Written reviews have their benefits. But there is one thing that video reviews will always have that written reviews can’t. And it is the ability to have a cheesy star wars opening crawl. But hey, we can use our imaginations! Imagine a dark background dotted with stars suddenly yellow text appea… ah screw it. Let’s just get into the review.

Star Wars: Rebellion is complicated, really really complicated. Star Wars: Rebellion has some balancing problems. Star Wars: Rebellion is huge, maybe even too huge. Star Wars: Rebellion is extremely long. And perhaps worst of all, Star wars Rebellion: has some infuriating luck. All that being said, I love this game. I will be the first to admit that this game is not for everyone. But if the concept of the game I explain to you today sounds interesting, you will (almost definitely) love this game.

So how does it work? There are two players in Star Wars: Rebellion. One plays the rebellion and one plays the empire. Already the first interesting part of this game has been revealed, and that is the asymmetry in Star Wars: Rebellion. The empire starts with more units, it has better cards it can use, and can take over empty planets just by moving onto them. It may seem futile for the rebellion to resist, but they have one trick up their sleeve. You see, the rebellion just has to survive a certain amount of rounds. But the empire needs to find and destroy the secret rebel base. The rebels can even complete objectives so they don’t have to survive as many rounds, and they can move their rebel base if they play a certain card.

This isn’t going to be a full rules explanation, simply because there are so many rules to explain. But I will explain the basics of a turn. The game centres on leaders, leaders are the famous Star Wars characters that, just like the movies, do everything. This really helps with some hilarious theming, since in the movies the Stormtroopers and rebel troopers are quite useless against the main characters. And this perfectly reflected by the game requiring you to use leaders to move units, and to use mission cards. You can play these mission cards at the begging of a round and assign leaders depending on their stats. In the next phase players take turns revealing a card or using a leftover leader to move units. When you reveal a mission card depending on the card it will either let you use that cards ability, or it will give your opponent a chance to counter your card. You can only counter or move with leaders you haven’t assigned to cards in the previous phase. So this makes a really cool puzzle of which leaders you want to assign to cards and which you want to leave behind in your leader pool. If you choose to counter a card with a leader both sides roll dice equal to the amount of the stat of the leader that matches the cards required stat. Whichever side rolls more successes wins.

You can also use your leaders for moving. Moving allows you to place a leader and bring any units from adjacent planets into this planet. If your enemy has units there, a battle happens. Battles don’t involve that much strategy. But that’s alright because the strategy is in the game around the battles. Preparing units, finding information, and denying the other side of information, producing units with factories (a side of the game I won’t be discussing today). But the battles serve their purpose of being a high-tension culmination of a sides planning. You roll some dice and maybe play some cards in a battle, that’s it. But inside your head you are holding your breath because this battles outcome will affect the game in quite a significant way no matter where the battle is. It feels so good to have your plans succeed in a climactic battle, and it feels so disheartening to have your plans result in a failure. Is that a bad thing? You tell me.

There is one more huge thing I haven’t talked about yet, and that’s theming and feeling. And for a Star Wars game, that is a huge part of the game. But what do I even mean by feeling? Feeling isn’t something people really talk about hugely in games. But I think it is really important to a game experience. Because the reason we play board games is not just for the puzzle, (actually never mind, euro gamers do) it’s for the social experience. I would just play a single player game otherwise. And the experience is made because of feeling. And Star Wars: Rebellion gets that. Star wars rebellion makes the Rebellion feel hopeless even if they are winning, and it makes the empire feel powerful even if they are losing. Some people (who may or may not include me) have a hard time playing the rebellion without wanting to burst into tears. And this is all extremely thematic, in fact this whole game is extremely thematic. And I expect nothing less from a Star Wars game. Star Wars: Rebellion gives you something all board games should try to give you: stories. I could tell you the story of how two of my most powerful rebellion ships got crushed by one star destroyer after careful planning, I could tell you the story of princess Leia turning to the dark side, or I could tell you the story of one of many daring rescues. Do you see why this game is great?

So I recommend it, right? Well… yes? Maybe? I don’t know. Star Wars: Rebellion has a price of ninety US dollars (or 0.01 Bitcoin). That’s three Modern Arts, that’s one and a half full priced AAA video games, that’s nine Coups (the game, an actual Coup probably costs a lot more than ten dollars)! And do you really want a game where some players can get so demoralized they almost want to quit several times in one game? Do you really want a game where one side might make a sub-optimal play just because they feel bad for the other side? Do you really want a game that can take most of a day only to end it an extremely one-sided final battle? Probably not. But I do, I want that game. And maybe, if you are just crazy enough, and you can find some else who is also just crazy, and you think the idea of the rebellion feeling hopeless will be fun for you, and the concept of this game is making you bounce around in your seat. Then you will love this game.