We've been taking a crack at this game, and it whooped our butts, even on Easy mode.

What got us stumped the most was probably our poor dice rolling in the early rounds, causing significant delays to tech development and the untimely loss of our base defense and mission soldiers - not total wipe-outs but significant setbacks none-the-less.

Over the course of the first few rounds the skies filled up with UFOs, the barracks were getting empty out and the funding was running out. Eventually too many continents were panicking and the game ended.

I realize we need to take a more professional approach to this game: it is not forgiving or lenient to the casual player. From the reviews I gather the game is popular, so I must assume that there is not one but many ways to improve ones chances to beat the alien invasion.

Feel free to share your wisdom!

Edit: Then again, this topic seems relevant: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/133757-has-anybody-won-yet/

One solid piece of advice: try to avoid going above two units per task.

I like to use up the Emergency Funding in the first two rounds - particularly if you have a card that lets you refill it..

Unless you have a salvage engine going (Archangel Armor or similar), I'd use salvage to add a second die to research tasks from round 2 onward (so assigning one scientist and using one salvage).