Hello fellow card players. I recently bought this game for me and my architect buddy, and the directions don't seem to provide enough understanding. Can somebody please help us get going because we really want to play and understand this cool game.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/media/SWLCG/SW_LCG_tutorial.swf

Rule book is really good but if that fails you watch the tutorial video on the games support page. I posted the link above. 

Agree here. The video tutorials are what I watched to get a pulse on the game.

Agreeed with the above, though none of us are "official" rules guys for the game, there are a few guys here that have a very good grasp of the game, (dbmeboy, Toq and ScottieATF to name a few).

There are also a few players that have blogs up that you can visit to give you tips on builds and some more detail on the mechanics that are very helpful.

Thanks. I have watched some vids on youtube. Helped alot, but I still don't fully understand shields. Can one player put shields on another players cards for a certain reason? How do shields actually work?

NerdRulez said:

I think I answered your question about how shields work on your other thread, but I'll cover your other question here.

There are ways that you could put shields on an opponents card if you wanted to.  You cannot do it with the shielding keyword because the full rules for shielding (found on pg 25) specify that it must be a friendly unit or objective.  However, other cards which place shield tokens are not restricted to targeting friendly units unless they specifically say so.  For instance, the card Our Most Desperate Hour can be used to place a shield token on any Character unit, even your opponent's character.