Gale Force Nine | Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps: Alien Warriors | Board Game | 1-6 Players | Ages 14+ | 60 to 120 Minute Playing Time

Listen up Marines! Here's the situation. The terraforming colony on LV426, Hadley's Hope, has unexpectedly broken contact. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation in conjunction with the Colonial Marines is sending you to find out what happened. You're trained for situations like these. You're packing state of the art fire power. There's nothing you can't handle!Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps! is a co-operative table-top game for 1-6 players. You take control of the Marine crew of the Sulaco and must work together to discover exactly what went wrong at the colony and defeat the alien threat.This box set contains three main missions that can either be played on their own or as part of an on going campaign, with each mission representing an important part of the movie. Mission 1: Rescue Newt. Mission 2: The Atmosphere Processing station. Mission 3: Survive the battle for Operations.The box contains everything you need to start, including:4 x double sided game boards60 x endurance cards42 x motion tracker cards1 x turn dial9 x mission cards2 x D10 "Marine dice"1 x D6 "alien die"4 x spawn point tokens21 x blip tokens2 x sentry gun tokens7 x character cards6 x quick reference guides6 x aim dials16 x alien models7 x character modelsThe characters included with this game are Cpl Dwayne Hicks, Pvt William Hudson, Lt Scott Gorman, Pvt Jeanette Vasquez, Pvt Ricco Frost, Ellen Ripley, and Newt.The game is played by choosing a mission card and then setting up the board in line with the instructions provided. Each player choses a character to play as, and each character has a "hero" side and a "grunt" side. Use the hero side for any player characters with any characters not assigned to a player using the grunt side.Each character has a series of important stats, including:Move: How far they can move per action.Defence: How well they are able to defend themselves against an alien attackMelee: Their chance of killing an alien in close combatTech: Their skill at operating computers, equipment, and barricading doorsAim: Their skill with ranged weapons.When playing the hero side of the character they also have several special skills. For example Vasquez is able to use the M56 Smart Gun at reduced cost compared to other characters thus representing her specialist training and greater experience with the weapon, Gorman has the ability to buff other characters with an extra action, Hicks can re-roll a missed shot, Ripley allows another character to re-roll a failed defence, Frost gets a bonus for using the flame thrower, and Hudson can negate harmful motion tracker cards. Grunts have lower stats and less special abilities.Prior to each mission you get to gear up your characters with weapons and equipment from the movie. Each character can carry a main weapon, back up weapon, and two items of equipment at any one time, although it is possible to swap these weapons or change equipment as and when they are obtained.All of the major weapons and items from the movie are represented and they each have unique powers and abilities. The Smart gun for example rolls two attack dice instead of one, the pulse rifle comes with a free grenade launcher action, whilst the flamer is short ranged but has an area of effect. There's even a shotgun...for close encounters. Other items include things like body armour, helmets, flares, maps, knives, shoulder lamps, motion trackers, pistols, and med scanners.The key resource of the game is the endurance deck - a finite and reducing deck of cards that must be expended to take certain actions and requires careful management throughout. The deck represents your increasing exhaustion throughout the campaign and the increasing alien threat, and cards can move from the deck into an "exhaust" pile and back again depending on what decisions you make and how the game unfolds, and can even end up discarded altogether meaning they are no longer available at all for the rest of the campaign. The deck also includes a series of hazards and events, with the former being unfortunate turns of bad luck and the latter positive benefits. If you ever completely run out of cards, it's game over man!Each character has two actions. Actions include the ability to move, fire, barricade a door, aim (which increases your aim by +1), interact with computer terminals, play a card from your hand, or rest. Rest is especially important as it allows you to move cards from the exhaust pile back into the endurance deck to be used later. You can double up on actions if you wish, for example move twice or take two shots, or aim then fire.The motion tracker deck is how aliens are generated. You can get an idea of the oncoming threat by looking at the back of the cards, cards with more blips on them representing a greater challenge. Each turn a certain number of cards are revealed depending on how many players are in the game. Each card generates between 1-2 blips with blips generating 1-5 aliens, and may also provide the aliens with special effects such as emerging unexpectedly from a tunnel or increasing the level of hazard faced by doing things like allowing aliens an extra move, generating extra blips, or causing you to lose endurance cards.Cards in both the