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Collectable Card Game

Star Wars Destiny vs. Star Wars Unlimited – The Battle of Star Wars CCG’s

I get a lot of questions from readers. Some are wild, some are insightful, and some are just thinly veiled excuses to argue about dice rolls. But none show up in my inbox more often than this one:

“Which is better, Star Wars: Destiny or Star Wars: Unlimited?”

Honestly, it’s such a common question that I feel like Obi-Wan being asked for the millionth time if the Force can help you win at sabacc. So fine. Today, we settle this. Lightsabers down, cards up, let’s talk Destiny vs. Unlimited.

Now, if we’re going strictly by canon, this fight is already over. Destiny was discontinued back in January 2020 with its swan song set, Covert Missions. Unlimited, on the other hand, is still very much alive, kicking, and racking up wins like a young Luke Skywalker.

I was sad to see Destiny get discontinued, but I was not terribly surprised by it. The game had a lot of business issues related to supply, and it was way too expensive.

But here’s the thing: every CCG veteran knows that just because something is “out of print” doesn’t mean it’s “out of the fight.” If history has taught us anything (besides never betting against Han in a tight spot), it’s that the old guard sometimes outshines the flashy new kid on the block.

Case in point: Legend of the Five Rings. The AEG original ran for a glorious twenty years, shaping stories, tournaments, and countless arguments about clan honor. The Fantasy Flight reboot barely limped to four years before being retired. By any metric, the classic run was the true Shogun of Rokugan.

Legend of the Five Rings was a complex and deep CCG with a dedicated following, an awesome community, and a very long history. I loved this game; one of my biggest regrets in life was selling off my collection many moons ago. What a fool I am!

But I digress. We’re not here to talk samurai, we’re here for blasters and dice. So let’s buckle in and jump to lightspeed: it’s Destiny vs. Unlimited, once and for all.

What Makes A CCG “good”

Before we can really pit these two games against each other, let’s get our bearings and talk about what actually makes a good CCG. I mean, sure, flashy art and cool tokens are nice, but if that’s all it took, every holochess set on the Millennium Falcon would be tournament-ready. In my book, there are three pillars that matter most.

First: the mechanics have to be balanced. No single meta should be the Death Star of the game, capable of blowing up entire tournaments just by existing. Winning and losing needs to happen on the battlefield (or playmat), not in the deckbuilding phase where whoever owns the shiniest, rarest card automatically wins.

Second: theme matters, a lot. Especially when we’re talking about a galaxy far, far away. If Jar Jar Binks somehow outmuscles Darth Vader in combat, then we’ve veered straight into “special edition” nonsense. A good CCG should feel like the universe it’s set in, so that both fans and players are immersed in the same story.

Third, and maybe most important: publisher support. Sets need to release on a steady cadence, playtesting has to be tighter than a stormtrooper’s helmet, and the collectible element has to actually feel… collectible. Publishers can’t be afraid to step in with bans, errata, or even mid-course corrections when something breaks the game. And when they do mess up (because they will mess up), they’ve got to fix it faster than the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel Run.

Now, sure, there are other things that make a great CCG, but without these three, the whole enterprise collapses. Get these wrong, and no amount of flashy marketing or movie tie-ins will save you.

Alright, let’s talk Destiny for a minute.

Back in April 2018, I wrote a review for Star Wars Destiny where I boldly proclaimed:

“The robust nature of CCGs combined with FFG’s commitment to the product means this game likely has a long and bright future ahead of it.”

Yeah… about that. Let’s just say that prediction aged about as well as Anakin’s relationship with sand.

The truth is, Destiny never really hit hyperspace on any of the three pillars that make a CCG thrive.

Balance – The game looked balanced at first, but cracks started showing up after the first set. These balance issues piled up, whole metas dominated by a handful of characters or combos by the 3rd set. By the end, they would have had to ban entire card types to straighten out the game. It was quite broken in the end.

