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Rob Zacny

Episode 385: Star Wars: Rebellion Board Game

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Three Moves Ahead 385:

Three Moves Ahead 385


Star Wars: Rebellion Board Game
Rob, Sean Sands, and Jonathan Bolding get together to talk about Star Wars: Rebellion. No, not that one, the board game one. Fantasy Flight's take on the Star Wars universe offers an asymmetrical experience in which the powerful Empire attempts to search for the scrappy Rebels across the galaxy.

Star Wars: Rebellion

 

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Usually, I enjoy the eclectic nature of TMA topics.  One week Warhammer, the next a discussion of rarely played PC games.  But this week's Rebel topic seems a bit arbitrary, even by the eclectic standards of TMA.   What happened to the Winter of Wargaming?  And why with so many new and old games out there to discuss, why did the editors choose a game already covered, sorta, as a PC game.   I could even forgive all this if the setup to the topic was a little more substantial than, hey, we played this board game and now the chat (yes, there was a cursory acknowledgement of the PC episode but no real explanation for why we're back to Rebel again).     

 

This episode feels like filler, before more meaty topics to come.  I hope so.  I'm a big fan of TMA and even when the game or the topic (or both) don't interest me, the way everything is introduced, chewed over, put into a context, considered and rejected, the way the conversation flows is always a pleasure to experience.  This episode fell flat (for me).  Don't lose that TMA style.     

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I enjoyed this weeks podcast - I am a big fan of the board game so it was up my alley.

 

The Obi Wan death action is the pitts if your the Empire (but also thematically cool). 

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I'd love to have games like that on PC. Mindgames, betting, bluff, strategy. But the only thing that ever felt close was playing Armello with friends. Even then it feels like everything is decided by luck, there's no long term strategy, bluff or hidden agenda involved.

 

When I read AAR for 4X games it looks like those things are happening there. But I rarely play 4X game where it is even remotely the case. Because most 4X are overloaded with mechanics and there's nothing to strategize and plan and manipulate once you've learned basic rules. I've even made a game that tries to distill this betting spirit of 4X - wasn't really good, but at least it tried.

 

Maybe those games are hidden in wargame genre? Couldn't get even in Unity of Command.

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I'll tell you straight up what breaks the absolute fuck out of this game

 

 

If one of the players has played a few times and has cracked the code of "as the empire, spread out" and the other player has never played and is tricked by the game into thinking his rebel action figures actually mean something and tries to use them...basically, if you own this game and have played it, you can never again play with someone new, or introduce it to anyone ever, the experienced player has to play so poorly and so against the strategy that they know they should be playing, that it turns into a tutorial session where the new player is almost guaranteed to win, which takes away the tenseness and the excitement of pulling cards (cause your real play through will be your second game), you will never have the "ah-ha" moment that Sean and Rob had....

 

 

...maybe the only way for this to work is that the experienced player HAS to play rebels, but even then, if the empire player groups up and doesn't spread out (because your trying to crush the rebel, obviously) they're hosed and don't even know it, cause they don't know the cards the rebel player can pull later....if the empire player is experienced then good luck to the rebel player when the empire spreads out and you never get to pull even half your cards...

 

 

 

The other thing is that, there is some semblance of strategy to the empire side that you can kind of count on, but for the rebels, your entire strategy boils down to what cards you pull, when you pull them and your dice rolls, if any of those things don't line up or fail you, your done, gg...this might be the reason experienced players HAVE to always be rebels due to their inherent extreme luck based nature, they won't necessarily be able to put their experience to full use if the card draw says fuck off...

 

 

Also, the combat overall detracts from the game, and is only there to lull you into thinking you should actually be fighting...the game is all about hero placement, die rolls, card drawing....the actual game is very much under the surface of what it appears to be, this is one of the pit falls for new players, no amount of telling the new player what they should be doing will prepare them for the fact that they should actually just not worry about the rebel pieces at all...the best thing that can happen to a new player playing rebel is to have all their shit destroyed within the first 2-3 turns (which a spread out imperial player can still easily do early on due to how picking starting planets works), that forces the rebel player to play the real game, which has nothing to do with the mini's, since all their powers derive from cards and hero powers

 

 

 

Overall, its ok, mostly its just going to be frustrating....the rebel player will constantly be frustrated (by shit cards, shit dice and the imperial player existing)  most of the game till maybe the very end, and the empire player will be enjoying the game until maybe the very end when they suddenly lose...

