I just got the game and my wife and I played the tutorial. so 2 player ( alot of headwork btw being just the 2 of us and learning the game) we lasted to round 6 when I just could not shoot down enough ufo;s. We had a great time getting our butts kicked and will be playing again today.

I would love to here how others have done with what amout of players,diffuculty level, rounds survived and wins if any. Stategy also

MY AAR

I think I was too paranoid about base damage and we fell short of completeing missions.My wife does not like the 2 intercepters go in and when there is a loss rolled both are distroyed.

Crisis cards also did a number to me

This was also our first game and we are just getting the hang of all the posistions.

I wish somehow interceptr pilots could become elite I had one pilot shoot down 4 ufos and was at his highest push and survived, that pilot totally saved north america. I know the pilots go back to reserve so game wise it would not make sense for elite pilots but he saved our bacon.

One thing to ease the pressure on your Interceptors is to use the Central Officer's ability to move UFO's to orbit. During the Tutorial, I think I assigned two Interceptors to NA and two more to...I think it was either S. America or Africa. Either way, the baddies snuck in two more UFOs in Asia and another continent, and I moved those to Orbit before the timed phase was done.

The reason is, simply, satellites are cheaper than Interceptors. If they're destroyed, both are out for the next round, but satellites come back for free. Yes you're risking getting your comms scrambled next turn, but well...them's the breaks.

Have the scientist player dig for Elerium turn 1 if you don't have it. Also, dig for the tech that gives you an automatic orbital kill and the one that lets you use scientists to build interceptors for free. I'll try to make a list later on of my favorite techs during the tutorial. After getting my butt handed to me multiple times, I've beaten the tutorial twice in a row solo, and once with 2 players, so I can vouch that's it's doable.

@Longhornn

If you think it's rough keeping track with two players, try it solo. I played twice with my wife; we won the tutorial and lost on Easy, then I played solo twice, losing once on Easy (I thought I had won, but later realized I didn't) and winning once on Normal.

Here are some of my tips that have helped us out thus far;

Things to make sure you do every turn, where possible;

• Chief Scientist: use the Laboratory to push along research by dumping spare salvage to get more dice, rather than spending $ on extra scientists
• Chief Scientist: if you have a couple of "meh" technologies in your hand, be sure to use Research Center in the Timed Phase to dump them and fish for something strong, like Elerium as mentioned above
• Central Officer: use the Satellite Nexus in the Timed Phase, towards the end when you're confidant all the UFO's are down, and send them to orbit, where your 2-3 satellites can shoot them down, saving $ on Interceptors
• Commander: make sure that towards the end of the Timed Phase, after you've sent your soldiers to the base and the mission, you drop a spare soldier in the Officer Training card. Especially early on when you don't need to keep them back for things like Revive, you should train up a couple of different soldier types early on

How do you know when the Timed Phase is almost over? Depending on the board state, some actions happen in different orders each round, but you can be sure you'll be asked to Assign Research I-III and deploy troops to the Base and Mission, so when you're on the 5th event in that list, that's a good time to use those Timed Phase events, especially with the Officer Training, as you'll know which soldiers you don't need currently on the field, as you'll have already sent the teams out on a Mission and to defend the Base.

Some clutch techs to research, in my opinion;

Elerium: $2 a turn on the Emergency Fund will let you put more things out on the board every turn, or save up for one big push.

UFO Flight: pulling your team out when you get ganked on threat being at 1-2 while having loaded up a Cyberdisc really sucks. The Interceptors you're not getting killed by using the Satellite Nexus instead will keep your teams alive and keep $ in the bank. This might be less useful later on when you have things like SHIV, Revive, and other means to put automatic successes on Enemies, but if you pull it early, it'll definitely help your finances by not replacing soldiers over an early wipeout.

