Star Wars Sabacc Deck and Game Design
Star Wars Sabacc Deck and Game Design
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Sabacc is a gambling game in the Star Wars universe. In advance of a trip with my wife
to the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser, I designed and printed a 62-card deck of Sabacc
cards and designed three non-gambling games to be played with that deck.
Professor Mela Bond enjoys a game of Kamino in the Sublight Lounge of the Chandrila Star Lines' Halcyon
Designing the Deck
Designing the Deck
In Star Wars lore, Sabacc is best known as the gambling game played by Han Solo and Lando Calrissian where Lando lost the Millennium Falcon to Han. Several versions have existed over the years with the first appearing in a West End Games roleplaying game supplement in 1989.
The official cards in Sabacc have changed many times over the years, with 76 cards in the most common deck. However, when Disney opened Galaxy's Edge and the Galactic Starcruiser in 2019, they premiered a new design for the game with a 62-card deck.
However, as seen in the above image of the official Galaxy's Edge deck above, none of the cards have a rank in the top-left corner, making it difficult to know the values of your cards when fanning your hand.
While my wife Melanie designed the clothing for our voyage on the Starcruiser, I set out to design a new deck of Sabacc that was more usable than the official deck and more similar in design to the classic 52-card deck used for many card games in the United States.
The cards were initially designed in OmniGraffle and then moved into Illustrator for final, precision clean-up and layout.
It took significant effort to find a printer who could both cut and print the cards without requiring nearly $500 to set up a cutting die, but eventually I found that AdMagic now has the ability to print custom-shaped playing cards. The test print of the cards had some concerning issues with the edges and alignment of the cut, but I was very pleased with the final version. The weathered appearance of the cards is a result of the dark colors on the backs of the cards rubbing off on the lighter card faces, which could be an issue in another context, but looks perfect in the context of Star Wars, and the cards have now lasted through hundreds of games.
Note: This is a personal, non-commercial project, and the illstrations on the Aces (i.e., 1 and -1 rank cards) in the deck were found on the internet and are not my creations.
Designing the Games
Designing the Games
Adapting the games from a 52-card deck (with 4 suits of 13 ranks + 2 Jokers) to the 62-card deck of Sabacc (with 3 suits of 20 ranks + 2 "Sylops") proved to be an extremely interesting undertaking. Though I initially had several ideas for the games based on the three suits (Circles, Triangles, and Squares), all three games that I completed are based exclusively on rank (the numbers -10 to 10) rather than suit. This converted the range of the cards from 3 suits of 20 ranks to 3 copies of 10 black (positive) cards and 3 copies of 10 red (negative) cards (+ 2 Sylops, one each of black and red).
The first prototype print of the deck can be seen in the image to the left. The torn card edges and other issues were not present in the final print.
Kamino
Kamino
A 2-3 player variation on the classic card game Casino where players take turns capturing cards from the table by playing a single card that sums to zero with one or more existing table cards. The name is based on the planet Kamino, where the Clone Army was created.
In the image, the player has a -10 (red), which sums the three cards on the table to equal zero ( -10 + 7 + 4 + -1 = 0), capturing all cards.
The Sylops (i.e., Joker) card is used in Kamino as a -1 multiplier to flip the value of any card, allowing for some very complex captures.
Of the three, this is the game that requires the most strategy, and it plays best as a 2-player game.
Death Star
Death Star
A circular form of Tri Peaks Solitaire where the player rushes to destroy one of three cards in the Death Star core before the draw deck runs out. The images to the right shows both the beginning and final stages of a game. The "target card" is shown atop the discard pile in the bottom-middle of each image.
In standard Tri Peaks Solitaire, the player can consecutively pick up any cards that are exactly one rank from the target card (e.g., if the target card is an Ace, the player could pick up any 2 or King). In Death Star, this is expanded to include the identical card of the opposite color, so if the target card is a red -2 as shown in the left image, the player could pick up a Red -1, Red -3, or Black +2 as the next card, opening up many possibilities for play.
Empire
Empire
A 2-6 player game with a similar feel to many domino games where players attempt to be the first to empty their hand of cards by adding them to a number of stacks and “bringing order to the galaxy.” It is themed as an Imperial game, with the players pulling cards from the mess of shuffled face-down cards in the middle called the "boneyard of pre-Imperial worlds."
The in-progress game to the left shows four stacks above the boneyard that progress from 10 down to 1 (or -10 to -1 for red cards) and four stacks below the boneyard that progress from 1 to 10 (-1 to -10 for red).
Like many domino games, this is an excellent game for sitting and talking to friends without having to spend too much time thinking about the rules, making a favorite of ours in small groups.
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