Many people get into games they love to play. But few people get to be a card in the game they are playing. When I asked Alistair Petrie, who played Imperial General Draven in Star Wars: Rogue One and Andor about his favorite card in Star Wars: Unlimited, he gave me, perhaps, the most obvious answer.
“When the team sort of said, oh, you’re a card in the game,” said Petrie, “that was well, obviously, I need to play that as fast as possible. Thankfully, they had several in front of me, which they were very sweet to allow me to sign for people, which was great,”
Petrie got a chance to learn and play Star Wars Unlimited as part of the game’s rollout of its latest expansion, Legends of the Force. This expansion introduces several Jedi, Sith and other masters of the mystical power in the Star Wars universe. Several cards have the Force trait which expands into the new mechanic for the set.
Certain cards within the set, such as bases, give the player a Force token when they are played or used. The player can spend the Force token to activate powerful special abilities on Jedi Masters and Sith Lord. It’s very challenging to resist saying “use the Force” in the tone of Obi-Wan Kenobi whenever it happens during a game.
The General Draven card appeared in the Jump to Lightspeed set. Appearing in the game is just another fascinating aspect of being a part of the Star Wars franchise. It also takes the actor back to when he was young and how playing games brought his family together.
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“My father was in the military,” said Petrie, “[So my] formative years were spent in the Middle East in Saudi Arabia, where my father was a pilot. Access to television was pretty minimal. If there were movies to be watched. It was sort of old school VHS or Betamax, which was sort of fairly hard to get hold of. You know, the great sort of global world of streaming in which we now live wasn’t really accessible. It was just my mother and father and me. Evenings were spent effectively playing all the traditional simple board games, which was sort of all I knew in a sense. I didn’t feel I was sort of missing out on some great world of a screen life that other people had. As a result, there [were] a lot of board games that we played and friends would come over and we would play.”
That early exposure to games stayed with Petrie throughout his life. It helped him make friends and build his community as an actor. Then, in the early 90s, he got a chance to play the forefather of collectable card games, Magic: The Gathering.
“When I was first in Los Angeles in about 1992 and my closest friend who I was living with had his brother-in-law and he had a friend and basically these people used to gather at the house and they would play Magic,” said Petrie. “I knew nothing about Magic. I’d heard of it, but it felt incredible. Sid, my great mate, played it as well as Dungeons and Dragons in his school days. I was sort of always intimidated by them because I thought I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know how to kind of join a game. I didn’t know where to access almost a beginner’s group, really. But the appeal was always there. Due to the gorgeous generosity of my closest friend, when this gathering arrived on Thursday evening at this house in Los Angeles I went along. They were so brilliantly patient with me and no question was too stupid. So I started to play, started to play magic and it felt very complicated, but equally they made it very accessible. And the thing that really struck me, like all board games, you have two, four, however many six people gathering around the table and playing and talking. Being part of something sort of collective that felt sort of inclusive, competitively, inclusive, if that makes sense. There was something, forgive the pun, inherently magic about that. It’s so beautifully focused and people gather together for this one specific purpose. It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about, it’s about the process of playing. I think there’s something rather wonderful in that.”
The cinematic nature of the game appealed to me most when I first started playing it. Like most of the sets, Legends of the Force draws across the many time periods and different media of Star Wars, from the films to the shows to the books and everything in between. It allows for all sorts of unexpected combinations, like Darth Maul facing off against Kylo Ren.
“What sort of pulls you,” said Petrie, “[is] you’re playing Star Wars Unlimited and there it is in front of you. But every other kind of legacy is sort of surrounding you like some kind of other visual effect. Your head is in that cloud while you play it. So it kind of comes to life. If you break it down to its constituent parts, it’s a map on a table anyway that you can play it pretty much anywhere because it’s so portable. That’s the other glorious thing about it. You roll it up. Couple of boxes in your bag, you’re done. You can take it. You can go anywhere with it. The epicness suddenly just unfolds before you as you literally just pop it on a crate.”
Later this month, the first ever Star Wars Unlimited Galactic Championship will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Venetian Resort. In addition to a tournament drawing the best players from around the world the event will feature experiences for players and Star Wars fans alike. They’ll be opportunities for trading, trying out new games and even photo ops with some of the most famous ships in the galaxy.
Star Wars Unlimited: Legends of the Force is available from Fantasy Flight Games, through online retailers and Friendly Local Gaming Stores. This interview has been edited for clarity.