Firestorm: it's not the greatest thing, but again, if you pull it early, getting a guaranteed UFO kill will lower the risk of losing an Interceptor

Arc Thrower: for 1 success, which you can probably get by using the Laboratory and 1 Scientist, being able to blank out the Enemy abilities will help you push through Missions and keep your Base safer. Whiffing on a Floater with Evade when you load up a Mission that you desperately need that reward from can set you back huge. Just stun it with the Arc Thrower instead. This also helps you pull Salvage from Outsiders, and makes Sectoids/Sectoid Commanders less annoying with Mind Merge. Honestly, for 1 point, this thing can pay off huge, many times in a game.

UFO Navigation: for 2 points, the ability to refresh another asset card to be used again is just incredible. At the very least, you can combo it with the Satellite Uplink to give you a second chance to reroll the alien die in the Resolution Phase, but as you get things like Carapace Armor, SHIV, Arc Thrower, etc, it gives you way more bang for your buck.

Stealth Satellite: for use with the Nexus strategy above, this helps cut down on the UFO's in orbit, and of course can combo with the UFO Navigation to get 2 out of there if you're pressed for money and can't load out the satellite slots.

Alien Construction: if you get this early, it's going to really help push your research along with Laboratory. If you get it late in the game, you might as well skip it, as you'll be so close to winning or losing, your money could be spent elsewhere.

Xenobiology: Being able to dump salvage to research tech from your hand is amazing, especially if you get this down early. After a couple of rounds of blasting aliens in your Base and on Missions, you can fast-track some expensive stuff right out and save the $ on scientists. Thin Men can actually be a boon in this setup, as they'll spawn more future-salvage for you.

This is not exhaustive by any means, and I'm skipping over some other great ones, but this is make take, so far, on the real money techs. The techs that require you to put a soldier on them (Revive, Battle Scanner, etc) are also great, but you have to be efficient with your $ by ensuring you actually have spare soldiers of the matching type to place there.

Similarly, the techs that give you guaranteed success for exhausting the card, like Alloy Cannon, require you to ensure you're always dropping the matching soldier on the mission. While I mentioned above that it's important to get some Elites going early, you want to use these weapon cards to help guide that training decision. If you start the first round with an Alloy Cannon, it would be worth training an Assault right away, and keeping money for Resolution to recruit the third one from the pool, so you'll have a stock of them at all times in case a roll goes bad, so you can get the most out of your cards.

The TL;DR take on research; if you're going to research it, make sure you wind up using the heck out of it, whatever it is, as they're all helpful to your cause, but the flow of cards each game will require you to adapt your playstyle, session to session to leverage your tools to their fullest potential.

We won 3 players yesterday. It was down to the last roll possible in the turn and i don't think we'd have survived another round.

It was on easy. Maybe in 4 or 5 more games with veteran players we'll dable with "normal".

A friend and I played the tutorial Saturday night and won on about the 6th round. It was very close though, a real nail biter.

Again my wife and I tutorial , lost in round 6 , but we were on the final mission just could not complete it, the crisis cards hit us too hard in that round. so we lost do to 2+ continents in the final panic.

She wanted to play again so this time she wanted it on normal base in SA, we picked the nasty alien tactic overwhelm. At first we were holding off ufo's but the base was constantly hit , heavy and we lost due to the base destroyed. but again great fun. The satellite uplink is a life saver.

the last round of base assault, our die rolls failed us all over the board , even with 3 elites,

2 cry and one elite muton did a real number to the base.

I am sure we will play again tonight.

The tutorials seems to be very difficult. We tried the game on easy and got managed to win though.

Again my wife and I tutorial , lost in round 6 , but we were on the final mission just could not complete it, the crisis cards hit us too hard in that round. so we lost do to 2+ continents in the final panic.

She wanted to play again so this time she wanted it on normal base in SA, we picked the nasty alien tactic overwhelm. At first we were holding off ufo's but the base was constantly hit , heavy and we lost due to the base destroyed. but again great fun. The satellite uplink is a life saver.

the last round of base assault, our die rolls failed us all over the board , even with 3 elites,

2 cry and one elite muton did a real number to the base.

I am sure we will play again tonight.

