Apocalyptic Game Review: Rex, Final Days Of An Empire

Distant from from the insignificant scope of human exploration, immeasurably removed past galaxies and wonders faintly burning within Earth’s night sky, elusive to even the vast confines of the human imagination lies the rusting husk of a war torn empire. Once great and spanning an entire galaxy, this silent grave, long abandoned, holds history turned to legend in its sleeping vaults. And rests on little known stories long forgotten. 

But now, Fantasy Flight, the great collective that discovered and excavated this realm, has captured one moment in this imperium’s life, and preserved it to be experienced by our own simple race in the most coveted of artistic forms to be found here on Earth: the board game.

In Rex, players play multiple factions vying both politically and militarily for the capitol world of a failing empire. An urban juggernaut, a cityscape sprawled unending over an entire continent, this final battle takes place amoung twenty or so regions across this land, and each player — either as the old empire vainly attempting to keep order, the rebel faction ready for new rule, a barony attempting a coup, or one of three other sects — works to mine influence points (in the form of tokens) that appear randomly throughout the game in different regions. This influence acts as currency for every facet of the game. Bidding for strategy cards that help in combat (yes an economic component!), hiring and placing troops, this influence is the key to fueling your strategy to meet your particular victory conditions.

Paired with this basic game design are several features that really make gameplay varied and interesting. The first and most obvious is the bombardment mechanic. The entire time the game ensues, there is a fleet of rebel space ships (depicted through fantastic miniatures) that circles the board and destroys everything in its path (both troops and influence). This imparts great apocalyptic atmosphere to the entire game, as well as provides another element players must constantly be weary of when making decisions throughout Rex.

The second aspect of this game that really leaps out at you is how both balanced and varied each playable faction is. With vastly different abilities, ranging from avoiding bombardment, to gaining influence paid by others for strategy cards, each group, while seeming overpowered for its unique advantages, is extremely balanced by the others, despite being completely different. This makes immersion all the more effective, and adds tons of varying strategy, as well as flavor to gameplay.

Now Rex can’t be mentioned without saying that its based on the classic Avalon Hill production Dune. And while Fantasy Flight has tweaked Rex’s game design, as far as I can tell by what lies deep in nerdrealm on the internet, the games are comparable  Whether this is completely true I do not know first hand, but lucky for you (and me) I recently got my hands on a copy of Dune, and considering it was designed by the creators of Cosmic Encounter, and is DUNE THEMED, I’m ridiculously excited to play it and tell you readers all about it.

What I can tell you is that the political and thematic essence of the Dune saga was kept intact in the remake of this game. Despite being placed within the Twilight Imperium universe, the intrigue that gave the classic sci-fi novel cult status is there. And Fantasy Flight really did do a great job at tailoring this atmosphere to the universe in which they placed it.

So abridged thoughts on Rex — stats: 3-6 players, but really 4-6; medium-heavy gameplay, averaging 3 hours and requiring much thought; great components and art.

While riddled with randomness, all controlled through card draws, there still is a large amount of decisions and strategy to be had in this game. As long as you are not a strict eurogamer you should be more than satisfied with the many decisions available. If you are a fan of theme (which I am), you will be happy. this story is laid on thick, and atmosphere is apocalyptic. Political intrigue, bombs, apocalypse…really what’s not to like?

Designers: Bill Eberle, John Goodenough, Jack Kittredge, Corey Konieczka, Peter Olotka, Christian Peterson.

Publisher: Fantasy Flight

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