My friend got Rebellion for Christmas last year. Last night he finally got it to the table. We played the four-player variant. One person had played 2 games as the Rebels and he was the Rebel admiral. The other three of us hadn't played the game before. I chose to play as the Imperial general in hopes of gaining control of Boba Fett (and wore my Boba Fett shirt for the occasion!). We played with the recommended first-game setup and also left out the card text on the recruitment cards.
In the first two rounds of the game, we drew both of the cards that let us use diplomacy without first subjugating a system. We were able to control all Star Destroyer systems and begin producing Star Destroyers. Also, we got Boba Fett as our first additional leader! Unfortunately, it took several turns for us to be successful at capturing anyone, and by that point, 6 of our 10 missions were against captured leaders. It was rough. But things soon changed. We had a hunch the Rebel system was on Tatooine, so the admiral moved a decent-sized fleet toward that sector. When we were adjacent to Tatooine, Admiral Ackbar led an attack from their hidden base with all of their units. Unfortunately for them, the battle didn't go as planned. They lost their Mon Calamari cruiser in the first round and lost half of their ground troops. They retreated their remaining forces to Naboo. This attack put us in a difficult situation. That was basically the whole of the Rebel fleet, so we wanted to have a successful battle, but we also wanted to move our fleet to take their base. If we used a leader to support the battle, we wouldn't be able to move those units later in the round. The admiral decided it was worth it to have the Tarkin oversee that battle. His tactics cards were critical, allowing us to deny blocks to the Rebels, which is what allowed us to eliminate the Mon Cal cruiser.
Later in the round, we detained Admiral Ackbar with Tagge, meaning he didn't go back to the leader pool at the end of the round. It also meant that the fleet was stuck there and couldn't leave Naboo. During the next round, we moved the Death Star to Naboo and decimated the rest of the fleet. Then we blew up Naboo and all the Rebels on the ground. We were then able to finally capture Admiral Ackbar and ended up putting him into carbonite in the same round. It was a crucial round for us. Unfortunately, the Rebels moved their base. It turned out the base was on Ryloth, not Tatooine, so it's a good thing Tarkin supported the fleet instead of having us try to move later.
Over the next few rounds, we battered Ackbar with interrogation sessions. Using Yularen and Boba Fett for the interrogations gave us a lot of insight in the system, so the Rebels kept on choosing not to play their rescue card, which meant it was a whole activation wasted for them.
As the Imperials, we spread out over the right side of the board, but the Rebels were starting to lock down the left side. My partner had a feeling the base was on the left side of the board. We tried interrogating Ackbar to make them tell us three systems where the Rebel base might be. Unfortunately, we played our missions wrong and lost the opposition. We should have had Vader go before Yularen because Yularen's mission would have allowed Vader to use all his symbols to help the mission. It was a set back that left us still scrambling to find the Rebel base.
Time was running out. The Rebels were 3 reputation spaces from the time token, so if they got two objectives during the next round, they would win. Luckily, we drew the probe cards that told us the Rebels were nowhere on the right side of the board (since we had control of everything else by that point). So they were either on Dantooine, Ilum, or Dathomir. Unfortunately, we had one fleet adjacent to Ilum and no other fleets next to those systems. Start of the round, the Rebel admiral sent Wedge to sabotage the system with our fleet in it (can't remember the name of the system, but it was between Ilum and Alderaan). We knew if we opposed the mission, we couldn't advance toward the systems we had to conquer, so we let the sabotage token go. The Imperial admiral then moved the fleet to Ilum. We found the Rebel base!
The final battle was so intense! During the second round of space combat, the Rebels and Imperials wiped each other out completely, leaving only the ongoing ground battle. The ground battle began with 4 Rebel Troopers, 1 Snow Speeder, 1 Shield Generator, 2 Storm Troopers, and 2 AT-STs. We went through the whole ground tactics deck and had to start all over. I was able to destroy all the Rebel figures except the shield generator. Then the Rebel general played a tactics card that dealt the last damage to my one remaining AT-ST. The shield generator held and our invasion was repelled. The Rebels breathed a sigh of relief. Their plans for missions, if successful, would get them the reputation they needed to permanently sway galactic opinion against the Empire. But before they could continue with their plans, it was the Imperial general's turn.
I activated Boba Fett's mission and sent him to Ilum. If we won the attempt at the mission, we could bring 2 Stormtroopers, 1 AT-ST, and 1 AT-AT from a single system and bring it to the activated system. We had all those units on Coruscant and the Rebels had nobody to oppose the mission because they were focused on getting the reputation they needed. There was nothing that shield generator could do against such an onslaught!
The Rebels fought valiantly on Ilum, but their crimes against the Empire did not go unpunished. We made an example out of them that caused the rest of the galaxy to kneel before our might. And at last ... we had peace.
Edited by Budgernaut