With this edition of “How That Works,” I’ll be taking it back to the basics for new players, and even experienced players that may not realize they were doing something out of order. For instance, for the longest time, I would roll to see who got the highest total before we would mulligan. No one is immune from making mistakes, and no one ever pointed it out to me either.
Setup is something you will have to run through each and every game. It’s fairly straight forward once you’ve done it a couple times.
1. Deck Setup
Each player should count their deck of cards to ensure there are 30 cards in each deck. If it’s a tournament, there may be random checks to ensure the correctness of a deck, meaning, making sure there are no villain cards in a hero deck, etc. It’s also important to note, that in a tournament setting, if there are any illegal cards found in your deck, you will receive an automatic loss. If you cannot find an appropriate replacement, then you would be removed from the event.
2. Characters and Battlefield
Place your characters and battlefield face up in front of you, with the corresponding character dice on their character cards.
3. Draw and Mulligan
Shuffle your deck, and allow your opponent to cut your deck, if they choose to do so, then draw 5 cards from the top. You are allowed to mulligan (discard and redraw) up to 5 cards, or keep all of your original cards if you wish.
When choosing to mulligan, each opponent should choose which cards to discard simultaneously. To mulligan, discard the cards you don’t want from your hand, shuffle them back into your deck, and allow your opponent to cut the deck once more, if they choose, and then draw back up to 5.
4. Determining First Player
Proceed to grab and roll all of your character dice. The player with the highest combined value showing is allowed to choose the battlefield. Specials and blanks count as 0.
If you win the roll, you choose which battlefield to take control of. This doesn’t count as claiming, so you don’t get any of the battlefield bonuses on the first selection. If you choose your own battlefield, your opponent then gets 2 shields to distribute as they wish among their characters, this does not trigger any character effects. If you choose their battlefield, you then get to distribute 2 shields as you wish, again, not triggering any effects. Whoever’s battlefield is chosen plays first.
The same would apply if your opponent wins the roll off.
5. Taking Resources
Each player takes two resources.
Then it’s off to the races!
You may refer to pg. 13 of the rules reference for setup information.
Next Time
A breakdown of each die face, and how to resolve them.
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You say in step 3 that you should allow your opponent to cut your deck after you’ve shuffled it. I think it’s important to clarify that while this is part of the game set up in the tournament rules for SW:D it is not in the main game set up instructions that you’ve linked to here and this could cause confusion for players using this resource.