Had a chance to play Outer Rim last night, and it was actually a lot of fun. Felt very Star Warsy, and sort of reminded me what I love about the franchise. It's nothing like Armada, since it's such a small and personal scale, but still a fun game. Pretty much a shameless clone of GF9's Firefly game, but FFG has done a few things to streamline that experience (chit money instead of paper money, and market decks are universally available to be purchased from any planet).

Good times, so if you're looking for a Star Wars game to fill in some time between now and SSD and you get a chance, I recommend Outer Rim! Any one else played it yet? Thoughts?

I'm eyeing this one myself if I have the funds free.

"It's like firefly." is a criticism I see leveled against Outer Rim but I didn't think much of Firefly in the chances I had to try it. You're stuck in this endless loop of trying to get better and better crew before taking on a job and, as a result, you're no closer to actually finishing the game two hours later until someone decides to go in without everything.

I'm hoping Outer Rim is an improvement on that engine, because I wasn't impressed with Firefly.

I bought it yesterday and will be opening it up next week when I have time available.

I picked it up at the UK Games Expo and a few of us tried it out earlier in the week (giving it another go next week, hopefully). It was quite fun, and fairly easy to pick up.

We didn't get much PvP stuff in, but that might be due to time limits (we played 2 and a half hours, and ended with 4-7 fame, not 10); in the last couple of rounds we were beginning to get some combat.

I was a bit surprised by some of the ships in it; some of the player ships aren't even in X-Wing, and it has the Bulk Cruiser as one of the capital ships.

I played a game of it yesterday, and wanted to immediately play again. I am scrubbing toilets and vacuuming, may even do the (shudder) dishes, trying to get my wife to give a try just so I can get another game in soon.

So far, highly enjoy!

I’m definitely considering checking it out. My initial concern was replayability but the play-throughs I’ve watched seem to suggest that isn’t an issue...and we know there will be expansions. The solo mode AI seems interesting as well. Still holding off though as I’ve got Tauntauns and Dewbacks to buy shortly lol...

Bought it at the UKGE, played it a few times, excellent game, always a different game and very thematic. So easy my missus picked up how to play it. My last game vs @Kendraam had Han Solo, Chewbacca and the Falcon and kicked ***, how much more Star Wars can it get. I can see the expansion for it already.

I gotta say this, FFG's nailing it with Star Wars games. Rebellion is the definitive Star-Wars-In-A-Box game and I'll be crushed the day FFG loses the Star Wars license or somehow Rebellion goes out of print. It's like how big Decipher was with their CCG back in the day in impacting the lore and being " The " Star Wars game.

Armada is a good Star Wars system but I'll have to admit, the theme is only in the ship constituency and it could go the way genesys did with being an agnostic system. You can't say that for Rebellion, and if Outer Rim is in the same way all the more power to it.

I just hope with more titles like these, FFG can wrest more freedom to make board games from Hasbro. Rebellion is hands down a dramatic improvement over the likes of Star Wars Monopoly.

I really miss Decipher's CCG game. Played it loads with my brothers. If your getting Decipher vibes from Rebellion then I'm in!

Edit: are we getting our Rims muddled up here?!

Played my first game today.

Really cool mechanics, and the themes and choices are fun.

Bounty hunting is super luck dependant for where the bounties are, and I won my first game in a landslide runnung Boba Fett. Trying smuggler build next.

On 6/14/2019 at 11:40 PM, Digitalfiends said:

My initial concern was replayability ...

My concern as well. Any game can really get by on the "new hotness" appeal of it as it still offers surprise and mystique as you try to solve its puzzles. Outer Rim will, after a few play throughts, have far less wonder and luster as you've seen all the gadgets, attempted all the jobs, and interacted with all the locals.

The game may well still be fun to play (and I'm hopeful it will be), but it'll lose a lot of that "whoa, neat!" narrative element that goes with any of the early playthroughs as players discover the game's world together.

On 6/18/2019 at 10:44 PM, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

My concern as well. Any game can really get by on the "new hotness" appeal of it as it still offers surprise and mystique as you try to solve its puzzles. Outer Rim will, after a few play throughts, have far less wonder and luster as you've seen all the gadgets, attempted all the jobs, and interacted with all the locals.

