Galaxy of Jawas

Galaxy of Jawas

Summary

“Galaxy of Jawas” is a game format restricting characters to Jawas and thematically appropriate Droids, Vehicles, Starships, and Weapons.

The “Galaxy of Jawas” game format is simple to play for those of all levels of skill. The restriction to Jawas, and the relative equality of Light and Dark Jawas, creates a balanced game where it is difficult for one side to dominate. There are still opportunities to be clever, such as using Bo Shuda at Audience Chamber in combination with a Jawa holding Luke’s Hunting Rifle, or to move all the Jawas from Tatooine to the Blockade Flagship using Elis Helrot. It’s Jawa vs. Jawa in a game that everybody can enjoy and dive deep on.

Background

During the Covid-19 Pandemic my friend John and I played a weekly SWCCG game. During our weekly game we played several different game archectypes: clones vs. battle droids, the battle of Yavin IV, the battle of Hoth, the asteroid field, cloud city, and the senate. However, our favorite game type came to be what I call “Galaxy of Jawas”, a format where you can play any character you want so long as it is a Jawa or a Droid without presence.

Sample Decks for Gemp

Download these text files and import them in to Gemp to play them.

Tenets (unless you know better ones)

  • Locations must have both light and dark icons.
  • Sandcrawler locations are permitted to allow them to be used with a Sandcrawler and Suction Tube.
  • The Rancor Pit is permitted as to allow for Rancors in the pit.
  • All Jawas, or Characters that can become Jawas, are welcome.
  • Starships with unique named pilots, like “Zuckuss In Mist Hunter”, are not permitted.
  • No ships with permanent pilots are allowed. While we could assume that the “permanent pilot” is a Jawa, it is unlikely that the Jawas were able to steal any of the ships that have them.
  • No capital starships permitted.
  • No TIE Fighters, X-Wings, A-Wings, X-Wings, U-Wings, or B-Wings.
  • Jawas are not Jedi, so can’t use their starfighters.
  • No combat vehicles, or Ewok vehicles, permitted. Only Creature and Transport vehicles are allowed.
  • Political Effects require senators. There are no Jawa senators, so these cards are useless. If a Jawa Senator were ever introduced, Politcal Effects would be permitted.
  • No Droids with permanent weapons are permitted.
  • Droids must not be immune to restraining bolt by means of having presence. Battle Droids, IG-88, et. al., are not permitted.

Characters

Jawas Only

  • Only Jawas are permitted.
  • Alien Mob and Alien Rabble are permitted as they can become Jawas when used with the My Kind of Scum and Agents in the Court objectives.
  • Alien Mob can be essential to the Dark Side as the Light Side has more unique Jawas, like Offworld Jawas, available.

Droids

  • Droids must be subsceptable to Restraining Bolts, meaning that the droid can not have presence.
  • No droid may have a permanent weapon.
  • This means that no Battle Droids, B2 Battle Droids, or Droidekas may be used.
  • No droids like IG-88 or 4-LOM may be used.
  • No droids like K-2SO may be used.

Tooex, Nightime Conditions, and extra power for Jawas

  • The Security Droid, Tooex provides extra power and immunity to attrition for Jawas under nighttime conditions.
  • For the Dark Side, Sunsdown & Too Cold For Speeders includes a bonus feature of halting all vehicle activity. This effect can be a great equalizer if the Light Side has a lot of Skiffs on the table.

Locations

  • Generic Jawas require force from both the light and dark side to deploy.
  • To ensure a balanced game, all locations must have both Light and Dark icons.
  • Locations are not restricted to Tatooine, so long as they have both Light and Dark icons.
  • The core of a Jawa campaign is going to happen on Tatooine thanks to the requirement of many Jawas to deploy only to Tatooine, or many relevant objectives impacting only Tatooine.

Sandcrawler Locations

  • Sandcrawler locations,_ which have neither light nor darkf orce icons,_ are permitted as they are used with a Sandcrawler and Suction Tubes.

