Fantasy Flight Games

The Force Will Be With You

Published 17 April 2015 | Star Wars: Armada

The Force Will Be With You

Celebrate May the 4th at the Fantasy Flight Games Center

“For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us.”
–Yoda, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce our May the 4th celebration: an evening of Star Wars™ gaming at the Fantasy Flight Games Center!

An Event of Galactic Adventure

This May 4th at 6 pm, you can join us at the Fantasy Flight Games Center in Roseville, Minnesota for an evening of excitement and fun with all our Star Wars games. This event has grown larger every year and we're thrilled to be a part of this worldwide celebration of all things Star Wars!

The Star Wars experience is filled with fearless heroes and deadly villains, set against a backdrop of a war that spans the galaxy. At this event, you can play out the classic stories of Star Wars, battling in space with starfighters and capital ships or fighting alongside iconic characters like Han Solo, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, or Emperor Palpatine. Whether you’re roleplaying an aspiring Jedi in Force and Destiny, commanding the movements of the Rebel fleet in Star Wars: Armada, or leading a deadly strike team in Imperial Assault, our May the 4th event offers games for every aspect of the Star Wars experience.

Come to play the games you love and learn some new games during the event – we'll be offering demoes of all our Star Wars games. You can learn to survive the perils of the Outer Rim in Edge of the Empire, or pit dark side against light side in Star Wars: The Card Game. In addition to these demoes, every game will have open play available for you and other attendees. You can meet and play games with other members of the Star Wars community. You may fly against your friends in a game of X-Wing™ or help other players complete a daring raid in an Age of Rebellion session. Every game offers a chance to make new friends as you adventure in the Star Wars universe.

What's more, you'll also have the chance to test your skills against each game's designers! Fantasy Flight staff and developers will be on hand to meet attendees and challenge you in our Star Wars games throughout the evening. Can you outfly the ace pilots of Fantasy Flight, or lead your strike team better than our top generals? The May the 4th celebration at the Fantasy Flight Games Center is your chance to challenge the staff at your favorite Star Wars games.

Join Us on May the 4th at the Fantasy Flight Games Center

Your starfighter is ready. Your strike team awaits your command. The Imperial Navy is prepared for your arrival. Join us on May 4th at 6 pm in the Fantasy Flight Games Center for a celebration of Star Wars tabletop gaming!

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Enjoy Great Games Set in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Published 9 April 2015 | Star Wars: Armada

Enjoy Great Games Set in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Come See Us at Star Wars: Celebration

“Count me in.”
–Leia Organa, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Are you attending Star Wars™ Celebration in Anaheim, CA next week? Be sure to stop by the Fantasy Flight Games booth, where you'll be able to try out X-Wing™, Imperial Assault, Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion, Star Wars: The Card Game, and Star Wars: Armada. You can demo some or all of these awesome Star Wars releases, or even just stop by to chat with our team.

What's more, we’ll be presenting a panel on Friday, April 17 at 1:30pm on the Fan Stage: “Star Wars With Fantasy Flight Games.” If you’ve ever wanted to learn how we bring the Star Wars universe and its iconic characters to the gaming table, this is your chance. Panelists include Steve Horvath, Steve Kimball, artist Jake Murray, and freelance writer Sterling Hershey, who has written for all the Star Wars roleplaying games. Together, they will give you a peek into the world of game design and discuss some of the exciting Star Wars games that we are currently developing.

Star Wars Celebration is next week. We can’t wait to see you there!

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Battle for the Galaxy

Published 6 November 2014 | Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion

Battle for the Galaxy

STAR WARS (TM): Empire vs. Rebellion Is Now Available

“This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi, it will soon see the end of the Rebellion.” –Darth Vader, Star Wars: A New Hope

Side with the Galactic Empire or the Rebel Alliance and battle for the fate of the galaxy in Star Wars™: Empire vs. Rebellion, a card game of skill and deception for two players, now available at your local retailer!

The galaxy is torn between two sides in a massive civil war. On one side, the Galactic Empire rules the galaxy, stretching its totalitarian regime across hundreds of planets. Opposing the Empire and the tyrannical rule of Emperor Palpatine are the heroes of the Rebel Alliance. A ragtag coalition of soldiers, politicians, spies, and freedom fighters, the Rebellion strives constantly to rid the galaxy of the Empire’s unrelenting oppression.

