Star Wars Outer Rim Board Game - Strategy Game, Fun Family Adventure for Kids & Adults, Ages 14+, 1-4 Players, 3-4 Hour Playtime

In Star Wars: Outer Rim from Fantasy Flight Games, one to four players take on the roles of various smugglers, bandits, and cutthroats in the Star Wars universe such as Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, IG-88, Jyn Erso, Dr. Aphra, Boba Fett, and more. The game is an open sandbox game in which players attempt to complete jobs, deliver cargo, and engage in various adventures in the hope of becoming the galaxy's most infamous scoundrel. The game board is actually an arc of system tiles depicting the outer rim and various systems therein. The systems include planets such as Tattooine, Ryloth, Mon Calimari, Nal Hutta, and more. Each planet is connected by a serious of navpoints that players will move across. Each player picks a character and gains a starter ship and display panel. The ship and the display panel have spots for various items such as gear, crew, jobs & bounties, mods, and more. The display panel also has numbered peg slots to track your fame points. It also boasts a reputation tracker, where players put four dials to track their reputation with the Empire, the Rebels, the Hutts, and the Syndicate. A player may have either positive, neutral, or negative reputation with each. A player's turn consists of three phases. First, during the planning phase, the player may move his ship (the number of spaces detailed on his ship card), he may remain still and gain 2,000 credits (the game's currency), or he may choose to heal all of his character and ship damage (if he has been defeated during the pervious turn he must do this). Next, the player has the action phase. Here, the player may trade cards with another player in his space, or he may engage in a market action. There are six market decks in the center of the player area. These decks represent different missions or bounties the player may take, cargo the player may buy, luxury items the player may pick up, ships the player may acquire, and more. The player may buy one card form these decks, but he may also cycle through one of the decks by putting the top, revealed card on the bottom of the deck and revealing the new card. Sometimes, when a new card is revealed it will move one of the patrols across the board, toward the player. The patrols represent the space fleets of the Empire, the Rebels, the Hutts, or the Syndicates. During this phase players may also deliver cargo or take character or card actions. Finally, the player engages in the encounter phase. During the encounter phase different things may happen. If the player occupies the same space as a patrol, and the player has negative reputation with their faction, he must fight them in combat (more on that later). If on a planet, the player may turn over a contact token, which represents one of the many characters in the Star Wars universe, draw its numbered card from the databank, and resolve it. Often times this will result in the player having a chance to gain the contact as crew on his ship. Other times, a job may be offered. Sometimes, depending on the player's reputation tracks, other things might happen. Players may also choose to draw one of the planet's encounter cards (if at a navpoint the player draws from the navpoint deck). These cards offer stories and challenges to players - sometimes good, sometimes bad. Once the encounter is complete, player passes to the next player clockwise. Sometimes during a player's turn, he may have to engage in combat. There are two types of combat in the game, ship combat and character combat. Both the ship and the character have combat and health states, which essentially state how many dice are rolled and how many hits can be taken. The eight-sided dice boast four sides - blank, focus, hit, and crit. A hit counts as one hit, of course, while a crit counts as two hits. The focus can be changed or altered by certain cards or abilities. The player rolls and the player to his right rolls for the cards. The player wins if he rolls more total hits than his opponent, but is not defeated. A player is defeated