About game plus historical detail:

Star Wars: Rebellion is a board game of conflict between the Galactic Empire and Rebel Alliance for two to four players. I played two-opponents variant and it seems to me this is the most interesting option. In Rebellion, you control the entire Galactic Empire or the fledgling Rebel Alliance. You must command starships, account for troop movements, and rally systems to your cause. Given the differences between the Empire and Rebel Alliance, each side has distinct victory conditions, and you’ll need to adjust your play style depending on who you represent


The game is featuring more than 150 plastic miniatures – a true feast for mini-lovers – and has two game boards that account for thirty-two of the Star Wars galaxy’s most notable systems. With this we can safely say that Rebellion features a scope that is as large and sweeping as any Star Wars game before it.

Still, the game remains intensely personal, cinematic, and heroic. As much as your success depends upon the strength of your starships, vehicles, and troops, it depends upon the individual efforts of such notable characters as Leia Organa, Mon Mothma, Grand Moff Tarkin, and Emperor Palpatine. Plus a great deal of cunning, bluffing, forward planning and oftentimes – scarifying your forces. The secret missions your leaders may attempt will evoke many of the most inspiring moments from the classic trilogy – again, a very thematic element. You might send Luke Skywalker to receive Jedi training on Dagobah or have Darth Vader spring a trap that freezes Han Solo in carbonite.

Would you stand-up to the task and manage to prevail against odds, leading the Empire or Rebels to victory over the determined enemy forces?

Number of players:

For me personally this is truly great 2-player game. There is possibility to organize a session with 4 players but I do not see that so exciting as pure duel.

Playing time:

The initial games can take around 3 hours – of course, unless a sudden death will not happen and Empire quickly finds & crushes the Rebels. Long term, it should not take more than 2 hours.

Complexity:

The base game is not overly complex or complicated – a lot of additional possibilities and decisions will come from the components and what they allowing for. Of course, you need to account for two sets of different actions as this position is beautifully asymmetric!

What I like:
  • Theme & Star Wars background – I could not resist calling this out as one of the game key advantages. The full Star Wars saga with all the key personnel of initial Trilogy is here and adds so much needed background and chrome to the game. Of course, we have seen many games where the known title was the only good aspect, but here that is not the case.
  • Why? Because we are getting fantastically asymmetric title. In that game the player commanding Rebellion really has to have steel nerves, disregarding to some extent what is going on the map and meticulously working on reputation. On the other hand Empire tries to grow its forces ASAP and chase wherever possible the traces of insurgency.
  • How to achieve the victory – Now, that is a really neat mechanics which I appreciate highly. For Rebellion, the reputation starts at 14 and decreases each time they perform some valiant feats; turn marker starts of course at 1 and grows in traditional way – by one after each turn. When those both values meet, the game is finished in Rebellion victory. In theory, you could disregard the reputation at all and after 14 turns you win. But the Empire will then have plenty of time to find and destroy the revolutionary base – which in effect will give them the victory.
  • Components quality – while I am not special fan of miniatures, here they are really beautiful and very well add to the game theme. The detailed Death Star is one of many examples – FFG as always delivers best quality in that aspect.
What I do not like or would like to see in the game:
  • Maybe not a huge disadvantage, but with time the experienced players get huge advantage over newbies – also the game might become slightly repetitive. Fortunately, we have expansions which add so much to the title but this is for another article.
For whom?

First and foremost – surprise, surprise! – for the fans of Star Wars. Still, in this game the chrome connected with this franchise is not a cover, but a great addition to fantastic, tense and engaging mechanics!  

More about the game:

And now let us have a look at the components – all pictures from my actual games:

The empire attacks – The Death Star being the pinnacle of its technological advances.
The rebellion forces are growing with each turn but the true question is – where they are located?
One of our games I had pleasure to play with Kuba G. Very tense and this time my Rebels prevailed.

VERDICT:

The game is very interesting and have fantastic bluff mechanics. True, when playing Rebellion you need to immediately throw away any hopes for an even fight in the space and focus mainly on reputation and defenses of your base. Sometimes survival is more important than glory.  As Empire, you need to choose wisely your axis of advance and be careful with spreading your forces too thin. All in all, great asymmetric game which I highly recommend!