Year: 2020 | Players: 2-4 | Minutes: 60+ | Ages: 14+
This Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps review was made after playing the game five times (one campaign and two one-off missions, all three-player games). We were sent a copy of this game by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
What is Aliens: AGDITC?
Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps is a cooperative survival game in which you play through the most famous scenes from the Aliens movie. The game was designed by Andrew Haught and it is published by Gale Force Nine (Firefly Adventures).
Rules Overview
Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps has a three-mission campaign as well as four standalone “Bug Hunt” missions. During the campaign, you start out with any weapons and equipment that you want and you’ll be attempting to complete the missions’ objectives. In the Bug Hunts, you start out with basic weapons and you have to find what you need to defeat all of the aliens and survive.
Each player gets a hero who has unique abilities as well as other unique stats that you use throughout each mission. All of the characters not controlled by players become grunts, which are weaker versions of the heroes that players can activate at the end of their turns. If your hero is ever killed or captured, you choose a grunt and flip its character card to its hero side.
Managing the Endurance Deck is a huge part of the game. This deck is where you’ll get more gear for your heroes, it has beneficial Event cards, it has the terrible Hazard cards, and it’s the game’s timer. You’ll move cards from the Endurance Deck to a face-down Exhaust pile for a variety of reasons, such as when you use your weapons and when you activate certain abilities. You can also recycle cards by putting cards from the top of the Exhaust pile under the Endurance Deck, giving you more time to complete your mission. Some game effects can move cards to the Discard pile, which removes them from the game (not good). If at any time there are no cards in the Endurance Deck and the Exhaust pile, you immediately lose.
The rounds start with the characters activating by using two actions apiece. Actions include moving, attacking, putting up barricades, interacting with tokens on the map, performing card actions, and resting (drawing/recycling cards). Attacking is done by picking a weapon, rolling a d10, and hoping that you get a number that is equal to or lower than the number on your character’s Aim Dial.
During the Alien Phase, the aliens move toward the characters and attack if they end up next to anyone. You do have a chance to fire at the aliens before they attack and roll for defense, but if you fail to kill them or defend their attacks, you get knocked down (and potentially dragged away or killed). After all of the aliens activate, you draw Motion Tracker cards to see where the next groups of aliens show up. The aliens start out as blip tokens and a token gets revealed once it’s in line of sight of any character; only then will you find out if it’s one, two, or maybe even five aliens coming at you.
After the first two campaign missions, you lose some cards from the Endurance deck, making it more difficult to make it through the other missions. If at least one hero survives the third mission, you win! You’ll beat the Bug Hunts by simply killing all of the aliens.
For more info on how the game plays, check out the Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps rulebook (PDF).
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Pros and Cons
Pros
- Easily the highlight of this game for me is the co-op deck management system. The fact that everyone is drawing from, exhausting, and discarding cards from the same deck forces you to care about every decision that your team makes. Also, it always feels great when you’re able to recycle cards because you know that you just bought your team more time. It’s just a great system.
- All of the weapons are unique and useful in different situations. Even the pistol, the weakest weapon in the game, can be great if your Aim Dial gets below 3. I also like that some weapons suit some characters better than others.
- Being able to barricade spawn points and tunnels is really cool. It’s very satisfying when a group of aliens can’t get through and you get to take a half-second breather.
- I usually don’t like controlling multiple characters in cooperative games, but I like the way it’s done here with the grunts. You can choose to activate any of the grunts that haven’t already been activated during the round, giving you even more fun tactical decisions to make with your team.
- The designer and publisher did a good job of making this feel like a true Aliens game. The components look great, the weapons and equipment feel just right, and the characters’ stats and abilities make thematic sense. Oh, and I love the quotes included on some of the cards.
- There are a lot of exciting moments in this game and there is plenty of potential for epic moments. We had one truly epic moment in a Bug Hunt where Vasquez was able to save us by clearing out about 20 aliens with her flamethrower. It was awesome.
Cons
- This game has a very high luck factor. Our first two missions of the campaign were actually pretty boring because we rolled well early, we avoided the Hazard cards, and the aliens were spawning in convenient spots. And then we had one Bug Hunt where we rolled poorly and the aliens were in our faces the entire game; it was exciting at times, but I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anything we could have done differently to pull off the win.
- It seems like the rulebook was rushed. There have already been a lot of rules questions from players and I’m sure there will be a lot more. It’s certainly playable, but some of the wording in the book (and on some of the cards) is pretty vague, forcing you to either interpret it how you want to or stop the game to look it up.
- Assembling the miniatures was a massive pain. It took me over three hours to put them all together and I ruined multiple aliens in the process. Getting the tails onto the aliens was no fun at all and I really struggled getting the feet glued to the bases. I know some people will enjoy assembling them, but I definitely would have preferred some pre-made figures.
- You can run out of blip tokens and alien miniatures, especially during the Bug Hunts. That just shouldn’t happen, in my opinion.
Final Thoughts
Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps is a good cooperative survival game that could be pretty special with an updated rulebook and some extra components. The co-op deck management is awesome and there are plenty of “Wahooo!” moments, but the issues I mentioned are enough to keep me from liking it as much as other similar co-op survival games, like Resident Evil 2.
At this point Legendary Encounters: Alien is still my favorite game based on those films, but I have enjoyed playing this one, too.
If you’re a big fan of Aliens, you might end up loving Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps, but it’s one I’d suggest trying before buying if you can.
Aliens: AGDITC Links
BGG | Amazon | Miniature Market
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