Theme – They nailed the Star Wars feel, no argument there. Rolling those chunky dice and throwing Darth Vader into the fray felt amazing. But mechanically, a lot of cards just did variations of the same thing, and after the initial hype, the design space started to feel cramped. It was like being promised a galaxy of possibilities and then realizing most of the planets were just Tatooine with a different filter. By the 3rd set, you had dozens of cards that all did things so similar they were practically the same card, and the costs of cards could vary drastically, and rarely did any of it make thematic sense.

Publisher support – FFG wanted to back Destiny; you could sense that they thought they had a big winner on their hands, but the Force wasn’t with them on logistics. Supply shortages, constant delays, and radio silence for excessively long periods meant the community spent more hours speculating on forums than actually playing. By the time new sets arrived, the hype had often fizzled.

Here’s the thing: when Awakenings dropped, Destiny felt incredible. It had that fresh, lightsaber-sharp energy, and it was easy to see why so many of us believed it had a long future. But by the second and third sets, the cracks had become death-star-sized.

The final set of Destiny illustrates one of the key problems of the game: an inflexible design space. They ran out of ideas way too soon, and the games different sets became quite indistinguishable from each other. For the most part, they started to feel very repetitive.

And just to twist the vibroblade a little deeper, Destiny was stupidly expensive. Even by CCG standards, it was pretty ridiculous with a tough entry point for new players. If you wanted to be competitive, your wallet felt it. Big time.

Don’t get me wrong: I still love Destiny despite it all. I’ll happily crack it out for a casual game, and it’ll always have a special spot in my collection. It really is a one of a kind, a true diamond with rough edges.

As a long-term product, I don’t think there was much hope. This game pulled a Boba Fett, awesome in its debut, but swallowed by the Sarlacc pit way too soon.

Star Wars Unlimited

Star Wars: Unlimited landed in March 2024 with all the pomp and circumstance of a new Imperial Star Destroyer sliding out of drydock. The hype was real, the launch was smooth, and yes, it came from the same publisher that once gave us Destiny. Déjà vu, anyone?

But here’s the difference: Unlimited actually nailed the three pillars of CCG success. No gimmicky dice, no fiddly side mechanics, just a straight-up, classic collectible card game. FFG followed a tried-and-true model like they had a copy of The Jedi Path propped open on the table.

The result is a well-balanced, well-supported game that wears the Star Wars theme like a perfectly tailored robe. Every detail feels polished, every release has hit its mark, and the game hums along with the confidence of a Jedi Master. By all practical measures, Unlimited is CCG perfection.

Star Wars Unlimited knows its audience. If you are going to launch a starter set for a Star Wars Game, your opening play is a duel between the two most famous characters in the setting. This was a fantastic starter set, even if you don’t plan to collect Unlimited, its worth getting. It’s that good!

And yet… here’s where the holocron cracks. For all its precision, Unlimited doesn’t really have that wild spark of uniqueness that sets it apart in any way. There are no dice rolling across the table, no risky design choices, no “wow” factor that makes you stop and say, THIS is what makes this game special. Instead, it feels like Magic: The Gathering, just dressed in Star Wars robes.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic design. I enjoy it, I collect it, and I’ll happily sit down for a game when the opportunity arises. But I don’t wake up at night plotting new deck builds like I did with Destiny or find myself agonizing over deck-building problems like in Lord of the Rings LCG. Unlimited is a reliable, polished, and thoroughly fun game, but it doesn’t break the mold in any way; in fact, it’s using the most traditional CCG mold there is.

Destinity vs. Unlimited

Alright, the cards are on the table, the dice have been rolled, and the time has come to declare a winner.

And the winner is… Star Wars: Destiny!

Now, hear me out. The logic is simple: if I’m reaching for a game right now, between these two, Destiny is the one I grab.