if the total hits rolled against him equals or exceeds his current health, depending on his printed health value and any damage makers he currently has. If the player is defeated his standee is knocked down to its side, he must surrender 3000 credits (or all he has), and looses any special "secret" cards he may have. For his next planning phase he must remove all of his damage. As in combat, players will frequently be required to text certain attributes. Each character has two or three attributes such as Influence, Stealth, Tech, Tactics, Strength, Piloting, and more. Additionally, crew cards provide their own attributes for your roles. During a test, the player must roll two dice. If he does not posses the attribute, he must role a crit. If he does posses it he can role a crit or a hit. If he posses the attribute and so does a member of his crew, he can also role the focus icon to pass. The game ends as soon as one player reaches the agreed upon fame goal (usually ten in a standard game). Whoever succeeds in hitting the fame goal first becomes the most infamous smuggler in the galaxy and wins Star Wars Outer Rim. In my opinion, Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars Rebellion is the greatest Star Wars game on the market today, and Outer Rim is in no danger of dethroning it. However, Outer Rim is a really fun game that is quite a bit different from Rebellion. Outer Rim is a sandbox game that plays a lot like Firefly: The Game or XIA: Legends of a Drift System, or even Merchants and Marauders. Players have choices about where to go, what kinds of jobs to do, what kinds of cargo to carry, how they will customize their ship, and how they will obtain fame points. The game is a race to complete those jobs and deliver those cargos and bounties before your opponents get the edge. At its heart, however, this is a story-driven game that, like Rebellion, succeeds in sucking the players into the Star Wars universe (and thank heaven it is the original trilogy universe, and not the tripe that Disney is turning out these days with the Star Wars name attached to it - though some planets are from those films). This is also a dice rolling game, but the way you can customize your ship and character allow you to modify your rolls in interesting ways. Some missions you don't want to chance early in the game because you lack the skills, gear, mods, etc.. But as the game progresses and you obtain more of those things you're looking for those jobs and bounties that you are in a position to take. Several other mechanics in this game are very cool as well. The encounter phase is right out Fantasy Flight Games' Eldritch Horror and Arkham Horror games. The database deck is a great story-building engine that reminds me a lot of Fantasy Flight Games' Fallout board game (that was the only thing good about the Fallout board game!). I do have a few criticisms, however. The arc-shaped board, while interesting and visually appealing, is a bit gimmicky. I would have much preferred a standard game board. Also, the patrol mechanic is a bit hit or miss. I've played several games with 1, 2, and 4 players. With the lower player counts, the patrols really don't do a whole lot. With 4 players, there was a bit more to them. Players came in contact with patrols more often, and that often led to combat situations, which was pretty cool. Perhaps the biggest criticism I have, however, is downtime. Within a few turns new players will be moving through their turn pretty quickly, but still it does take time to read the cards, roll the dice, examine the market, etc.. There is downtime. It is not so bad in a low player count game, but when you get up to 4 you are waiting for your turn for a while. The downtime in a 4 player game didn't ruin it for me, but it was there. Just be aware you'll have friends on their phones during your turn. All told, however, I really enjoyed Star Wars Outer Rim and would recommend it fans of Star Wars games and Fantasy Flight Games' enthusiasts. As I mentioned before, like Rebellion it successfully transports players into the rich Star Wars Universe in a fun and interesting way. The Discriminating Gamer

