Star Wars: Rebellion

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

FFG's newest Star Wars licence was just announced.  It looks like a boardgame version of the 90s era PC game of the same name.

"The more you tighten your grasp, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
     –Leia Organa

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Star Wars™: Rebellion, the board game of epic conflict between the Galactic Empire and Rebel Alliance for two to four players!

Experience the Galactic Civil War like never before. 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. Featuring more than 150 plastic miniatures and two game boards that account for thirty-two of the Star Wars galaxy's most notable systems, Rebellion features a scope that is as large and sweeping as the Star Wars universe deserves.

Simultaneously, it is intensely personal, cinematic, and heroic. Your forces are led by iconic heroes or villains. Including such characters as Leia Organa™, Mon Mothma™, Grand Moff Tarkin™, and Emperor Palpatine™, these leaders and their individual talents drive everything you do. As civil war spreads throughout the galaxy, these leaders are invaluable to your efforts, and the secret missions they attempt will evoke many of the most inspiring moments from the classic trilogy. You might send Luke Skywalker™ to receive Jedi training on Dagobah™ or have Darth Vader™ spring a trap that freezes Han Solo™ in carbonite!



Ultimately, your games will span multiple star systems. Many fighters will be lost. Many troopers will fall. Planets will join the Rebellion before they are overrun by the Empire and subjugated. Imperial officers may capture Rebel spies and interrogate them for valuable information. A hotshot Rebel pilot may land a one-in-a-million shot against the Death Star™ and destroy it. In Rebellion, you and your friends decide the final fate of the galaxy. Will it remain under tyrannical rule, or will a select few manage to liberate it?

It Is a Period of Civil War

Rebellion packs an astonishing amount of the classic Star Wars trilogy into a relatively compact ruleset. Each game round encompasses just three phases, yet as you play through those phases, you will encounter massive fleet battles, desperate attempts at espionage, Jedi training, political maneuverings, and even the possibility to lure important Rebel heroes to the dark side of the Force.

One of the most important ways that Rebellion evokes the original trilogy is through its asymmetry. The Galactic Empire and Rebel Alliance are vastly different forces, and they come with different play styles and win conditions.

The Galactic Empire
As the Imperial player, you can command legions of Stormtroopers, swarms of TIE fighters, Star Destroyers, and even the Death Star. You rule the galaxy by fear, relying on the power of your massive military to enforce your will. To win the game, you need to snuff out the budding Rebel Alliance by finding its base and obliterating it. Along the way, you can subjugate worlds or even destroy them.

The Rebel Alliance
As the Rebel player, you can command dozens of troopers, T-47 airspeeders, Corellian corvettes, and fighter squadrons. However, these forces are no match for the Imperial military. In terms of raw strength, you will find yourself clearly overmatched from the very outset, so you need to rally the planets to join your cause and execute targeted military strikes to sabotage Imperial build yards and steal valuable intelligence. To win the Galactic Civil War, you need to sway the galaxy's citizens to your cause. If you survive long enough and strengthen your reputation, you inspire the galaxy to a full-scale revolt, and you win.

The game's asymmetry—and the distinctive feel of each faction's play style—extends beyond these differences, however, and into the very nature of the missions that either side can attempt, the projects the Imperial player can undertake, and the Rebel Alliance's military objectives. As the Rebel player, you might send your leaders to Establish Trade Relations or Incite Rebellion , but as the Imperial player you're more likely to keep the local systems in line with a Display of Power . Of course, you might simply tighten your security in order to capture Rebel leaders and then use them to lay your own traps, such as deploying a Homing Beacon .

 

As the Imperial player, you will even have the opportunity to eliminate entire worlds with your Death Star. But if you do, the Alliance may later be able to inspire sympathy among those who fear befalling a similar fate.

The result is that even as your missions, projects, and objectives help you shift the balance of power, they also immerse you more deeply into the mindset of the forces you are commanding, as well as the larger themes and conflicts of the classic Star Wars trilogy.

Keep the Local Systems in Line

While the focus of Rebellion is often on the iconic characters serving as your leaders, they are certainly not the only characters involved. In fact, your games are bound to affect the lives of billions of individuals spread throughout the galaxy. After all, it is the fate of the galaxy that is at stake in Rebellion, and that galaxy has a very real presence on your table.

