I loved the old computer game of this. I didn't mind the turn based movement, reminiscent of tabletop gaming which I enjoy more than computer games.

Bought this is a fit of nostalgia (as I'm sure many did).

It's been on the shelf for a while, but finally got around to laying it out and working through the tutorial solo, in prep for a game with a friend of mine in a few days.

So XCOM got annihilated by turn 4.

My Interceptors and soldiers were getting wiped out in the Global and Base defence tasks, meaning I had to spend most of my budget trying to replenish them.

I don't think I did anything wrong (re-set the threat track for each continent for each successive Global Defence task and not so for Base Defence tasks), the dice were pretty cruel at times (2/3 blanks and a red1 showed up more than a few times). A must resolve crisis didn't help by advancing a continent two on the panic scale either.

So a quick scan of this forum and BGG didn't turn up any common mistakes or tips threads - so any thoughts or tips?

Despite the resource management can fickle dice routinely result in a short game?

Curious to give in another crack, but didn't walk away from my first game thinking "Wow! I can't wait to play that again!"

It's always possible to roll nothing but 1s on the alien die, in which case you're going to lose in dramatic fashion.

General advice is not to assign more than 2 units to anything (to limit your losses), and try to get some automatic success techs researched ASAP.

Thanks. I had a good read through the "So anyone won yet?" Thread and picked up some good points from there.

I think what we'll do is play through a couple of turns of the tutorial, then re-set and commence a game on Easy.

Also, the tutorial IS quite brutal, I've heard. Easiest normal game is apparently much easier. But then the app doesn't guide you step by step on the other hand.

So we had a crack at Infiltration, re-setting after two tutorial turns for education purposes.

It was a bit closer. We got slammed with crises in turn one (6 I think), but weathered that storm.

We were struggling through - there were some great interceptor and orbital defence efforts to keep panic in check.

In the end we got smashed on base defence - destroyed in turn 4. It's **** hard to keep that secure even with a few squad leader buffs, all too easy to have the two squad members allocated slain and then be desperate to recruit the following turn.

All in all much more enjoyable than the solo run through of the tutorial and entertained enough for a revisit on the cards in the not too distant future. If only there weren't so many other awesome games that compete with it... X-Wing, Armada, Forbidden Stars, Pandemic, Up Front...,