Some things to consider if you find you're still having a tough time getting the win;

• You don't have to send soldiers on a Mission, ever , as the Final Mission will flip regardless; Missions speed it up though
• Go heavy on emergency funding early on, and get all your soldiers out of the pool and into reserves, so you can rotate them out for Officer Training, and have extras to use with the Skyranger
• Use your asset to move a bunch of UFO's into orbit and use your satellites to destroy them, saving $ on Interceptor deployment
• Research and use the Lab to salvage your way to victory on key technologies
• By taking your time with Missions, you can use soldier $ to keep your base safe. If you take 2 turns to beat a Mission, there's less chance you'll roll a Loss and lose the team.

I have lost the tutorial twice, and won on both easy and normal. I believe the tutorial is weighted to knock you out once it's taught you how to play so you can start your own game. Both the games I won ended in the sixth round.

Well we finally won a game 4 player normal difficulty, round 6 my son was on the final mission if he had not been able to complete it we would have lost do to panic but since a won end mission gains immediate rewards we beat them before they got us .

I've won on Hard, twice. I've put a couple posts on BGG that many help you:

Session report: victory on Hard

Research tech rankings

Played yesterday and we won our first game. (on easy)

I was the chief scientist. We dumped a LOT of funding in to research early.

I managed to research a large number of the weapons and upgrades for the soldiers. This made his roll at killing aliens very effective while allowing his soldiers to avoid death which provided a ton of salvage to further research more technologies.

The stealth satellite was really useful for killing UFO's in orbit.

(I Forget what its called) The tech that lets you convert salvage to emergency funds was also clutch.

Had a ton of fun playing the game.

We won an easy after round five. We was two player.

I have to second someone else's suggestion to potentially skip deploying to a mission to save money. Also, especially when you start out low credits, I tend to never use more than 1 scientist per bay (and occasionally less) unless it is for something really critical that turn - Stealth Satellite, Firestorm, Elerium, etc.

Assuming you start with around 10 credits

3 on scientists

3 on satellites

2 or 4 on interceptors

2 or 3 troops defending the base

that alone puts you at 10 to 13 credits before sending anyone on the mission. Those numbers are pretty much average to what we end up spending on any given turn, so you can adjust your plans and pull from the emergency fund to accommodate from there.

Also, I tend to try to push the Stealth Satellite tech as soon as possible and then just do 2 satellites per turn after that.

As for my success ratio - I played the tutorial once solo just to remember how to play the game (I'd gotten a demo at genCon last year) and it was a very close game. If my die rolls hadn't been as lucky as they were, I would have lost, but in the end it was a victory.

I've since played 2 other games through the tutorial - 1 of them I ran the app and let 4 other friends play and just gave advice. I've played about 3 or 4 games on easy and 2 games on normal. In several of them we ended up having to extort a country into panic due to not having enough funds or we've just abandoned a country to the aliens when the board got swarmed with UFOs and while every single game has felt very close, we've managed to win each of them so far. While science is key, spending the least amount possible for it is what I suggest doing. Unless you're somehow really rich, I'd not spend more than 4 on science in any given turn. While every tech has its uses, I prefer to research auto-kill tech as well as stuff that can save your troops. I'd also suggest skipping deploying to a mission, or only sending 1 or 2 to a mission to keep the cost low, the risk low and you can have extra troops for the Sky Ranger ability as well as the upgrade to elite option the Commander has.

Since defending the base and global defense are where your "loss" conditions are, those are what you want to make sure you protect each turn. They have priority over science and any side missions.

Played a mission on normal today with my roommate. Got domination, and we were getting swarmed with UFOs, and had a couple bad rolls with our Interceptors, and base-defense wasn't going too well, either. We did get "lucky", though, as our base got a critical when all countries were still in the yellow, so no extra-UFOs.

Round 6 we got the final mission and we decided to rush the mission with the two elite we had (heavy and Sniper) as well as two regular soldiers so we had one of each. air-defense still got bad rolls, coupled with the huge armada hovering over the world (we had only 4 UFO-tokens left) a total of 4 continents went into panic in that turn.

