The Good: Nice foils, Easy to learn, Good way to enhance a collection, Underproduced and valuable
The Bad: Mostly foil reprints, Mostly extra non-foil cards, Still a lame game
The Basics: Objectively, this set is a waste of money, but the market continues to declare that even by-the-pack Young Jedi Reflections cards are extremely valuable, making them worth hunting down!
There is a real crapshoot in trying to figure out how to rate and review the Young Jedi Reflections gaming cards. Young Jedi was a terrible unpopular gaming mechanic and the first three sets were so grossly overproduced that it is virtually impossible to get excited about them at all. On the flip side, the last three sets were remarkably underproduced and as a side effect of that tend to be remarkably valuable. In fact, one of the most valuable - for collectors and investors - Star Wars gaming card sets is Young Jedi Reflections. It was so underproduced that packs of the cards sell for $5.00 - $10.00 each when they can be found and that is an infrequent thing.
Moreover, packs tend to be chock full of goodies, so even by the pack it is hard not to do well as a buyer. But these packs of twenty cards yield few unique cards and a lot left over, making it hard to laud the product as well. The result is a very valuable foil card set, bogged down by a ton of extra cards per pack that players, investors and collectors will either already have or largely not be able to use.
Basics/Set Composition
The "Reflections" was the fifth set Decipher produced to capitalize on the excitement surrounding the release of The Phantom Menace. While their enormously popular Star Wars CCG would have expansions that contained characters and themes from Episode 1, that game was not designed for the heavy influence of Jedi Knights that the time period of The Phantom Menace demanded. As a result, they decided to create a new game, called Young Jedi. Young Jedi was also geared toward a slightly younger audience than the late-teen and twentysomething crowd that ate up the Star Wars CCG.
"Reflections" is a 100 card gaming card set comprised of 60 foil reprints and forty unique foil cards. Of the unique cards, the cards were broken down between Light and Dark Side cards with each side getting twenty of each. The 40 cards for the set were comprised of 12 Armed And Dangerous (cards depicting personnel with weapons or equipment, like Boss Nass, Gungan Chief & Fambaa and P-59, Destroyer Droid Commander & Multi Troop Transport), 14 Combo Battle Cards (cards illustrating combinations of equipment and moves to maximize damage when playing characters together like Jedi Force Push/We're Not In Trouble Yet and At Last We Will Have Our Revenge/Sith Force Push),and 14 Double Impact (cards that detail effects of battle, like Gungan City/Gungan Energy Shield and Starfighter Screen/Blockade).
The images on the Young Jedi cards are as close to full bleed as possible, minimizing the borders and texts to provide cards that are actually nice to look at. "Reflections" was originally released in boxes that had 24 packs of twenty cards each. Booster packs came with 1 reprint foil, 1 Reflections unique card and eighteen cards from the prior four sets randomly inserted.
Playability
Young Jedi introduced a new gaming mechanic unique to this game. The game is played with sixty-card decks and the rulebook (not included in the booster packs or boxes) describes how to assemble a deck to play the game and achieve victory against your opponent. This is essentially a strategy game played with cards that have different values and functions. Players draw cards to their hand, stock up a location with characters and do battle.
"Reflections" requires other cards from other expansions as there are no location cards in this expansion. As a result, it is impossible to play the game with just cards from these packs. Ironically, the packs might include all of the cards needed to play the game, but the Reflections set of 100 cards is woefully inadequate for players.
Most of the cards, especially the Battle cards define actions and tell the player how to use them. This is an easy game to learn, but consequently one that is not challenging to master and therefore less exciting to play over and over again.
Rule Changes
"Reflections" is the fifth Young Jedi set. There are no starter decks, so one must track down a starter deck from one of the first three expansions for rules. Starter decks come with a rulebook (not included in booster packs). Given that the rules take up 29 pages of a little book, it's not so much the point of a review to list the rules for readers. "Reflections" follows the same rules laid out in "Menace Of Darth Maul" (reviewed here!) with no changes to the core game.
It is best to find a "Battle Of Naboo" starter deck, as "Battle Of Naboo" expanded the game by adding a new planet to it and provided new rules for the new card type. The new card type was Effects and "Reflections" essentially has them with the combo cards. Effects (Double Impact and Combo Battle cards) essentially allow one to play cards together and most every one has text on it with explicit directions on how to use it for play.
Highlights
Fans of The Phantom Menace will likely enjoy "Reflections" for the images of a number of very popular Star Wars characters. In addition to foil reprints of earlier rare characters like C-3P0, Shmi Skywalker, and Sebulba, there are brand new combinations that make some lesser characters suddenly powerful, like Toonbuck Toora, Senator & Coruscant Taxi.
But for the best card of the set, I'd have to go with card A7 Aurra Sing, Trophy Collector & Jedi Lightsaber, Stolen By Aurra Sing. This card basically arms a bounty hunter with a Jedi weapon, increases her damages such that for the minimal cost it takes to play her she becomes enough of a match for any light side player (certainly the unarmed ones!).
Collectibility
"Reflections" was beautifully underproduced, for a change and as a result - and the fact that the set was so small - made it one of the harder ones to find. Many dealers did not even get it in and as a result, it sold out quickly and has been a tougher set to find on the secondary market.
The thing is, like any Reflections foil product, one has to balance the foil reprints with the unique cards and the fact that in order to get those cards in, one will be getting nine times the stock in cards one already has. This almost guts the collectibility, save that the packs seem to still be near impossible to find.
Overview
Young Jedi might be an agreeably diverting game, and if one is looking to invest in the product, "Reflections" is the strongest way to go, even if one ends up with so many leftovers!
This set utilizes images from Star Wars The Phantom Menace reviewed here!
"Reflections" was preceded by "Duel Of The Fates" (reviewed here!) and was followed by "Boonta Eve Podrace" (reviewed here!).
5/10
For other card reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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