In Star Wars Risk you play cards, roll red six-sided dice, and move little plastic bits around a board, and that’s about where this game’s similarities with Risk end.
This game should not have been called Star Wars Risk. Risk is crap (with the exception of perhaps Risk Legacy).
Star Wars Risk however, is quite fun.
This game is essentially the spiritual successor to The Queen’s Gambit, a game I’ve unfortunately never played. Star Wars Risk should have been titled Rebellion’s Gambit or something that didn’t include the word Risk, a major turn off to most board game buyers.
The components and packaging in this game are pretty nice coming from Hasbro, though I did manage to get the Black Series edition, which is a little bit slicker than the standard version you’ll find in the store. If you need as much pizazz in your games as possible, I’d recommend springing the extra $25 or so for the Black Series version.
The main pull of Star Wars Risk is that you have to manage three fronts at the same time. The game attempts to recreate the final battle in Return of the Jedi.
You must manage the space battle around the Death Star, the ground battle on Endor around the shield generator, and the fateful duel between Vader and Luke.
Star Wars Risk is a two-player game (you can play four-player but it just breaks things down into teams). If you’re the Rebellion your mission is to destroy the Death Star. If you’re the Empire you need to destroy every single rebel ship.
The gameplay is rather straightforward.
To start a turn, you choose three of the six order cards in your hand, each of which have any combination of possible orders on them, and place them in a stack in front of you in the order you want to resolve them. Each card has multiple options for actions to do when you play the card.
Then, starting with the rebel player you take turns drawing from your stack of three cards and resolving one thing on each card until they’re gone.
Repeat.
Everything you do is incredibly simple.
Want to advance towards the Endor bunker? You roll five dice and advance spaces depending on how well you rolled.
The Imperial player can also lay down stormtroopers to slow the progress towards the bunker.
Once the Rebels reach the bunker, it blows up and the rebel fighters can start attacking the Death Star.
Attacking with ships is simple. Roll one die for each ship in a sector that’s attacking.
Roll a three or better to destroy a Tie Fighter or an X-Wing; a four or better to destroy a Y-Wing, and a five or better to destroy a B-Wing.
The wrinkle in the space combat is that the Executor and the Millennium Falcon are also on the board wreaking havoc: the former deploying more Ties and the latter mopping up Ties.
The Death Star can target the Rebel fleet, which may still have precious Rebel fighters docked on board.
Battling with Luke and Vader requires you to simply roll two dice and on a four or better your opponent will take damage. The Emperor can also intervene to do an automatic two damage to Luke.
The battle between Luke and Vader, while initially seeming inconsequential to the goals of the main battle. But if you win that battle you get free cards to add to your stack on a turn, which can swing the tide of the battle immensely. You get even more bonus cards if you manage to redeem Vader rather than simply kill him.
All of the mechanics in this game are incredibly simple. So simple on their own as to almost be too simple, too mundane.
But when you throw them all together and have to manage these three aspects of the board at once, only getting to do three things on a turn, things start to get tricky.
Do I smack Luke around? But wait those X-Wings are moving in on the Executor. Oh but I need to stop him from moving on the bunker. But the Death Star needs to blow up the rebel fleet…
The decisions laid out before you are never overwhelming, but they’re never simple choices either.
This game is fast, it’s fun, it’s simple, but it has enough strategic depth to keep pulling you back for another match.
This was a very overlooked game when it came out in September, 2015, probably because the word Risk is on the box, but I’m very happy to have this game in my collection now.