Base-defense held on, albeit barely, staying one point away from destruction, when it was the turn of the suicide-squad. First roll on the Chrysalid, sweep. First Roll on second objective, 2 out of three successes, but also a 1 on the alien-dice, so I had to burn the revive I had to keep the sniper alive as well as my Support-weapon to clinch the necessary three Sucesses for the objective.

At last, our Sniper and Heavy, the elite of the elite, went into the last objective, with a 4 on the threat-counter. First Roll, no Success on 3 dice (normally four due to 2 elites, but objective says to roll one less dice), but a 7, so we roll again. Another Whiff, this time with an 8 on the Alien-Dice. Then, three successes and another 8, so the Final Mission is completed, though sadly, the App says we will lose due to the Status of the Final Mission being requested after the Panic-States.

Sounds like a great game. Sorry about the lose but that was really close! If a few earlier roles on global defense had gone your way, u'd have gotten it!

OK a clean win 2 player my wife and I on normal our score was 87 with no countries in red. We felt very good since the last win I said we did was not really true in the turn order of the game, but this was a clean win. finally

The TL;DR take on research; if you're going to research it, make sure you wind up using the heck out of it, whatever it is, as they're all helpful to your cause, but the flow of cards each game will require you to adapt your playstyle, session to session to leverage your tools to their fullest potential.

I had an "a-ha!" moment when I finally realized how to use the Workshop. At a first glance, it looks counterproductive - you burn a tech card and you just won't see it again (unless you're using it REALLY early). BUT - you can't research everything anyway, and some techs are of the critical-at-the-right-time type, and THOSE are great for Workshopping. Furthermore, you don't have to pay credits - just scientists that you probably weren't using anyway!

It also means one less card in your hand, which in turn means one MORE that you get to draw the next turn. So you're more likely to get the things you really need.

A couple techs I'd comment on:

UFO Flight - not as good as it looks, because it doesn't apply to base defense.

Arc Thrower - ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL if there are Thin Men about. Nothing sucks like trying to defend your base from Thin Men. The Sectoids' Mind Merge is a minor nuisance compared to the raging hemorrhoid that is Infiltrate.

Plasma Cannon - good any time, but fantastic if you also have Interceptor Repair. Like the auto-kill weapon upgrades, but you activate it with a spare interceptor. Well worth the heavy commitment needed to get a 3 tech.

The TL;DR take on research; if you're going to research it, make sure you wind up using the heck out of it, whatever it is, as they're all helpful to your cause, but the flow of cards each game will require you to adapt your playstyle, session to session to leverage your tools to their fullest potential.

I had an "a-ha!" moment when I finally realized how to use the Workshop. At a first glance, it looks counterproductive - you burn a tech card and you just won't see it again (unless you're using it REALLY early). BUT - you can't research everything anyway, and some techs are of the critical-at-the-right-time type, and THOSE are great for Workshopping. Furthermore, you don't have to pay credits - just scientists that you probably weren't using anyway!

It also means one less card in your hand, which in turn means one MORE that you get to draw the next turn. So you're more likely to get the things you really need.

A couple techs I'd comment on:

UFO Flight - not as good as it looks, because it doesn't apply to base defense.

Arc Thrower - ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL if there are Thin Men about. Nothing sucks like trying to defend your base from Thin Men. The Sectoids' Mind Merge is a minor nuisance compared to the raging hemorrhoid that is Infiltrate.

Plasma Cannon - good any time, but fantastic if you also have Interceptor Repair. Like the auto-kill weapon upgrades, but you activate it with a spare interceptor. Well worth the heavy commitment needed to get a 3 tech.

RE WORKSHOP

Yes now use it in conjunction with the alien tech that allows you to take a discarded card at put it on the top of the research deck (alien materials maybe, can't remember). That card sounds crap when you first see it, but is one of the best in the game IMO. It allows you to use the workshop with say "plasma rifles", then suck it back onto the tech-deck and use it again next round. Essentially you get all the advantages of the tech without having to research it. So choose a couple of "pet" techs and use em all game. That plus judicious use of the "discard and replace 2 tech cards ability" allows you to push through the tech deck at a high rate and still retain a couple of pet techs.

