Best Star Wars board games 2026

If you're looking for the archetypal Star Wars board game, you can't go far wrong with Star Wars: Rebellion. A grand strategy game that recreates the Galactic Civil War of the original trilogy, Rebellion has players assume the role of the Empire or Rebel Alliance as they vie for control of the galaxy.

The rebel forces must engage in covert insurgency as they infiltrate the Empire's territory to inspire resistance, destabilize Imperial power, and unite planets to bring peace to the galaxy. The Empire, meanwhile, uses its vastly superior military forces - from the humble Stormtrooper to the almighty Death Star - to weed out the rebellious agitators. As time ticks down, the race is on to see if the Empire can find and destroy the rebel base before the galaxy is inspired for revolution.

True to the films, Rebellion is played asymmetrically, as the Rebel Alliance looks to disrupt the Empire from within, rather than face their massed military forces directly. There's starship combat and military strategizing, but you'll also be looking at the bigger picture to see how you can force your opponent to reveal their weaknesses.

Governed by straightforward mechanics and split into numerous but not overwhelmingly protracted phases, Rebellion is a great pick for those looking for a strongly thematic strategy leviathan to add to their tabletop musings.

There have been at least 10 different Star Wars collectible card games since the 1990s, but Fantasy Flight Games' most recent offering, Star Wars: Unlimited, is a particularly exciting one for TCG fans - packing superb rules design, stunning original artworks, and more leader cards for your favorite characters than you can shake a lightsaber at.

The rules are a bit like Magic: The Gathering's popular Commander variant: your deck is led by a single character card, and you've got to defend a specific Base - be that Dagobah Swamp or Echo Base. Each one has a colored Aspect, which largely defines the other cards you'll be able to put in your deck (similar to the five colors in Magic). While the goal is to wallop the enemy base into oblivion, your units fight across two separate theatres, ground and space.

It's accessible and familiar to anyone who's played a TCG before, but also fresh and stuffed with Star Wars flair. SWU only launched in 2024, but it's punched its way into the trading card scene fast, with the seventh set, A Lawless Time, dropping in March 2026. Among the newest, most affordable, and most impressive TCGs around right now, we strongly recommend giving it a go.

From the gigantic Star Destroyer rumbling overhead in the opening of A New Hope to the rebel assault on the second Death Star, frantic space combat has typified the Star Wars franchise. Atomic Mass Games' Star Wars: X-Wing does a fantastic job of bringing this tactical, fast-paced dogfighting to the tabletop, as players are pitted against each other to blast apart their opponent's starships.

X-Wing isn't a big game, but it's frenetic. In most games, players control at most three or four ships and rely on calculated maneuvring to pick off their enemies while evading deadly asteroid fields and enemy firing lines. Equip your starfighters with a choice of pilots and upgrade cards so they better cater to your playstyle, while bringing additional firepower and tactical depth to the field.

In a nice shake-up, turns are taken simultaneously, with players deciding the movement of each ship in secret before revealing their choices and resolving their effects. You've got to outthink your opponent, and can go from dominating the dogfight to drifting alone in space with just one crucial oversight.

The X-Wing miniatures come painted (handy for anyone who wants to jump straight into a firefight) and each ship has its own attributes, forcing players to balance their own abilities against the advantages of their enemy ships.

X-Wing does a great job of recreating frenzied space dogfights, and it's well worth dipping into the starter set. And although Atomic Mass stopped production on new ships and sets in 2024, the game's still alive, supported by an active fan community called the X Wing Alliance, which is developing new rules and organised play support. Most of the range is still available for sale!

Star Wars isn't all theatrical, galactic-scale conflicts and epic pitched battles. Away from the mysticism of the force and political machinations of the republic lie a host of swashbuckling adventures about plucky bands of idealists fighting the good fight. If the adventures of Han and Leia blasting their way through corridors full of stormtroopers is your idea of a good time, Fantasy Flight's Star Wars: Imperial Assault might be for you.

One team of players assumes the role of a crack group of covert rebel ops attempting to infiltrate Imperial strongholds and complete a series of objectives. Another player will control the near-limitless Imperial forces to crush the rebels before they escape.

