Star Wars Rebellion- Not so Long Ago, In a Galaxy Nearby….
For a Star Wars geek, there is nothing like imagining you are in the cockpit of an X-wing, leading the attack on the Death Star, just like Luke in A New Hope. In the board game world, one of the games that comes as close as you can to that is Star Wars Rebellion. This is a BIG game, each play takes at least 3 hours, and possibly longer. It’s the kind of game that you reserve at least a half a day to play, so that’s just what my friend Matt and I did. Our first attempt started a bit too late, (8 PM) and I was just learning the game, so we decided to schedule it again for a later date. (and an earlier start time!)
Star Wars Rebellion has been described as Star Wars in a box. It is just that. It covers the material in the first trilogy of films, plus Rouge One, if you have that expansion, which in this case we did. In this two-player game, one player is the Empire, trying to chase the rebellion around the galaxy, desperately trying to root out the secret Rebel base, which is chosen by the Rebel player and hidden somewhere on the game board. All the while, the Empire is building massive super-weapons like the Death Star, and massive space ships like Victory-Class Star Destroyers and Interdictor cruisers (So, yeah, Star Wars geek here if you didn’t guess that already).
The Death Star Threatening Naboo
The Rebellion for this game is playing one large game of chicken. After they have established their Rebel Base from a deck of probe droid cards, they begin the process of harassing the empire by slowly accomplishing missions, completing objective cards, and completely avoiding conflict until they have built up the resources to take the fight to the Empire. All the while, the Rebellion is trying to keep the Empire from discovering their base, gaining support from unaligned star systems, and even sabotaging and flipping imperial supported systems to their cause!
Naboo Destroyed
The greatest thing about this game though, is the ability to tell your own story of the original trilogy. In both the aborted game, and the full game we played, Luke Skywalker never showed up. He just sat there on the sidelines while the rest of the Rebellion took on the Empire for themselves. People like Mon Mothma spread diplomacy through the galaxy, Jan Doddana led assaults on Imperial star-ships, and General Crix Madine led strike teams against factories and bases. In fact, no Jedi managed to show up, as Obi-Wan Kenobi also decided that Tatooine was just to nice a planet to leave, or that Luke was just too interested in Tosche Station and those power converters to be of much use. (I warned you there was a Star Wars geek here at Quackalope HQ)
Some of this could be explained by our use of the Rise of the Empire expansion for Rebellion. This expansion adds many characters form the movie Rouge One, so the added characters will by design lower the total number of people you are going to be seeing from game to game. That said, Rise of the Empire does add an enhanced set-up option to the game, as well as cinematic rules for combat, which is a welcome addition to the standard rules, and makes things much more exciting, or at least they did for me on my first play.
One of the great stories to arise out of our game involved Han Solo. He had just landed on the planet Saleucami looking to take out an Imperial garrison on the planet. It didn’t look like a hard job on the surface, just an AT-AT walker and a few storm troopers. Nothing the Airspeeders couldn’t handle. Then, through the haze of combat stood a lone horrifying figure, Darth Vader! Was he there on an inspection? Was he searching for the stolen Death Star plans? No matter. He was here now. That’s all that mattered. In the heat of the battle, Han landed the fatal shot! Somehow Vader missed the smuggler from across the battlefield, and in a moment of fatal distraction, the Dark Lord fell!
In terms of game-play, I had drawn a card that allowed me to have a confrontation with the leader that was assigned to the combat. It was pure happenstance that Matt had assigned Vader to the battle, and it was pure luck (and a little planning on my part) that allowed that to happen. Now, mind you, the game allowed Matt to get me back almost right away, where he had the Imperials feed a captive Princess Leia to a Sarlacc, and blow up Naboo, but that’s just a part of the beauty of the game, it allows you to tell so many different stories.
In the end, I was able to keep my Rebels one step ahead of the Empire, even having as my last play of the game be a massive space battle between Admiral Ackbar and Emperor Palpatine, where the Rebels blew up the Death Star. It took some doing, including an all-out evacuation of Tatooine, but in the end, the Rebellion proved triumphant. If you are a Star Wars geek, you owe it to yourself to try this game. If you’re like me and slightly hesitant to try a game this large and dice heavy, you should still give it a try. I had some trouble with how much die rolls control what you can do, but in the end the story options just made the game pop. If you want to get some Star Wars into your life, do yourself a favor, and take a trip to a galaxy far far away, conveniently located on your nearest (fairly large!) table.
