We were going to be playing Battlestar Galactica. But once again life, the universe and any other unseen force decided to conspire against us and throw a spanner in the works.

Instead it was going to be just Diego and myself turning up. So after a brief messenger exchange Diego and I settled on playing new boy on the block (to my collection anyway) Star Wars Rebellion.

Which meant I needed to punch some cardboard quickly before Diego and I were due to be playing it.

Wow when set up this game is huge. 

We were working our way through the learn to play booklet. Which takes you step by step through your first game. This means your first game is 85-90% of the full rule set. It takes out certain cards, gives the starting setup of both sides forces, ignores the abilities of the recruit cards.

As a learning game there were some misplays. These things happen and weren’t too big an impact on our game.

Rebellion is a long game. I knew that going into this. But with setup, going through the rules, slow initial rounds as we got to grips with things. We hit five hours! But that took me by surprise. I’d been so engaged and engrossed with the struggle between the two opposing forces, I’d lost track of the time. That’s the mark of a good game.

We were at least two turns from the end of the game, when Diego had to return back to the real world. So the decision was to call it a draw. Either side could have won.

I was playing the rebels so the Death Star was a constant threat right from the start. When the Empire built a second it was like “omg! How can I win?” The Death Star has no health and rolls four red dice when attacking. Indestructible and deadly. Luckily you eventually draw a mission card that allows you to destroy a Death Star. When that happens it’s so satisfying. At that moment I didn’t care if I won the war, I’d destroyed a frickin’ Death Star.

The combat was good. Not brilliant. But did give manage to capture being epic and that your forces were trading blows. Although if I had to criticise it, I’d say that the combat should be simultaneous and damage being done at the same time. At the moment it’s possible if attacking to keep your forces intake by destroying the enemy completely before they get a chance to respond (especially if they have no block damage cards).

I liked the hand management side of the mission cards. You always have something you can do with the four starting cards, and then having to decide what to keep if you have more than ten cards.

The missions themselves very thematic, and having the ability to attempt to stop them by allocating one of your own leaders.  Brilliant. But then choosing which mission to send a leader on, and which leader is a hard choice sometimes. Especially when you want that leader available to block an opposing mission. But if you send that leader on the mission you get a bonus. Tough choices. It was rather cool when Luke went off looking for Yoda on Dagobah and became Jedi Luke. What wasn’t cool was when he got captured right away!

This really is an epic game in scale, setting and play. I love it. Diego and I have already set up a future date for this to hit the table again. That’s how much we enjoyed the game.

A fantastic learning session for a great game. Thanks Diego.