I'm definitely super excited at the fact that this game is coming out.  I love the LoTR LCG and the co-op/solo play, but now the Star Wars universe too!  I can't wait.  I think the fact that there are not only cahracters and items, but ships too will make the dynamic of the game much different.

Snibe said:

Indeed. And the Death Star. We mustn't discount that. Sauron never had the destructive capacity to explode Middle-earth, much as he may have wanted to. Oh, maybe it will be possible to save Alderaan from its awful fate, if we play our cards right!

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Above is a link to a review of the Gencon demo, if FFG's bizarre forum system copied my link right.  

There are definitely some LotR-esque rules, but the way you do everything is very different (drawing cards, gaining resources, attacking, defending, etc.).  Making progress seems to work the same way but happens toward the end of the round instead of right before everything goes down, thankfully.

Apart from one or two things which I think a pretty unavoidable in this sort of game such as the encounter deck and the bad guys will engage you this sounds nothing like LOTR  And it looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. Very much looking forward to this game and I'm loving the artwork.

 Thank you for the link, Adam! 

There is also this post from Nerdcore in the AGoT forum.

I played the Star Wars LCG demo at Gencon today, and while it is fun (You're running missions against a timer and an ever increasing Imperial Presence), the big complaint I heard from people was that it is a rebel-only game. The Imperials are all AI, though hopefully they'll expand to either have a competitive mode (The Strategy cards seem easily replaced by a human), it was a let down that you could only be a rebel.

Hopefully with as early along in the design as it is, they'll get it a competitive mode, but it's extremely entertaining as a cooperative.

Thanks Adam!  Amazingly, once an actual description of the gameplay was available, I only saw one person on the BGG thread throwing out the ol' "This clearly just a clone of LotR" line. 

PWBrian said:

I know, huh.  Maybe judging a game before you know hardly anything about it whatsoever isn't such a great idea after all.

Not gonna stop any of us here though. =)

As long as the mission deck allows more replay value than LotR does I will be happy with this game. I have already decided to not get LotR so this will get at least some of my money assuming the missions can be replayed unlike LotR.

PWBrian said:

You should look again, there's at least one other person who still feels it's very similar to LotR (and WH:I)

I'll believe that it's really _significantly_ different from LotR after I've played it. I didn't get the impression that the guy who wrote the BGG report knows LotR very well.

I don't have the spare cash to invest in three LCGs anyway, so it'll be two out of three for me: If I like Star Wars better than either CoC or LotR, then one of the latter will have to go.

Then again maybe I'll find someone else to buy the cards, allowing me to play it regularly without investing any money

He seemed to know Star Wars well enough to inform us.  The set up is different.  The resource system is different.  The draw system is different.  The zone concept is new.  The space combat is obviously new.  Battle resolve differently.  The AI works differently.  Questing's equivalent seems to work similarly but in a significantly different place in the turn order, and only against certain random zones.  The enemy has a separate strategy deck.  Seems pretty different to me in every way possible.

But maybe not to everyone!  And yea, I'd like someone else to buy the cards for me, too, haha.

The missions seem too similar and that is the problem with LotR, hopefully time and the rules will prove me wrong. I will at least buy the core set for sure.