But Imperial Assault really excels because it leans into its party-adventure setting. It plays more like a dungeon-crawler than a typical miniatures game, with players navigating a combat grid to outflank and gun down their enemies while they inch closer to their objectives, cleverly employing character abilities along the way to strike a critical advantage at just the right time.

Even better, Imperial Assault is played across a persistent campaign that sees characters accrue new skills and buffs as they progress through an unfolding narrative. It adds a certain colour to your play, but if you can't commit to a full adventure, you can also play the game's skirmish mode, wherein you and an opponent will muster your forces and duke it out in a one-off battle. Either way, Imperial Assault is a brilliant recreation of dungeon-crawling in the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars: Battle of Hoth is the most recent addition to the family, and it's a doozy! Two players battle through a series of asymmetrical missions, controlling armies of infantry and war vehicles across a hex grid battlefield representing the ice world Hoth.

The rules are a reimplementation of Richard Borg's classic Command Colors rules system, best known for its appearance in the excellent WW2 game Memoir '44.  This is by far the most approachable war board game on the market. Each turn you select one of your command cards, which will let you give orders to some - but not all - of your forces.

As you use up your cards, you'll find your army more and more unwieldy - you might be in a perfect spot to gun down the rebel shield generators with your central AT-AT, and not have a single order with which to activate them. Do you take a turn off to refresh your hand, or make do with what you have and adapt your plans?

Expect a full review of this once we've had enough time with it. Our playtest at UK Games Expo left us satisfied that it's a solid reimplementation of a classic game system with some nice Star Wars touches - but we're keen to put the 17 scenario campaign through its bases. However, at a bare minimum this is Star Wars themed Memoir '44, and that's already great.

Read our Star Wars: Battle of Hoth preview.

Star Wars: Shatterpoint brings balance to the force by giving us a wildly enjoyable 'skirmish' wargame that shockingly accurately recreates the movies' fast-moving, backflipping hero duels. To quote our own Tim Linward's review of the 2023 core set: "it plays how Star Wars feels".

You and your opponent each assemble a small fireteam of miniatures, composed of your favorite hero characters - be they Jedi, Sith, Clone, Droid, or other - accompanied by Secondary and Support units that provide covering fire or lightsaber fodder. Then, you'll fight it out in a compact arena, using a mix of blaster fire, melee attacks, force powers, and special abilities to do battle. Raised walkways and other vertical terrain add tactical spice and opportunities for super-cool force jumping antics.

With two years of expansions now under its belt, Shatterpoint has over a hundred different units to pick, build, paint, and battle with, across all the main canon eras, making it an essential Star Wars board game for any fan who fancies painting miniatures, but not a whole army of them.

Read our Star Wars: Shatterpoint review.

For card gamers who want to craft satisfyingly flavorful Star Wars decks and face them off against each other, but don't fancy the high cost and random packs of a TCG, Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game is an affordable, accessible, and generally excellent choice.

Taking lessons from the best deckbuilding games around, but slimming things down to a svelte 30-minute playtime, SWTDBG is a head-to-head game that pits Rebels against the Empire in a race to destroy a target number of enemy bases by attacking them with ground units and spaceships.

Along the way, you'll need to spend resources to buy stronger cards for your deck from a shared supply - or sabotage cards to slow down your opponent. It's quick, it's simple, it's brilliantly themed, and we strongly recommend it.

Read our Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game review.

If the mention of Star Wars immediately casts your mind to the battlefields of Hoth or guerrilla assaults through the bush of Endor's forest moon, Star Wars: Legion by Atomic Mass Games might be just your thing. It's a mid-weight, two-player miniatures game designed to evoke the series' grandest surface battles, with each of you commanding a force of infantry and vehicles, from speeder bikes and AT-ST walkers to the Republic's mean-looking TX-130 Saber.

We rank Legion in our list of the best miniature wargames, alongside behemoths such as Games Workshop's Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar, but rules-wise, it's markedly simpler than those games in army building and gameplay .You just have smaller forces and fewer layers of complex synergies to work out - but that doesn't mean it's a shallower experience. A brilliant system of alternating unit activations, combined with an 'orders' mechanic that partially randomizes which units you'll get to activate when, allows Legion to capture the chaos and rush of blaster battles beautifully.

