For the last year, I have had the absolute pleasure of reviewing board and card games, a new-fangled part of Digitalchumps. On the Star Wars side of the new board/card game tracks, the last SW game we reviewed was Jabba’s Palace, a simple card game from Asmodee that brought a maximum amount of fun for a short amount of training. It certainly was a highlight of last year’s first kickoff of this new DC venture, and a change of pace from our Lord of the Rings board game experience which took a bit of time to get going.
Now, we’re back with another Star Wars game from Asmodee, and this time it takes the simplicity of Jabba’s Palace and stretches it out into a Lord of the Rings experience. Welcome to Star Wars: Outer Rim and its expansion Unfinished Business. It’s a lot to do with just a little bit of time spent understanding how to do it.
Let’s get right into it.
Journeying through Outer Rim
Star Wars Outer Rim gives me a Catan vibe, where there might be a lot to understand, but it’s easy to pick up and go. This is probably the strongest part of the experience and, for a lack of a better way to put it, a welcomed one. The game has a lot of moving parts to it, but each is simple to understand and gives you a great reason why they work the way they work. Let’s get cracking on those pieces.
Characters
The first step in the game is choosing your character. Each player in the game gets to choose which character they want to play, which consists of some familiar faces, such as Han Solo, and can get down and dirty with bounty hunters and lesser-known smugglers. Whoever you choose to play as comes with a set of attributes, goals they must accomplish, and proficiencies, as well as a starting salary. Starting with the former, each character can have proficiencies such as stealth, tech, pilot, influence, strengths, and tactics. These can be doubled up when you add more characters to your player’s crew. If I added Boba Fett to my crew with Han as a leader, they both might have to pilot a ship as a proficiency, which means I have a strong proficiency in piloting. That will come into play when I play the game. You want to pay attention to these proficiencies, as they will be vital for success in the galaxy. They’re a wonderful addition to strategy in this game and directly related to rolling dice during combat.
As mentioned previously, you can double-up on these proficiencies, which equal more chances for success during combat. When you go into combat with someone or a ship battle, you pull cards related to the person or battle that tell you what proficiency is best for the battle at hand. If your character, or crew, has that proficiency, then you have a greater chance to roll success with fewer restrictions on the die cast. For example, if my character Black Krrsantan runs into a battle that requires strength, then he is ready to go. If someone on his crew has strength as well, then when I roll the two dice for battle, I don’t have to depend on any specific hit markers on the dice to proceed. I’m essentially supped up and have the roll in my favor unless I don’t roll any hits. Should I have no proficiency matching, then I must roll one direct two-hit symbol and one single hit symbol to succeed. If I don’t roll both, then I don’t win.
Simplicity, easy-to-understand rules, and quick starts. You got to love it.
Once you get that information in check and under your belt, and it’s quite easy to pick it all up, the next step comes into play with the player card. You put your character card in a bigger player cardholder, which features categories on top (Gear) and categories on the bottom (Job/Bounty). If you haven’t guessed it yet, those are specific cards you can gather and play during the game.
Towards the top left of this card and stretching across the top to the middle is the fame meter. Before the game begins, players must agree on how many fame points it takes to win the game. You can play a game up to 12 but let me tell you that you are looking at 5+ hours of game time for that amount of fame. When you complete jobs, bounties, or deliver cargo, you maybe have the opportunity to get additional fame points. This all depends on the card you get. The goal of the initial game is to reach the fame point limit. It’s a tough road to climb when there is a large number of fame points set.
Next to the fame point meter is the reputation point meter for the Hutts, Syndicate, Empire, and Rebels. The meter is measured with three easy levels:
- Negative reputation
- Neutral reputation
- Positive reputation
You slide these back and forth because of several different factors, including cards you pull, jobs you complete, and failures during the game. They also play into how you’re able to complete tasks from cards drawn. For example, if you pick up a crew member who is pro-empire, convincing them to join your crew could be easier if you have a positive relationship with the Empire. If you don’t, then you will find steps you must achieve to convince them, which are generally difficult. Honestly, this is pure fun when it comes to balancing out strategies and allegiances with the four organizations. It’s just another layer of pure cerebral fun with this game. It works incredibly well because you must focus on how you want to be viewed during the gameplay and prepare for any situation when it arises.
