Star Wars Rebellion Game Manual Pdf
My first game ended with Imperial victory on round 6. I was the rebellion and didn't get my first objective completed until round 4 (destroy a star destroyer). The empire got lucky in that all their probes revealed the entire left half of the board. I had to retreat to Dantooine, the only planet they hadn't explored, which was immediately discovered (by a random decision no less) by a single assault carrier + stormtrooper, a scenario I dreaded when I first read the rules. Chatting after the battle there were a couple of things I surmised: -On round 6 I probably could've completed 4 or 5 objective cards at once, dropping the reputation track by to 8 or so.
It really is difficult completing these things, especially the sabotage objective. The empire's anti-sabotage card also lets them draw projects, you're fighting a war of attrition there.My biggest mistake was running when I did. A massive fleet + death star was coming to Rodia, my base, but I had done an excellent job taking out my opponent's ground troops. They would've hit my base with a single AT-AT which would've been obliterated. However they had enough heroes left to attack my other loyal planets, effectively cutting off reinforcements.The rebels' heroes are better and completing missions is easier. My opponent never opposed my loyalty mission knowing they would just subjugate anyway.
Games similar to Star Wars: Rebellion: Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain; Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace; Star Wars: Force Commander; Star Wars Galactic. STAR WARS REBELLION. Computer Game Manuals. Star Wars Pinball Star Wars Pinball Operating Manual 2. Sep 20, 2017 09/17. Star Wars: Rebellion is a great board game nearly crippled by an awful manual.
That said the Empire has no fear of losing heroes and every rebel leader used to oppose is a costly decision.The Empire took Mon Calamari early allowing them to amass a huge force I couldn't maneuver around and attack. It brought a tidal wave into the right half of the board. Thinking about a second game I've come up with the following strategies I want to test -The rebels need to split up. The Empire can cover so much ground that the worst situation you can find yourself in is being blockaded. Damn that 'loyal in a single region' objective, establish loyalty in Utapau and Mon Calamari as soon as possible. I might try establishing a foothold in Mustafar/Bespin and Mygeeto early game to force the Empire into splitting in half.I was doing my best when I kept hitting my opponent's ground troops.
They overestimated the importance of air domination and at one point I had every planet from Nal Hutta to Coruscant clear of ground units. Unfortunately I underestimated my own air units and never once built a transport. I'm thinking suicide runs of 1 transport + 4 troopers and breaking loyalty or sabotaging systems that give them AT-STs and AT-ATs.I think the 3-player version of the game is harder on the rebellion since they have to think hard about the order of leaders. My opponents were first timers as well but correctly surmised that their goal is to cover as much of the board as quickly as possible. I'd like some thoughts and opinions from more experienced players. Sometimes it's better to sabotage systems that were subjugated (empire can't R&D sabotage off if it isn't loyal) This is especially useful if the empire is relying on subjugated systems to deploy forces in remote areas of the board. Sabotage and they had to waste time setting up loyalty instead.
With the empire having to divide their forces among six places to start, it is often feasible for the rebels to start their initial pieces near the weakest empire position and land a strong enough ground force to occupy it. It can be very difficult for the empire to expel a rebel ground force on their system, considering the annoyances of having to transport the troopers. Camping systems with a fighter if the empire only left ground forces is also effective. Since the tie fighters have to be transported, they can't get your fighter off without overcommiting which slows down their spread.
When going for loyalty, rebel player should balance the icon value against the position of the system. If it's easy for the empire to subjugate or blockade, it's not great to influence, unless you are forcing them to tie up a valuable unit like a star destroyer to do it. I think the problem of imperials randomly stumbling into the rebel base isn't really such a problem with experienced players. Rebels will recognize if the empire has a strong enough force near the base to destroy it, and if so they should proactively move or reinforce it. If the force isn't big enough to destroy it, there isn't such a worry even if they stumble on it as you will probably have time to move before the full imperial fleet can arrive (and the time they spend moving toward you means fewer systems subjugated) Also, empire has to destroy your space and ground forces to destroy the rebel base (except with Death Star) so it is viable to focus your efforts in being superior in just one of those theaters.