It’s flawed, no one’s denying that. But it’s also unique, risky, and downright fun. Destiny brought something to the table that no other CCG did: dice. Rolling those chunky, shiny dice, seeing what the Force decides… it’s unpredictable, it’s exciting, and it’s exactly the kind of chaos a Star Wars game should embrace.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Unlimited. It’s polished, dependable, and a joy to play. This isn’t a duel to the death between two CCGs, I’ve got at least a dozen on my shelf, and there’s room in this galaxy for all of them.

When I reach for a CCG, I want something special. Something that separates it from the cookie-cutter card games that populate the universe. Destiny has that spark, Unlimited I don’t thing does. There have been plenty of games like Unlimited, but there’s never been anything like Star Wars Destiny before, and there hasn’t been anything like it since. One of a kind. Risky. A little chaotic. That’s why, in my book, Destiny still rules the galaxy.

Best of List

Top 10 Collectable Card Games Of All Time

In the early 80’s there were three games that really defined what would become the tabletop gaming hobby. Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer 40k, and Magic The Gathering. Magic The Gathering of course is the grandaddy of collectible card games but fast forward over 40 years later and CCG’s have become a sub-hobby all on their own.

I don’t talk about CCG’s very often but in the last decade, CCG’s have gone through something of a renaissance and with each new CCG that has come out, the genre is making leaps and bounds for the better.

In today’s list, I will pick my top 10 collectible card games from the awesome past to the wonderful present. Enjoy the list!

10. Legend Of The Five Rings (1st edition)

Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition by Alderace Entertainment falls into what I like to call the “Hardcore CCGs” category from the 90’s . This was a fairly robust game from a robust gaming era that was very heavy on the theme and backstory and for fans out there, it wasn’t just a card game but much like other early CCG’s like Magic The Gathering, Legend of the Five Rings was a lifestyle game.

I think what separated LotFR from other LCG’s was that it was part of a multifaceted franchise that covered gaming as part of a spectrum. You had Legend of the Five Rings RPG which in the 90’s was competing against heavy hitters like D&D and Vampire The Masquerade. You also had a miniature game line called Clan War which competed against the Gameswork shop heavy hitters like Warhammer Fantasy. Finally, you had a huge library of novels dedicated to the story of this amazing game world, books which when released coincided with card set releases so that when you read a book about a certain part of the history of the game, you then got to play it out in the card game.

Unfortunately despite very modest economic success, Legend of the Five Rings in all its forms was never terribly popular and never reached anything beyond its extremely niche audience.

Fantasy Flight Games picked up the rights to the Legend of the Five Rings and revised the game in a second edition, but this too saw only minimal success and ultimately faded out of existence rather quickly.

This game was made for fans and it catered very heavily to this niche audience. In my humble opinion, this is one of the all-time classics that rightfully deserves to be on this list even if it’s at the tail end. It is an amazingly rich and complex game with tons of great lore to support it and without question, some of the best art ever put on a gaming card. Awesome, albeit retired CCG.

9. Magic The Gathering

I was hesitant to put this one on the list at all because I could file a 500-page novel worth of complaints about it, its design, the company that runs it, and the endless stream of bullshit that makes this a game I have no desire to play at all.

Still, there was a time when I lived and breathed magic and it wasn’t a short time, most of the 90’s by my estimation. Like other games from the 90’s Magic The Gathering was a lifestyle game and equally as all games in the 90’s, it was mostly broken as fuck!

Yet, Magic The Gathering endures and by all accounts it’s still one of the most popular CCG’s on the market today and this has been so since its inception. No CCG ever has nor likely will come even within a light year of the success Magic The Gathering has seen. Magic The Gathering sells more cards in a year than all other CCG’s combined sell in a decade. In a word, there is no such thing as “competition” when it comes to market share, Magic The Gathering rules undisputed.

How? Why? It’s a good question. Mechanically Magic The Gathering has a lot of design flaws that would never be put into a game today. It’s a game where you can build a legal tournament deck in which you can win a match before your opponent ever gets a turn to play. You can build decks that spawn an infinite number of monsters, or do an infinite amount of damage. The amount of stupid shit in this game is endless but I think the reason people like it and perhaps rightfully so is not despite these things but because of them.

