The Bad Batch introduces a new card game to Star Wars

Star Wars: The Bad Batch has introduced a brand new card game to a galaxy far, far away. In-universe games have been part of the franchise ever since Chewbacca and R2-D2 played dejarik, also known as holochess, aboard the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope.

The card game sabacc has also made many appearances throughout the franchise, including the sabacc game where Han Solo and Lando Calrissian meet for the first the first time in Solo: A Star Wars Story.

According to StarWars.com, the new card game introduced in The Bad Batch Season 3, episode 4, "A Different Approach" is called balaans. Omega plays balaans against a Trandoshan and then against the Imperial Captain Mann to win enough credits to book passage offworld. Omega's skill at the game and her ability to "hustle" her opponents are nice callbacks to Omega and Cid playing dejarik together in Season 1.

The episode's trivia guide explains the rules of balaans: "The deck consists of five red and five blue number cards, as well as face cards consisting of two 'destroy,' two 'deflect,' two 'bluff,' two 'steal,' and four 'block' cards; the game includes the near-unbeatable hand called Three Eastern Stars."

With the Three Eastern Stars, Omega is able to beat Captain Mann at balaans. The trivia guide also reveals that a full round of the game between Omega and Captain Mann was shot, but it was cut down to the main moves for the sake of the episode's pacing.

The Bad Batch's production team created a complete rule set and the production team even playtested a few rounds. This level of detail is part of what makes Star Wars such a rich and fully realized universe.

Given Lando's penchant for gambling and card games, the Lando movie is a perfect place for balaans to make an appearance. Now that the game is part of the canon, it has the potential to be incorporated into nearly any movie, television series, video game, novel, short story, or comic. Perhaps it will even be turned into a real game that fans can one day purchase and play.