Star Wars Outer Rim is an adventure card game. Each player is a smuggler with a questionable reputation , traveling the Outer Rim in a pick up and deliver universe. This is a competitive game with very limited player interaction , which suits us just fine. The base game is fun , but more cards are needed to keep the game fresh. The expansion is necessary to accomplish this. My wife and I love this game. It's the best Star Wars game out there. ( IMHO )

Fantastic game. Great look into deeper Star Wars characters and cool play mechanics. Very enjoyable and playable over and over.

This is one of my favorite board games to play. Once the rules are established, you and whoever you’re playing with travel around to different planets doing jobs, collecting bounties, or smuggling cargo. Every time you play is unique because the board can be set up differently, you can have a different player card, you can have a different starting mission, and you have options with ships and attachments. It’s really immersive and can be done in a short amount of time or a longer period of time. I bought the expansion pack and it opens it up even more. The one feature I also like is the ability to play against the, “A.I.” if you don’t have anyone to play with you at the time or if you were trying to understand how the game is played. There are a ton of options on how you can play and this has become one of my favorite board games. It takes a minute to learn but once you do, the ball starts rolling fast.

If you are a huge Star Wars fan, this will be a 5-star game for you. After all, only die-hard Star Wars fans are going to know who “Doctor Aphra” and “Ketsu Onyo” are. If you just kinda like but don’t love Star Wars, this will feel more like a 3-star game to you. I’m averaging the two and calling it 4 stars, because while the game is good, it does have some problems and inconsistencies and some general lack of common sense. Probably some more playtesting would have sorted out some of these problems. One of the biggest issues is the dice. They look nice and “Star Wars-y” but the icons are actually hard to see. Also, they don’t roll particularly well which is unfortunate because whether you win or lose this game will depend almost entirely on your dice roll results. Also, the player quick-reference card isn’t as helpful as it could have been, and the Learn to Play booklet and the Rules Reference booklet contradict each other in a few places. The market decks are pretty thin (some have only about a dozen cards each) and aren’t as robust as you’d expect, given that there are 45 years’ worth of Star Wars books, comics, films, TV shows and video games to draw ideas from. For example, in the Gears & Mods deck, there are 5 cards that add to your Ground Combat strength, but only 1 card that adds to your Ship Combat strength, which doesn’t make sense. Speaking of ships, the more expensive ships are for some reason barely 1 stat better than the mid-range ships, which means it doesn’t make much sense to spend all that money to bother upgrading your ship. In other things that don’t make sense, a lot of the cards deal with scenarios when you are on the same space as another player, but because of the multi-track layout of the game board, players are seldom on the same space. Also, they went to the trouble of putting Droid icons on the droid characters, but there are only two times in the entire game where this icon matters: one is that the flamethrower weapon won’t work on a droid, and bacta medpacks won’t recover damage from the IG-88 player character. While these both make sense, it seems strange they went to all that trouble for just those two scenarios, while leaving out other things that would have made even more sense to include (for example, why is there no Bounty on Princess Leia?). Speaking of damage, there are cards that will help you recover from damage, but at the beginning of your next turn you’re just going to restore all that damage back to full strength for free anyway. Other outer space board games deal with combat damage much more efficiently than this. The really big “common sense” fail comes with the dice results. A solid starburst is a Hit, and a hollow starburst is a Crit. When attacking, a Hit is 1 damage and a Crit is 2 damage (which is better). When rolling a skill test, a Hit is a good success and a Crit is a great success (which is better). But… when you roll to deliver illegal cargo, you have to roll a Hit; if you roll a Crit (which is better), it counts as a fail, which makes no sense. Our first game was so bad that we stopped at a fame goal of 5 (instead of the game goal of 10). We regrouped with some homebrew rules (such as getting rid of the poor starter ships, beefing up the weak economy in the game, and getting rid of that “Crits aren’t Hits” nonsense) which made our next game so much fun that we played an extended game to a fame goal of 12 because we were having so much fun. So, this game can be a lot of fun, but you’ll need to put in the effort to homebrew out the bad design elements the game comes with. Hopefully there will be an expansion pack on the way with more (and better) market cards, and more (and better) ships.

The game is excellent. The packaging on which the game came was horrible. I have sent and received used games with more care. There was no foam or padding when I opened the package, only the game. One of the corners got slightly damaged with transport. Not expecting this from a professional seller.

Me parece que es divertido, y si eres fan de star wars lo es más, realmente es fácil de aprender, y me gusta el sistema de eventos similar al de Arkham horror 3ra ed, tal vez el único contra es que puede no llegar a haber interacción entre los jugadores, pero lo considero bueno para aquellos que no les gusta el enfrentamiento directo.

I looked at lot of youtube reviews of this game and they were all positive. So I decided to give it a try. I do not regret it at all. Game looks amazing, very thematic, difficulty of rules are 2-2.5 out of 5 in my opinion (and I am a novice board gamer). It will take you few plays to get the grip out of it but it is very very easy to learn. Seller is amazing, fast delivery so no complaints there.

Great board game, can be a little complex at first but the rules are split into 2 with a handy reference guide which is very handy. I would recommend getting it with the expansion as it rounds out the gameplay and experience.

2-3 hrs hopefully faster when we get use to it. Otherwise pretty good, just need more interaction between characters.