There is something uniquely clever to a game that has so much depth and interaction, that if you study it long and hard, you can completely unravel it.

I crap on it, but it is the granddaddy of CCG’s and this list would be incomplete if I did not put it on the list so here it is, but frankly, I can think of a 100 CCG’s I rather play than Magic The Gathering. It does however have its charm, I can’t deny that of all the games on this list, I have played Magic The Gathering the most and so its place in CCG history and this list is secured.

8. Vampire Eternal Struggle

Vampire Eternal Struggle is to me, everything you think you want to have in a great CCG, which results in an overcooked game to a point where the game is nearly unplayable. Its a effectively a game that appears to be designed by Vampire The Masquerade fans that kind of don’t know what they are doing, but fully understand what a Vampire The Masquerade CCG should feel like, if that makes any sense. This was not all that unusual for a card game in the 90’s, making stupidly complex card games was kind of a thing back then, but even so far as complex CCG’s go, Vampire Eternal Struggle stretched the definition.

This was a game that could take upwards of 3-4+ hours to finish a single match, there was a ridiculous amount of rules weight and card interaction and in a lot of ways it mimicked the obscene level of detail that was customary in The Vampire The Masquerade RPG.

As overcooked as it was, however, there was true magic in the way the game executed because it did what White-Wolf RPGs were famous for which was to tell an amazing story. This was a game that even though I haven’t played it for 20 years, I still remember specific matches I had. All-nighters where me and a couple of friends effectively created our own little micro-universe for an evening in the world of darkness.

It was a unique game in a couple of ways. First and foremost it was best played in multiplayer, rather than head-to-head which separated it from most of the CCG’s out there that had modes for multiplayer but weren’t designed for it. The second thing was that you had this amazing world of darkness behind it, a setting so fleshed out and so recognizable to fans that each card had impact and meaning that went well beyond anything you would expect to be able to put into a card. Above all else, however, it was a brutish and harsh – take that – kind of a game, with ruthless mechanics that brought a lot of emotion and player interaction that went well beyond the mechanics of the game, much like the RPG on which it’s based.

This was a fantastic CCG and recently the game was revised and reprinted so it is still very much available today for people to explore. I would caution however that this is a game made for Vampire The Masquerade fans, by Vampire The Masquerade fans. If you don’t know what that is and why it’s awesome, this game is definitly not for you, if you do, you probobly already know about this game and don’t need me to tell you how awesome it is.

7. Arkham Horror LCG

Arkham Horror the card game was released by Fantasy Flight Games in 2016 during a period when FFG was producing CCG’s under the Living Card Game strategy where rather than having random booster packs, you would have pre-constructed expansions. It was also not a competitive card game but rather a cooperative card game in which players would effectively go around a dynamically constructed game board based on a location and solve mysterious while fighting monsters using decks they built.

I own and love this game, I actually think it’s pretty fantastic but generally speaking I also think it has one major flaw which is that it’s a cooperative game where once you complete a “quest”, it’s a bit like a legacy game where a lot of the hype and excitement disappears and the game starts feeling like your watching a scrooby-doo re-runs.

The format just lacks sustainability and while I still love picking this game up every long once in a while and playing a few rounds, it lacks freshness unless you are constantly buying the latest expansions. I did that for a while until I realized that I would effectively play each expansion once and then never go back to it because I knew the story, I knew the mystery, I had figured it all out.

It’s a very fun game mechanically but it almost feels like it would have done a lot better if the “quest” creation was turned over to the community and the game was a digital card game rather than a physical one. If you had an endless stream of new challenges that you could play on a daily or weekly basis, I think the game would have a lot more longevity.

Needless to say, even with this one flaw, I think this is a brilliant game and deserves to be on this list.

