Stein Repeats As Rebellion Champion!

After a down year last year, the Star Wars Rebellion tournament recovered this year with 22 players competing to master this incredible thematic war game.

Our mulligan round was very well attended with 16 players playing 8 matches. No one formally took the option of a teaching game, though a few first-time players were making their way through the game.

In the First round we had an additional 7 games bringing us to a total of 15 preliminary round matches.

Some interesting notes from those preliminary games:

• Of the 15 games, the Empire won 8 to the Rebels 7. This shows a fair bit of balance in the game with the bidding system implemented. In the playoff games, the Rebels went 6-4 so overall there was a slight Rebel advantage this year
• In no game was there a bid of more than a single influence. In fact, Eric was able to win his Quarterfinal and Final game as the Rebels with a bid of 0
• In both preliminary rounds, each table had a different original base location. In fact, over the 25 games in the tournament, no location was chosen more than 4 times (Endor – with three of those being Eric Stein)
• Every preliminary game went at least 5 rounds, with an average length of 7.2 turns
• The rebels won on average on turn 7.8 and the Empire on turn 6.7
• Seven of the 15 preliminary games used the expansion which might suggest that there are a number of players still uncomfortable (or don’t own) the expansion game

That gave us 12 unique winners to start the single elimination on Thursday morning. With 3 players dropping we had the dreaded 9 player bracket to start. With a prepared plan to use eliminators wherever possible, we got 5 games going.

Table 1 had the most lopsided of the games as 2022 Champion Ty Hansen defeated former GM Chris Kizer’s rebels on turn 4 crushing a Malastare base setup.

Table 2 saw GM Andrew Drummond take down Jacob Platnick’s rebels in Yavin on turn 7.

Table 3 was newcomer Byung Chun as the rebels escaping an initial Ord Mantell base location to win in 8 turns with a new base on Hoth.

Table 4 had Alex Gregorio’s rebels hold off in Endor against Alfred Schnabel’s Empire across 8 turns.

Table 5 had 2024 champion Eric Stein hold off the eliminator Corbett Ray who mucked after 6 turns against an unassailable Mon Calamari base.

The eliminator failed to beat last year’s champion Eric, so our quarterfinal again had an easy to work with number of 5… Yannick Poirer was gracious enough to offer himself as an eliminator and 3 quarterfinal games got going.

Andrew drew Yannick for an opponent and with some tactful double movement actions defeated Yannick’s Nal Hutta base on turn 5.

Byung as the Empire stymied Ty’s every opportunity and held him to a single objective point while overrunning the Dathomir base on turn 7.

Alex’s Empire valiantly tried to defeat Eric’s rebellion but failed to do so in time as Eric won a turn 8 victory.

Since the quarterfinal eliminator also failed to drop 2023 champion Andrew so we had 3 players advance to the Semifinal. After consulting with AGMs and convention staff on the fairest way to proceed (since we couldn’t find an eliminator) we settled on a random draw that gave Byung Chun a bye into the Final and Andrew and Eric would fight a rematch of last year’s Final.

Similar to the 2023 Semifinal, Andrew and Eric played a long slug match with the game going extra time as Andrew managed to score both Imperial objective points available to him (Admiral Motti’s anti-sabotage and Jabba’s execution). There were also a number of inflection points in the game as Andrew made two land assaults on the base with close to equal troops and failed while Eric also missed a Death Star plans opportunity in the mid game.

In the end though, Eric had relocated his base to Hoth with multiple shield generators, and it was more than Andrew’s limited military resources were going to be able to overcome. Andrew conceded on turn 8 despite Eric still only being at 12 on the objective track but in a position deemed by Andrew to be unbreakable.

This left the Final table of the Canadian newcomer Byung against the 2024 champion Eric. Eric took the rebel side, as he had all tournament and Byung managed the Empire. The rebels got a Kashyyyk, Bothawui, Naboo start and the Empire began loyal in Sullust, Mustafar, Salucami with subjugation in Rodia and Corellia.

Byung arranged the Imperial forces across 3 Star Destroyer based fleets on the East half in Coruscant, Sullust, and with a Death Star under construction in Tatooine. Eric’s rebels responded with only troops in Utapau to support gaining loyalty.

Over the two turns, Byung used his fleets to rapidly expand, moving to Ord Mantell, Mon Calamari, Naboo, Toydaria, Mygeeto, and Bothawui while capturing Leia on Naboo and Eric secured loyalty on Utapau, Geonosis, and Cato Neimodia while sabotaging Corelia.

Turn 3 saw Byung continue the rapid expansion, claiming Utapau, Cato Neimodia , the Nal Hutta region, Bespin and others and generated almost all of his carriers by the second build. Eric by this point only held Geonosis, and Kashyyyk but had generated all 3 of his shield bunkers to ward off a ground assault. Though notably starting turn 4 Eric also still had no points.

Turn 4 saw Byung find the base on Endor, but with the majority of his forces arrayed to go West (only the Death Star in Tatooine and a Star Destroyer in Utapau were on the East half) it took him a couple more turns to bring enough force to bear on the far corner.

Turn 5 saw a pivotal strike when Eric used Plan the Assault to get a few fighters in place to blow the Death Star to bits, giving the rebels 2 influence points and setting them up well to pressure the Empire for the rest of the game.

On the turn 6 Byung was finally in position to strike Endor, the rebels snuck in to do a rescue operation. While Byung blocked the mission with Vader ensuring he maintained a captured leader, the action left his fleet unable to move that turn and gave the rebels the opportunity to relocate across the board to Mon Calamari.

From there and given the concentration of the Imperial forces in the bottom corner, the Mon Calamari base ended up holding out against what the Empire could muster, and the Rebels claimed the victory.

That result gave Star Wars Rebellion its first ever double winner. Congratulations to Eric and looking forward to seeing him go for the threepeat next year!