Groggy’s Guide to Star Wars LCG Episode 2: Defending Fate

A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far, Far Away…

Groggy’s Guide to Star Wars LCG Episode 2: Defending Fate

As the Galactic conflict rages on, the rookie player increases in knowledge and skill of Star Wars: The Card Game strategies. Armed with this new knowledge and their decks, the player makes a devastating blow towards their opposition. During the course of the battle, the opposition turns the game around and now the player has to defend…

Welcome to Groggy’s Guide to Star Wars LCG! This guide is written by a casual player, for casual players. If you’ve just bought your Core Set* or you want to improve in your skills as a player, this guide will aid you in general strategy, deck strategies and more for Star Wars: The Card Game.

*This guide assumes that you have already read and understand the core rules as well as a familiarity with Core Set cards. All cards referenced can be viewed online in the card spoilers section of cardgamedb.com.*

Continuing from the basic tips and strategies written in Episode 1 of this series of articles, I would like to talk about Defending, Fate Cards and Card Draw.

First, Defending. As the Dark Side player, defending properly is key to winning games in Star Wars: The Card Game. You may often be a bit more relaxed about the way you defend as the Light Side player but you do not have that luxury when playing the Dark Side. The way you defend is influenced by your deck, what you draw and how your opponent plays.

Your deck determines a large part of how you defend. An aggressive Imperial Navy deck built for attacking might not be so great at defending, whereas a Sith deck built for playing extremely passive (often called Sith Control) works best on defense. Play to the strengths of your deck. As the Light Side player, more often than not I found myself using a unit like Guardian of Peace to defend an objective and attempt to prevent damage or the unopposed bonus, without worrying about the edge battle. A neat trick is to send in a unit for defense just to force your opponent to either play a card for the edge or to pass and lose the edge. This means they have one less card for defense on their own turn. Luke Skywalker can be a great attacker and defender for the Light Side. Emperor Palpatine is one of the best units for defense in the game.

What you draw definitely factors into your defense. A draw of only a single unit in your starting hand is usually cause for a mulligan. When you just don’t seem to be drawing the cards you need to tip the balance of the game in your favor, the best thing you can do is discard the cards you are not using. Sure, only 1 card can be discarded at the beginning of your Draw Phase, however, in an edge battle you can use every card in your hand. I have experienced games in which I did not draw the units I was looking for and decided to discard as many cards as I could. I eventually found those cards and I was able to turn the game around.

How your opponent plays can and probably should make you change the way you are defending. If your opponent is overly aggressive, you have more room to attack on your turn but you will want to defend properly as well. If your opponent is too passive, take care how much you attack because you will leave your objectives and units more vulnerable on their turn. Units with Shielding and Protect can help you keep your important units in play.

In addition to these factors, remember that you don’t have to beat your opponent’s Force icons when defending. All you need to do is tie for the same amount of Force icons. Defending and winning the edge can be a great denial to your opponent, as they don’t have access to their edge enabled combat icons.

Fate Cards. Fate cards can help you turn the tide of an engagement into your favor. These are especially helpful to the Dark Side player’s defense. Twist of Fate, being an extremely useful card when used in defense, is in an abundance of strong Dark Side objective sets. For the Light Side, you’ll find Twist of Fate in some support objective sets. Getting rid of your opponent’s cards is just plain mean but often necessary. Remember to bluff it differently so your opponent doesn’t figure out that you have played a Twist. Maybe sometimes you play just the Twist, or you fake your opponent out and go nearly all in, adding the Twist to your edge stack, knowing that you’ve saved your best card for after the Twist resets everything.

Heat of Battle can help you dispose of those pesky units your opponent sends into battle. Damage on participating units before any of them strike is fantastic. Protection is a great defense when heading into an Edge Battle. Shields are incredibly useful in this game, allowing you to prevent damage or focus tokens being placed on your units.




Further expansions add even more tricks during an edge battle with Echoes of the Force and Seeds of Decay. Echoes is a bag of tricks wrapped into 1 card. You can use it to remove one of your low Force icon units from the Force struggle. Play Echoes to make your opponent’s units that are participating in the current engagement focus twice. Use it to make your opponent commit units with low Force icons to the struggle, in the hopes that with 1 less card available, they will lose the Force struggle. Lastly, removing big mains like Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine from the Force struggle for a turn can especially be handy. Who knows, maybe you have My Ally is the Force ready to be played and all you need to do is remove one of their units from the Force.


Seeds of Decay is a game changing Fate card. Back in the early days of Star Wars: The Card Game, units like Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda were able to control the Force struggle quite easily, defending when necessary. Seeds of Decay changes all of that because it allows you to place 1 focus token on a target unit that is committed to the Force. This card is a free tactics on any committed enemy unit before the resolve strikes step of an engagement. In a scenario where you are defending, let’s say Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is committed to the Force, is the declared attacker. All you have to defend with is an Emperor’s Royal Guard. Using Seeds of Decay will not only stop Obi-Wan from striking, it will allow your unit to strike him for some damage without the worry of being focused down by Obi-Wan afterwards. Now you will have the advantage, seeing as your opponent now has 4 less Force icons for the Force struggle and 1 less defender going into your turn.

The only Fate card currently released that isn’t useful for your defense is Target of Opportunity. While the two Force icons it has would provide you with something if you used it in defense, this card is fantastic on the offense. Numerous engagements I have fought have depended on that 1 damage that Target of Opportunity provides to destroy the engaged objective.

Card draw effects are some of the most helpful effects in the game. Considering every set released, in all but a few instances, those being in The False Report and Against All Odds objective sets, card draw is a great way to gain advantage over your opponent for both sides of the game. That one extra card could be the solution to the current situation.

Cards such as Dark Precognition, Counsel of the Sith, Mission Briefing, Asteroid Sanctuary, Forgotten Heroes, etc are fantastic ways to draw more cards. Of those I just mentioned, all but Forgotten Heroes allow you to draw cards on your opponent’s turn, which can potentially help you win an engagement when you otherwise could not. There are even more draw effects than I listed, as well as ways to increase your reserve value.

“A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, NEVER for attack.” - Yoda, Star Wars Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Thank you for taking the time to read Groggy’s Guide to Star Wars LCG! Be on the lookout for Episode 3: Board Control


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