6. Warhammer 40k Conquest

I have to admit I only played this game a few times and never actually bought into it and there is good reason for it, but still the few times I played it, it made a big impact on me and I always think of it whenever the subject of CCG’s comes up. Like Arkham Horror this was one of many Fantasy Flights LCG’s (Living Card Games), but it was a 2 player competitive game. I think this is one of the most underrated competitive card games out there today.

The theme and franchise appreciation here is important as the card game and the cards themselves capture the Warhammer 40k universe perfectly but what I think really made this game stand out is that the interaction and speed of play was balanced perfectly. It’s a tight game where players are making impactful decisions with each card play and games are almost always definined by decision rather than deck or card draw, it really is a game of pure strategy and I think that is actually kind of rare in card games. Most CCG’s are defined by deck building as much as strategy but this one is one of those games where what deck you played mattered considerably less than what you do with it at the table.

Above and beyond that however I think the asymetrical factions really shine here, each faction had its own thing going on and FFG made sure every faction of the 40k universe was covered before the game went end of life so its a self contained and very complete feeling card game set. The fact that it went out of print and is no longer supported doesn’t matter and thankfully they printed so much of this game its actually quite easy and cheap to get a hold of a complete collection.

Really fun game, I think this is still well worth getting today even if its out of print. Just a very good, self contained, head to head experience built around an awesome franchise and a great theme. A game made for 40k fans.

The only reason I have personally never bought into is that in my gaming group, at the time, we had a lot of stuff going on gaming wise and it was a rare situation where economically I had to make some tough calls. I regret that, I wished I owned the entire set and plan to some day soon purchase it for my collection.

5. Star Wars Destiny

Heading into the top 5 on my list, it would be criminal to exclude Star Wars Destiny, without question one of the best Star Wars franchise CCG’s ever produced. It suffered from a rather poor business model and went extinct rather quickly, which was a real bummer, but it remains in my collection and I’m to this day always ready to pull it out and play.

This CCG is quite unique in that it uses dice as part of the card play mechanic and it also makes use of a very tight deck which makes deck building a really light element of the game which is great for beginners. That said, I actually think the nuance of this game is difficult to grasp and many veteran card players felt the luck element of this built in dice mechanic made it a less competitive experience. That might or might not have been true, but to me, competitive is not a reason to or not to play a game, I think as long as the game is fun, that is all the juice it needs. Destinty was certainly that.

I think Fantasy Flight Games should have stuck to their LCG model for this game because one of the things that really killed this game is the fact that you often needed 2-3 cards (with coinciding dice) in order to make a certain card playable, this was especially true about heroe’s so what you ended up with is a lot of cards and dice that you really couldn’t put in a deck and remain reasonably balanced for the general power level of the game. This mixed in with the fact that most of the hero/villain cards where uncommon and rares, made collecting the right cards a pain in the ass and more a frustrating than fun experience.

In the end FFG also had a lot of trouble balancing this game and their were quite a few broken and OP cards as well as a lot of junk cards you would never use for any reason. I’m not sure if the issue was with a lack of testing or what but at the end of the day the game did have a few issues.

Nonetheless, I consider this one of the all-time great CCG’s, just a super fun, tight little game that was very approachable albeit probably one of the most expensive to collect, in particular if you were going for competitive play. These days you can still find it in bargain bins and I say it’s still well worth getting a collection going.

4. Android Netrunner

Netrunner is a unique entry on this list for two reasons. First, it’s the only game on the list that is truly asymmetrical, yet managed to be a well-balanced competitive one on one CCG. I can’t think of any card game in the history of card games that does this, it’s a white elephant in this regard. Secondly, this is the only game in the history of card games that I can think of that died at what I would consider to be the height of its success. Quite literally this game got better and better with each expansion and when it was cancelled they had released what I would consider to be the best expansion ever released for the game. How and why it was discontinued is just a complete mystery to me.

