Sorry for the long silence - things have been busy lately. My family is in Tucson for the next month and I went out to visit for the 4th of July. Had a great time and now I'm home! Got to see Tombstone, AZ which was awesome!
Since I have some time on my hands now, I'm trying to play some of these games I've let stare at me for a long while, and some of them have solo modes! So, instead of sitting on the couch and watching TV, I have the TV on (usually WWE, NXT, or Dateline as of late) and I've taken over the dining room table for some fun times rolling some dice.
Last night, I broke out Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps from Gale Force Nine.
There was a lot of contention about this game amongst fans, much of which I don't really get. I'm a fan of the Alien franchise - it's probably one of my favorite movies of all time (that list fluctuates) - and when they announced this game back in 2018, I was on board. I pre-ordered the game right after Gen Con 2018 and then waited ... and waited ... and waited ...
Why was the game delayed for so long? Well, I have a theory on that. The game was originally announced back in 2018, and I saw prototypes of it at Gen Con that year. Everything pointed to a relatively soon release and the game appeared ready to go ... then my thought is that Disney happened.
Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in March of 2019, and I'm certain this threw a monkey-wrench into any and all licensing deals. When you're working with a license, any license, you have an extra layer of approvals that you have to go through before you can release a product, or even continue on development of a product. As far as I understand it, you get the license, develop a game, and have to work in tandem with the license-holder to develop the mechanics and design of the product. Some companies are very involved in this process and can be collaborative in many ways, while others can simply put a stamp of approval on a piece of paper and call it good.
What I think happened was Disney was hip-deep in acquiring 20th Century Fox when this game was scheduled to come out, and they put a hold on all licenses pending review by their people - a reasonable step, no doubt. Things like a hobby board game probably weren't as high on the list as things like action figures, apparel, comic books, and more mainstream things like that, and when Disney got around to looking at this game, they most likely had some notes on what they wanted to see. They were probably still obligated to any existing agreements with GF9, and the game was already soliciting pre-orders. GF9 most likely had to go back and revise a number of things, change elements, etc. to make Das Mouse happy with the final product.
Regardless, the game eventually came out last year, much to the consternation of board game lovers and BGG users everywhere, and it had mixed reactions.
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I should mention that there was an Aliens game that came out back in the 1980's from Leading Edge Games that I used to own and played a few times. The components of that game were (compared to now) sub-par and very economical, but the game was solid and hard as Hell to win. This GF9 game is not a remake of that game, but it certainly shows as an influence to it.
First and foremost, people were annoyed that you had to assemble the miniatures for the game, and this really wasn't advertised. Now, I've played things like Warhammer, Warmachine, and Marvel Crisis Protocol before, and those being a miniatures games, there's a lot of snipping bits off sprues and gluing small pieces together that something like this wasn't too much of a challenge to me. I didn't realize, however, that there are a lot of board game lovers out there who absolutely hate assembling miniatures and it dawned on me that not all board game enthusiasts are fluent in the world of miniatures games.
It reminded me of my brief time playing World of Warcraft and asking folks on there if they ever played Dungeons & Dragons. I got a chorus of, "No," and "What's Dungeons & Dragons?" It was enlightening. I can understand the aversion to assembling miniatures as a board gamer - the amount of time from unboxing to play should be the shortest possible amount of time as possible, and requiring the assembly of miniatures is just ... well, counterproductive.
That all being said, the game itself works fine. I played the first campaign mission and had a good time. There were times while I was playing that I thought maybe the game was too easy, then, of course, I realized I was doing something wrong, stopped doing that, and then the game got a little more difficult. I was still skeptical about it for a bit, and then it happened - holy crap the game can go from, "We got this," to, "Holy crap we're gonna die," in a single round. I like that kind of back-and-forth, to be honest.
For example, take the game Pandemic for instance. It's a great game, but the last four times I've played it over the course of many years, my wife and I have handedly beaten it each and every time. We're playing it correctly, and it is a difficult game, but we seem to have found the rhythm of the game and we just get it. We've got playing it down to a science and because of that it's lost some of it's appeal to us.
This game certainly didn't do that. I was conservative with my choices and my tactics, thinking my squad should stick close together so they can collectively deal with the aliens as they came up, and this worked for a time ... then we got overrun and in a single turn three of my people were knocked down and it was pretty much done.
Now, my issues with the game are more-or-less entirely component-based. The components of the game are great, for the most part - the cards, the boards, the dials, and the tokens are all great. The rulebook leaves a bit to be desired and after going back-and-forth with it for 30 minutes, I loaded up a YouTube video playthrough of the first mission and learned way more about setting up and playing the game with that than by reading the rulebook.
While having the minis are nice, it gets annoying when, due to appendages, tails, and poses, you can't fit all the minis on the map. Additionally, it's irritating when I need to move one of these minis, tokens and all, and because of the pointy bits, they drag half the group with them, or knock over minis, and it quickly becomes a mess in some cases. I also ran out of minis and tokens at one point, and I couldn't find in the rules anywhere that indicated what I should do in this case. It may be in there, but the rules weren't exactly the easiest to navigate (but I've seen worse).
It got to the point where I thought that the alien minis were just in the way, and tokens would have been a better option. That's unfortunate, as I love minis and want all the minis I can fit onto a map. I even am contemplating looking at 3d printed alternatives for the aliens that might work out a bit better. Also, the assembly of the aliens was aggravating and tedious, and frankly unnecessary.
That's really the problem with the miniature assembly thing, to be honest. It's fine and I don't mind putting minis together, but it's just unnecessary. The result is that you have multiple weak-points on the aliens minis and they'll break easily, and their pointy-bits get stuck together like a barrel of monkeys toy. Also, the minis just feel ... cheap. Their plastic quality is not the best. I know it's nitpicky, but I've just seen ... better.
It's annoying.
Fun times, though. Fun times.