A good CSO is probably the MVP of the game IMO.

BTW I tend to use it for the SL weapon techs. They allow me to then concentrate research in strengthening other areas of the game which in general have less techs available (SL has 11, the rest have 5-7 each).

When the tech deck runs out, do you reshuffle it and draw back up to 6 when new tech is available at the beginning of the round?

It doesn't run out. In the refresh phase, all discards (for every deck in the game) go back to the bottom of the deck. Well, I suppose if you somehow research 20 or so techs, it COULD happen, but why haven't you just won the game already?

The one exception - completed missions are removed from the game.

Yes now use it in conjunction with the alien tech that allows you to take a discarded card at put it on the top of the research deck (alien materials maybe, can't remember). That card sounds crap when you first see it, but is one of the best in the game IMO. It allows you to use the workshop with say "plasma rifles", then suck it back onto the tech-deck and use it again next round. Essentially you get all the advantages of the tech without having to research it. So choose a couple of "pet" techs and use em all game. That plus judicious use of the "discard and replace 2 tech cards ability" allows you to push through the tech deck at a high rate and still retain a couple of pet techs.

Just beware of the "discard 3 techs from the Chief Scientist's Hand" crisis.

Yes now use it in conjunction with the alien tech that allows you to take a discarded card at put it on the top of the research deck (alien materials maybe, can't remember). That card sounds crap when you first see it, but is one of the best in the game IMO. It allows you to use the workshop with say "plasma rifles", then suck it back onto the tech-deck and use it again next round. Essentially you get all the advantages of the tech without having to research it. So choose a couple of "pet" techs and use em all game. That plus judicious use of the "discard and replace 2 tech cards ability" allows you to push through the tech deck at a high rate and still retain a couple of pet techs.

Just beware of the "discard 3 techs from the Chief Scientist's Hand" crisis.

Yup not a nice one. Generally I have a few techs each round which I don't mind losing (ie will be discarded) [either because they are to early to be effective, or too late, or just not as good as others on offer] so that lessens the impact for me, usually. I can always use alien-materials (or whatever the card is called) to grab one of those back anyway as it goes to the discard pile. I do love that card.

Good point though, as that crisis card effectively makes you throw away your existing hand (if you are researching 3 techs that round).

When the tech deck runs out, do you reshuffle it and draw back up to 6 when new tech is available at the beginning of the round?

It doesn't run out. In the refresh phase, all discards (for every deck in the game) go back to the bottom of the deck. Well, I suppose if you somehow research 20 or so techs, it COULD happen, but why haven't you just won the game already?

The one exception - completed missions are removed from the game.

1. Well you can burn through the tech deck without researching anywhere near all the techs. The Workshop and the "discard 2 tech cards from your hand" can allow you to get through 3 techs a round + whatever you research. I have not personally managed to get through the entire deck but we have come close a couple of times (ie 3-4 cards left in the deck).

2. What you say about crisis cards is correct, the rules explicitly state this, but I cannot find any reference to this for the tech-discard pile. As far as I am aware the tech discard pile is separate to the tech-deck.

Cards like alien-materials explicitly state going through the discard pile. Perhaps this only ever consists of the cards discarded that round, IDK. Personally I think it is separate for the remainder of the game, as this makes the workshop/alien-materials combination far more potent. This also allows alien-materials to benefit players who discard techs that are less beneficial early on and then potentially recoup them at a later date if required.

If this is not the case then alien-materials will only ever be beneficial when used in conjunction with the workshop, or to allow you to preserve a tech lost through one of the tech killing crisis cards. Sure thats good, but IDK doesn't sound right to me.

Unless I have failed to locate the referential text in the manual or FAQ, the only other place it could have been mentioned is the tutorial (which to be fair I don't really remember that well).

If you have any more information about this please let me know, I would appreciate it. As I tend to use alien-materials quite a bit.

Thanks

Resolution Phase (12/14)

Last paragraph: "All discarded cards are placed on the bottom of their respective decks."