Unrest Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Unrest, an asymmetrical card game published by Pandasaurus Games. In Unrest, one player is trying to librate three districts before time runs out.

I’m a huge fan of asymmetrical board games. Whether they are two-player affairs such as Netrunner or Raptor, or fully embrace multiplayer like Root and Vast, I love the uniqueness that they bring. Today, we are going to be looking at a newcomer to this genre, Unrest from Pandasaurus Games.

In this quick playing game, one player takes on the side of the Rebellion, looking to break free from the regime of the Empire. The Empire player must stamp out the seeds of rebellion before they grow into a full-blown revolution.

In Unrest, the gameplay is different depending on which faction you control. The Rebellion’s goal is to liberate 3 of the 5 districts before the end of the game. If the Empire player can prevent that until the rebellion deck runs out, they win.

At the start of each round, the Rebellion player will choose two adjacent districts to be the focus for the round. They will then play 3 cards to that area, two face down and one face up. Afterward, the Empire player gets to take two actions. They have 4 options in total and the two they used in one round will be unavailable until the other two are used (after which all are available again).

The four different actions let them reveal a rebel card, destroy a rebel card, move a card to any other district, or blockade one of the two chosen districts. After they have taken their two actions, the rebel player decides where to send their 3 cards. Either all in one district or split up among the two focused on this round.

The rebel’s goal is to complete the three mission cards. These are pretty straightforward forward