The expansion of the game, Unfinished Business, allows for players to add larger goals to their galactic adventure, such as becoming a Crime Lord. With that addition, the player must achieve goals that will lead them to one final reputation. Each reputation card in the expansion has a different set of goals that must be accomplished to retain the moniker the player was shooting for in the game. This addition is wild, and it adds a bit more content to the final experience. This was one of the cooler more personal parts of the Unfinished Business expansion.
As for the survival part of your character’s journey, you can get into scrums with bounties or organizations. When that happens, and it’s not a space battle, you go into ground attack mode. During ground attacks, your character cards feature two numbers that help the process. The first is your attack damage (red), which simply shows how much damage you can inflict on your opponent. The last number is how much damage you can take before you die. Should you be pushing daisies in the game, you will lose a certain number of goodies, but you’re not out of the game. You never really lose the game this way. It just makes things harder to start up again. It’s essentially a video game with infinite continues. I’m okay with that because I died many times during the second session of this game and I was more than happy to keep playing.
This is as simple and as complicated as the characters get, which isn’t bad at all. You just get enough complication to make choosing a character a strategic venture. You can see that a lot of thought has been put into this aspect of Star Wars: Outer Rim. The creators simply weren’t throwing mud at a wall to see how and if it sticks. Each process to win or lose is amazingly crafted with purpose.
Now, with characters out of the way, let’s talk ships.
Ships
An addition to the player experience is the ships. You are given a low-grade ship at the beginning of the game that can only take a finite amount of cargo and crew. The former allows you to earn money, which also means you can do more in the game (and survive better). As you gain more and more money, you can purchase new ships, which offer up more space and opportunities to earn more and become more powerful. Ships are vital for survival. For each ship, there are three categories to focus on. Those categories are:
- Ship movement
- Ship attack damage
- Ship damage points (how much damage you can take before your ship goes kaboom!)
When you’re not fighting a ground war with your character, you’re fighting a space battle with your ship. The ship battle can be for cargo, bounties, jobs, mods, or simply for survival against a particular organization that you might run into during your space journey. The latter of the bunch involves the four main organizations mentioned previously (Hutts, Empire, Rebels, and the Syndicate), who are always patrolling space looking for those who oppose them. They are represented by tokens, which follow players around their path. If you run into one of the tokens on the board, then you’re in a space battle that correlates to a specific numbered card and a reward that is generally significant. That shouldn’t mean you’re looking for trouble, as those organizations certainly bring the pain at times.
Once you’re in a space battle, you’re given tasks to complete on a card that directly correlates back to the proficiencies with player and crew cards. The tasks can also directly relate to your allegiance with organizations. For example, if you’re pro-Empire, and you meet an imperial ship, then more than likely the challenge will go easier on you, or you win instantly outright. If you are pro-Rebel and meet up with an imperial…good luck.
Ships are just as important as characters in this game, if not more so. They also carry their own set of attributes that add to the overall team and can bring easy paths to victory. Ultimately, having a bigger, better ship to accomplish more means that you can gain fame quickly.
Paths, Planets, and Dangerous Encounters
The game board is laid out in a ‘U’ shape on the table. Its structure is based on smuggling and trade routes with the occasional bounty hunter tracking path. Along the paths are a series of planets (Ryloth, Lothal, Naboo, etc.) that allow players to land on them to choose from a selection of tasks. Each planet has two tokens connected to it that are bounties. The tokens are hidden until a player lands on a planet and choose a token to flip over. Players who land on the planets directly can select one of these tokens and try to take the bounty on the card that is related to the token. The characters being hunted Each token has a number on it and a character name. The number correlates with a card that has a series of challenges on it that could equal out to a successful capture of a bounty or a failure that equals out to a punishment. For example, one of the tokens I ran into was Saw Gerrera. If I had been playing as Jyn Erso, this bounty would have been easy-peasy. Since I was playing as Han Solo, the bounty required me to go through a series of proficiency tests led by a two-dice roll. Continuing with the example, I had to test my influence proficiency, which Han didn’t have, and rolled two dice to see if I could pass the test. If I passed the test, I would not only win Saw Gerrera’s challenge but could bring Saw onto my ship as a crew member. The latter of which adds additional attributes and proficiencies to my crew and gives me sort of a powerup. All those little pieces from the character chosen equal out to how well I can handle tokens I run into on planets. Since the name of the game is to win, sometimes going head-first into those tokens can prevent another player from winning or completing a bounty. I did that to my wife more than a few times. It was amusing.