The wonderful thing about Android Netrunner was that it was one of those rare cases in which deck building, while important, was not the defining factor for victory. How you used your cards, how you approached each match and your knowledge of the game had far more impact than the strength of your deck. More importantly, it was about the fairest playing field in a CCG ever put out mainly because, like most Fantasy Flight Games of this era, it was a living card game so everyone was building decks from the same set.

I played this game exclusively with the same opponent for several years online using tabletop simulator so I never actually purchased a single card, but I consider those games to be among the card gaming experiences I ever had.

This is an auto-buy in my book, one of the best card games ever made with some of the best card art ever printed.

3. Game of Thrones The Card Game (2nd Edition)

We are now reaching what I consider to be the creme de la creme of card games. Game of Thrones the card game is without a doubt the king of multiplayer games, one that captures its theme with perfection both mechanically and visually.

I love this game, but like many CCG’s I’m a dabbler rather than a committer, but this is more a result of economic self-preservation than anything else. There are many collectible games out there, I buy into and pay obscene prices for many of them, and at the end of the day you have to make some hard choices, one can’t expect to be able to buy into everything.

That said I have friends who went ape shit and we have more than enough cards in the gaming group for us to have an occasional crack at this one and I consider any such opportunity an absolute pleasure.

This is a fantastic CCG that captures the momentum of the Song of Ice and Fire story, ensuring that characters are at the heart of the game, with thematic powers that result in play resolutions that truly tells a Game of Thrones story.

Of all the games I recommend on this list, this one comes without caveats, even if you are not a Game of Thrones fan, this is such a great card game that even without the appreciation of the theme, this is a great design. Good games like this come along only once in a while and they are not to be missed, this is an auto-buy in my opinion for card lovers.

2. Star Wars Unlimited

Star Wars Unlimited dropped like Thor’s hammer into the CCG scene, stealing the show and proving that there is plenty of fresh ideas and new life left to bring to the genre. This is without question my new love. I never thought anything quite as good as Star Wars Destiny would ever come around again and bring Star Wars to the CCG table top, but I was wrong, Star Wars Unlimited is perfection personified.

As of this writing, only the initial core set for the game has been launched with the first expansion only 24 hours away as of this writing, so it’s hard to predict the game’s future. That said, the first release was absolutely perfect blend of deck building, competitive play and precision design. This game is so good and I know I’m not the only one who thinks so because it is absolutely impossible to purchase unless you pre-order and anything that is in stock in seconds after it drops. It’s that good.

I will never proclaim a Magic The Gathering killer, because I don’t think any such thing will ever come along, but Star Wars Unlimited is objectively a superior game to Magic The Gathering in every measurable way, yet has the same addictive deck-building quality and card interaction that made MTG such a landmark game.

I don’t care who you are if you are not playing Star Wars Unlimited, you are missing out on the single best competitive CCG ever made by a massive margin, there is absolutely nothing in the same league with this game. It’s a modern masterpiece.

1. Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game

I will be the first to admit that Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game is a personal taste thing more than a perfectly designed game. This is my number-one choice, not THE number-one game. That honor goes to Star Wars Unlimited. Still, with that said, I love this game above all others for a single, indisputable reason and that is that it captures Middle Earth with such perfection, such epic scale and so much thematic joy through its gameplay and art that I honestly could not bare to ever put any CCG above this one. It’s not just the perfect CCG, its a perfect game.

Like most Fantasy Flight Games, this is a game from the Living Card Era which I think is perfect for a cooperative deck-building game. For me the reason I love this game so much is that it’s every bit as good playing solo as it is playing in a group. Its perfect with experience CCG players and complete newbies who have never played a card game before. Its scalable with quests that take 15 minutes to epic sagas that take weeks to complete. It has deep, strategic deck-building elements or can be used with default theme decks. In a word, every conceivable gaming situation you have, it has you covered.

Love this game, there is nothing in the world of tabletop gaming I can recommend more than Lord of the Rings the Living Card Game. It’s perfect.