Star Wars Destiny by Fantasy Flight Games

I picked up the starter box of Star Wars Destiny from Fantasy Flight Games for my brother-in-law because he is a huge Star Wars fan. Like most starter sets, Destiny provides you with the bare bones to get started. You get Rey and Poe versus Kylo and Phasma.

This is a collectible dice and card game. Personally, I am not generally a fan of collectible games. I think they reward players with more money and disadvantage those with less. But, that truly only applies when playing competitively. If you are just playing with friends who like the setting and don't care about buying up all the best combinations, then any collectible game can be fun (I play Magic with my nephew and though we occasionally buy packs, we don't go out trying to buy specific cards to help us win).

The dice in Destiny are used to gain resources and for combat. The cards get you extra dice or special abilities that are triggered based on how you roll. The dice and cards can also gain you Shields which can be used to negate damage done by your opponent.
Like many games, getting the right combination into play can make all the difference. For example, I was able to get Poe with his blaster and the Teamwork card all in play early and was rolling 3 dice with lots of chances for Blaster damage. And with Poe using his Blaster, he was dealing extra damage with each hit.

Of course if you don't have any Shield tokens, you might feel overwhelmed, but each player has a few cards that will allow you to change an opponent's dice rolls. Even though I was able to take Phasma out very quickly, those dice change cards kept Kylo in the game until he was able to take Poe out.

Another mechanic I like about the game is deck exhaustion. To keep players from cycling through their deck just to find the best cards, if at any point in the game, your draw deck runs out, you lose the game. Though I am slightly confident that I would have prevailed with Rey over Kylo Ren, my opponent lost when he exhausted his deck. Which was disappointing to me as I was just about to get Rey's Lightsaber into play.

This is a light to medium game (depending on how many packs/expansions you have added to the starter) that I would be happy to sit down and play casually. Though some gamers hate the randomness of dice, I find them fun for casual play where you can laugh and moan over each success and failure. I'll probably pick up a few of the booster packs for my brother in law and just sit and enjoy playing without worrying if the guy in the store has a better deck/dice combo then me.