In Empire vs. Rebellion, you take command of the forces of the Galactic Empire or the Rebel Alliance. Using your military power, diplomatic clout, strategic reconnaissance, and knowledge of the Force, you must best your opponent in a series of events drawn from the classic Star Wars films. Whether you replay the events of the movies or reshape their outcomes in your favor, every game of Empire vs. Rebellion offers you the chance to experience the thrill of the Galactic Civil War.

Gather Your Resources

To achieve victory in the Empire vs. Rebellion, you must claim several key events by winning a struggle. You must use the resources of your chosen faction included in your deck to overthrow your opponent’s plans. Four different kinds of resources compose both players’ decks: military, diplomacy, recon, and the Force. Each of these cards has a resource value shown in the upper left-hand corner. To win an event, you must bring the total resource value of your resources as close as possible to a target shown on the event card, without surpassing it.

Resource cards bear special abilities to help you in your struggles against your opponent. Military resources allow you to discard your opponent’s most useful cards, whereas a diplomacy card can discard one of your own cards, allowing you to modify your total resource value and avoid surpassing your target. Recon resource cards give you the chance to gain vital intel by looking at the top of your deck or your opponent’s. Finally, resource cards that represent the power of the Force allow you to exhaust your opponent’s resources, keeping him from using special abilities.

Iconic characters from the Star Wars films introduce their own talents to your struggles over events. Both the Empire and the Rebellion have access to eight characters that they can include in their decks. These characters offer some of the most powerful abilities in the game, and they can boost your resource value significantly.

At the beginning of each struggle in Empire vs. Rebellion, you and your opponent also select strategy cards. These strategy cards can give you a powerful advantage, but they are kept secret until the end of the struggle, giving you the opportunity to trick your opponent or lure him into your trap. After both players finish playing resources in the struggle, strategy cards are revealed before the final victor is determined.

For a detailed overview and example of how resource cards, events, characters, and strategies interact in a game of Empire vs. Rebellion, read our past preview.

Choose Your Side

The struggles of the Galactic Civil War lie before you. Gather your most potent resources, call upon iconic characters, and determine the outcome of key events from the Star Wars saga. Pick up your copy of Empire vs. Rebellion at your local retailer today!

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Attack on Echo Base

Published 29 August 2014 | Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion

Attack on Echo Base

Preview the Struggles of STAR WARS (TM): Empire vs. Rebellion

“General, prepare your troops for a surface attack.” –Darth Vader, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

In June, we announced Star Wars™: Empire vs. Rebellion, a two-player card game of tense strategic battles and clever bluffing that places you in command of the Galactic Empire or the Rebel Alliance during the Galactic Civil War. Each turn, you must influence key events in your favor by using the resources, iconic characters, and overarching strategies at your disposal.

In today’s preview, we’ll take a closer look at a game round, giving an example of a struggle over a memorable event from the classic Star Wars films: the Empire’s attack on Echo Base.

Walkers Incoming

A round of Empire vs. Rebellion begins by revealing the top card of the event deck. In this case, the contested event is Attack on Echo Base. The faction that claims victory in this event expands their power through the galaxy and gains the victory point and influence rewards shown in the upper right-hand corner of the card. The lower left-hand corner shows the event card’s capacity, which limits the number of resource cards, and the objective value, which is the target both Empire and Rebellion strive to reach. The faction that comes closest to the objective value without surpassing it claims victory in the attack on Echo Base, claiming Hoth for the Empire or the Rebellion.

In this example, Phil controls the Rebel Alliance and Sara leads the Galactic Empire. Before they play cards in the struggle, however, they each choose a strategy card. Strategy cards give both players a secret way to affect the struggle, and they are kept secret until the end of the struggle, when both strategies are revealed and take effect.

At this point in the game, Sara has already seen Phil’s Deception strategy. This strategy allows the player who would lose the event to win the event instead. Phil can’t choose this strategy again until he plays each of his remaining strategies, so Sara decides that the Direct Assault strategy is the best choice for this struggle. This strategy increases the resource value on her resource cards by two when determining victory.

Phil, on the other hand, wants to control how Sara plays in a future round. With this in mind, he chooses the Infiltration strategy. This strategy allows Phil to choose Sara’s strategy card in the next round, potentially helping him to lock her into a certain play style. After both players choose a strategy, the struggle phase and the attack on Echo Base begin.

Imperial Troops Enter the Base

On a player’s turn, he has four options. He can bring more resources to bear on the struggle by playing a new card from the top of his deck, he can exhaust a card to trigger its power, he can spend influence to ready a card, or he can pass. After completing one of these options, the turn passes to the other player. The struggle continues until both players pass consecutively.