endurance and motion tracker decks are thematically named with quotes from the movie such as "We got knives, sharp sticks", "In the pipe five by five", "Do something Gorman!", "They're all around us!" and "They mostly come at night", and usually provide an effect that fits these titles, which is a nice touch.If a blip is generated out of your line of sight the number of aliens it represents remains unknown until it comes into your view. Blips move a random distance each move, decided by a roll of a D6, which represents that slow, irregular encroaching that we see in the movie on the motion tracker as the aliens presumably creep and crawl towards their prey looking for opportunities and weaknesses. This random element also makes it more difficult to prepare for them. Do you stand your ground and wait for those blips just round the corner to present themselves only for them to roll a one, or do you forge ahead on the assumption that they probably won't be able to get into range with you only to roll and unlucky 6 and end up under attack?Once a blip is sighted it is flipped over to reveal how many aliens it includes, with multiple aliens forming a "swarm". Once revealed aliens act in a uniform way, always moving a certain speed towards the closest available character and attacking once they get into base-to-base contact, although each character within a certain distance can engage in defensive fire immediately before the alien attacks so long as they have a suitable weapon and line of sight.When an alien attacks your character and anyone within a certain distance gets to make defensive fire. If that fails however your character must make a roll on its defence score to see if they succeed in beating off the attack, with negative modifiers applying when attacked by a swarm. If you pass you dodge the attack, and if you roll under your melee score in the process you manage to kill the alien that attacked you. Fail however and your character gets knocked down. Fail with a roll of ten or more (taking into account modifiers) and you are killed outright. Finally, if you start the next alien phase with an alien still in base contact with your character they drag you away to their nest to become a host for more of those...things! Don't worry though, between each mission you can if you wish run a rescue mission to try and save those Marines that have been captured.Missions are objective and sometimes turn based. In mission one for example you must locate Newt who is hiding somewhere in the complex, but when you find her she will run away just like she does in the movie (although she won't flee from Ripley) and you have to stop her. For the first two turns you do not play any motion tracker cards, representing the fact that at this point you don't actually know that the threat exists and the aliens are not yet aware of your presence, but by turn three they start to generate and you're in for the fight of your life as you attempt to make a hasty retreat!To help you in missions you can do things like barricade doors, which will stop an alien in it's tracks if it rolls a 1-3 on a D6, but folds like paper if they roll a 4-6. You can also access computer terminals that allow you to search an area using cctv or being able to remotely seal doors if you have a bypass device.Game play is extremely thematic in nature and you really feel like you're playing through the plot of the movie as you get to do things like rescue Ripley and Newt from a couple of escaped face huggers, fight for your lives after an ambush in the atmosphere processor, or secure operations whilst the sentry guns mow down waves of oncoming aliens. Missions do a great job of slowly building the tension, pressure, and threat, and you never quite feel like you have everything you need or are really in control. There's been a lot of love poured into the game and this is very much a game by fans, for the fans.There are also a number of non-cinematic scenarios that can be played called "bug hunts". These are bite-sized missions with a variety of objectives but each one of them involves your characters starting with no weapons or equipment apart from a pistol, and requires them to fine equipment crates in order to increase their arsenal, providing an additional challenge.The modular nature of the game boards and components means that they can be re-arranged into different configurations, which along with the flexibility of the rules and the endurance and motion tracker decks allows you to also create custom scenarios if you wish. For example I wasn't happy with the placing of the spawn points in mission three (surviving the attack on operations) as I found it a little easy going, so I moved two of them into the same room as where the characters start to make things more challenging and better reflect the events of the film. I also played a mission under the atmosphere processor with the full squad (using the characters from the expansions) reduced to "flame units only, and no grenades!" to more accurately re-enact the escape from the alien ambush. Want to mess around with how weapons or special abilities work? You can do that too. The designers have been quite clear that the conditions of play and difficulty level are there for gamers to mess around with, and it's a lot of fun doing so. There's a lot of possibilities.In terms of complaints there's really not much to go on.The models whilst