Preview the Struggles of STAR WARS (TM): Empire vs. Rebellion

“General, prepare your troops for a surface attack.”
   –Darth Vader, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

In June, we announced Star Wars™: Empire vs. Rebellion, a two-player card game of tense strategic battles and clever bluffing that places you in command of the Galactic Empire or the Rebel Alliance during the Galactic Civil War. Each turn, you must influence key events in your favor by using the resources, iconic characters, and overarching strategies at your disposal.

In today’s preview, we’ll take a closer look at a game round, giving an example of a struggle over a memorable event from the classic Star Wars films: the Empire’s attack on Echo Base.

Walkers Incoming

A round of Empire vs. Rebellion begins by revealing the top card of the event deck. In this case, the contested event is Attack on Echo Base. The faction that claims victory in this event expands their power through the galaxy and gains the victory point and influence rewards shown in the upper right-hand corner of the card. The lower left-hand corner shows the event card’s capacity, which limits the number of resource cards, and the objective value, which is the target both Empire and Rebellion strive to reach. The faction that comes closest to the objective value without surpassing it claims victory in the attack on Echo Base, claiming Hoth for the Empire or the Rebellion.

In this example, Phil controls the Rebel Alliance and Sara leads the Galactic Empire. Before they play cards in the struggle, however, they each choose a strategy card. Strategy cards give both players a secret way to affect the struggle, and they are kept secret until the end of the struggle, when both strategies are revealed and take effect.

At this point in the game, Sara has already seen Phil’s Deception strategy. This strategy allows the player who would lose the event to win the event instead. Phil can’t choose this strategy again until he plays each of his remaining strategies, so Sara decides that the Direct Assault strategy is the best choice for this struggle. This strategy increases the resource value on her resource cards by two when determining victory.

Phil, on the other hand, wants to control how Sara plays in a future round. With this in mind, he chooses the Infiltration strategy. This strategy allows Phil to choose Sara’s strategy card in the next round, potentially helping him to lock her into a certain play style. After both players choose a strategy, the struggle phase and the attack on Echo Base begin.

Imperial Troops Enter the Base

On a player’s turn, he has four options. He can bring more resources to bear on the struggle by playing a new card from the top of his deck, he can exhaust a card to trigger its power, he can spend influence to ready a card, or he can pass. After completing one of these options, the turn passes to the other player. The struggle continues until both players pass consecutively.

Sara begins the Empire’s assault on the secret Rebel base by drawing the top card of her resource deck and playing it, revealing a Recon resource card with a resource value of three. The turn then passes to Phil, who also chooses to play the top card of his deck, revealing Chewbacca! Chewbacca is one of the Rebel Alliance’s eight unique character resource cards. He possesses a resource value of six while ready, and by triggering his power, Phil may exhaust up to two of Sara’s resource cards.

On her next turn, Sara takes advantage of her Recon resource card, exhausting it to trigger its power. Sara has the option to look at the top two cards of any resource deck, discarding one of the two cards and replacing the other. Sara decides that she would rather filter her opponent’s cards. Upon looking at the top two card’s of Phil’s resource deck, she finds a Recon resource card with a value of two, and a Military resource card with a value of five. She discards the two resource, leaving the five-value resource. By leaving Phil with a high resource card on top of his deck, she can push him closer to overshooting the event’s objective value.

Phil takes his turn next, playing the top card off of his deck and revealing the Military resource card with a value of five. Together with Chewbacca, this puts Phil’s total resource value at eleven – a total greater than the Attack on Echo Base objective value of nine. If the event ends with Phil’s resource value higher than the objective value, Phil automatically loses the event, leaving Sara and the Galactic Empire in control of Echo Base.

Sara has no ready resource cards, so she chooses to play the top card of her deck, revealing a The Force resource card with a value of two. This brings her revealed resource total to five, or seven with the hidden bonus from the Direct Assault strategy. The turn passes to Phil, and he triggers Chewbacca’s power, which serves the dual purpose of exhausting Sara’s The Force resource and lowering his own resource value to six.

On Sara’s next turn, she decides that filtering her own future cards may be her best chance of winning the event. To that end, she spends an influence to ready her Recon resource card, preparing her to use its power again. Phil wants to prevent Sara from reusing her Recon resource, however, so on his turn, he exhausts his Military resource card to discard her Recon resource card. Sara plays another new card on her turn, revealing a Diplomacy resource card with a resource value of three. Unfortunately, the special text of Attack on Echo Base states that Diplomacy cards’ power can’t be used during this struggle, making the power of Sara’s newest card useless.

At this point, Phil sees that Sara has a total resource value of five, while he has a resource value of six. He doesn’t want to play another card for fear of going over the event’s objective value, so he chooses to pass. Sara, however, knows that her chosen strategy card adds two to her resource value, bringing her to a total of seven. Because Phil passed on his last turn, Sara also passes, and the struggle ends. Both players reveal their strategies, and Sara’s Direct Assault strategy brings her resource value closer to the objective value than Phil’s, bringing victory to the Galactic Empire!

Sara claims the event and the spoils of victory – two victory points and one influence. The first player to seven victory points in Empire vs. Rebellion claims dominion over the galaxy. Although the Galactic Empire was triumphant in the Attack on Echo Base, the Rebel Alliance will make its stand on separate planets and continue the fight for freedom across the galaxy.

The First Transport Is Away

Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion is a climatic game expanding the narrative of the ongoing war between the Galactic Empire and the Rebellion. You hold the power to relive moments from the classic movies and change the course of iconic events, but you’ll need every resource at your disposal to claim victory in the Galactic Civil War.

Preorder Empire vs. Rebellion at your local retailer today!

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