Hi, just got this game as a birthday present last week. Wife and I have played twice. First game took 8 HOURS! I really wish FF had included an insert that gave a single page outline of the steps to each phase.
Warning this is a long post. I have a question about the classification of the deathstar as a unit, then a more general question of "If and what are we doing wrong" because of the length of our first game and second one (4.5 hrs), and how difficult we are both finding to make any progress within the first 4 turns.
Anyway, my main question concerns the death star, and if it is considered a unit. Specifically, my wife was playing empire. She moved the death star to a planet i had loyalty in, with 2 ground units at the time. There were no space units. When phase 3 came, we didn't know if i was allowed to build units using the planet's resources or deploy planets from my build queue, since I know the rules say you can't build or deploy units from and to a loyal planet that your opponent has one of their units in. (come to think of it, does this only apply if they have at least 1 ground unit? We were assuming it meant space or ground.)
This issue came up again when I played a rebel card that I can't remember the specific name of, but it was like hidden fleet except only ships could be moved from the reb base to a space with no units.
Like i said, death star was her only figure on my planet. I used this card to get my ships out of my base and onto the system, so that I could initiate combat with the deathstar and play my plan the attack card to take it down. (We did make sure she rolled her red dice first against the ships.) Was I allowed to do this? If not, what cards if any do allow you to transfer into a system with the deathstar in it?
Finally, If the deathstar isn't considered a "unit" for the purposes of these cards, are there any other pieces from your military that aren't either? For instance, the ion cannon/shields?
Also, we are finding that our games are going very very slow - we cut it down to 4.5 hours the second time, but by that time my wife just conceded when I blew up the deathstar because she needed to raid. I was a lot more cognizent about trying to thin my mission deck early the second time around, but I am finding it really difficult to achieve any missions in the game - in fact that last game, I only completed 2 missions in the last turn only (one worth 2 points during phase 3 and the other 1 point during a combat). It seems the ability to speed up the game falls on the rebel player most since he has direct influence over the rebel marker moving to meet the empire's marker, whereas the empire is going to necessarily take some time to narrow down where your base is going to be. I found I couldn't ever complete the 1 point missions - control all systems in a region or blow up a destroyer because my leaders were busy doing missions, not moving troops. Wife would just send vader or palp to counter my diplomacy missions, and it felt that my tool kit was very limited in gaining diplomacy beyond that. To be honest, I felt like the missions that gave you 2 points were way easier to fulfill, in particular the 1 point mission to control a region feels like I am chasing my tail.
On the empire end, my wife constantly felt overwhelmed with all the ground she needed to cover to find me - and she seems to be very very good at suspecting where I'm hiding - both times we've played she was one planet off from my location, but still struggles to get to the location quick enough when she needs to answer my bigger plays (like taking mon calamari with the intel mission that let me also fill my build queue - she had spent her leaders on moving units around calamari's twin planet on the other side of the board and removing my sabotage on corellia). In particular, she is frustrated with deciding between her missions or if she should just inch across the board. I noticed that most turns she was attempting to capture my leaders (She did wind up getting one of them, then next turn converted that unit to her leader pool with lure to the darkside), get through her project deck, and she was opposing my diplomacy attempts on the big planets, so was she spread to thin? Was she doing too many missions and should have always focused on moving her units atleast a couple of times a turn? She felt like she was chasing her tail trying to keep me from producing starships on one side of the board while amassing her army on the other to take down the region she suspected (correctly) that my base was on.
My suspicion is that the first game rules are to blame - for this second game we still used the first game rules, including not using the action cards text. I recently flipped through those cards and it seems like they present more opportunities for mobility and thinning out the mission/project decks, but do they make any really meaningful impact on the game length? Feels like I'll never get to even see the 3 point rebel missions.
Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to give proper context to how we are approaching the game and where we are struggling to understand what to do. While the production values of this game are incredible, the rule books and first game setup feel like they needed to be done better - first game setups should never lead to 8 hour games! We are still leaving this game with mixed emotions - the game has very high production values, and I can feel in my bones that it's going to be very rewarding and and a blast once I have the rules down - but when we get into a 30 minute back and forth, double rulebook fliping, google fest over random mechanics and interactions the game starts to feel frustrating and futile.
Edit - 2 more questions concerning loyalty and subjugation:
Had a forehad slap moment when I realized why I might be struggling with the loyalty int he region mission - If I have loyalty on a planet, but the empire has subjugated it, does it still count for that mission?? I've been assuming no. second, in that situation would the empire still be building the one troop he gets from a subjugated planet, or does he need to remove my loyalty tokens completely first?
Thanks!
Edited by satyrsun