Star Wars: Rebellion rules – how to play and how to win

Star Wars: Rebellion quick rules

The goal

The two factions do not win the same way. The powerful Galactic Empire must find the Rebels’ secret base and conquer it. The Rebel Alliance, weak but hidden, gains reputation: its reputation marker moves toward the time marker, and the Rebels win as soon as both are in the same space.

A round in three phases

Everything is done by leaders, famous characters from the saga. In the Assignment Phase, each faction secretly sends leaders on missions. In the Command Phase, factions take turns revealing missions or moving units. In the Refresh Phase, you retrieve your leaders, draw cards, and time advances. The Rebel player always goes first.

The Assignment Phase

The Rebels assign first, then the Empire. You place a mission card from your hand facedown, with one or two leaders from your leader pool on it. Their skill icons must be enough to reveal it. Keep leaders in your pool too: only they can move your units and oppose enemy missions.

Revealing a mission

On your Command Phase turn, you may reveal a mission: read it, declare the system and place its leaders there. “Resolve”: the ability happens. “Attempt”: your opponent may send a leader to oppose it, and each player rolls one die per icon of the required skill. A hit or direct hit is one success, a special is two; you need more successes than your opponent. Starting missions return to your hand, others are discarded.

Activating a system

Or place a leader from your pool in a system and move your ships there from adjacent systems. Each ship brings along as many ground units, and TIE Fighters, as its transport capacity. Your units cannot move out of a system that already contains one of your leaders. You may also pass; the phase ends when everyone has passed.

Combat

When your units move in with your opponent’s units, there is a combat. Each faction may add a leader, who draws tactic cards. The space battle comes first, then the ground battle, current player first, rolling the red and black dice of the units, five of each color at most. A hit damages a unit whose health matches the die’s color, a direct hit any unit. After each round, each player may retreat.

The Rebel base

The base is hidden under a probe card; its units wait in the Rebel Base space. They move in and out only through the base’s system or an adjacent system, which gives a clue. When Imperial ground units move into a system, the Rebel player must declare whether the base is there, and reveal it if so. Each round, the Empire draws two probe cards: systems where the base is not located.

Loyalty and subjugation

Populous systems can be loyal to a faction, mostly through diplomacy missions. Imperial ground units in a system that is not loyal to the Empire subjugate it. Loyal systems, and for the Empire subjugated systems, build new units.

The Refresh Phase

Leaders return to their pools; each faction draws two mission cards and keeps ten at most; the Empire draws two probe cards, the Rebels one objective card. The time marker advances one space: on a recruit icon, each faction gains a leader; on a build icon, each faction places units on its build queue. Units that slide off the queue are deployed, two at most per system.

Objectives and the Death Star

The Rebels gain reputation with objective cards, played when their requirement is fulfilled: only one during each combat and one during each Refresh Phase. The Death Star cannot be damaged; only a Death Star Plans card can destroy it. It can destroy an entire system.

Game end

The game ends immediately. The Empire wins when the base is revealed, Imperial units are in its system and no Rebel units are left there, or if the Death Star destroys that system. The Rebels win as soon as the reputation and time markers are in the same space.

Three or four players

You play the team game, two players at most per faction. The Admiral recruits, builds and runs space battles; the General controls the mission cards and runs ground battles. Each player uses their own leaders. With three, a single player controls the Rebels in both roles. Teammates may share anything, but only in front of their opponents.

Beginner traps

For the Rebels, every move through the base gives a clue. For the Empire, a fleet without ground units never reveals the base. For both, keep leaders in your pool to oppose your opponent, and remember that one of your leaders in a system keeps your own units there.

Rise of the Empire

With the expansion, each faction has its own tactic cards: before each round of battle, each player secretly chooses one, then both are revealed. Leaders no longer draw cards: they let you reroll as many dice as their tactic value, and a special removes one damage. Green dice show only direct hits, and a leader pool never keeps more than eight leaders.

How to win Star Wars: Rebellion

No points

There are no points: one faction wins, along with all its players. The game ends as soon as a condition is met, with no fixed number of rounds.

The Rebels

They win as soon as the reputation marker and the time marker are in the same space of the time track. Time advances one space each round, reputation through objective cards.

The Empire, by conquest

It wins when the Rebel base is revealed, Imperial units are in its system and no Rebel units are left there.

The Empire, by the Death Star

It also wins if the Death Star destroys the base’s system, even while the base is still hidden.

What the sheet records

The winning faction, once for the whole table, then each player’s faction; the winners are the players of the winning faction. Optionally, how the game was won.

Example ending

With 3 players, Emma controls the Rebels alone against Jake, the Imperial Admiral, and Alex, the General. In round 7, the time marker is on space 7 and reputation on space 9. During a combat, Emma plays an objective worth 1: reputation moves to 8. At the start of the Refresh Phase, she plays a second one worth 1: reputation reaches space 7, the time marker’s space. The Rebels win immediately: Emma wins, Jake and Alex lose.

Common mistakes

• Playing two objectives during the same combat: only one per combat, and one per Refresh Phase.
• Thinking the Empire wins by finding the base: it still has to conquer it, or destroy it with the Death Star.
• Recording a single winner in the team game: both players of the winning faction win.

How to set up Star Wars: Rebellion

Setup takes a while: choose factions, prepare the board and decks, then the starting forces and the secret base. For your very first game, the Learn to Play booklet gives fixed starting units from a diagram.