Anyway, before you land on planets, each player must go through a series of steps during their turn. Those steps are as follows:
- Planning Step – this is the step that allows you to move through the galaxy. The number of movements corresponds with the number on your ship’s card. If you have the number five on the card, then you can move from point to point in space up to five times. If you decide to only use three spaces to land on a planet, then you can do that as well, but you don’t get the remaining two moves back. This all makes sense. You can also choose not to move, which will get you 2,000 credits. Finally, you can choose to heal all your damage (both ship and person) and bypass the credits and movement. This is a good choice when you’re heavily damaged in the game. Things can and will go south for you quickly if you don’t watch your damage.
- Action Step – this is the step you can use to turn in cargo, bounties, or anything else worth a credit on your vessel. This is also the step that allows you to buy items from a market, which include ships, mods, bounties, jobs, or whatever is available. Of course, you must be on a planet to make any purchases, so move cautiously. You can also trade cards with other players during this step, but to be quite honest, I didn’t do that once with my wife. We are both cutthroat at these games. When I look her in the eyes during these review sessions, I can see she has plans for my demise. I’m not going to help her.
- Encounter Step – If you don’t encounter anyone willingly, such as trying to secure a bounty, or you haven’t run into an organization along the space road that would fight your ship, then you must do another encounter via a Navpoints card. This card proposes a situation, and you must conquer said situation or pay the price. You will never end this three-step process without an encounter, so don’t try to weasel your way out.
These are the basic steps for each round and this simplicity, even when the cards in the encounter get complicated, is easy to follow. This is a good reason why I love playing this game and why I have compared it to Jabba’s Palace. It’s easy to understand and adapt to it and focuses solely on the fun experience, which I can’t say was the case all the time with the Lord of the Rings card game. That was a lot of work.
Unfinished Business business
Star Wars: Outer Rim – Unfinished Business is the expansion for the main game. This expands the original game with new characters to choose from, adding previously mentioned monikers and goals to shoot for, and provides an easy getaway from organization starships that you might run into along the space path. This also provides more detailed missions, more bounties, more ships, and more goodies in the market. It’s a great expansion and stays true to enhancing the experience and making it more than just another Star Wars game. That said, let’s break it down a bit.
More Characters
The wonderful part of Unfinished Business is that it brings in even more unknowns to the board game’s original set. You get to choose from more unique characters, which expands the universe quite a bit. There are eight new characters introduced with this expansion. That’s a fair number of new characters in a crowded room of cool characters to choose from. More the merrier.
Cores
The expansion also adds core planets, which allow the players to jump to light speed instantly to the other side of the board. That alone makes for a more intense and quicker gaming experience, something that I appreciate. The original game is just a tennis match of movement, but having a circular option makes for a smoother time. This decision to add on these new cores makes for a better experience. Not that the original experience was bad, not at all, but it’s improved thanks to this decision.
Orange Tokens
The original bounty tokens in the main game were green and yellow and only accessible when you land on planets. Now, Unfinished Business puts the third token in play with an orange token that is only accessible when you land on a planet because it lies on a planet. The original two tokens laid beside the planet, but this one guarantees an encounter of some sort when you land on a planet. It still hides the tokens, in case you’re hunting a bounty, but it makes the token discovery experience far less empty. I only say empty because I didn’t know how good it was until it was included. The more bounties and potential crew, the better.
Unfinished Business is a wonderful addition to the original Star Wars: Outer Rim set. It brings more variety, more characters, and a new layer of intrigue and action to the overall experience.
Only Complaint
If I had to complain about something, it would be the amount of table space this game requires. I have a long IKEA table and it took a good chunk of space on it. My recommendation is to play this on a round table. It will work far better. This is my only complaint and honestly, it’s probably my fault for not having a variety of tables for the house.
Anyway, let’s wrap this long-ass review up.
Conclusion for both sets
Star Wars: Outer Rim and its Unfinished Business expansion are just top-notch fun. They’re both easy to pick up and learn, fun to play, and you will go back to this board game far more than you think. If you are or aren’t a Star Wars fan, then consider this board game for your household. It’s worth the time and effort.