Sometimes I focus all of my attacks and sabotages on systems that make ground units, while establishing loyalty in those systems myself. If I'm pumping out troopers as fast as the empire is, they won't be able to destroy my base without committing huge amounts (which again means they are not effectively subjugating) or sending Death Star. In either case, you can move the base to avoid it. Getting space superiority is harder to do - the empire's starting lead in space info is much more dramatic than their lead in ground. But the advantages of contesting space are greater mobility and the ability to take down the Death Star, making your fleet a mobile objective engine when it is not defending the base. In my limited experience I'd say that the Rebels are a little harder to play.
This could just be psychological because of the fact they are outgunned everywhere. But it could also be that the Rebel has to perform some tricky timing. My thoughts in the abstract are that the Rebel needs to prepare for the end, not try a toe to toe fight. Keep back a few surprises in combinations of missions/actions and moving the base.
The Rebels must realize one important thing. THE EMPIRE IS GOING TO WIN.
Once you understand that fact, then you can focus on what you need to do. Delay, surprises, agile repositioning of the base, etc. In my opinion the Rebels have a tricky puzzle to solve. I think once we start to see some quality Rebel play, we'll see the Empire stumble. Until the Empire figures out the tricks of its own. I'm eager to give the Rebels a try (only played Empire so far). It looks fascinating.
I know it will take many plays as the Rebel to figure out all the combos and timing. But isn't this the whole point? Trying to solve the puzzle for the 'more difficult side'.
Then handing that puzzle to the other side? And hopefully this goes back and forth and we come to realize this is an amazing experience? I hope so anyway. In my limited experience I'd say that the Rebels are a little harder to play. This could just be psychological because of the fact they are outgunned everywhere. But it could also be that the Rebel has to perform some tricky timing. My thoughts in the abstract are that the Rebel needs to prepare for the end, not try a toe to toe fight.
Keep back a few surprises in combinations of missions/actions and moving the base. The Rebels must realize one important thing. THE EMPIRE IS GOING TO WIN. Once you understand that fact, then you can focus on what you need to do.
Delay, surprises, agile repositioning of the base, etc. In my opinion the Rebels have a tricky puzzle to solve. I think once we start to see some quality Rebel play, we'll see the Empire stumble. Until the Empire figures out the tricks of its own. I'm eager to give the Rebels a try (only played Empire so far). It looks fascinating.
I know it will take many plays as the Rebel to figure out all the combos and timing. But isn't this the whole point? Trying to solve the puzzle for the 'more difficult side'. Then handing that puzzle to the other side? And hopefully this goes back and forth and we come to realize this is an amazing experience? I hope so anyway. Once the rebels get really good the empire player will have, not only to find the base and kill it, but doing so in a way that lets no opportunities to the rebel player to get their points!
So play a flawless game and this will become a puzzle on its own! Also I think the Infiltration mission is almost mandatory for the first three turns to put those Objectives 1 missions under to pile.
Star Wars Rebellion Game
Else, you'll never get to see Obj. 3 which are much easier, and get to Obj 2 sooner which are also easier than Obj. 1 and allow to blow the death star if it comes in your way, which you don't have any other way to do. And while doing this you get to choose between two Obj. 1 which one you get to keep. Mon Mothma is a beast for getting loyalty every turn. She hasn't been for me, but that's because the Imperials usually oppose her with Emperor Palpatine.
I think her success rate has been about 30-40%. At least then she's taking the attention of the Imperials' best leader, so that in and of itself is a small success. Last game I played as the Rebels I had 7 systems with Rebel influence by the end, was about to make my fourth Calamari cruiser and had taken Coruscant using two different cards (and different leaders) in the same turn to attack ground and space separately. My plan worked well because I didn't start any combat except by the uprising/strike team/insurrection cards, and used my units on the board to scatter around, complete objectives (like the one where you get Rep by having Rebel units in four different systems) and generally be a distraction. If you can keep the Emperor looking everywhere except where your base is, you'll win the game. Draw them out by scattering units and completing missions (in mid-game I'm attempting 6-7 missions per turn), retreat every chance you get and keep your base hidden.
I played Rebels for the first time last night and had a pretty good strategy. I considered several factors in deploying the rebel base.
Find a place that is far from the Death Star and requires the most moves to get to. As a distraction, I carved out a region of the galaxy not near the true rebel base that just looked too juicy to pass up. They had spaceship building capacity, I build up a sizable fleet and ground force and dropped a generator and ion cannon on the 'distraction base' to make it look like I was trying to actively defend. The Imperial player took the bait and invested almost all of his resources in attacking and destroying this region while the true rebel base was left unmolested. Once his massive fleet began arriving on the borders of my distraction base, I started running missions in those adjacent sectors to try to bait the Imperial player to counter them with his own leaders. Once he dropped his leaders, he couldn't deploy his units out of his sector which delayed his final attack. I really didn't care if I was successful in these missions as the real goal was to delay him attacking my distraction base and keep the ruse alive.
