It’s a product for a modern audience that generally wants to play a game in a single afternoon or evening.įreedom in the Galaxy leans much more on the conflict simulation scale of gaming. There’s a lot of action in a game that plays out the narrative from the original movie trilogy (Episodes 4 through 6) and takes about 4 hours to finish. Star Wars: Rebellion is a game with deep strategy embedded in its card play mixed in with a simple but robust military engine coupled with a character system that either leads the military forces on the map or goes on missions to fulfill objectives or projects important to their side’s cause. They are also two different kinds of beasts. For me this game came into its own with its rich backstory and cornucopia of detail that is quite an achievement considering that the game is smaller than a lot of similar wargames of its time. Considering that Fantasy Flight Games recently published Star Wars: Rebellion, we now have THE official Star Wars licensed strategy game which makes Freedom in the Galaxy obsolete right?įor some perhaps. It’s a favorite among dedicated fans whom have played it for the last 30 years so they could have the closest experience to a Star Wars like wargame. Much like it’s cousin by SPI, War of the Ring, the publisher that obtained a license for a game about Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books probably tried to do the same for George Lucas’s creation. This game was essentially supposed to be: “Star Wars: The Wargame”. It’s a two player space opera wargame between an evil oppressive Galactic Empire and an upstart rebellion that initially consists of just a small group of characters intent on overthrowing the tyrannical emperor. This game is very much a product of the late 70’s early 80’s gaming, a time when hex and counter strategy games had reached an apex and had branched out into science fiction and fantasy (led by Ares Magazine, a spin-off SPI game magazine created to deal specifically with those genres). This game was published by SPI in 1979 and later reprinted in a new edition by Avalon Hill in 1981. Of the four, Freedom in the Galaxy is my favorite. Today’s post is about the one in the lower right corner. I played them all to absolute disintegration.

These were Civilization, Source of the Nile, Statis Pro Baseball and Freedom in the Galaxy. My introduction to the boardgaming hobby (as opposed to say, just boardgames in general) came via my father’s very tiny collection of Avalon Hill titles all the way back in 1983-84.

Age of rebellion galaxy map