Announced just ahead of this year’s Star Wars Celebration and available in limited quantities this past Star Wars Day, Funko Games puts the fate of the galaxy in your hands with Star Wars Rivals, the company’s collectible, expandable card game. Whether you choose the Light Side or the Dark Side, you can collect characters from across all three film trilogies to build your force (pun intended) and battle other players.
At first glance, Star Wars Rivals appears to share much of the look and feel with their Marvel Battleworld line. Those who own that expandable, collectible game will pick up the gameplay elements of Star Wars Rivals quickly. For those unacquainted with Marvel Battleworld — particularly younger gamers — Star Wars Rivals may feel a little daunting at first with the various actions involved with each round, but it should only take a session or two to learn the basics. With the expandable nature of the game, no two play sessions will ever be exactly the same, but the basics don’t really change, regardless of characters selected, locations placed, and actions played.
For the purpose of this review, Funko Games provided one Star Wars Rivals Series 1 Premier Set and four Series 1 Booster Packs — two Light Side packs and two Dark Side packs. Let’s take a look at what’s in each.
The Star Wars Rivals Series 1 Premier Set contains four Character Cards, four Character Movers (the cool little action figures), two Character Tokens to act as stand-ins until you pick up a couple of Booster Packs since it takes three characters per side to play, 12 Location Cards, 14 Action Cards, 12 Influence Loss Tokens, three Location Markers, the High Ground Marker, the Prism Die, and instructions. Everything you need to start playing right away can be found in the Premier Set, even if you have to use the generic, non-character Character Tokens. Star Wars Rivals is for two players ages 7+. The average play session lasts around 20 minutes. The Star Wars Rivals Series 1 Premier Set has an MSRP of $19.99, though at the time that I wrote this you could find it for slightly cheaper online exclusively at Walmart.
In addition to the Premier Set, you’ll want to pick up a couple of Series 1 Booster Packs — at least one Dark Side and at least one Light Side — so you can retire the Character Tokens. If for some reason you decide to skip the Premier Set and go right into collecting via Booster Packs, then as long as you have at least one Light Side and at least one Dark Side pack, you can play the full game. While each Booster Pack contains one character and its associated cards and die (more on that below), they also come with a pair of those generic Character Token in each, so you’re at the required three characters per side to play. The Premier Set is the only way yo acquire the four included characters and their respective cards; these four cannot be found in the Booster Packs.
Each Booster Pack contains one Character Card, one Character Mover, 2 Character Tokens, 2 Location Cards, five Action Cards, six Influence Loss Tokens, three Location Markers, one High Ground Marker, one Die (a regular six-sided die, not the Prism Die in the Premier Set), and instructions. Each Booster Pack has an MSRP of $4.99. At the time that I wrote this review, Booster Packs were not available for purchase yet.
As I said above, gameplay basics are pretty simple to pick up…
…and there you have it.
In addition to the gameplay outlined above, players may also be attempting to score additional points by completing Missions on the Action Cards that they draw. Missions can be completed when you play an Action Card, so both players see the Mission, or players may covertly be attempting to meet the Mission requirements on the Action Card while keeping it in their hand, so their opponent doesn’t know that the player is positioning themselves to score additional Mission points. This brings an additional layer of secrecy and strategy to the game.
In playtesting the game for this review, we started off as we do with every game test, by starting with an instructional session where the object is less to win the game and more to make sure everyone understands how to play by asking questions and talking through various moves. Then we jumped into competitive play. The transition from instruction to competition was smooth and easy. After a few sessions, our players had a good feel for the game and each employed various strategies to win, such as when to give priority to Missions over scoring locations, sacrificing one location to score others that round, and so on.
No two sessions of our gameplay went the same way, and with over 20 characters available — some with an additional variant Holographic Character (you say “holograph”, I say “Force ghost”), Star Wars Rivals is infinitely replayable. The game is fast, fun, and strategic. The only issue I have is with the Booster Packs. Frequent readers of this site already know my stance on blind box purchases. If this is the first game review you’ve read here at Pop Goes the Culture, please indulge me while I get on my soapbox for a moment.
Blind box purchases suck.
Blind boxes are where you have no idea what you’re purchasing until after you’ve handed over your hard-earned money. When purchasing Booster Packs, you have no idea which character you’re going to get. You know what’s included in each Booster Pack. You know what series the character is from. You know whether it will be a Light Side or a Dark Side character, but that’s it. If you’re after a particular character, you’ll either need luck on your side or you’ll need to know another player who is willing to trade characters (and has the character you want, is willing to part with that character, and that you have a character that they want) or turn to an aftermarket like Ebay or your local game shop. I get why the practice is popular with the companies who make these types of blind box pack and the retailers who sell them. Funko Games is far from the only company who does this, and Star Wars Rivals is certainly not the first nor the most popular collectible card game to do this. That said, just because it’s standard practice in the industry doesn’t make it less icky of a practice. It feels a little too much like gambling in a game that is targeted to players as young as seven year old.
Let me go ahead and step down from my soapbox now. There we go. Put that away over here.
Where was I? Oh, yeah — Star Wars Rivals is a super fun game to play and a great evolution from Marvel Battleworlds from Funko Games if you can overlook the Booster Pack lottery and not feel the need to collect every character or even a specific character aside from the four that come in every Premier Set.
