Sorry for the long post and at timed bad English...

We have now played the campaign in the rule book with the starting forces from the box. In this post I will tell you a bit about our experience and what we think about the game and the campaign.

There will be a lot of ranting but we do love the game, minis, theme and most of the rules… So even if I might sound a bit negative It is only because I really would like to have a solid ”product” and right now it is not… But as I said… We do love the game!

The group I have been playing with are pretty experienced gamers. We do play a lot of board games and war games as well as miniatures games. I would say we all are ”above average” when it comes to gaming.

During the campaign I played the Aliens so some of my thoughts below will be based on that experience.

I will list some of the unclear rules and strange things we found out during the 10 games of the campaign. I might also have forgott some of our "problems" so I might come back with more...


THE RULES
The rules are poorly written and there are a lot of things that needs clarifications in an official FAQ or errata or even better, a version 2.0 of the entire rules.

First of we do have three different rulebooks. My friends got one with no version number in it, one with 1.1 and I have a book with 1.2. There are minor changes between the one without number and 1.1. Even less changes to the 1.2. The strange thing is that the PDF that is downloadable is the 1.1 and not the newer(?) 1.2… No biggie really, only a bit strange…


SENTRY
Sentry really needs some clarifications and changes. It is not clear about the cost for the action even thou it is probably a cost of 1 AP and that is how we played it.

The rules does say you can postpone an AP to move of attack later in the turn. It does not really give you an option to do nothing. So ”RAW” says you have too attack or move. But if you have already attacked or moved before in the turn you cannot do the same action again. So you need to remember what action you did before taking the sentry action. We hose ruled that it is ok to take a ”pass action” when triggering the sentry.

After a couple of games we realized the sentry also is a bit weird and does not really feel like it is ”thematically” spot on… If you have a model on sentry you can wait until all models on the board has moved and then take your sentry action. So a model with a ranged weapon with ROA higher than one will almost always wait until he can get maximum effect of the sentry attack at the end of the turn. So for an Alien player It is impossible to ”lure” the others to spend their sentry actions during the turn. If it was some rules regarding what you are allowed to react to would make the sentry action harder to use and it would make the players think more when using it…

It is not clear on the timing during the turn. If several models are on sentry and the want to react to the same action it does not really say what order to resolve the actions. at turn end it is initiative order so we played like that during the turn too.

MOVE ACTION
This is pretty clear. The only thing is that Aliens are too slow to be a real threat to the other players
The one thing we discussed was if it is ok to run back and forth. If you for example run out from a corner and then back again. If you do so, do you get revealed if you are a ping token or does the reveal only occur after the complete run… I used this with my Aliens to scout corridors.

ATTACK ACTION
The rules are not very clear on how to perform an attack action. The flow charts says one thing, the text one thing and the examples and recommendations says a third thing. We will ignore the flow charts here and look at the way you perform the attack action. The rules says you make one attack at a time. So if you have ROA higher than 1 you first resolve the full effect of the attack before moving on to the second. Then There is a recommendation and example of rolling several dice together. I would say these two ways of attacking is not nearly the same. I made my opponents choose before each roll. Otherwise you can ”optimize” your hits much more and for an Alien player you need all advantages you can get.
The flow chart says that you stop attacking when rolling a 20. The rules does not say that… So we ignored the flow charts…

PLAYING CARDS
This part could be a lot clearer when you are allowed to play cards. You can play them pretty much anytime but sometimes it does get a bit weird regarding the timing.

There are also a couple of cards in the Marine deck that does not go away at end of turn. It is unclear how to get rid of those once played. We hose ruled they only last until end of turn.

The card that makes you Shuffle and draw 5 cards is a little broken. We ended up with a player redrawing it several times so he had a lot of cards in his hand and could really pick the ”perfect” hand. We house ruled so the card did not take effect again if drawn in the same ”action”. I drawn in later turns it would activate again.

Another house rule we used was that if you did not play any cards at all during the previous turn you could discard one card and draw a new one. We introduced this after a couple of turns when some of us could not play the cards in hand at all due to lack of ”targets”.

THE CAMPAIGN
As I said in the beginning we love the game and had a blast playing the campaign BUT Prodos cannot have played their own game in campaign mode with the start box.

There are not enough tiles for some of the maps. This is just plain stupid to have maps and not the correct tiles in the box. This would have been noticed if they bothered to play the campaign.

Some missions are impossible to win with Aliens. The once where you are supposed to get stuff to the vents is according to the rules impossible since only ”tiny” models can stay on a vent and perform an interact action. We did off course rule that the tile outside the vent was ok. But the rule says otherwise. This should also have been pretty clear in they bothered to play the game.