The game may well still be fun to play (and I'm hopeful it will be), but it'll lose a lot of that "whoa, neat!" narrative element that goes with any of the early playthroughs as players discover the game's world together.

After ~3 games i would agree with this assessment. That said I'm generally of the opinion that if you're playing a game like this more than once a month you're overdoing it and are going to burn out. There is very definite room for expansion on Outer Rim and I'm already curious to see how that pans out.

That said, it is a solid game, and its only shortcoming is a lack of options to improve replayability due to the limited number of cards in each category.

Played my first game as Lando and liked it at two player but think it would shine at 3+. Though it would be interesting to see if there was a lot of downtime between turns, my sense is that you would stay engaged as the action is exposing contacts and cards that you want to know about.

It helped that I pulled the perfect set of Lando cards, from illegal cargos to Lobot in my crew to the fancy threads and pulling multiple gambling encounter cards. I had a path to victory (10 VP, er, fame points to win) but was beaten right at the end as I discovered too late that it is just as important to cycle the decks defensively as it is to hunt for the stuff you want. In my case, those sweet illegal cargos since they give you 1 fame each and as Lando I can re-roll the check to not get caught.

I think it would have a ton of replay unless you pick the same character each time, or play vs. the same character each time. Each matchup will be a little different, and then the cards you pull from the decks offering more permutations.

Lando vs a very aggro opponent (Ketsu?) felt very asymmetric which I absolutely love. (Rebellion, Twilight Struggle, Netrunner are some of my faves.) I had no offense to speak of, just a 3-cargo ship and fancy clothes and almost won the game.

I've also played Firefly and think this is superior. (Disclaimer: I wasn't impressed with Firefly.) To me this comes across as another classic Corey K boiled-down-to-its-essence ruleset that OOZES theme. And unlike Firefly you really have to be stubborn to get stuck.

EDIT: I really agree with these suggestions I read on the BGG forums;

- When doing a job and it says "read card #41", the player to your left reads it out, removing the bits that say if you pass or if you fail. This heightens tension and stops players from "gaming the situation".

- Have players pick characters that they feel comfortable with and they know well.

- Try to play your character and not yourself.

I've played 3 4-player games now. The first one we just played for a few hours and didn't finish, but we got one player to 10 Fame the other two games.

I'm impressed at how rarely we've needed to refer to the rules (although we still haven't quite figured out how patrols move when they have a choice). Occasionally something comes up, but for the most part it is all pretty obvious, and the new players haven't needed much more than the rules reference cards. It's also really quick to pick up.

There seems to be a lot of luck involved, but it's not nearly serious enough (and can be quite silly) to worry about; it's a game that it is still pretty fun to lose.

Second game I ended with Ketsu, in the IG-2000 with Proton Torpedoes and some other ship mod, and was crushing patrols all over the place for money and fame, but just failed a combat that would have got me to 10; then Han Solo, in a Chrome-played YT-1300 (with the +1 movement boost), on 4 Fame, delivered an illegal cargo (+2 Fame), got to flip his ship to the Millennium Falcon (+2 Fame) and just managed to beat a patrol that came after him (+2 Fame) to win.

Third game didn't go nearly as well; as Lando I got + reputation with everyone, but wasn't able to leverage that into Fame (or money). Also got blackmailed and beaten up a couple of times by Jyn Erso and Saw Gerrera. Highlight was arriving at a planet, buying a smuggling compartment for my ship, then as it was being installed delivering some illegal cargo using it. "Nothing to see here, officers, just having some work done on my ship; don't look too closely." Han Solo ended up winning again (different player) after delivering a new pet rancor to Jabba. Not quite sure how it fit in the Millennium Falcon, but it all worked out.

Definitely a fun game, and a nice break after a couple of months of intense Armada, but I'm ready to go back now.

17 hours ago, webv said:

- When doing a job and it says "read card #41", the player to your left reads it out, removing the bits that say if you pass or if you fail. This heightens tension and stops players from "gaming the situation".

While not a bad idea on the surface, I dunno how well that would mesh with the 'secret' results of some of the cards. It seems rather important on a few of those that nobody else knows you have that.

The "Secret" cards are generally pretty easy to spot without reading them accidentally. They're also limited to the encounter cards, rather than the Databank ones. So just doing this for the Databank cards should be fine.

so now that is on the boat, HYPE TRAIIINNNN.... it is time....