Star Wars Rebellion Pc Manual
He finally attacked the distraction base with a massive force and I held him off for a couple of combat rounds before I retreated to a safe system. By this time, he had spread his units all over the map and his massive force, fresh from victory after destroying the distraction base, was too far away from the real base to be a threat. Now that the ruse was up, I redeployed the space and ground elements back to the main rebel base and decided that I could hold it if I really needed it.
If the Imps are focusing on military conquest, they have to use a lot of their actions to do so. This gives the Rebels a lot of unopposed actions. Sabotaging systems is great.
If you keep it to subjugated systems, it's harder for them to clear it. Don't choreograph your moves.
If it looks like you are trying to complete goal X, the Imp player is going to counter goal X. If it looks like you may be trying to complete goal X, Y, and Z at the same time, he's going to have to counter all of that (using up all his actions and stalling his advance), or he's going to have to let something go. Know your objectives. Don't just work on the objectives in your hand, work on all objectives. Think of the timing of your missions. Sabotaging good production planets right before the build phase is good as stopping an AT-AT or Star Destroyer from being added to the build que is great.
On a non-build phase though, target forward staging bases where he wants to deploy stuff. If he deploys stuff to rear bases, it will take him time to move it to the front line. Look for combinations of missions that can give you big advantages.
You want to force the Imp player to be reactive to your actions, not the other way. While the Rebel forces are smaller, you still need to be aggressive and keep trying to throw the Imps off their balance. Mon Mothma is a beast for getting loyalty every turn. She hasn't been for me, but that's because the Imperials usually oppose her with Emperor Palpatine. I think her success rate has been about 30-40%. Yea, Loyalty has not worked for me either.
I need to pair her with some one else. Use her in systems where you have a Rebel unit or two. That gives her two extra dice. I took Sullust that way on the first couple turns of the game. Launched a strike team, won the ground battle, then played her to convert it to Rebel, with bonus dice because I had boots on the ground. Converting a planet in the Imperial backfield, like Sullust or even Corellia, can really throw off the Empire's plans. Making them waste turns moving their fleet backwards, or into territories where they know your base isn't, can buy the Rebels valuable time.
As the empire, I'd rather move an extra system than block Mon Mothma. That way I take a rebel system AND I eliminate a potential location for the rebel base, AND I get the leftmost production of that planet, while also placing the fleet in (typically) a better position. I think it's a mistake to send the Emperor on defense missions. As the Empire, you need to move more than the rebels, while still doing missions of your own. I typically only oppose one rebel mission a turn, and it tends to be things that are going to help me with another mission - for instance, sending Vader to counter Mon Mothma makes it easier for Tagge to capture her later in the turn.
Mon Mothma is a beast for getting loyalty every turn. She hasn't been for me, but that's because the Imperials usually oppose her with Emperor Palpatine.
I think her success rate has been about 30-40%. If you're trading a Mothma activation for a Palpatine activation every turn, that's a win for the rebels (especially if you get a 30% chance of a loyalty thrown in). The Empire's leader activations are more valuable than the Rebellion's; they need to move their ships if they're going to win, you just need to stall them long enough. If you let rebels fulfill their loyalty mission every turn, they will easily complete 2 or 3 points of objectives. If tying Palpatine up for most of the game buys me one extra turn, it's probably worth it.
Definitely worth it if it buys me two. The fact that it means fewer rebel troop deployments is also good.
Early turn fleet movements aren't that great. You can rule out some base locations, but there's a good chance you are going to draw the probe card for it anyway. It also depends on the situation.
If Mothma is grabbing a system with great resources and you don't have the means to subjugate it in this turn of the next, opposing is much more attractive. Sometimes Mothma may try to influence an imperial system to make it subjugated and therefore eligible for incite revolts from another leader.
That's probably worth opposing too, especially as you get to roll against the revolt even if you failed to stop the loyalty. Mon Mothma is a beast for getting loyalty every turn. She hasn't been for me, but that's because the Imperials usually oppose her with Emperor Palpatine. I think her success rate has been about 30-40%.
