Star Wars Brings Dejarik to Life in New Board Game

A new version of the Star Wars game Dejarik is now available both at the Disney Store and at Disney theme parks. Yesterday, Disney began sales for the Galactic Archive Series version of Dejarik, the classic chess-like game first seen in Star Wars: A New Hope. While Disney had previously produced versions of Dejarik to sell at their parks, the new version comes with clear plastic pieces and a board that lights up, making the pieces look like holographic projections like in the movies. The new game set can be found on the Disney Store now. 

Dejarik, in Star Wars canon, is a holographic board game that dates back before the Clone Wars. The game consists of eight pieces, four controlled by each player, with the goal being to clear the board of opponent pieces. On a turn, players could either move their piece, attack another piece, or activate a special ability. The game notably featured the pieces fighting each other in holographic form. Most infamously, Chewbacca supposedly ripped off the arms of opponents who beat him, leading to the popular Star Wars quote "Let the Wookie win." Lucasfilm created rules for Dejarik, but never publicly released them. However, Disney released a version of the game for sale in 2019, which also included a checkers board on the flip side.

Disney has also notably has released a version of Sabaac, a card game found in the Star Wars universe. That game involves trying to play a hand that adds up to 23, although the game uses cards with holopatterns that shift unpredictably. Han Solo notably won the Millennium Falcon in a game of Sabaac from Lando Calrissian, with Solo: A Star Wars Story revealing that Solo had prevented Calrissian from cheating by stealing a hidden card.