Star Wars The Clone Wars Board Game | A Pandemic System | Tactical Strategy Game for Adults and Teens | Ages 14+ | 1-5 Players | Average Playtime 60 Minutes | Made by Z-Man Games

Got this for me and my wife for Christmas. We've been playing (and love!) the original and Iberia versions of Pandemic for several years, probably over 100 times each, so we were looking for something different to try. This is pretty similar in concept and some elements of game play, but with the Star Wars theme and enough differences from the other versions, it's a fresh new gaming experience. We've only played it a few times so far, but the gameplay seems just as fun, interesting and challenging as the others. We like the droids and character models, and the extra layer of unpredictability that the villains bring. The only negative I've seen so far is that the game board doesn't seem to lay flat, but I'm sure that will loosen up in time. Great game!

It is an excellent game, but liking this game depends on the expectations. Let me elaborate.This game is based on the system of another game called Pandemic, where you need to stop the spread of a virus, in this case an invasion of droids. But there are key differences and improvements over the original game. First droids do not spread, they just invade and stay there. And the bureaucracy of cards used by the original pandemic is replaced with mission cards, that refer to specific episodes of the TV show, making it very thematic.There are games that are strategic and others are tactical. Some are more focused on the narrative and others in the ludic part of the experience. This game is more narrative and strategic, in the sense that it is oriented to solve missions that relate directly to episodes from the Clone Wars TV show. And it is strategic because it shows the big picture of a strategist and how Jedis needed to deal with separatist droid forces in a galactic scale.From a narrative point of view, Rebellion (with Rise of the Empire expansion) and this game, are the definitive games. Other games are skirmishes, which is fine if you like tactical battles and pew pew.Player cards refer to Jedis that have specific skills. And these skills reflect their personalities very well.Components are great. Very thematic.There are some criticisms that have been made to this game.* It is too easy. Rulebook establishes how to increase difficulty.* Winning with higher difficulty depends on luck. If you refer to combat, any combat game uses dice, because outcomes of a fight are not deterministic, like planing a move and then make a maneuver with a car. However, winning is also a matter of your strategy to keep or discard cards and also planning ahead how you will move to minimize use of actions to move. So it does not rely so much on luck, but planning with some uncertainty given by the dice rolls.* Rules are too simple. Boardgamegeek website has posts regarding variants to make the rules more sophisticated for advanced players and/or difficult.* Villains are too easy. Indeed in the TV show, villains were not the big boss. Their villany was more about their ability to constantly harass the Jedis. This is perfectly depited in this game. You will try to stop the droid invasion and fulfill the missions, but the vilain will be there to make your life hard, so you will need to face the villain several times, like in the show. Since this is not a skirmish game, do not expect a big boss fight. If you want that, you will need to play Shatterpoint.The die rolls a lot, so try to make it roll inside the game box, so it does not go off the table. Use a cup to make the roll. That randomizes the roll a bit better than using your hand.Miniatures of Jedis and villains come inside a holder that holds them perhaps too tight. So after repeated use, a miniature could brea,k if you take them out with your bare hands. Use a eyebrow tweezer and carefully grab the base of the miniatures to take them out. Also get a couple of sandwich bags to store cards inside the box.Also, buy a small container to put miniatures of droids inside so you can pick them up easily when playing.The game does not take too long, it is for casual players like the original Pandemic. And for fans of Clone Wars, this is the definitive game, unless you want skirmishes.

In 2020, a few months before the the global “corona” pandemic started, I purchased a copy of the famous Pandemic game that was just published in a Hebrew version in Israel. Me and my wife were pretty new to the hobby and explored this amazing world, and this game was our second cooperative game in our humble collection. We really enjoyed this game, it was a tense and thrilling experience of saving the humanity from the evolving viruses that spread all over the world, exploring each character’s unique specialty and ability. The base game didn’t offer a lot of variety except some difficulty levels, and after a few plays we eventually sold the game.2 years later, Z-men announced the new variation for a game based on the Pandemic system - Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which caught my attention immediately as I saw it. A few weeks after it appeared on Amazon, I grabbed a copy to try, mostly because I love the Star Wars theme and because I was curious to find out how the publisher implemented the theme into the Pandemic system.I was really surprised to find out that the system, although mostly left the same, felt fresh and interesting with a lot of improvements over the original game it was based on.The main goal of the game is to beat one of the selected main villain. In general, the game offers 4 different villains: Darth maul, Count Dooku, Ahsoka Tano and General Grievous and 7 iconic Jedi characters (Anakin, Obi-wan and etc.)All of the characters are represented by a nicely detailed, very good quality miniatures. Additionally, there is a set of small miniatures that represent the droids that are used to spread across the planets and increase the threat.The same concepts and mechanisms of the Pandemic games are still exists, instead of spreading disease you are spreading the droids, outbreak is now became a threat.But the main card play mechanism became more interesting for us. All of the cards you pick represent a tableau that can be activated to increase various actions, clone troopers cards are used to increase a fight and complete certain required objectives and are discarded only when you choose to.These changes created a perfect variety which lacked for us in the original game.Each round, depends on the main enemy, you should complete certain number of goals depending on the chosen difficulty. The goals require you to pick some symbols and reach a certain number when attempting to fulfill the mission.After competing all the missions, you move to complete the main objective which is defeating the main boss.All of this is done in turn orders between the players. Each player has 4 actions: move, fight, pick a card and attempting a mission (which I mentioned before).Additionally, every character has his own special ability which he can use freely during his turn.After completing up to 4 action, the main enemy flips a card which is being executed.Next, invasion cards are being executed by adding droids to a different planets.We really enjoyed this variant of the game, especially thank’s to the great implementation of the theme with the system.The game felt familiar, yet different enough to feel new and interesting. Each main enemy is different, and players should find a different approach to beat each one of them.I highly recommend this game to people who co-op games, Pandemic fans who want to קand especially Star Wars who liked the series and the episodes 1 to 3 movies.