At least then she's taking the attention of the Imperials' best leader, so that in and of itself is a small success. Last game I played as the Rebels I had 7 systems with Rebel influence by the end, was about to make my fourth Calamari cruiser and had taken Coruscant using two different cards (and different leaders) in the same turn to attack ground and space separately. How do you attack the same system twice in one turn? I thought that having a leader in that system prevented you from activating it again?
Only have a couple games in, but this doesn't sound right to me. Mon Mothma is a beast for getting loyalty every turn. She hasn't been for me, but that's because the Imperials usually oppose her with Emperor Palpatine. I think her success rate has been about 30-40%. At least then she's taking the attention of the Imperials' best leader, so that in and of itself is a small success. Last game I played as the Rebels I had 7 systems with Rebel influence by the end, was about to make my fourth Calamari cruiser and had taken Coruscant using two different cards (and different leaders) in the same turn to attack ground and space separately. How do you attack the same system twice in one turn?
I thought that having a leader in that system prevented you from activating it again? Having your leader in a system prevents your ships in that system from moving out (other than with retreats), but it does not prevent future activations. You can activate a system multiple times, or activate a system that you put a leader in previously for a mission. Note if you are used to other games with similar activation mechanics like Twilight Imperium 3 or RuneWars, this rule is a little different in Rebellion than in those other games. Mon Mothma is a beast for getting loyalty every turn. She hasn't been for me, but that's because the Imperials usually oppose her with Emperor Palpatine. I think her success rate has been about 30-40%.
At least then she's taking the attention of the Imperials' best leader, so that in and of itself is a small success. Last game I played as the Rebels I had 7 systems with Rebel influence by the end, was about to make my fourth Calamari cruiser and had taken Coruscant using two different cards (and different leaders) in the same turn to attack ground and space separately.
How do you attack the same system twice in one turn? I thought that having a leader in that system prevented you from activating it again?
Only have a couple games in, but this doesn't sound right to me. I don't remember the names of the cards, but I used Han Solo to lead a strike team of ground units from the Rebel base to attack the 2 stormtroopers on Coruscant. He brought in Darth Vader to oppose the mission, which failed, but Darth got to command the Imperial ground forces, and lost. Next mission was Ackbar leading a fleet of ships from the Rebel base to take on the lone TIE and assault carrier over Coruscant. I don't remember the name of the card, but it allowed the Rebels to move ships only (no ground forces) to any system and engage in combat.
Basically the space version of Han's card. Darth defended since he was in the neighborhood, but I won that battle, too. In more conventional terms, you could do it if you had two different fleets in range of a system, and for whatever reason, you wanted to bring them in one at a time. So plant Leader 1 in the target system and move fleet A into that system. Then later in the turn plant Leader 2 in that same system and move fleet B into that system.
Late last year hobby games maker Fantasy Flight Games announced Star Wars: Rebellion. Creating a big strategy game in the Star Wars universe alone would get tabletop fans excited, but what pushed Rebellion to the top of many most-anticipated lists was the fact that it would cover the original trilogy and be designed by, part of the team responsible for the extremely popular tactics game. FFG recently sent Polygon an early production copy of the game, and I've had it on the table for the better part of a week. Here's my first impressions of one of the biggest board games in Star Wars history. Rebellion is a massive package. Retailing for $99.95, it comes in one of the deepest square game boxes I've ever seen.
Inside are two massive game boards, two side boards, dozens of cards and counters and over 150 plastic miniatures. There's a lot going on, and my first 30 minutes or so with the product was just punching out chits and bagging everything up so I could make sense of it. Then it was another hour to set it up for the first time. The objective of the game is fairly straightforward. The Rebel player must win the hearts and minds of enough citizens to overthrow the Empire, while keeping their base hidden from the Emperor and his vast fleets. The Empire has to find the Rebel base and destroy it.
In motion Rebellion is dauntingly complex, but it boils down to two major gameplay systems working on top of one another — characters and combat. To perform an action anywhere on the board, players must move a character from their sideboard to a star system on the map. On a given turn Princess Leia might go to Mandalore on a diplomatic mission to gain support for the Rebellion, and then Grand Moff Tarkin might journey to Corellia to oversee production of a Super Star Destroyer. To counter those actions, additional characters can be moved to oppose them. A quick role of the dice determines if they succeed or not.
