Star Wars: Armada – Rebellion In The Rim Campaign Expansion

Fantasy Flights Games Star Wars: Armada is a two-player miniatures game of space battles that allows big fans of Star Wars (like me) to lead Rebel and Imperial fleets into battles. In the game, any player could play a key role into the Galactic Civil War to change the outcome of this great conflict, one battle at a time.

Rebellion in the Rim is an epic campaign expansion for Star Wars: Armada that focus on the lawless Mid and Outer Rim regions of the galaxy. In this campaign, two to six players will assume the role of admirals for the Rebels or the Empire fleets and will fight for the supremacy in the region.

During the campaign, each admiral will need not only to plan their operations to conquer strategical targets but also to take into account the resources and supplies needed by their ships. Increasing the presence of your faction in each sector could lead to an escalation and a full scale battle among all the fleets. As the tension in region builds up through the campaign, a grand final battle may explode to determine whether the Empire will crush the Rebellion under its mighty fist or if the Rebel army will succeed in keeping them at bay.

What’s In The Box – Game Contents

Rebellion in the Rim comes in a nice small box with a lot of components. Among them the most notable is a 40×60 cm campaign map representing all 30 location where battles could take place. The map is used by the players to plan their battles by listing the objectives available at each location. Moreover, the map shows any campaign benefits available for players controlling a location together with a space to mark the presence of a faction.

Presence is represented by a sheet of 81 removable stickers provided in the box. Each faction has 20 stickers to mark their presence at a location and 20 more to upgrade their presence by building a defensive station. Overall the stickers are a very useful idea to help tracking the campaign progresses although I feel the presence/defensive base icons could have benefit from a better design as they are pretty similar. In addition, removing and re-adding stickers could damage them a bit and if you are not careful enough you may deplete them quite fast. I wish the box would came with two sheets instead of one to ensure some level of repeatability of the campaign.

I also feel players experience a similar issue with Team and Fleet rosters as in both cases, there are just enough copies to play one campaign. FFG has noted in the file that players are allowed to make copies of them before starting your first campaign but my personal preference would have been to have at least enough copies to play the campaign twice.

Together with the campaign map and sheet, the box if filled with a LOT of very good cardboard tokens, unit cards and upgrades. All tokens included in this campaign are specifically designed for the campaign including some new obstacles. Among them, Rebellion in the rim adds some very evocative ones including Exogorths, Purrgils and gravity rift. As soon as I read the rules, I started looking to get both the Exogorth obstacle and The Millennium Falcon in the same game…

Among the provided cards, Rebellion in the Rim gives you the option to improve your forces with 28 upgrade cards, including some iconic officers to lead your ships into combat. This expansion also allows you to deploy eight unique squadrons that will follow the same rules presented previously in the Rogues and Villains expansions. Last but not least, the expansion introduces a new type of objective: campaign objective.

Gameplay – How To Run An Efficient Campaign

At the beginning of a campaign in the Rim, each player builds a small fleet of 200 points following Star Wars: Armada fleet rules and applying some small limitations. During the campaign their fleet will progressively grow in size to 250 points max and can change composition while players retire some units and add different ones. The model is called Task Force system and I think it is a good and effective way to start playing Star Wars: Armada or to introduce new players to the game. In fact, as the core box includes 180 points worth of units, you can growth your hobby and your collection as you play along the campaign.

Together with a fleet, players also choose a location on the campaign map as their starting point. At each turn, each faction decides which new location their fleets will attack and declares the related Assault. I quite like that FFG added a rule to ensure only one location already own could be attacked per campaign turn. Each location could grant advantages and resources thus planning your starting base and moves would prove quite important.

Once all assaults declared, players can engage in the actual battles and once completed they update the map to show which faction gained control of each location. Winning or losing a battle will grant players with experience. A set of rules have been designed to ensure that the losing fleet of a fleet that fought at a disadvantage will gain more experience.

Between the turns, players will also need to manage their fleet. Any ship or squadron destroyed in a battle will become “scarred” to represent the damages suffered in combat. Scarred units will fight less efficiently in any future battle unless they are repaired. This is a big different compared to the previous Star Wars: Armada campaign where any unit destroyed in a battle would not be available for the next one. This new rule also makes locations with repairing docks and resources quite key to keep your fleet in order.

Rebellion in the Rim also adds a few new interesting rules for fleet management to make the game more immersive. For example, an assaulting fleet can suffer “low morale” (if the location is in an area with diplomat tokens of the opposing faction) or “low fuel” (if there are no friendly bases in the area) or even “low supplies” (if the enemy controls all border locations to the assaulted area).

All these effects take the form of “fleet condition cards”.

Over the course of the campaign, the opposing factions will accumulate campaign points. Any time a certain threshold is reached the current Act will be considered completed and a pivot battle will be triggered. All fleets will participate to the pivot battle and some special rules and objectives will apply. Once three Acts completed (or if one faction is largely ahead of the other) a final Climatic Battle will take place and after that the campaign will end.

Rebellion In The Rim – Final Thoughts

Overall, I really like this expansion and I believe Rebellion in the Rim is a great way to play Armada. As most of the miniatures games of this type, Star Wars: Armada battles could feel a bit repetitive. This campaign adds just enough depth to any game so that the battles mean something. The added growth element and the fleet management phase also make the game more enjoyable and leave players with the need to get back to the table. Personally, I think that a number of players could probably use these rules to run a long term- multi fleet live campaign that could make this game quite enjoyable for a good amount of time.

Considering the above, I think this campaign model is also an extremely effective way to teach the game to new players. For example, I quite like how the Task Force system limits the type and number of upgrade your ships could have at the beginning leaving new players to learn just the basics of the game without worrying too much of knowing everything. Also, the reduced size of the

fleet allows most of the players to get into the campaign right away and growth with the game.

Being the perfectionist I am, I feel a few aspects of the campaign could probably be improved or balanced slightly better. For example, some of the strategic effect tokens seem to be more powerful than others, as well as some commander abilities. Moreover, I think the balancing rules would not work perfectly if a player keeps losing one battle after the other. In true honestly, no balancing rule could really be considered perfect and players may sometime need to consider if there are considerable gaps in knowledge or experience among them more than looking to a rule to help.

Last but not least, I feel the amount of some of the components provided should probably be increased a bit as mentioned in the related section. In addition, the rulebook is not always very clear and some rules could be a bit difficult to locate. Nothing too dramatic but I strongly recommend to read the rulebook in full before getting started.

Overall, Rebellion in the Rim is a nice addition to Star Wars: Armada and I would recommend getting this expansion for new and experienced players. The value you get for its cost is really good and could add a lot of depth to any game.