Last rant about the campaign is the balance. I played Aliens and it was really hard to even get close to winning. I hade a couple of ”openings” to get a win but if the other players are only a little awake they made it almost impossible. We agreed on the Aliens having the hardest time completing the missions. I had to kill stuff and also go to places all the time. The others had ”easier” objectives only killing or only going… Mission 8 and 9 are totally broken. A Pred player cannot lose these unless he really tries to loose. Those two missions took only 10-20 minutes to ”run through”. These can not have been tested at all…

I feel the Aliens are having a really hard time doing anything at all in the missions when playing against good players. Not to be able to both move and attack is really crippling. I cannot really swarm anything if the marine player is playing it careful. The flamer is just to darn good. The same goes for the Preds with the disks and plasma. I feel it is also a bit unfair not to be able to do two attacks in a turn. The others can do both a close combat attack and then a ranged attack. So the disk Pred can really do some damage in CC. I can only make one CC attack and no ranged.


Did we enjoy the campaign in spite of the above ranting? Hell yea! Really fun and as an Alien player with only losses I want to have another go to se if I can win at least one of the missions…

THE ADVANCED RULES AND GAME BALANCE
The advanced rules with the point system is really weird when it comes to the cost for marines. We had a lot of close games during the campaign and the marines won some of the missions even thou the preds won most of them. If the point cost is correct it means the Marines can get two full units more for the same points as Aliens and Preds from the start box… This is just wrong… We have not tried building our own forces but I am looking forward fielding some real Warriors and maybe a Queen soon…


A lot of the things I mention in the (too) long post is already adressed by others so I hope there will be a good FAQ soon with clarifications. If not I have to create one myself…

/Tommy

First of all, you should read any FAQ or errata, even from people in the group, although Jarek has answered directly on some cases.

You are right of course. The rulebook should be clear to everyone, and right now we Crusaders are trying to build up a FAQ for people to use. All of your points are already noted, and we will try to help Prodos with a new version of rules.. Check the relevant threads, and contribute if you believe you can.

For example, you are playing SENTRY wrong.
In the rulebook it says that you have to expend one action point to do sentry, which allows you to save an action point for later. Since you have expended 1 action point to use sentry, you can only save your seccond action point. So, no, you cannot shoot and sentry, because sentry effectively uses two action points (with the rare case of a model having 3 action points). I did the same mistake the first times I played during summer, but then a friend pointed that out.

I suggest that you replace the NORMAL ACTION SENTRY action with the following action (exactly the same, only written clearer):

EXTENDED ACTION: SENTRY
When you use sentry, place an "S" token on the model and end it's activation. You can expend the sentry token at any time, after a model performs an action, to either Shoot, CC, or Move (As per the basic Actions). All "S" tokens not used during the turn must be expended at the end of the turn by players taking "S" turns.

So, while I agree with you that you should be able to just "pass", the rulebook states that they must be expended, so if you cannot see anyone to shoot/slash, then you can effectively only move. In the 3 action point case... oh well... We'll FAQ I guess

Also, since TACTICAL ADVANCE is not a Move Action (rulebook says only two actions exist, Move and Run), you can "TACTICAL ADVANCE" as a Marine to Move and "S", and then Move Again if you like...

Stay tuned

Is your take on the SENTRY action official? There are a lot of people using the SENTRY action as a short skill.

Not sure what you are saying about expending the SENTRY token. According to the rules I _must_ use move, cc or shoot if able? Do you agree that we should be able to "pass" or not?

You are also changing the RAW for SENTRY. In the example (top page 22 in the 1.2 book) it says you can spend the SENTRY before the active player takes any action. You say after...

It is a mess trying to read the different FAQs which are full of "house rules" and new rules among "non official" rulings. So it is not that easy knowing where to look and what is official.

I will try to read all the different threads and se what I can find...

Thanks,

Tommy

My *wording* of the sentry is not official, although after the FAQ JD is composing goes out, it might as well be, because it is as is meant to be played. Jarek had given the following explanation, more or less:
In the book it is a basic action, because it costs your FIRST action point to use, and saves your SECCOND action point for later.
So, effectively, it costs 2 action points to let you either MOVE/SHOOT/ATTACK later.
If any person uses one action point to (for example) INTERRACT with a door, then he has only 1 action point left and cannot use the sentry action (although in the book it is a basic action and costs 1), because he no longer has an EXTRA action to save for later.
My wording simply removes any doubts. You need 2 action points to go into sentry AND use (a.k.a. remove/expend) the sentry token later to either shoot/move/attack.


Yes, according to the rules you must use one of the three, because the rules say that you *must* expend the token at end of turn.
Yes, I agree that we should be able to pass, but that is irrelevant until the rules design team prints out the next version of rules. I know for a fact that Prodos is getting ready to create a new set of rules.
It could be the case that the creator of the this ruleset did not wish to give that option on purpose.


Yes, that was a mistake as I said it I meant to say that you cannot interrupt a player's action, and you play it after he has completed what he was doing.
After your opponent declares which model will be next, you can immediately use sentry.
After he uses an action (for example, Shoot 3 times with Plasma Caster), you can immediately use sentry.


Yes I know the feeling. You should check on JD's thread. He is in the proccess of compiling the FAQ now, so most things will probably be on his thread (OFFICIAL FAQ i think).

In the mean time, if you have any questions, ask.

Thanks!

I do not mean to sound so critical that it might seem. I just really like the game and I want it to be as good as possible...


/Tommy