Hey mates,
I think It is about to start using the forum to it main purpose now that we finally have the pre-rules.
So yesterday I was so excited that I took 2 of my friends to play.

We used Space hulk tiles and alternative miniatures to play the first mision with the basic forces.
We didn't used any kind of card or token we just wanted to learn.

So Forces:
-5 marines with medic and smart gun
-10 infant warriors+5 stalkers
-3 preds 1 with smart disk(warrior), 1 with spear(warrior) and 1 with plasma canion(hunter)

First of all both the preds and the marines were completely terrified mainly because of the amount of aliens going out so the first turns were mostly everybody aboiding the aliens.
Then as the alien player I decided to get in contact to see what happened. The result was most of the aliens were wipe out by the combination of preds and humans, and finally the preds killed all the humans and won.
The game took like 2 hours and looked like 2 minutes, really really funny.
Funny anecdote
One marine reached the elevator and sealled the door before his mates reached the computer room and we supposed he died of innanition as the marines didn't acomplish to activate it
Impresions.
Predators
Predators look to be really easy to play, specially without any experience, this probably will change after some games or with cards.
The smart disk is awesome, specially the fact that ignore armour, really deadly.
The combi stick with 4 attacks It is really cool, but the smart disk is more tactical.
The plasma caster is more or less like the movies, don't let the predator shoot .

Aliens
As alien is really important to stay together and manage to attack in CC before you get shoot. As well aliens look terrifing to the others players so the there should be a way to take that in advantage.
Flame throwers and smart disks are designed to prevent you to mass tiles so be carefull, don't make direct attacks.

Marines
M41 is not bad, smart gun is fun, flame thrower is like a nuclear boom see how half of the xenos in fron of you just disapear on one shoot.
Marines are cool and funny to play but they still must stay together and work in group to aboid being killed by preds and aliens.

And that is alls for the moment. I am not sure if the boardgame is balance or not, but I can clearly say that is it extremely funny, some rules are still to very clear like CC between the 3 factions or sentry but you really get into the game witch in my opinion is the most important part.

So what are your impresions, lets post our battle reports

Thanks for your impressions, it's very interresting.

The game seems to but a lot of fun when we read you.

I don't have time to play now (I have to write a Dongeons and Dragons 5ed campaign), but I have read the rules and they seems interresting.
It have more personality than I thought.

The system is not too hard to understand. There are not a lot of useless table like Games Worshop games and they prefer a more simple dice result under stat to suceed who is more simple because it don't need any conversion.

The only sad thing for me is the solo mode, less interresting that I hope (even if it's always useful to start learning de basics rules), but it's not the core of the game so it does'nt matter.

I like to have a specific ping mechanic for each species (even if with my poor command of the English language I'm not sure that I correctly understand how the marine ping works).

And I'am a bit sad that the Alien Queen is the Khorne Bloodthirster of the game because I was hoping some day to have a Predalien Queen (maybe as a special character) and the Alien Queen stat are so high that I can't imagine how they can made a Predalien Queen better...

I hope we will have our base box for Christmas when I have time to play. If not I think I will try the rules with my 40K 2/3ed Marines and Tyrannids (who were at that time the only game to play and Aliens VS Marines war, even if they're not as cool of a true alien movie material).

But I have some question and I hope some of the guy's here can answer.

-It seems that the environnemental event can destroy a good tactics, are they not as powerful as they seems ?
Because in that case I will not use them with some of my friends because they prefer tournament condition and I think it will not work well in tournament condition.

-I don't see in the rules how we play a case where we have on one tile a power loader (occupation 3 if I remember well) and on an adjacent tile an Alien Queen. It's the alien Queen turn and she want to kill the power loader. can she move on the power loader tile (that make a tile with 9 occupation point) and mage the tile engaged, or is she stuck because she as a to big body and the power loader will make her toast with is flamethrower at is turn ?
(note that in the second case, the only for a queen to attack a power loader will be to let all is minions fill the power loader tile, then when the power loader tile is fully engaged the queen will have is tile engaged too and can attack him).
It will be sad if we can'not made the duel Power Loader versus Alien Queen.

I would also like to add...Are there templates? Flamethrower and grenade? or is just done by the tiles..

The motion tracker is not totally clear for me?

Harec, it looks like Aliens really need to stay close to the infected areas, possibly need more warriors/ heavy support in a group. Maybe just absolute mass numbers?

