The Great Rebellion

The Great Rebellion is a strategy game built around managing resistance, pressure and limited resources, so the whole thing turns on choices made under strain. By our assessment, its best feature is the political feel of the setup: games in this vein work when the player is balancing control, risk and the slow accumulation of advantage. The downside is that this kind of design can become abstract fast if the systems are not very clear, and then the tension turns into bookkeeping. In practice it asks for patience and a taste for seeing how a broad conflict unfolds over time. Compared with simpler tactics games, it sits closer to management of a struggle than to direct combat. The Great Rebellion is for people who enjoy long-form strategy, and it is least convincing when a session needs to move quickly.