Star Wars CCG
Decipher's black-bordered Star Wars card game, built from actual movie stills instead of new artwork. One player took the Light Side, the other the Dark Side, and you dueled over planets by draining each other's Force.
The Star Wars Customizable Card Game arrived from Decipher, Inc. in December 1995, just as collectible card games were exploding in the wake of Magic: The Gathering. Its signature look set it apart instantly: instead of commissioned fantasy art, the black-bordered cards used real photography from the original trilogy — grainy, atmospheric movie stills of Luke, Vader, stormtroopers, and starships. Designed by a team including Tom Braunlich and Rollie Tesh, it split the galaxy in two, with one player commanding the Light Side (the Rebels) and the other the Dark Side (the Empire).
The engine of the game was the Force. Players used a shared resource called the Force to deploy characters, activate locations, and — most memorably — 'Force Drain' opponents at contested planets, grinding down their reserves. It had a reputation for depth and complexity that rewarded serious players, and for a stretch it was genuinely huge: from 1995 to 1998 it trailed only Magic itself among collectible card games.
Decipher supported it with a steady stream of expansion sets — Premiere, A New Hope, Hoth, Cloud City, Jabba's Palace, Endor, and more — running all the way through the prequel era. The run ended when Decipher lost the Star Wars license at the end of 2001; production stopped that December and the rights passed to Wizards of the Coast, who launched a different Star Wars card game. Rather than let it die, the community formed a fan-run Players' Committee in January 2002 that has kept the game alive with tournaments and new virtual cards ever since — a devoted afterlife for the CCG that turned Star Wars into a photo album you could duel with.
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