UK Games Expo, Britain’s biggest tabletop gaming convention, is a delicious smorgasbord of every kind of physical game imaginable. But if there’s one thing that’s dominating this year’s event, it’s Star Wars. And no wonder: it’s a hugely popular franchise that’s currently enjoying a gaming renaissance with multiple titles getting ongoing support.
Expo is showcasing the newest and upcoming releases for three Star Wars board games and card games: the collectible card game Star Wars: Unlimited, the miniature skirmish game Star Wars: Shatterpoint, and cooperative board game The Mandalorian: Adventures.
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The Mandalorian: Adventures has a new expansion, Clan of Two, based on season two of the TV show that inspired the game. “As big Star Wars fans, we wanted to make sure players feel like they're experiencing the episodes right on your tabletop,” said Josh Beppler, who co-created the game alongside veteran designer Corey Konieczka. “An expansion was something we always had hoped to accomplish because there is such lovely source material to pull from. Season two of the show was such a massive success, we were eager to get to work on the new characters that were just immense fan favorites.”
Clan of Two adds some new playable characters from the wider Star Wars universe such as Ahsoka Tano and Fennec Shand alongside legendary foes like the Krayt Dragon. But of course, that’s one of the joys of the franchise: there’s so much of it to draw on for inspiration. “What we choose to add is based on a lot of different factors,” Shatterpoint’s lead designer Will Shick explained. “Sometimes it's just a character that we really love in the office and have a great idea for. Sometimes it's based on inspiration for a sculpt. A lot of times it's based on whatever’s really popular among fans.”
If you’ve looked at the release schedule for the game, you might have noticed that diversity has led them to some slightly surprising places. “We’re going to do a shark man from space,” Shick grins. “It’s so cool.” He’s talking about Riff Tamson the Karkarodon, who’s included in the upcoming Terror from Below set. It’s also an opportunity for the team to introduce a new keyword to the game, 'Aquatic,' unlocking new possible builds. Shatterpoint is noteworthy for nudging players toward taking thematic teams by using these shared keywords to create powerful combos, and this is no exception.
“That’s a totally deliberate design,” Shick continues. “We found the best way to develop games is to bake in soft bonuses. Or little guideposts that say, hey, this character does something really cool, but if you take this character with another thematically paired character, they both do something even better. It doesn't force the player's hand. It’s just that if you play thematically, those bonuses might be more valuable than you taking a min-max approach.
Keywords are also a part of collectible card game Star Wars Unlimited. But as a system that needs a lot of new cards dropped with each new set, they’re used differently. There was already an existing “Force” keyword for Jedi and Sith, but for the newest set, Legends of the Force, the designers built on that by making the Force use a distinct mechanic. Some of the game’s starting bases allow you to gain a Force token which you can spend to unlock powerful abilities on particular cards, while others give you the chance to regain the token.
It’s a mechanically interesting system, although not necessarily that well tied-in with Star Wars lore, but the designers are open about wanting fun to come first. “We tried a lot of different iterations of this mechanic,” designer Joe O’Neill explained. “Some that required you to use your deck to draw cards that gained you the Force, but that often felt very inconsistent. One piece of gameplay that is always in play is your base. So using that allowed us to create this as an opt-in decision that didn't require any re-writing of rules, didn’t require you to draw specific cards, and then feel like you’re missing out by not drawing the right thing.”
Using the base also leans into what many collectible game players love most about their systems: deck-building. “If you're choosing to run a heavy Force deck that means you don't get access to energy conversion bases,” O’Neill continued. “So you have to choose between some of the strongest abilities in the game. You don't get to run everything and we think that choice is really meaningful and an interesting deck-building decision.” His co-designer John Leto finished up by pointing out that “there are other ways to gain the Force throughout the set which feel thematic. A lot of the bases we chose were places that were important to the Force, like the crystal caves.”
While collectible games like Star Wars Unlimited want to cram as much variety into new material as possible, less malleable formats often use expansions as a way to respond to player feedback from the original game. The Mandalorian, which some fans felt was too short in only offering four missions, is no exception. “The expansion adds four more, so it doubles the amount of maps,” says Beppler. “All the missions can be played on the new maps. It’s all interchangeable. You can take any of the new characters, team them up with base game characters, finding new synergies and combos. I think exploring old missions with these new abilities will give the game a lot of new life.”
He’s hopeful that other tweaks might win over some gamers who passed on the original. “The biggest example is probably the duel deck,” he offered. “It's such a cinematic way to experience a fight. And it really helps make the theme of these characters stand out.” He’s also included new options that substantially increase the challenge if you found the base game too easy. “We've added conditional ongoing events which sit in an action slot and give you a negative consequence until you clear it,” he continues. “We also created deadlier versions of some of the weaker events from the first game. It’s all optional – you can stay in novice mode, and you’re going to have a great time but you will miss some of the deep strategy that emerges from the gameplay.”
Similarly, some of the upcoming Shatterpoint material helps answer a common gripe that the scenarios aren’t varied enough. “We’ve just had a brand new key operation drop, they add a thematic campaign mode that you can play,” explained Ross Thompson, the director of marketing at Atomic Mass Games. “And we're getting ready to release new tournament kits, too, which will include promo cards, posters and that kind of stuff. Then we’ll have galactic legends coming later this year where you can play as one character that you really want to get into.”
Shick fills in with more detail on this new play mode. “One player will get to control a super-powered main character,” he explains. “So Darth Vader as we see him on screen, not balanced for the game. Then two other players take squads of primary or secondary and supporting characters. It's a really interesting narrative because one player gets to feel super powerful, while the other player gets that experience of being like, oh my gosh, I'm going against the big guy, how do we come out on top?”
Most ongoing miniatures games encounter the need to tweak and rebalance characters as the game goes on, and Shatterpoint is no exception. However, in the age of online material and army-building apps they’ve taken the unusual step of releasing updated cards and encouraging players to print out the updates. “Print and play offers the flexibility to make those changes and offer them to players widely, ensuring that they're free and not behind a paywall,” said Shick.
This feels like a remarkably forward-thinking attitude in a sector that’s dominated by power creep and “fear of missing out” marketing. “We're not too proud to admit the fact that, like game development, design is a craft,” says Shick. “Once a game goes out into the wild, players might do different things to what you anticipated. So we want to make sure that we’re honoring people’s collections, that we’re bringing that value and making the best game possible, both going forward and looking back. If a player picks up a starter box and gets massively appealing characters like Anakin and Ahsoka, they better feel good. We want to ensure they play just as well as they did when the game came out."
Talk like this is undeniably inspiring. It’s refreshing to talk to designers and feel like they’re truly invested in what they’re doing. It’s true of all the creatives on these games: their enthusiasm for their work and from Star Wars radiates off them as we speak. The Star Wars Unlimited team even collects their own product from booster packs. “We have an entire Teams channel at work just for trading within the studio,” O’Neil laughed. “People post their wants list and when the set comes out we all sit down and all crack our boxes, then set up trades.” And you know that a game design team is doing good work when they’re eagerly looking forward to finishing the day and going on to eat their own dog food.
Matt Thrower is a contributing freelance writer for IGN, specializing in tabletop games. You can reach him on BlueSky at @mattthr.bsky.social.
