wars Official Tournament Sealed Deck Is A Great Way To Get Some Rare Cards!

The Good: Playable right from the box, Good premium cards, A wonderful way to get the expensive A New Hope CCGs!
The Bad: Star Wars Premiere cards in this set are just about worthless.
The Basics: The second boxed set that recycled earlier cards, the Star Wars Official Tournament Sealed Deck actually has some value and decent premium cards!


It takes a lot to get me to recommend the recycled products from the various gaming card companies, but Decipher gets a nod for originality with its tournament sealed decks. The Star Wars Official Tournament Sealed Deck were intended to be competitive and social and the idea behind them is a decent one. They contain a bunch of recycled material - in the form of a starter deck and packs of Star Wars Premiere (reviewed here!) and a pack of A New Hope (reviewed here!) gaming cards, along with an eighteen card exclusive pack of gaming cards. This made the set collectible and playable right out of the pack. Moreover, with the soaring cost now of A New Hope cards, the Star Wars Official Tournament Sealed Deck remains one of the best ways to get an exclusive bunch of cards along with the rarer packs of gaming cards!

Basics/Set Composition

The Star Wars Customizable Card Game Official Tournament Sealed Deck set was the second Star Wars sealed product (i.e. not in packs) and the seventh de facto release from the Star Wars Decipher cards. It was released in decorative boxes, of which there were six varieties. The Star Wars Official Tournament Sealed Deck set is an 18 card set focusing on characters, ships, alien races and scenarios from A New Hope and it had few treats for those looking for an Expanded Universe flavor to the game. This set includes alien characters and obscure ships like Chall Bekan, Arleil Schous, a Z-95 Headhunter and an Obsidian Squadron TIE. The set consists of 9 Light Side and 9 Dark Side cards which form sets of 18 cards, conveniently packaged altogether.

Rather smartly, this set is spread out, so no card type dominates. As a result, the laws of random chance being what they are, the exclusive set features at least one of each essential card type, guaranteeing that fans will be able to play right out of the pack. This set contains 4 characters, 2 Effects, 2 Interrupts, 2 System Locations, 2 Site Locations, and six ship cards.

Playability

At its most basic level, this is a board game where one constructs the board and pieces out of a selection of cards. The starting purpose of the game is to drain your opponent of Force without depleting your own Force and to survive the trip around the Star Wars Universe with whatever your player throws at you. The basic idea is to assemble a sixty card deck (for beginners), lay out the board (spaceline) and play against an opponent. In laying out the board, players get the power from the Force they need to play other cards.

Locations form the board for the game and almost all of them have an indicator which puts into play Light Side and Dark Side Force points, which the player may then tap into to "buy" characters, ships, weapons and tactical cards to thwart their opponent. Events represent the obstacles that opponents can use to make the game more than just a basic search and kill game. The rulebook clearly defines what each deck must possess in terms of numbers of the card types. But basically, one starts by laying out a board, assembling a starship and its crew and traveling along the planets and through space to either crush the Empire or put down the Rebellion.

This is a very complex customizable card game, but it represents a level of gaming sophistication designed to appeal to younger adults and actually challenge them, which is a decent idea given the thematic complexity of the Star Wars universe. The problem, of course, is that most people who would be most stimulated by this game do not have the time or effort/interest to learn to play it. As a result, the late-teens that basically run the CCG players world seem to have had mixed impressions about this game.

Fortunately, because there is a rulebook in the Premiere Starter Deck in the boxed set, the rules are right there and the Star Wars Official Tournament Sealed Deck is playable right from the package.

Rules/Rule Changes

The Premiere Starter Deck in this boxed set includes a rulebook. In the Star Wars Official Tournament Sealed Deck set, there are no new card types nor rule changes.

Highlights

Players, collectors and fans of Star Wars are pretty much dependent upon liking the obscure to get the most out of these eighteen cards. Tarkin's Orders helps beef up the power of the Dark Side hand and Arleil Schous is a decent Light Side alien character. But there are no indispensable cards in this exclusive set.

For a highlight I have to go with the Dreadnaught-Class Heavy Cruiser. This Dark Side Capital ship can lug around 4 TIE fighters for the relatively inexpensive cost of 5 Force. Given that it is armored to 4, this can take a bit of a beating, making it a good fit for a Dark Side Deck going up against faster, less powerful Light Side ships. This concept ship also boosts the power of TIE Fighters at the same location, making it a real asset, especially in conjunction with a Turbolaser Battery, which may be added to it.

Collectibility

The Star Wars Official Tournament Sealed Deck set had fair collectibility. The boxes were originally expensive and obscure, but have since flooded the market, bringing down the value of the exclusive set. In recent years, the set has risen in price and the boxed sets have begun drawing more attention when complete because they contain the A New Hope cards. The sets still run in the $20 range, which is a decent price for eighteen rare cards.

Overview

The Star Wars CCG Official Tournament Sealed Deck is a set that is exceptionally easy to collect and because it is playable without complicated rule systems that followed this release, it is still a pleasure to pick up.

This set culls material from A New Hope, which is reviewed here!

This set was preceded by Cloud City (reviewed here!) and followed by the Star Wars CCG expansion Special Edition, review pending!

This is a set of Star Wars gaming cards I proudly sell in my online store. Please check out my current inventory of them by clicking here!

6/10

For other card reviews, please click here to visit my index page!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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