Rebellion is played over two game boards that you place next to each other to form one play surface with thirty-two systems divided into eight regions. In your games, you will battle over these systems with capital ships, starfighters, troops, speeders, and walkers. You will attempt to win their people to your cause, and if you do, they will share their resources, allowing you to recruit more troops and build more vehicles and starships.

Accordingly, while Rebellion is in many ways a game about the critical changes a handful of individuals can affect, it is also a game about conquest, dominion, and logistics. As the Rebel player, you might expect to command a smaller military, but you cannot afford to fall further and further behind in the economic aspects of the war as the Empire secures the loyalty of entire regions and accelerates its production of Star Destroyers and AT-AT walkers.

The loyalties of the various systems are key to your ability to maintain a viable military force whether you are commanding the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire. Certainly, as the Imperial player, you will start with an imposing military advantage – one that the Rebels will be hard-pressed to overcome. Still, most of the galaxy's thirty-two systems can generate resources, and if the Alliance can win the loyalty of those systems to take advantage of their resources, then they may slowly be able to generate a fleet and a military that can stand toe-to-toe against those of the Imperial Navy.

For this reason, the Imperial player is almost certain to act swiftly to snuff out the sparks of rebellion among all systems within range of its fleet. To this end, the game board does more than indicate the systems for whose loyalty the players can contend, it also serves as a map of the various hyperlanes your fleet might travel. Narrow borders indicate the spaces between adjacent systems, while thicker, orange borders hold together those systems clustered within a region. Meanwhile, there are no serviceable hyperspace lanes between some of the systems that appear to be adjacent, and the red areas between those systems indicate that no space travel is possible.

Throughout your games of Rebellion, you will move your forces from system to system. As the Rebel player, you might risk a ship and a few squadrons every now and again to orchestrate key military strikes. As the Imperial player, though, your expansion through the galaxy is critical to your success. The more systems you probe and subjugate, the closer you come to identifying the location of the hidden Rebel base. At some point, your movement may even bait the Rebel fleet into action...

Your Moment of Triumph

Battles are inevitable. The Rebel Alliance cannot hide forever. At some point, it will need to win a military action in order to rally the galaxy's citizens, or the Imperial forces will simply locate its base and close in from all sides before beginning their bombardment. Whenever Rebel and Imperial forces both occupy the same system, they must fight, and while these battles seldom decide the war outright, they always have a tremendous impact.

Your military forces in Rebellion are represented by more than 150 detailed plastic miniatures, including Stormtroopers, Rebel troopers, X-wings, Y-wings, TIE fighters, AT-AT walkers, Star Destroyers, and more. There is even a Death Star and a partially constructed Death Star for you to place on the map should you begin construction on a second technological terror. All these forces have their combat statistics – attack dice and hit points – listed clearly on your faction sheet.



During engagements, these forces clash over multiple steps, using custom dice to resolve their attacks. If both players have starships in a system, they engage in a space battle before opposing troops engage in a subsequent ground battle. In both cases, any leader you have in the system may allow you to draw tactics cards, which you can use to deal more damage, block damage, or surprise your opponent in other ways.

After you have fought both the space and ground battles, you then have the opportunity to retreat, provided you have a leader in the system who can coordinate the effort. However, if neither side retreats, your engagement continues through additional space battles and ground battles until one side has eliminated the other's forces.


These combats can have far-reaching consequences. For starters, whenever the Galactic Empire is able to wrest a planet away from the Alliance, it can subjugate that system, and its residents cannot afford to show their loyalty to the Rebels. Even if that system is loyal to the Rebels, it cannot give them its resources, but instead must provide its resources to the Galactic Empire.

Meanwhile, the Rebel Alliance also stands to gain much from initiating strategically chosen battles. Beside the obvious benefits they derive from reducing the forces available to the Empire, the Rebels can fight battles to achieve a number of different objectives, each of which can win them more loyalty in the galaxy. You do not even need to win all your battles to achieve your Rebel objectives. Some merely require you to destroy a specific Imperial unit or a certain number of Imperial units, and many others reward you for winning either the space or ground battle and keeping your Rebel unit in the system, even if it remains loyal to the Empire.