extremely detailed are multi-part and require gluing and assembling meaning you're not going to be able to play this straight out of the box. In my opinion FAR too much has been made of this issue. The models are for the most part two or three part miniatures (not including the base) and do not require specialist tools to assemble. I removed and trimmed mine using an old pair of wire clippers and a standard craft/Stanley- the kind of things pretty much every house will have lying around. The aliens are a little more complicated being six-part models an a little more fiddly, but after the first one I found I was able to assemble each one within a couple of minutes. Pay close attention to the instructions.There's an awful lot of material crammed into this game in terms of tokens and counters, some of which (like the barricade tokens) are very small and easy to lose. There's also a lot of rules to get used to, most of which will become muscle memory after playing a few missions, but early on it's easy to forget certain phases of the game like paying the cost of actions or resetting aim dials. It is also the case that you really do need at least the "Ultimate Bad asses" expansion for proper campaign play because if you don't have those extra troops by the time you get to mission three you could be trying to do it with only one or two characters left standing. Some of the rules probably needed a little clarification (although most of the questions raised in gaming communities have been things that are addressed by simply reading the rules properly and applying your common sense), although there will be a detailed FAQ to come from the designers.Make no mistake though, this is the definitive Aliens gaming experience on any platform and it manages to absolutely nail the feel and tone of the movie and there's nothing onerous enough here to prevent me from giving it the maximum score possible.

Get away from her you b***h! is an expansion to the Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps! core game, and you will need the core box set to be able to use it.The expansion offers five expanded missions for a longer, more involving, campaign, five new "bug hunt"missions, and extras that allow one player to play as the alien hive.Included in the box are:4 x double sided game boards25 x endurance cards25 x motion tracker cards1 x alien willpower dial31 x hive mind cards11 x mission cards21 x blip tokens8 x alien queen damage tokens1 x power loader stats overlay2 x character cards2 x aim dials1 x M577 APC card6 x APC damage tokens5 x character modelsThe models included in this expansion are the alien queen, the P-5000 power loader, "enraged" Ripley, Bishop, and Broken Bishop.The rules contained within allow you to extend the main campaign from three to five missions with bigger playing areas, provide the opportunity for bigger bug hunt missions and increase your team from six to eight characters, have a mission for the iconic APC escape scene from the movie, rules for synthetic characters, and allow you to play as the alien hive including the alien queen.When playing as the aliens you are able to use willpower to exert your influence over them and force them to act in a defined way rather than the regulated manner in which they usually move and attack. You also have access to a number of "hive mind" cards that can be drawn and fall into three categories: "Nature", which provides a continuous and on going effect. "Instinct", which provide single use effects such as forcing someone subject to a face hugger attack to roll against their defence or be killed by a chest buster. "Reaction", which can only be played in the circumstances defined by the card.Operating the power loader can be done by any character, with that character receiving a boost to their defensive and melee stats and also providing them with a unique attack that allows them to not only swat entire swarms of aliens but also go toe to toe with the alien queen, and is also the only way you can ultimately destroy the queen by dropping her through the air lock doors.The APC template is used between missions 2 (The atmosphere processor) and 3 (defending operations) as you attempt to escape the alien hive with the remains of your team, pursued and attacked by alien warriors as you go. The APC has several crew positions, including driver, front and rear gunners, door gunner, scanner, and repair, each of which allows the character occupying that space to conduct a unique action such as shooting encroaching aliens, increasing the speed of the APC, repairing damage, or looking at blip tokens to see what threat lies ahead. Hopefully you can escape without blowing the trans-axel!Synthetics operate different to normal characters. Whilst Bishop cannot attack, he has strengths and abilities of his own including an exceptional skill with tech tests, being immune to hive hazards, and not attracting aliens n the same way human characters do.In terms of complaints there's not much to moan about here.Models are multi part and require some gluing and assembly - the Queen and Power loader being a little more complicated - and the core game really isn't the same or as good without buying this and the "Ultimate Bad asses" expansion, but it's well worth the purchase and together helps to form what really is the most accurate, atmospheric, tense, and authentic Aliens gaming experience I've ever seen.