Quartett Spiel: Vintage German Star Wars Cards

Getting these vintage German Star Wars cards in the mail (and it was a complete surprise: the story's here) was like Doc Brown coming by and saying, "Hey, the flux capacitor's warmed up, you want to hit 1978 for a few?"

It's a 32-card set (33 counting that awesome "title" card) of playing cards, only instead of four suits of 13 cards each, there are eight four-card groups. (From a quick and partial Google translation of the directions, I think it's your standard "draw and assemble the sets" sort of game.") Seen in order, the numbered sets progress through the movie scenes. Cards 1A, 1B,1C and 1D, for instance, make up the "Die Rebellen" quartet, starting with the Star Destroyer from the opening scene, and finishing with Darth Vader confronting Princess Leia. Then there's the "Auf Tatooine" set, 2A-2D, followed by "Luke Skywalker", "Der letzte Jedi", (I love that one!) "Im Weltraum (in space)", "Der Todesstern (the Death Star)", "Showdown", and "Der Sieg (the victorious)."

The smaller but seemingly more-colorful pictures and the load of text beneath each one were just like I remembered, and I also remember thinking it was cool that they chose to include a Ralph McQuarrie concept painting of the Death Star trench battle.

Check out the whole photo gallery in this Associated Content slideshow!