 

 

...I'll probably never play this again, too much setup, too complicated in the areas it shouldn't be, the actual game being obfuscated by pretty mini figures, and taking forever to complete.....maybe if its played like a team game with more that 2 players and everyone is incredibly drunk, maybe..... 

 

 

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I think punkadog's, respectfully, a bit harsh, but I do wish y'all had played more than once. I realize the game is lengthy, but the playtime drops well below two hours once both players know what they're doing, so I think it would be possible to play the first four games in ten hours. Appreciated the discussion of FF's "frustrating and too straight forward" combat mechanics and components.

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I thought this was one of the best TMA shows in a long time. Dissecting the game in the context of an after action report gave the show a narrative depth that, to be honest, is kind of a novelty with the often wide ranging and discursive conversations TMA usually involves. More of these types of shows would be great.

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I gotta say I also really enjoyed this one, too!  I always love 3MA but I really enjoyed the pseudo-After Action Report (to take someone from above name for it) nature of this one. 

 

Interestingly, the discussion caused me to go back and forth as to whether or not I would actually want to purchase the game myself.  It seems like this game should be a worker (hero) placement game, yet it is presented in the form of a war game.  I kind of think that, having listened to this show, I'm "in the know" with respect to what to actually do if I played.  That's probably an unfair advantage I would posses over another new player.

 

Still, listening to you guys talk about the nuances of the game was really entertaining.  And, to be fair, I rarely play board games at all so I likely would not have ever purchased the game to begin with.

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I did enjoy this episode, to be clear! 

 

I don't mind one player having a knowledge advantage in a game like this, necessarily. For example, I like that Twilight Struggle suggests the more experienced player choose Soviets to ensure the new player faces the aggressive play that makes the game sing. The difference between TS and Star Wars: Rebellion is that experienced Soviet play aggressively pushes the USA down many interesting paths or at least ends the game early*, whereas experienced Imperial play in Rebellion** is actually less aggressive because it's about conservatively covering the map to smoke out the Rebels, but without actually discovering the base much faster. But, as the show mentions, it's not like the advanced player can simply take the Rebels because the Imperials can easily make unrecoverable errors in the first part of the game.

 

*I strongly believe in teaching Twilight Struggle by taking Soviets and trying my hardest to win on turn 3. Usually, that means we can get in two games instead of one!

 

**Originally had written TS here; edited to remove confusion.

Edited by cornchip

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I think one of the problems this game had is that the designers had an idea that would suit itself more to abstract units and more of an emphasis on the character and political mechanics and this competed with Star Wars and FFG's style which required more components and, of course, the iconic machines, the TIE fighters, X-wings, Star Destroyers, etc.  Thus, the game is way too heavy on combat mechanics that can't really be that deep because they'd take away from the character-mission core of the game.  It suffers for this problem quite badly.

 

You could replace the units with COIN style cubes/cylinders and probably not lose much at all.

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Really disappointing. I liked the topic, but didn't think the show was anything over than chatting about your game over a beer after playing. It was clear that neither of you had really grasped the strategy for either side (and why would you if it's your first ever time playing?). It was pretty frustrating to hear you both asking the same questions as i was - how does it pay on the 2nd and 3rd time through, how much depth does it actually have? - without offering much in the way of answers. It's like if you did a show on Civ in which you had only ever played one game, on settler difficulty.

 

 

Also, I'm surprised that Rob didn't make more comparisons to War of the Ring. I would have liked to hear how it think it compares. Is it as good? Does it take more time, less time? Is it worth buying if I already have WotR?

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I had been been playing PC games for quite some time, and I still have a distinct memory of how much I hated SW Rebellion on the PC.  I thought the UI was so unsuited for a real time game, even for its era.  I just remember it seemed like it took a thousand mouse clicks to do anything of significance.  As a PC game, it's still on my short list of most disappointing experiences of all time.

 

It's interesting to hear the positive buzz on the board-game incarnation of this this title, but like that spoiled potato salad that made me sick as a dog when I was a kid, it may very well be decades until I have the courage to try something similar again.  :wacko:

 

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