My (direct from Asmodee) pre-order arrived today. I set up and dove right in to a solo play with two AI opponents.
AI improvements
Let’s start there, shall we? Not only do we finally get an official version of an AI bounty hunter deck, we also get streamlined and customized AI decks for the non-bounty hunters. There is one unique AI card per character, and five generic bounty hunter AI cards. The rules dictate that when playing with a non-bounty hunter AI you use five specific cards from the base game and that character’s unique card. All of the unique AI cards have “shuffle the AI deck” as a final step so these decks are regularly shuffled to stay unpredictable. I didn’t think I’d be writing about how making decks in this game smaller would be a good thing, but for AI logic it works well.
The additional benefit to the bounty hunters using their own deck is that you can now have two AI opponents! The AI logic remains streamlined, even with bounty hunters, so turns move quickly and running two opponents doesn’t feel unwieldy.
Encounter and Market decks
The difference between 10 cards and 20 cards (for most decks) feels like an exponential addition. Various effects will still cycle or shuffle decks so any given card doesn’t feel impossible to find over time, but a wider variety of effects makes the options more diverse. The few decks that didn’t get a full 10 cards to double the offering are the less commonly used ones (luxury items, ships, etc.).
Encounter decks are also doubled, which again makes for greater variety in what you’ll find at each planet or navpoint. The themes are still consistent so the planets can still be specific destinations for what you’re used to finding there.
Level 4 contacts
Each planet also gets another contact, specifically a level 4 (orange) token. These are dealt randomly like the others. The rulebook promises that these are more powerful allies (crew) and enemies. Most are ways to deal the original playable characters into the contact token mix.
The market effects also include effects to reveal contact tokens on the current player’s planet. This slightly more frequent revealing of tokens makes for a bit less luck when searching for specific characters. Any time a token matching a player’s character is revealed, a bonus reveal is allowed. 403
With a maximum of four players among the increased number of tokens this really doesn’t feel as fiddly as it might seem on paper.
Ambition
I’ve made no secret of how much I love variable player powers as a method to inform strategy in other games. While Outer Rim’s 90/91/92 cards partially fulfill that as an initial motivation, the ambition sheets lay out a game-long strategy (maybe a destiny?) that requires fulfillment. If you’ve seen anyone score their 10th fame on an anticlimactic game mechanic you’ll know the feeling. Ambition sheets force an exciting culmination of coherent linked objectives. They do lengthen the game, though, but they are completely optional.
Favors and debts
Another optional mechanic allows players to grant a benefit to an opponent. Open-ended negotiation is part of this mechanic. In addition to exchanging credits, each player gets a debt token. This can be cashed in at any time for a favor benefit that can’t be refused. For those that want a more open-ended social aspect to their Outer Rim games, as well as the thematic tracking of debts and obligations, it’s there for the taking but isn’t printed on any specific cards.
Moving through the core
The core worlds can be encountered from either end of the board, functionally transforming the arc into a circle. The experience of traveling through the core worlds might not always be easy, but it’s a more interesting option than flying the long way around. This simple change makes the board feel more dynamic.
Final thoughts
For all its charm, Outer Rim felt a bit like between 75 and 80% of a game. Decks with 10 cards, only four AI opponents with identical behaviors, and fairly standard effects felt less like a sandbox and more like a game on rails.
Unfinished Business could’ve delivered more variety in some aspects and not others, and it would’ve felt like a video game patch or an upgrade from a demo to a full version. In the end the variety of content added even more significant depth to the game and pushed it past that 100% game level into a variable experience with a lot more replayability and customizable options. Outer Rim didn’t become a complete game; it feels like a complete game with expansion content, which is notable since it made up ground that was missing in the base box. 237