Never before in a solo board game have I been so thrashed. I mean this game should be the picture example in the dictionary for "unforgiving". It is hard as hell and seems like a pain to win...But my god is it ever fun. I never have been so challenged by a game before and I like it. My only issue is the set up time and the amount of flipping between pages in the rule book. I actually have a few questions regarding the game and maybe my teams will last a lil longer.

1) When a marine dies and you shift the formation, does the terrain follow and every thing get pushed up or down?

2) Why is it so easy to lose marines and is there a way I can prevent them from dying so easily?

3) What teams work best for a solo run? I can a green/blue/silver group and it was easy to work with till either the swarms got too big to manage or I lost key characters, thus abilities became useless.

Thanks so much of the help guys. Hopefully I'll win eventually...Providing my strats are solid and that the dice gods favour me for once.

1. Yes, everything moves. It goes up or down based on the smaller section of the formation. So if a marine towards the top dies, the stuff up top moves down. If it's even, bottom cards move up.

2. Support Tokens. You can use these to get a re-roll when attacking or defending. If it's still a problem, some teams have cards to boost them when defending. Blue I think has a good effect on their support card (bear in mind, like many attack/defense bonuses they only apply to specific characters for some reason).

3. There's probably not a huge difference between the teams, it largely comes down to how you play during the game. That said, I've been using red team and pink(?) team a lot, though I have not won a solo game.

2-player games are pretty fun, and my brother and I have won both 2-player set ups so far. There are also a lot of house rules you can find on the forums that might help a bit. But I agree, despite the difficulty it's still a fun game.