Outer Rim Game Review

Our gaming group was lucky to find a copy of Fantasy Flight's newest Star Wars game Outer Rim at our FLGS last week.  The much hyped game has you play as one of the better known Bounty Hunters or smugglers in Star Wars lore as they gain fame and fortune by completing jobs and moving cargo.
 
Characters start the game with one of two basic ships, and either a job to complete or some cargo to deliver.  Each player turn has three sections to it.  In the first section, they can move to a new location, heal,  or gain some credits at their current location.  Then players can turn in any bounties or cargo, buy items from the shop area or trade items with other players at their location.  The shop area contains gear that enhance players, crew that help out, and jobs and cargo for players to complete and sell.  Then players can do an encounter at their location, either meeting with contacts, doing a job encounter, or a location encounter.

The full board

The encounters are somewhat similar to the way FFG did their Fallout game, with cards giving tests to pass based on character attributes.  Tests use two dice, with a critical needing to be rolled to pass. If your character has a tested attribute (Strength, Tactics, Knowledge etc etc) its easier to pass with either a hit or a critical.  Combat works in a similar fashion, with each player rolling dice equal to their combat strength against their opponents dice.  There were only 6 dice included, but we pretty quickly had attributes up to 7 or 8 in value, so FFG probably should ship a few more with the game.

Your player tableau, Bossk in a HWK-290

The game overall is enjoyable.  You jet around and pull heists, find bounties to capture and upgrade your gear.  It takes a little time to get your machine rolling (especially with bounties, since you need to investigate characters first).  Player interaction is a little low, but you can make trades and ask for promises and credits from anywhere on the board.  I was able to extract a favor from another player in return for not stopping them from buying a ship on my turn, which was a fun way of politicing.  Attacking other players is possible, but its limited so its an area that's not really explored in the game.  If you've enjoyed most of FFG's other offerings, this game fits in nicely for a fun time with plenty of memories.

The only aspect that felt not very pivotal was the different faction patrols.  There are encounters with them, and having your reputation up with factions makes it easier to move around.  But overall since the patrols don't do a lot of movement and at neutral reputation just stop your movement they play a very minor role.  If there was more to their movement or more patrols going I think it would make that aspect a bit better.