Naturally, with over seven years of releases under its belt, Legion now offers a massive selection of kits to build for your armies, across the original trilogy and prequel eras - along with oodles of interchangeable upgrade cards that tweak your force's strategy and key abilities. And yes, heroes are a thing - from Jedi and Sith to Mandalorians and Imperial commanders, powerful characters lead your armies with a mixture of hard-hitting abilities and strategic buffs.

Get clued up with our breakdown of the latest Star Wars Legion starter sets.

The latest addition to Ravensburger's growing dynasty of card-based strategy titles based on ultra-popular fictional universes, Star Wars Villainous (as the name suggests) flips the script by having you play as the Galaxy Far Far Away's nastiest baddies.

As per its Marvel-themed predecessor and the series' original breakout,  Disney: Villainous, each of the base game's five villains - Kylo Ren, General Grievous, Darth Vader, The Clone Wars' Asajj Ventress, and The Mandalorian's Moff Gideon - is playing a slightly different game here.

Each villain gets their own customized victory conditions; their own player board depicting various iconic Star Wars locations that're somewhat tied to the character's particular movie/TV/cartoon storyline; and two unique decks of cards - a Villain Deck and a Fate Deck.

Each turn, you'll move your adorable little plastic evildoer to one of your board's locations, and do any or all of the actions available there - almost always collecting resource tokens, spending them to play cards, or both.

Honestly, Villainous' core mechanic feels perfect for the Star Wars setting: at various resource costs, you can play your own Villain cards to bolster your own board and pursue your dark objectives - but you can also play cards from other players' Fate decks onto the 'Hero' side of their boards to stymy their dastardly plans. It makes for delicious tactical choices, despite the total actions per turn remaining light.

For fanatical Star Wars purists, this Super Smash Brothers-style hotchpotch of competing villains from different timelines and narratives might be a turn-off; having multiple Anakin Skywalkers and  Obi-Wan Kenobis in play at one time isn't just possible, but relatively likely.

But, provided you don't mind the anachronisms, Star Wars: Villainous is a cracking, surprisingly accessible strategy game with enough asymmetry to mix things up and provide lovely replayability.

For some, the best Star Wars stories are those that don't appear on screen: the hidden underbelly of crime and corruption stalking the fringes of the colonized galaxy, and the dastardly scum and villainy that lies away from the heroics of the Jedi.

Fantasy Flight's Star Wars: Outer Rim places you in the life of such a scoundrel. Tasked with racking up enough renown to cement you as a legend of the galaxy, you'll be journeying across the game's planetary map trying to increase your infamy and stay alive in the treacherous landscape of outer space.

You might smuggle spice across planetary borders, involve yourself in the territorial disputes of rival gangs, or even choose a more virtuous vagabond life. You'll also be acquiring gear and giving your ship some loving modification as you hop around the galaxy.

Make no mistake, this isn't a tabletop RPG. You'll be managing resources and collecting cards to fulfill objectives. But it's a great way to jump into the shadow society that lurks in Nar Shaddaa or Jabba's Palace.

If you've ever wanted to step into the shiny Beskar shoes of Din Djarin, The Mandalorian: Adventures is probably your best bet, at least on the tabletop. This quick-playing adventure game recaps stories from The Mandalorian season one, and introduces all-new challenges, in fights where the odds are stacked against you.

Up to four players take control of Din Djarin or one of his associates, with a choice of eight playable characters with distinct abilities. Each scenario will see you working together to achieve an objective in the face of superior enemy numbers and constant reinforcements. Unless you're playing with the hidden traitor mechanic, that is!

This offers a lot of gameplay in a very restrained - and therefore affordable - physical package. Instead of a board, the game contains a ringbound board book with four scenario maps, and in place of miniatures, enemies are represented by cardboard tokens. It's not flashy, but that doesn't get in the way of the gameplay.

And there's a lot of gameplay here. While the four maps each have a starter scenario to help you learn the game, you'll unlock new content by playing, with more advanced mechanics and new, replayable missions.

This is an easy recommendation to fans of strategy games, coop board games, and of course, The Mandalorian.

OK, so it's not technically a board game as there isn't a board here, but we'd be remiss not to recommend Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars Tabletop Roleplaying Game as one of the best gaming experiences you can have in the Star Wars galaxy. This TTRPG uses a custom dice set to bring a variability and narrative possibilities to every roll, but what really sets it apart is the descriptive storytelling gameplay behind the dice.

