Regarding the location deck, do you think it possible to mix the core and expansion together? The rule card on the expansion seems to indicate they want the two decks to remain seperate, but I thought it would be cool to mix them.

I've been playing them mixed in right away (after two games where I first used half the Reds, then the other half in the second game). Green vs Red backside is a giveaway, so I build the hulk on-the-fly. Each time Marines Travel, shuffle the Locations coming up, then roll the die. There are 5 cards per number, die has 0-5 numbers, just reroll the 0, pick the card of the number you rolled. That way, all the locations are possible and can't prepare knowing next location you travel to will be a Green or a Red one.

thats a great idea. i'm going to do that. i should be getting both expansions this saturday.

i read on bgg that if you sleeve the cards, you can't tell the difference between them as far as how they feel, since the core cards have the linen finish and the exp cards have a smooth finish. (as long as the backs are the same color that is.)

Yep, feel difference goes away if you sleeve them.

nickelcity said:

I'd say go for it, I've tried it, and nothing goes terribly awry by mixing the red and green decks. The extra cards helps keep the game fresh.

Actually, my wife and I have recently mixed the decks beyond just green & red. We realized that since we almost always play 2-player, we were getting very familiar with some locations (1C through 4), but had barely seen any of the 1A & 1B locations. So, we made a single deck of 1A, 1B, 1C, 2 and 3 all shuffled together. Now when we play, we deal out three random locations from that mixed deck, and then a final location from a deck of just location 4 (both red & green). It works pretty well, and really makes the game unpredictable.

There is however, at least one issue that can come up if you mix the decks, but it's easy to fix and doesn't wreck the game in any way. Both the green and the red deck each have a location with the artifact terrain, and these two locations don't have the same number. Since the artefact goes to your hand when you activate it, it's possible to essentially need to have two copies in play. (One on the table and one in hand, or even 2 in players hands.) Given all the cards available in the decks, it doesn't come up too often. Luckily, there's an easy solution when it does come up: Just subject that card to the same limitations that reign in the Support Tokens. So, if the card is in someone's hand at the time you're directed to place it at a location, it remains in the hand and you don't place the new one.

r_b_bergstrom said:

I understand you said it doesn't happen all that often anyway, but by doing this you're also leaving out a green spawning point.

How about you place the Corridor Terrain instead?

TheWagon said:

That's not a perfect fix, either, though.

The Artefact card is green spawn point only until it's activated, then it leaves play and goes to your hand. Since you get to place it anywhere on the formation you want, you'll generally put it near someone that can afford to Move & Activate on the next turn. More often than not, that green spawn point will only be there for a single turn. Placing a corridor would have an impact for multiple turns.

Checking the card, i see also that the location 4 that places an artefact also already has a corridor, so you'd still be lacking an appropriate card.

You could just say "there's a green spawn point _here_ for this turn" and indicate a space... that would minimize the ripple effects. As long as you've got a good memory.

I'm okay with the benefit of not having a green spawn point (for the one turn it would have lasted) being counteracted by the lack of a second artefact to place (and thus one more dead marine in the end game). It'll only come up slightly less than 1 game in 25 (1 in 5 chance of an artefact in location 3, followed by 1 in 5 chance of an artefact in location 4, and then only if you still have the artefact in hand when you enter location 4), so it's not a huge deal either way.

I never said it was a perect fix, it was just a suggestion - because either by having two artifact cards, or by leaving one out altogether, your variant does make the game slightly easier, however small that chance is.

But don't get me wrong, I like your idea about getting some use out of those other location cards, and I couldn't come up with anything better myself.

Forgive me, but in the green deck (the original deck), there are three cards for each level, and in the red deck (expansion deck) there are two. Doesn't this imply that the red cards are 'harder' than the green cards, and that mixing the green and up might disrupt the game balance, which is pretty finely tuned and would probably tilt in favour of the stealers if you mixed them up, especially if you're dealing out three cards, where if you just played the red deck you'd only get two.

I've not tested this with gameplay, but it's my general sense.

Destructor said:

No, it doesn't imply that the red cards are harder. Are you sure you're using the numbered location cards correctly?

It doesn't matter that green has 3 cards of each "level" and red only 2, because you _don't_ play all the cards of a level in one sitting. You _don't_ get more cards in play in the green deck. You play with the same number of cards regardless of whether you're playing red or green. In a game, regardless of whether you're using red or green, you should have a card numbered "2", a "3", a "4", and either a "1A", "1B", or "1C" depending on the voidlock being used (which is itself determined by the number of players in the game). It's that with green you'll pick one out of three at each level, and with red you'd pick one out of two possible cards. So it just means that when playing red, you'd see more repetition from one game to the next.

On a related note, the location numbers are the sequence they occur in under the default rules, but that is not neccessarily the power level or difficulty of the room. If you look closely at the location decks, you'll actually see that frequently the later rooms are actually easier on the marines than the early rooms.

Wait, what? Are you saying there are only ever four locations in a solo game? The void lock, then three other cards? So in a single player you'd play:

Void Lock -> One 2 card -> One 3 card -> One 4 card?

I have to be honest I have not been playing it that way! I've been playing it:

Void lock -> all three 2 cards - > all three 3 cards -> The first 4 card to come up.

And I won the second game and came very close to beating the first! I imagine if I'd had to do 1/2 of the locations I'd have won a lot faster!

Thanks for this clarification- very useful!

Destructor said:

Yep, that's what I'm saying. Just four or five cards, depending on how many players you have. Glad I could help.

Um... My apologies in advance if this comes off as rude... but might I suggest you carefully reread the entire rulebook?

Now, it may be that you're doing everything right, and solo play is just that much easier than the 2-player and 3-player games I'm used to. I could believe that, because 3-player is so much harder than 2-player, and I have yet to play solo. But the idea that the game went 3 times as long as intended, with 3 times as many genestealers, and yet you still won suggests to me that there may be some other factor at work. It might be worth looking to see if there's some other rule you're missing that's making the game easier than the designers intended.

Here's some things that could radically alter the play balance, I'd recommend double-checking that you're doing all of these right:

• Starting with the correct number of marines (6 in a solo game).
• Support tokens cannot be used when the swarm is flanking the marine.
• Only 1 support token placed per support card played.
• Maximum number of support tokens is limited to those that came in the box. (So if you have a lot of them on a door or other special situation, it means you don't have as many available for your marines.)
• Support tokens can only be used for normal offense and normal defense rolls, _not_ most special rolls (like Claudio's "do I die?" roll).
• Doors (and other beneficial terrain cards) can only be activated once per round. (The only way to put more than 1 token on a door in a round is with Red team's special ability, which can put 2 on it.)
• No single fire team can use the same card in two consecutive rounds. (So you can't just shoot round after round).
• On defense, you must roll higher than (not equal to) the number of genestealers in the swarm in order to survive.
• Spawning the correct number of genestealers. (In a solo game that'd be 2 on a yellow/red triangle, and 1 on a white triangle.)

No offense intended, Just trying to help.