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Quote:
You are humanity's last hope.
In XCOM: The Board Game, you and up to three friends assume the roles of the leaders of the elite, international organization known as XCOM. It is your job to defend humanity, quell the rising panic, and turn back the alien invasion.
Where the world's militaries have failed to stand against the alien invaders, you must succeed. To do so, you must make strategic use of the resources available to you. You must launch Interceptors to shoot down alien UFOs, assign soldiers to key missions, research alien technology, and use that technology to defend your base — all while trying to keep the world from collapsing just long enough that you can coordinate one final mission to repel the invaders for good.
One of the more notable aspects of XCOM: The Board Game is the way that it incorporates a free and innovative digital app into the core of its gameplay. This digital companion will be available both as a downloadable app and as an online tool.
The app's primary function is to coordinate the escalating alien invasion, randomly selecting from one of five different invasion plans. Each invasion plan represents a general outline that the alien commanders will use to coordinate the arrival of new UFOs, plan strikes against your base, and respond to your successes or failures as it seeks to conquer Earth. The app manages all of these tasks and heightens the game's tension as it forces you to respond in real-time. Then, after you move quickly to coordinate your response, you engage the enemy in the untimed resolution phase and feed the results to the app. Based upon these results, the app launches the invasion's next strikes.
Additionally, the app teaches you the rules, controls the information that your satellites provide you, and tracks the progress of your resistance efforts, even as it allows you to enjoy the game at any of three levels of difficulty: Easy, Normal, or Hard.
The use of this app does more than simply streamline your play experience and track your turns in real-time; it also permits a uniquely dynamic turn structure. While the variety of game phases remains the same from round to round, the order in which you and your friends must play through them may change, as may the number of a given phase. As a result, while you'll want to know where UFOs appear before you deploy your Interceptors, the alien invaders may be able to disrupt your satellite intel and force you to deploy your Interceptors on patrol with limited or no knowledge of the UFOs current whereabouts. Similarly, you may be forced to think about the costs of resolving the world’s crises before you know how many troops you’ll need to commit to your base defense.
The effect of the app is to immerse you deep into the dramatic tension at the core of XCOM: The Board Game, and it ensures that the game presents a challenging and cooperative (or solo) experience like no other. Just like the XCOM department heads that you represent, you'll need to keep cool heads in order to prevail.
I don't know about you, but I see a phrase like "you are humanity's last hope" and am like, hoo boy, time to kiss the wife and son goodbye because we're doomed.In XCOM: The Board Game, you and up to three friends assume the roles of the leaders of the elite, international organization known as XCOM. It is your job to defend humanity, quell the rising panic, and turn back the alien invasion.
Where the world's militaries have failed to stand against the alien invaders, you must succeed. To do so, you must make strategic use of the resources available to you. You must launch Interceptors to shoot down alien UFOs, assign soldiers to key missions, research alien technology, and use that technology to defend your base — all while trying to keep the world from collapsing just long enough that you can coordinate one final mission to repel the invaders for good.
One of the more notable aspects of XCOM: The Board Game is the way that it incorporates a free and innovative digital app into the core of its gameplay. This digital companion will be available both as a downloadable app and as an online tool.
The app's primary function is to coordinate the escalating alien invasion, randomly selecting from one of five different invasion plans. Each invasion plan represents a general outline that the alien commanders will use to coordinate the arrival of new UFOs, plan strikes against your base, and respond to your successes or failures as it seeks to conquer Earth. The app manages all of these tasks and heightens the game's tension as it forces you to respond in real-time. Then, after you move quickly to coordinate your response, you engage the enemy in the untimed resolution phase and feed the results to the app. Based upon these results, the app launches the invasion's next strikes.
Additionally, the app teaches you the rules, controls the information that your satellites provide you, and tracks the progress of your resistance efforts, even as it allows you to enjoy the game at any of three levels of difficulty: Easy, Normal, or Hard.
The use of this app does more than simply streamline your play experience and track your turns in real-time; it also permits a uniquely dynamic turn structure. While the variety of game phases remains the same from round to round, the order in which you and your friends must play through them may change, as may the number of a given phase. As a result, while you'll want to know where UFOs appear before you deploy your Interceptors, the alien invaders may be able to disrupt your satellite intel and force you to deploy your Interceptors on patrol with limited or no knowledge of the UFOs current whereabouts. Similarly, you may be forced to think about the costs of resolving the world’s crises before you know how many troops you’ll need to commit to your base defense.
The effect of the app is to immerse you deep into the dramatic tension at the core of XCOM: The Board Game, and it ensures that the game presents a challenging and cooperative (or solo) experience like no other. Just like the XCOM department heads that you represent, you'll need to keep cool heads in order to prevail.
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Not being a video game guy, I had never heard of XCOM previously, so I have nothing to say about how faithful the game might be to that series, but I do find it interesting that so many people are decrying the requirement to download and use an app in order to play this game. They seem to be worried that since the app is required to play, at some future date changes in technology will render the game unplayable. To which I say, didn't the first version of the video game come on things that look like this:
Did people in the mid-1990s worry that 3.5" discs might become unusable in the future and not purchase this game? Did potential players not purchase Nightmare because gameplay required the use of a VHS tape? Along the same lines, when you purchase a game today for PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, you're buying something that can be used only so long as you have a functioning console — and given the history of Microsoft and PlayStation you know that they won't be manufacturing these consoles forever. Does that stop people from buying video games? What makes this newfangled board game any different?
I'm not trying to convince people to buy the game if they have such fears, but I'm puzzled at the reaction because the game sounds like a clever merging of video and board game, with perhaps some of the rules enforcement and tedious details of play being automated. The app randomizes events and reacts to what players do, while a comparable physical system would be cumbersome and allow players to make rule mistakes that affect gameplay. In short, the app allows you to do things that would be difficult or impossible otherwise, which seems like a good argument for its existence.
Whether this experiment pans out won't known until Q4 2014 when XCOM: The Board Game is released, but folks will be able to demo the game at Gen Con 2014 in the FFG booth. Aw, man, I just can't get away from that convention, can I?
In the game, each player controls two penguins, with the penguins standing on the intersections of a 5x5 grid of tiles. On each turn you secretly program a direction in which you want to move one penguin and a direction in which you want to crack the ice. Your goal is to break off chunks of ice as you score one point for each tile in an ice floe. If you strand an opponent's penguin on that floe, it costs you a point, but you now know better what that player's options are in the future. If a player reaches seven points, she wins; otherwise the player with the most points wins when the main berg shrinks to a certain size or most of the penguins have vanished.
• James Ernest has released a beta version of his Stuff and Nonsense, which Cheapass Games will Kickstart on September 1, 2014.
• In an August 2014 Cheapass newsletter, Ernest mentions that details on a new gambling game from him and Mike Selinker called Red Baron will be announced soon.
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