The Queen vs Powerloader situation... can't the Queen just Displace (page 40) into the tile? The Queen would step into the tile moving some of the Humans out. Even if the Human player moves the Loader out of the tile, it's still engage because the tile where the Queen now is, is supposedly fully occupied.

Am I missing something? I guess it might not work if the tile had 2 free slots, and you move out the Loader to let the Queen in. The tile would still have 2 free slots and thus the Queen would not be next to a fully occupied tile...

For the template, if I remember the base box will have template, but the beta rule does'nt seems to use them. Maybe they are here to be use for the AVP Boardgame Unleashed.

For the Motion Tracker, if I correctly understand how it works, all the ping token in is range are revealed. And all the unit in is range but not in sight can be targeted by the flame thrower special attack (or the grenade! stratgy card). The combo Motion Tracker/Flamme Thrower seems very powerful. The Weylant Yutani Commando (who, if I remember correctly can have 3 flamme thrower and a motion tracker) will be devastating...


For Queen VS Power loader I try to explain again but more clearly my problem :

The Queen have 6 occupation point, The Power loader 3. In my case there is no other than these two unit. No marine to fill the tile.

The Queen can not fully occupied a tile alone.

If she go on the power loader tile will be displaced. She can not attack him because she doesn't have range attack and she can not engaged him.

The only way for the Queen to go in close combat without the help of other unit will be that the rule authorize to have an occupation for the tile of 9.



I don't know if you have see, but the face hugger and the predalien can create new alien unit. It seems very unreliable, but it can change a battle.

If a predator is kill by a face hugger (1/4 chances) it create a predalien.If two players play an Alien VS Predator match, it's possible that the best strategy for the Alien player is to have a horde of face hugger to throw on the pred (I don't have time to test this, but it seems to me it's worth the testing).

Why ? Because the face hugger one shoot almost everything on a lost CON test. The human can win against them by using their turrets and their power loader because they aren't affected, but the preds have nothing to stop them. And a pred cost between 11 and 12 face hugger. I really hope they have enough attack to kill them before the close combat, because for 55 points of face hugger they can kill a 55 points figure and create a 175 points figure...

If I have made the rules, I will make that face hugger can not attack creature with more than 1HP, to force the alien player to damage the pred with other unit before face hugging them. Or I make that Facehugger can not create a predalien and only normal alien (even if it's not logical). The use of face hugger does'nt became easily profitable in that case.

I hope they have really well balanced the power of the face hugger, because if not we will see army of face hugger everywhere....

On the other hand I'm a bit sad that there are not dog unit for marines and only helldog for the pred to let the face hugger create more runners .
And that we can not create Berserker Predalien...

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Berserker-Alien

Finally understood the Queen situation, thank you

Another thing I find disturbing about the Facehugger - unless I'm reading this wrong - is that if he successfully hugs you, he doesn't die. He will keep on taking models out until you manage to kill the hugger.

I also can't understand where the models for the hugs come from. Do you bring extra models? Do you use Alien models already killed in this game? Because if you need to account for the models in anyway... well, he can't get the Predalien unless he paid 175 points for it. Might as well deploy it... the whole Facehugger stuff is a bit confusing to me.

But I already dumped two huge loads of questions and comments on the KS page so I guess I have to re-read the PDF to get a better understanding.

I'll have to reread the rules again..maybe even more. I think the thing we have to remembers is, nothing is going to be perfect. We as fans are going to be the hardest crowed to please, we just need to remember the spirit of the game.

Also I seem to be not seeing the weapon rules? Like how many times the M41 fires on bust or the Smartgun for that matter?

The Weapon tables can be found in the Reference section, 11., beginning page 86

Thank you sir!

Also RoA is rate of attack? So that would be number of shoots/hits that weapon gives out on a target...

Couldn't agree more! I'm going to paste my comments from the KS in a topic here, but as I wrote there, I think the rules - as they are now - might need a few clarifications or fixes but are amazingly well thought out and can't wait to try them on.

We also need to keep in mind that in 108 pages they give us the core rules, missions, stats and weaponry, list construction, and multiple ways - some not totally complete yet - to play the game (boardgame, tabletop, survivor/horde, make the hero, etc, etc). That's an amazing high goal they set out to do... and imho they came out very well.