Preview: Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns

I am not familiar with the Burning Suns universe but that is certainly not required to dive into Rogue Angels: legacy of the Burning Suns. This game will bring you right into the action and introduce you to the universe. Rogue Angels is a 1-4 player cooperative tactical game. I received a preview of the game and it had a fraction of what they are offering in the kickstatrer and I really enjoyed it.

Rogue Angels is played out over a campaign like other large campaign games that have come out recently. Players are introduced to the mechanics and characters at a good pace. Players are not dropped in the deep end. The player cards have a simple version and one with all the bells and whistles. I suggest using the simple version through a chapter or two of the game. The game is Co-Op for up to four players.

The Kickstarter version will have 16 playable characters, a giant map book, 6 campaign books and a plenty of cards. Each character has a play mat, a standee, a mini, set of equipment and the legacy folder with stickers. The legacy folder is how players will track affiliations and other traits that will last the campaign.

The massive amount of content that is coming with the game will keep players coming back for more

Rogue Angels has a very interesting cool down method of preforming actions. Each character play mat has four slots for cards to be placed under the card. The characters all have a set of fairly unique actions. Each of the action cards has a number 0-4. This number is where on the cool down track the action card will be placed. A player may rest and shift all the cards one spot to the left. The card that moves off the track is placed back into the players hand. When a player gets a wound card they will be placed in the cool down track. These will take up valuable space where players can play action cards. Each character gets a free rest at the end of their turn.

The first few scenarios build out the basic rules of the cool down economy and how to manipulate the enemies.

The cool down economy forces some interesting decisions on the players. Each player must choose carefully what space on the cool down track and know what they are looking to do in the next turn or two as to not have a card in a slot that they want to use. The player may choose to put a card in a higher value slot if the slot that matches the cool down value is occupied. A player may wish to do this if they need to preform the action. Then when a player takes wounds those cards now occupy spots in the cool down track. If a player happens to get all four of their cool down spots occupied then they are knocked out.

Players have the opportunity to make all these interesting choices during their turns. Each player gets to preform 2 actions on their turn. After each player takes their turn the enemy takes a turn so this creates a lot of pressure on the board. Each of the scenarios has an enemy behavior card that determines the enemy moves and actions. Players must use that information to build their strategy for the scenario.

I really enjoyed that this really felt like a video game. I have video game systems but its been years since I have sat down an played a console game, this bought it back for me in a good way. The first few scenarios build out the basic rules of the cool down economy and how to manipulate the enemies. This made learning the rules quick. When I first cracked open the box I was concerned that I was getting into a Gloomhaven situation. It was not that at all it was quick to learn and set up and the scenarios were a perfect length where I could play a few chapters at each sitting. The massive amount of content that is coming with the game will keep players coming back for more.

Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns is a great chapter based space themed Co-Op game. The richness of the universe that is Burning Suns adds so much depth to this game. The amount of scenarios and extras makes the price tag well worth it. This game is great at all the player counts. I could not stop playing each time I got Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns to the table.

Players: 1-4

Year Published: 2023

Recommended Ages: 16+

Time to Play: 60-120 minutes

A copy of Rogue Angels was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games for review purposes by Sun Tzu Games. This is a pre-porduction copy and the production version may differ from what is pictured in this preview.