Fantasy Flight has a pretty good track record with its Star Wars tabletop games, with two of them — X-Wing and Imperial Assault — in my crew’s regular rotation. They might soon be joined by a third.
Star Wars: Rebellion is a new game just announced by the company, and while the name and basic look may remind of a forgotten video game classic, this is trying to do its own thing.
Rebellion is a big ol’ strategy game of a different kind, combining…well, a bit of everything. There are heroes (who perform missions, like freeing Han from carbonite), political stuff, space battles, ground battles and 150 cool little plastic units to wage war with.
What’s intriguing me, though, is the complete asymmetrical nature of the game design. The Empire and Rebellion are not equally-matched: the Imperials have all the guns, so the Rebels have to race around the galaxy inspiring planets to rise up and staying alive, while trying to make quick, decisive strikes against the Empire.
Which is just like the movies, yes, but it’s great for game design, especially since this supports up to four players. It will be out Q1 2016.
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11 responses to “Great, Another Promising Star Wars Board Game”
Looks (and to a slightly lesser extent sounds) like Battlestar Galactica – the Board game I mean. Might have to have a look when it comes out, here’s hoping it’s a reasonable price…
Damn you fantasy flight games, getting me hooked on descent
As a player of Xwing, Armada and Imperial Assault; Fantasy Flight, you are ruthless bastards!
This actually sounds like an evolution of the video game. Man, I loved that game. It was my first online multiplayer experience! 🙂
It was a great game aside from the fact it was a bit too randomized. I was deep into the lore of Star Wars at the time and constantly got thrown out by the game because I’d go to planets that based off the setting should have certain resources and so on, but wouldn’t and it’d just feel wrong.
The greatest problem the rebels have is that their ships just dont look near as cool as the empire’s
X Wing’s over TIE Fighters but Star Destoyers over the rag tag rebel capital ships.
TIE Interceptors on the other hand are a different beast.
This looks really interesting and also like I don’t have to keep buying ships.
Sure I could play Armada with the ships in the box, but I would want 4 or 5 ships in the fleet, and enough fleets for a 3 vs 3 game. Essentially like the X Wing game I’d spend all the money.
You SHOULD play Armada.
In my experience it is a far more tactical, solid yet familiar game to X-Wing.
That and the models are nice (both rebs and imps!)
I look at Armada and see everything I love in a game, and the only thing that’s off putting is the cost. I also don’t think I’d be getting it out more than once every month or so. As I said I’d like to have a decent sized fleet, and I’d like to be able to have multiple players not just two. It’s a lot to spend to get there.
Yeah I am in the same boat.
I have forked out about 300 extra aside the core for expansions to allow my friends to play with a larger variety of ships.
I have a couple of friends who want to get into it, I just need to budge them a bit more to make the money sink.
Also, to be fair, the cost of the core is quite a bit more than Xwing but the amount you get in the box is well worth it.