When each player at the table has run out of characters, they've essentially run out of moves and the round is over. But over the course of play, more and more characters flood onto the table. The moves and counter-moves, missions and immediate actions become more elaborate and complex as the game goes on. Add to this the Empire's nasty habit of capturing Rebel characters when they're on the map, and there's an excellent kind of tension at play that feeds directly from the lore of the Star Wars universe. Throughout the game Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are all doing the kinds of daring, foolhardy and evil things they should be doing and their adventures move the game along relentlessly. This character play alone would be a satisfying experience at the table, but below that system sits a fairly intricate tabletop wargame.
Characters don't just run missions, they can also be used to rally units and begin combat. Place Emperor Palpatine on Dantooine, for instance, and he is able to bring in forces from multiple adjacent systems to fight the Rebels he finds there. The most relatable example would be something like Axis & Allies, but it's actually slightly more complicated than that. There are two theaters of combat — space and ground, and each has their own units. When entering a system space units must fight their way in before landing ground troops, and once on the planet's surface players have to destroy all of the enemy's ground units there before taking control of the planet.
The actual dice mechanics get a little murky, however. Each unit is only susceptible to one type of damage, either black damage or red damage. Some units do one kind of damage or another, and the rare units do both.
The dice themselves have the ability to deal critical damage, which can be assigned to units regardless of type, and there are tactics cards in play during each battle that also allow for certain damage rules to be broken. Overall combat seems needlessly complex. The miniatures themselves are simply stunning and run the range from detailed Rebel troops and Stormtroopers to the Second Death Star itself, and moving them around the board is a pleasure. But keeping track of which rock beats which pair of scissors was draining at times. Where the game excels is in modeling the kinds of combat scenarios that were common in Episodes 4-6. The Rebel player almost always feels overwhelmed at the sheer destructive power the Dark Side has at its disposal, while the Empire can rough the Rebels up but only rarely do they get the chance to pin them down and destroy them in detail.
Game setup also has a lot of randomness to it, and a tendency to begin the fight in medias res just like the movies do. For instance, at the very start of my third playthrough an entire Rebel fleet was cornered on Naboo. In the very first round of play my two capital ships were engaged by swarms of TIE Fighters, two Star Destroyers and the Death Star itself. The Empire played a card that prevented me from retreating, and my total forces on the board were reduced by 60 percent in just a few salvos. Charlie Hall/Polygon Rarely do all the units involved in combat actually fit in the space before combat begins. They'll either retreat, or be destroyed. But with my very next move Mon Mothma herself launched a daring mission to start a local uprising on Naboo.
After a crushing defeat resistance fighters threw off the yoke of the Empire with just a handful of troops and returned the system to Rebel control. When Rebellion isn't being dramatic and tremendously satisfying, however, it's driving me nuts with tracking down the minutia of its rules.
My biggest complaint with the game is the documentation, and for an experience as fiddly as this one is that's a big problem. Put simply, the rules are neither clearly explained nor conveniently located. Inside the box are two manuals, a Learn To Play guide and a Rules Reference. The first time you play the game you use the Learn To Play guide, setting up a pre-configured scenario with the Rebels and the Empire in more or less fixed positions on the board. But you're not done with the Learn To Play guide after that first game, because the rules you'll need to play going forward are buried in there as well. FFG seems to understand the issue, and that's why they've included the Rules Reference.
But that volume is actually bigger than the other one! And its so poorly laid out as to be almost entirely unhelpful. Bad manuals can't ruin games. But they sure do try. To track down answers to simple rules questions I literally had to read the length of the Learn To Play guide, then check a reference in the other manual, and then return to a different section in the first manual multiple times each time I played.
Even then I was never really sure if I was doing it right. The solution, in my opinion, would have been to make the Learn To Play guide disposable. Throw it out when you're done, and then crack open a third manual — the Actual Play guide — which would clearly tell players step-by-step what to do to play the game. It's not all doom and gloom, however. Bad manuals can't ruin good games, and Rebellion is a good game.
I want to play more of it, and I want to play against a skilled opponent. All nokia flash file download. But before I dive back in for another 3-4 hours at the table I'm going to wait a few months for some downloadable errata from FFG, or a proper user-generated manual from the community at Board Game Geek. Right now Rebellion is more frustrating than it should be, and for a game with this much potential that's a shame. For more tabletop coverage, see Polygon's dedicated section. Check out the debut episode of, a podcast about celebrating the games we play.
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