     

In the end, combat in Rebellion ultimately serves to reinforce the game's asymmetry, its themes, and the characters of its two factions. As the Rebel player, you simply cannot conquer the galaxy by brute force; you need to choose your military actions carefully and execute them for maximum impact. As the Imperial player, though, your superior military might is a powerful asset and one that you will need to use to your advantage as often as possible.

The Ultimate Power in the Universe

From the tallest buildings on Coruscant™ to the farthest reaches of the Outer Rim, Star Wars: Rebellion presents you a chance to reenact the conflicts of the Galactic Civil War that is unmatched in its scope and cinematic grandeur. Rich with personality, replete with strategy, Rebellion is a massive, epic game and one that fully captures the spirit of the classic Star Wars trilogy.

Look for your chance to decide the fate of the galaxy when Star Wars: Rebellion arrives at retailers in the first quarter of 2016!

[Arctic Blast]

[Nefaro]

Oh damn.

I still haven't picked up their WH40k one, Forbidden Stars. 

This looks like it uses somewhat similar mechanics to that one.  Which may be both good & bad.  The big complaint I've heard about Forbidden Stars is that it's best as just a 2-player game due to combat taking so long and the other players sitting around twiddling their thumbs for long stretches while that happens.

[W8taminute]

I really don't need to read the whole article, I'm buying this game no questions asked.  Thanks for sharing this news SDR.


Nefaro I have Forbidden Stars and I agree with your assessment.  Forbidden Stars is definitely a fun game to play.  For me the issue of the game taking a long time to play with two or more players is moot.  I game alone.

[Nefaro]

I'm definitely more likely to pick this one up.  It just looks more .. clean(?) to me.

[BanzaiCat]

Yeah, this one will be on my list as well.

[BanzaiCat]

Welp, I pre-ordered (with help) this bastard from Amazon today. It comes out next Thursday and I should have it sometime by April 9 or so.

I've been going over the rules while editing the latest GrogCast and I'm liking how it works.

'Learn to Play' Rules PDF: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/0b/07/0b07601a-6ac3-4333-ac41-b6d1b9a979da/sw03_learn_to_play_web.pdf

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I'm going to hold off and try out someone else's copy before committing.  Armada has really died off here and it's getting hard to find anyone who wants to play.  The lackluster Wave III announcements didn't help.  X-Wing is pretty much all anyone here wants to play and that's fine with me.  I just wish there'd be more willingness to break away from the 100 pt competition games in order to play some of the epic or cinematic scenarios.  I do think that will happen if FFG goes ahead with their ill-advised plan to force players to use a specific ship in all 100 pt matches.

Post impressions of Rebellion!

[mirth]

Post impressions of Rebellion!

+1 !

[BanzaiCat]

I'm kind of glad to hear Armada is dying but X-Wing is still going strong. Sorry to hear it in your case, SDR...that's gotta suck to invest in it and have nobody want to play. I'm glad I didn't get it myself. I still have a sh*tload of X-Wing Minis still in packaging.  :-[

I'll definitely do impressions of Rebellion. Maybe a review, like what I did with Star Wars: Imperial Assault.

[Arctic Blast]

I pre-ordered it. Three friends were pretty eager, and the multiplayer rules actually don't seem too bad.

Should be releasing and shipping on the 31st.

[BanzaiCat]

I pre-ordered it. Three friends were pretty eager, and the multiplayer rules actually don't seem too bad.

O0

Should be releasing and shipping on the 31st.

Here's hoping.

[Bison]

I love FFG, but their prices just make it prohibitive to own, expand, and play multiple games.  And I still need to get Imperial Assault for crying out loud.

[BanzaiCat]

Imperial Assault has so many expansions now it makes my head swim. It takes discipline to not get any of them when we haven't even finished the main campaign with IA.

[Nefaro]

Imperial Assault has so many expansions now it makes my head swim. It takes discipline to not get any of them when we haven't even finished the main campaign with IA.

I was in the same situation with it's predecessor, Descent. 

Fortunately I had already experienced, and came to terms with, the FFG Expansion temptations by the time Imperial Assault came out.  While I have two or three Descent boxed expansions (and a couple little ones), I still only have the original IA set. 

Broke my expansion purchasing addiction for that system, while still having plenty left to do with my current stock, awhile back.  :)

Same can be said for some of the other FFG expansion-tastic lines.  Such as Eldritch Horror.