Just recently got into the game and after several games while I think it's fun as it is, I feel it could also benefit from a competitive variation of the rules that pits one player against the others. This can be done with very few modifications to the existing rules. So here's my idea:
1.One player plays as the xenos. The xenos player starts with a hand of event cards equal to the number of marine teams in play (so 3 to 6 cards, depending on the number of players).
2.The xenos player plays one of the event cards in his hand during the event phase, as if that card was drawn by the standard rules.
3. The xenos player makes all the decisions realted to "Instinct" texts on cards.
4. At the end of the event phase, the xenos player draws a new event card from the deck.
5. Since this makes the xenos much more difficult to deal with (the xeno player would likely play the worst possible cards for the marines), each marine when slain would instead get a "wound" token. A marine can only be slain if it has a wound on it already. Basically they get a total of two hit points.
OPTION 1: If the xenos player turns out to be too strong, a rule can be added that he chooses the event card as the merines choose their actions for the round and places it face-down before he sees their actions. This would slightly reduce the significance of his choices.
OPTION 2: If marines turn out to be too strong with the addition of the wound tokens, try starting at a Void Lock made for more players instead. This would give marines larger swarms to fight.
The variant is yet to be tested. If anyone else is willing to try it, please let me know how that goes. Also if you have ideas about how to improve this, you're quite welcome.
Edited by Iffo