At their core, the Star Wars movies are about the journey from adolescence to adulthood, with characters such as Luke Skywalker and Rey learning about their abilities and place in the world, Anakin Skywalker finding his ultimate destiny as Darth Vader, or even Jyn Erso finally finding a cause worth dying for. It's the human drama that really makes the Star Wars saga as compelling as it is.
But it's also about a whopping big war in space, and that's the part that Star Wars: Rebellion successfully translates into a board game. The box says it's a game for 2-4 players, buttthe four player option just splits each player's duties, and isn't really worth considering. This is definitely a two-player game, as befits the Star Wars saga's rather black-and-white struggle of Empire vs. Rebellion.
What's interesting about the game is that it isn't just an armies-on-a-map Risk-style game with both sides starting out equal. Each player has different goals: the Empire, which starts with a lot more resources, must use a combination of deduction and brute force to find and wipe out the hidden Rebel base, while the Rebel player has to accomplish hit-and-run objectives to drive down the Empire's popular support and undermine its credibility.
Game play involves using the personalities of the Star Wars universe such as Han Solo, Princess Leia, Darth Vader, and even Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt, to attempt missions and lead attacks into enemy territory. Missions can be a simple as using diplomacy to convince a planetary system to join the Rebellion (or the Empire), or as complex as leading an attack on the Death Star, the destruction of which will seriously undermine the Empire's credibility.
The characters available to each player are revealed gradually over the first half of the game; no game is ever exactly the same, as you never know whether you will end up with Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, or lesser known characters like Wedge Antilles to work with. Additionally, the mission and objective cards vary from game to game, which keeps the game fresh over multiple plays.
Rebellion is a very complex two-player game that takes about four hours to play, so it definitely isn't going to be for everyone. But if you like rich, deep strategy games and you like Star Wars, it can't be beat.
Rating: 4 (out of 5) The limited number of players and long play time prevent it from getting to the table on a regular basis, but this is usually the first game I think of if I want to play a Star Wars game.
- Star Wars: Rebellion official website
- Star Wars: Rebellion on BoardGameGeek