Sara begins the Empire’s assault on the secret Rebel base by drawing the top card of her resource deck and playing it, revealing a Recon resource card with a resource value of three. The turn then passes to Phil, who also chooses to play the top card of his deck, revealing Chewbacca! Chewbacca is one of the Rebel Alliance’s eight unique character resource cards. He possesses a resource value of six while ready, and by triggering his power, Phil may exhaust up to two of Sara’s resource cards.

On her next turn, Sara takes advantage of her Recon resource card, exhausting it to trigger its power. Sara has the option to look at the top two cards of any resource deck, discarding one of the two cards and replacing the other. Sara decides that she would rather filter her opponent’s cards. Upon looking at the top two card’s of Phil’s resource deck, she finds a Recon resource card with a value of two, and a Military resource card with a value of five. She discards the two resource, leaving the five-value resource. By leaving Phil with a high resource card on top of his deck, she can push him closer to overshooting the event’s objective value.

Phil takes his turn next, playing the top card off of his deck and revealing the Military resource card with a value of five. Together with Chewbacca, this puts Phil’s total resource value at eleven – a total greater than the Attack on Echo Base objective value of nine. If the event ends with Phil’s resource value higher than the objective value, Phil automatically loses the event, leaving Sara and the Galactic Empire in control of Echo Base.

Sara has no ready resource cards, so she chooses to play the top card of her deck, revealing a The Force resource card with a value of two. This brings her revealed resource total to five, or seven with the hidden bonus from the Direct Assault strategy. The turn passes to Phil, and he triggers Chewbacca’s power, which serves the dual purpose of exhausting Sara’s The Force resource and lowering his own resource value to six.

On Sara’s next turn, she decides that filtering her own future cards may be her best chance of winning the event. To that end, she spends an influence to ready her Recon resource card, preparing her to use its power again. Phil wants to prevent Sara from reusing her Recon resource, however, so on his turn, he exhausts his Military resource card to discard her Recon resource card. Sara plays another new card on her turn, revealing a Diplomacy resource card with a resource value of three. Unfortunately, the special text of Attack on Echo Base states that Diplomacy cards’ power can’t be used during this struggle, making the power of Sara’s newest card useless.

At this point, Phil sees that Sara has a total resource value of five, while he has a resource value of six. He doesn’t want to play another card for fear of going over the event’s objective value, so he chooses to pass. Sara, however, knows that her chosen strategy card adds two to her resource value, bringing her to a total of seven. Because Phil passed on his last turn, Sara also passes, and the struggle ends. Both players reveal their strategies, and Sara’s Direct Assault strategy brings her resource value closer to the objective value than Phil’s, bringing victory to the Galactic Empire!

Sara claims the event and the spoils of victory – two victory points and one influence. The first player to seven victory points in Empire vs. Rebellion claims dominion over the galaxy. Although the Galactic Empire was triumphant in the Attack on Echo Base, the Rebel Alliance will make its stand on separate planets and continue the fight for freedom across the galaxy.

The First Transport Is Away

Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion is a climatic game expanding the narrative of the ongoing war between the Galactic Empire and the Rebellion. You hold the power to relive moments from the classic movies and change the course of iconic events, but you’ll need every resource at your disposal to claim victory in the Galactic Civil War.

Preorder Empire vs. Rebellion at your local retailer today!

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Empire vs. Rebellion

Published 12 June 2014 | Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion

Empire vs. Rebellion

Announcing an Upcoming Card Game of the Galactic Civil War

“Any attack made by the Rebels against this station would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they have obtained. This station is now the ultimate power in the universe!” –Admiral Motti, Star Wars: A New Hope

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Star Wars™: Empire vs. Rebellion, an upcoming card game for two players that pits the villainous plots of the Galactic Empire against the heroes of the Rebel Alliance.

A massive civil war shakes the galaxy. On one side of this struggle, the men and women of the Rebel Alliance plan for the day when the Empire will be overthrown. The Rebels are unafraid to use their military might, but clever diplomacy and reconnaissance may accomplish what displays of strength cannot. Opposing the Rebellion is the unlimited power of the Galactic Empire, under the command of Emperor Palpatine. Whether conducting reconnaissance and searching for Rebel spies or crushing insurgents beneath the heel of the Imperial Navy, all the galaxy knows to fear Darth Vader and the Empire.

Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion puts in you in command of the Empire’s unlimited reserves or the heroes of the Rebellion and challenges you to tip the outcome of key events in your favor. Every round, you must extend your might and commit your resources towards taking control of the Galactic Civil War, whether you use military power or diplomatic aplomb to achieve your goals. If you can outwit your opponent’s schemes and claim victory in crucial events, you can shape the future of the entire galaxy!

Take Command

To overthrow the Empire or crush the Rebel Alliance permanently, you will need to demonstrate your superiority by ending several key events in your favor over the course of the game. You win the struggle for an event by employing all the resources at your disposal, whether political connections, military forces, timely reconnaissance, or the Force itself.

At the beginning of each round, Imperial forces clash with the Rebels over a newly revealed event card, such as Escape from Tatooine. On your turn, you will continue the struggle for the revealed event card, utilizing all the contacts, tricks, and martial force at your disposal. When a struggle for an event card first begins, you must establish your forces in the event by drawing the top card of your resource deck and place it in your play area.

Cards in your play area contribute their resource value, shown in the upper left-hand corner, to the current struggle. For example, the Rebel Alliance military resource card shown to the right has a resource value of five. Every event card has an objective value in the lower left-hand corner; Escape from Tatooine, for example, has an objective value of eleven. Your goal is to use your resources and connections to bring your total resource value as close to this event’s objective value as possible without going over. If your resource value surpasses the event’s objective value, you have overcommitted your forces and your opponent easily claims the event.

Ultimate Power

Each turn, you must decide your faction’s best strategy for gaining the upper hand in the current event. You may choose to call for the support of your faction and put another card from your deck in play, but your ability to tip the event in your favor is limited. The number of your cards in play cannot exceed the event’s capacity, shown to the right of its objective value. Likewise, if the total resource value of your cards exceeds the event’s objective value, your efforts are discovered, and the opposing faction wins the event.

Alternatively, you may put your resources into action by using the special power of a resource card currently in play. To trigger a resource card’s power, you must exhaust the card by rotating it 90 degrees clockwise. While a resource card is exhausted, it contributes its exhausted resource value, which is located in the lower-left hand corner of a ready card. Activating your resources’ powers gives you several ways to control the outcome of the event.

A card’s special ability varies based on its type: military, diplomacy, recon, or the Force. Engaging in a military show of force allows you to discard one of your opponent’s resource cards, potentially depriving him of his most useful card. Diplomacy helps you manage your own resource cards by inviting you to discard the exhausted card or one of your other resource cards. Engaging in timely reconnaissance of Empire or Rebellion activities filters your resources or your opponent’s, allowing you to look at the top two cards of a resource deck – discarding one and replacing the other on top of the deck. Finally, drawing upon the Force helps you keep your opponent’s options at a minimum by exhausting one of your opponent’s ready resource cards.

An exhausted card cannot use its power again, but if you’ve already used a card’s power, you may wish to use that power again. Fortunately, the Rebellion has contacts and connections that span the countless worlds of the galaxy, and there are always those willing to sell information to the Empire. Influence tokens represent these connections, and they can be called upon to help you in the struggle for an event. By spending an influence token, you may ready one of your exhausted resource cards, letting you use that card’s power again.

When both the Empire and the Rebellion have completed their operations around a current event, their total resource values are compared. The player who came closest to the event’s objective value without surpassing it claims the event, along with its victory points and extra influence. The player who claims seven victory points from events first is victorious!

Strategies for the Future

Your struggles in the Galactic Civil War gain added depth from the presence of iconic characters and overarching strategies. Key characters like Leia Organa or Boba Fett provide a higher resource value than other resource cards while ready, but if they are exhausted, the resource value they provide plummets to one. Sometimes, however, a lowered resource value is worth the cost of triggering a character’s powerful effect. A single hero can make the difference between a lost cause and a triumphant victory.

Strategy cards offer another way to tip a struggle into your favor. Before a struggle begins, both players secretly choose strategies for their faction in this event. These cards determine your faction’s approach to their operations surrounding the event, and they can drastically change how you choose to play your cards during the struggle. At the end of the struggle, both players reveal their strategy cards, and they take effect, potentially allowing the Empire or the Rebellion to snatch an unlikely victory!

Claim the Galaxy

Your struggle for supremacy may take you to the heart of the Empire, or to the very reaches of the Outer Rim. Wherever the Empire finds the Rebellion, however, a strategic battle must occur. Take command of one faction’s resources in Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion, an upcoming two-player card game! Head to the Empire vs. Rebellion description page for more details, and look for this game of galactic struggles at your local retailer in the third quarter of 2014.

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