Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a Star Wars fan, so when Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) released Star Wars Outer Rim I knew it was something I had to check out. After finally having an opportunity to get it to the table today, it’s time to share some of our first impressions.
The Pros
- Thematics are on point!
- FFG typically does a good job with this and treats the IP with the detail it deserves.
- The character abilities match well the character personalities you know and love. It is incredibly satisfying to pilot Han Solo, earn enough credits to purchase the Falcon, and add Chewie to your crew if you find him.
- Game mechanics are well thought out but not overly complicated.
- To put it simply, you’re moving your character from planet to planet, picking up contracts/bounties/cargo or completing/delivering them. This helps you earn credits, which in turn lets you buy ships, upgrade them, add weapons to your gear, hire crew, and most importantly earn fame and win the game
- You DO NOT have to be a heavy gamer to understand how to play. Most of the cards explain the action you need to take to complete the objective.
- The door is wide open for expansions!
- Sure, a lot of your familiar and favorite Star Wars characters and ships are included in the game, but the Star Wars universe is HUGE.
- I fully expect to see more characters, ships, contracts, bounties, and encounters released for this game. First clue, the “databank deck” which include a lot of story elements and encounters is numbered and there are numbers missing.
The Cons
- Gameplay can run long.
- This is really only a con if you’re not prepared for it. If you sit down and expect to be done in 30 minutes, you’re going to be in for a surprise.
- Our first play through at two-players took about two hours. Although that included a few references back to the rules to clarify a few actions. But it didn’t feel like two hours and that is what is most important, so again this is a very minimal con.
- The door is wide open for expansions.
- Yes, I included this as a con as well, simply from an investment stand point. Take a quick look through FFG’s catalog of games and you’ll see most offer multiple expansions and waves of expansions which all add to your initial investment of their games.
- You could play this game many times before you got familiar with all the encounters and characters. You’ll be made to feel like you can’t have a great experience with the game without the expansions and that’s just not true. You can have a very enjoyable experience and you don’t have to buy every, single expansion I expect to see come out for this. If you want an idea of what this game could become with all the expansions, I suggest you check out Firefly the Game from Gale Force Nine. Side note, it’s also an awesome game.
- Set up can be time consuming.
- There are no fewer than 12 decks of cards that all need to be separated and shuffled before being placed on the table. You can save yourself a little time by separating the decks and putting them in their own individual baggies, but that’s up to you. There are also several different types of tokens that need to be separated and distributed across the board and sideboard before play can begin.
- This isn’t uncommon for this type of game, but it doesn’t make it any faster to get playing and can cause some players to lose interest before they ever even get started.
I’ll quickly add that the components are nice and well made for the most part. We did experience a bit of warping of the player boards, but we’re in the middle of a significant heat wave with high humidity where we live and that could have been a huge factor. This game is also ready and waiting for an insert to help shorten set up time and keep things neat and tidy in the box. Did you hear that Broken Token? Meeple Realty? All you cool kids with 3-D printers?
That’s our initial impression of the game. This will be coming with us to the NOVA Open from August 30th through September 1st, 2019. I know FFG is likely going to be on site with it as well, but feel free to stop by our booth outside the Star Wars gaming hall and we’ll be happy to share it.