Instead of making purely mechanical moves (like traditional DnD adventures), Star Wars is constantly giving players opportunities to describe and shape not just their actions, but the story and environments around them. It's a refreshing change that allows you to fold in LOADS of imaginative new ideas and Star Wars lore as you go.

This isn't the only pen and paper RPG in the world of Jawas and Y-Wings; you can read about all of them in our brief history of Star Wars tabletop RPGs. But FFG's official game is very good, and comes with a massive library of diverse content to play through; technically it's actually three separate games! Edge of the Empire, linked above, is all about outer rim buccaneering, while Age of Rebellion lets you fight in the Galactic Civil War, and Force and Destiny delves into force sensitive heroes and villains, their duels, and powers.

If X-wing is a game of frenetic, quick-firing dogfights, then Atomic Mass Games' Star Wars: Armada is its zoomed-out, strategic, slow-burning older brother. This naval-warfare-in-space miniatures game dispenses with small-scale, tactical fights in favor of epic, strategic fleet warfare. Command a handful of the biggest dreadnoughts of the Star Wars universe in massive battles that decide the fate of the galaxy.

You'll be maneuvering star destroyers and rebel corvettes across the battlefield to line up the perfect shot, while squadrons of TIE fighters and X-wings nip about the fray in critical bombing runs. Instead of zig-zagging across the map in an endless game of chase, more emphasis is given to strategic positioning to lure your opponent into your primary line of fire.

You can deck out your fleet with a bunch of upgrade cards to improve their stats and provide powerful abilities, and you might fancy tailoring your force to a specific playstyle. Expansion packs, which continue to release, leave room for added customizability, as well as the opportunity to field even more pretty space ships.

Armada can be slower in pace than X-wing and a single battle is likely to have less action and fewer close shaves, but it aptly recreates the epic scale of space warfare as you launch volleys of laser fire across the battlefield. It makes a fine addition to any collection of Star Wars board games, though be aware that finding the ships you want may get harder and harder, because - alongside X-Wing - Atomic Mass stopped supporting new content for Armada in 2024.

A trading card game that combines card-dueling battles with dice-rolling combat, Star Wars: Destiny is a peculiar game, but quite a brilliant one. Two players will battle it out using a deck of cards, filled with all your favorite Star Wars characters from across the three trilogies, from Kylo Ren to Jabba the Hutt to Padmé Amidala and more.

You'll take turns playing characters from your hand to the battlefield, activating those cards to roll dice, and spending resources to resolve the effects of your rolls. Destroy all of your opponent's characters, and you'll win the game, claiming the battlefield for the Jedi or Sith forces.

Unfortunately, Star Wars: Destiny was shelved by its publisher Fantasy Flight in early 2020, marking the end of its three-year run. Although the game won't be getting any new content, the expansions that did release are still available online and in local game stores, and are just as good as they ever were. Far from dead, the game still has an active online community and a presence in friendly local game stores. Start off with a two-player starter set, and from there, you can experiment with pre-constructed character decks with unique playstyles.

Chances are, you already have a copy of Risk kicking about in your house. Hasbro's classic board game about sending legions of troops to conquer a sprawling map remains a staple for both tabletop superfans and casual-gaming families alike. But Risk: Star Wars edition isn't actually Risk at all - that was a sneaky ruse to make the game more appealing to the general audience. It's actually a reskin of the classic Star Wars: Queen's Gambit, an excellent game that had the misfortune to be tied to the not-too-timeless Phantom Menace - you can learn more about the original in this article.

The board of Star Wars Risk is shaped like a TIE Fighter, and this isn't only for aesthetic effect. Its three sections represent distinct battles that must be managed simultaneously. The central area is the typical Risk fare that sees players command B-wings, Y-wings, and other classic Star Wars ships to capture regions of space and eventually destroy the Second Death Star.

But elsewhere on the board, rebels are assaulting the shield generator on Endor, and Luke Skywalker is battling Darth Vader. Players can influence these periphery battles through various dice-rolling and card moves to ensure they land favorably, earning bonuses as they do so.

Managing three interlinked battlefronts means this is far more involved than that classic Risk formula, and the tide of battle can suddenly turn. It offers light strategy against the backdrop of one of the most renowned moments of the Star Wars franchise.