Rancor Pit

  • When Bo Shuda is in play, when Kalit is deployed along with Luke’s Hunting Rifle, any Dark Side Jawa deployed to Audience Chamber is vulnerable to being sniped outside of a battle.
  • If the Agents In The Court objective is in play, then Trap Door can be used to send the light side Jawa in to the Rancor Pit!
  • While the Rancor Pit only generates dark side force, it is permitted as a counter balance to the Bo Shuda + Luke’s Hunting Rifle combo.

Strategies for Jawa Locations

  • Jawa Camp provides a great benefit to the player who owns that site. Jawa Camp enables the owner to only need force from their own side.
  • If the opponent player over writes the location, then the desired location can be raised back to the top using Interrupts like: •Imperial Command & •In Range and •Rebel Leadership & •Critical Error Revealed.

Starships

  • Starships are permitted.
  • Starships can not have permanent pilots of any kind.
  • It is considered possible that a Jawa got their hands on an old Republic/CloneWars era ship, it is unlikely that the Jawa has obtained an Imperial or Rebel ship and made use of it for anything other than parts. To that end, no Star Destroyers, TIE Fighters, X- Wings, A-Wings, X-Wings, U-Wings, or B-Wings are permitted.
  • It is unlikely that a Jawa has gotten their hands on a named ship, such as the Ghost or IG-2000.

Vehicles

  • No combat vehicles, especially Imperial Walkers, are permitted.
  • Only Creature Vehicles and Transport Vehicles are permitted.
  • This limitation however presents some interesting opportunities for the Light Side when deploying a Faamba with a Gungan Energy Shield.
  • While Ewok vehicles are not strictly prohibited, they are effectively useless since they can only be used by Ewoks and are thus considered forbidden.

Weapons

  • Any weapon useless to a Jawa, such as a Death Star Super Laser, are forbidden. Banned weapons include:
    • Superlasers and Turbolasers.
    • Weapons for TIE Fighters
    • Weapons for A-Wing, B-Wing, X-Wing, or U-Wings. Weapons for AAT’s and STAP’s.
    • Weapons for Walkers.
    • Character Lightsabers.
    • Weapons for Droid Starfighters.
    • Gungan Electropoles.
    • Gaderffi Sticks.
    • Gamorrean Axes.
  • Some interesting exceptions include character weapons that can be deployed to Warriors, including:
    • Dengar’s Blaster Carbine
    • Bossk’s Mortar Gun

Jawa’s and Weapons

  • Jawa’s have two named weapons:
    • The Dark Side has Jawa Blaster
    • The Light Side has Jawa Ion Gun
  • While the Ligh Side weapon is not very helpful in a battle, the Dark Side weapon can be effective against Light Side Jawas as most Jawas have an defense of 1 or 2.
  • For effecitve weapon based games, look to deploy a generic blaster on an Offworld Jawa or a Crimson Dawn Blaster on an Alien Mob.

Effects

  • No significant effort has been made to ban any effects.
  • There will be many effects which have no use as there are only Jawas in this game.

Political Effects

  • Political Effects require senators.
  • There are no Jawa senators, so these are useless and thus on the forbidden list.

Dark Side: Inconsequential Losses, Quick Reflexes, Crossfire, You’ll Be Dead, 2 and Jawa Blasters

  • Jawa Blasters deploy for free.
  • Crossfire adds 5 to your total power when you fire two blasters during a battle.
  • Inconsequential Losses allows a weapon to be lost instead to satisfy damage and/or attrition.
  • Quick Reflexes allows the Jawa Blaster to later be retrieved from the lost pile.
  • You’ll Be Dead allows you to do ping damage to any battleground site your Jawas control while holding a Jawa Blaster.

Interrupts

  • No significant effort has been made to ban any Interrupts.
  • There will be many effects which have no use as there are only Jawas in this game.

Activating Light Side force for use by the Dark Side

  • The problem with Jawas is that they require force from both sides of the table.
  • You Swindled Me can be a decent way to get your opponent to activate force for you to use in deploying your Jawas.

Moving Jawas around

  • Consider using an effect like Elis Helrot to move Jawas for a sneak attack, to protect them when you know a battle is coming, or to send them on their merry way to the other side of the galaxy.
categories: swccg |