XCOM: The Board Game

XCOM: The Board Game brings the stress and constant threat of aliens to you and three more friends around the table. Together you'll fight off the invasion, or succumb to the power of the overseer. One of my favorite co-op games, so if you're into fast decisions and big choices, this game is for you!  So bring three friends and reserve about 1-2 hours of time and start playing.

Get three friends and start playing!

How does it play?

For those of you that played any of the console games, you'll know that XCOM is actually a turn-based game in which you control several soldiers to take on an alien overlord. When transformed to a tabletop, this results in a dice-rolling co-op game for 2-4 players and an app companion. Every player takes one (or multiple) of 4 possible role(s) before starting the game in a set of several turns. Every turn exists of 3 phases in which you try to complete missions in order to clear the final mission. This all must be done before the aliens destroy your base, or a continent falls to complete panic. I'd advise you to play with 4 people, because the game becomes a whole lot more difficult when playing with less.

A single turn 

Timed Phase

Every turn starts with several short TIMED steps. This includes having alien invasions (which places UFO's on the board), preparing to research technology (where you not only chose what you'd like to research, but have to invest limited scientists and thus budget to the project), choosing which units to deploy where and to what task (and thus spending more of the budget) and handling other crises thrown at you. Once the timed phase is over, the players get a chance to relax before resolving all these events. Trust me when I say, you'll need the breather!

You can never have enough troops!

Resolution phase

At the start of this phase, an audit is done to check if you have enough budget. A lack of budget causes continents to increase in panic level, making the game much harder to survive, a surplus means being able to purchase extra units. Using a dice system with increasing difficulty on failure, every role now has to complete their steps in order to stop the incoming threat. By investing in resources during the timed phase you increase your dice pool. In order to complete a step you have to roll your resource dice and a special eight-sided alien die. If the alien die is equal or less than the increasing difficulty (threat) level, your resources are spent, else you can choose to continue to roll, but at an increased difficulty. Every success rolled on your resource dice counts, even when the alien die fails. These successes do carry over to the next rounds. It's a very interesting, though penalising concept.

Cleanup

When you've resolved everything, you check if you completed a mission, and get rewards. You get back your invested units, but exhausted units need a round to recover before they can be used again. And finally cards get shuffled back into their decks.

Painting your models can be very rewarding!

Winning the game

After a random number of completed missions, the app lets you know you've unlocked the final mission. Once you've beaten this harder, final mission you've won the game! Don't be discouraged if you lose even the tutorial though.

What's in the box

Being a Fantasy Flight product, you'll immediately notice the high quality of their products. Not only are there a lot of plastic miniatures, the tokens are made from sturdy cardboard and have a nice gloss highlight.

Having a square table is a plus!

Compared to...

Compared to other co-op games, XCOM still stands out because of it's time-based events. Not only is every player busy the whole time, you all get some seperate time in the spotlight.

Pick this up if...

First of all you'll need 3 good friends, and a decent tablet! If you like getting deep in a co-op game and handling different scenarios at one time then you'll like this game. With several factors going on at the same time, you won't be hanging back to let others do all the heavy lifting. A very rewarding feeling if you win is the ultimate price (although the app does let you down in that department, with but a simple "victory screen...")

Don't bother if ...

This game needs a fast gameplay, so if you like to take your time to make decisions, then this might not be the game for you. 

Because of the theme and choice-making I'd definitely recommend you play the game with friends you frequently game with. This isn't really a pick-up-and-play kind of game, and several playthroughs are recommended if you want to really experience the fun!

If you feel like I've left out something, or if you've got any other feedback, don't hesitate to comment! Especially if you like it :) If you'd like to read/see more of me and my gaming exploits, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter or follow my story on Snapchat !