our review

Agents against aliens

Galaxy Defenders

Defend the planet

As secret agents you fight enemy aliens together in a team of up to five agents. Each agent commands unique abilities to defend the planet, based on the usual conflict simulation game mechanisms. The game itself controls the Alien side, and each mission in the game has several end-of-mission options – successful, partly successful and failed – and the outcome of a missions changes the flow of the story line. Agents develop their abilities due to experience acquired.

A game starts with the selection of the scenario, that is, the mission, and the selection of agents – there are five different ones available in the basic version, and then you play in rounds until the end-of-fame condition for the scenario is achieved.

Each of the rounds in a mission comprises four phases:

* Refresh – As most abilities and items appearing in the game can only be used once per round, you need to refresh and regenerate them in this phase; abilities are flipped back, energy shield markers are taken back and placing of a guard marker next to a character renews the guard.

* Strategy – This is the cooperative planning phase in the game; players need to confer and cooperate to master the challenges of the round. You select a leader, the Alpha Agent of the round, he is starting player and thus determines the new turn of order in clockwise direction. The Alpha Agent also draws the event card later in the round and implements it. Should the Alpha Agent be eliminated during the round, the next player in clockwise direction becomes the new Alpha Agent.

Then you roll dice for GD-Wings ranks, for more salary and a new power, but only if players managed to eliminate at least one alien during the previous round. Then the Alpha Agent can discard fragments of alien technology that were collected in order to receive new weapons or other devices. Finally, you check for end-of-mission conditions, successful or not, the first condition that is met is the one that is valid.

* Battle – In this phase each active player in turn first plays his Agent turn and then an Alien turn. An Agent turn comprises Movement, Combat and Action. An Alien turn comprises drawing of an Encounter card, activation of aliens according to the card who then either act out movement and combat or teleport.

Movement is done according the standards known from wargames; terrain effects and obstacles come into play. For combat you use eight sided dice, one face can activate special effects of weapons, another can block weapons. For each hit the defender rolls one blue dice. Depending on the result either the agent or the alien is wounded.

For range in combat and for Alien movement a hex on the board and its surrounding six hexes are combined into a formation.

* Events – After the conflict/combat phase comes an event phase, with varying effects which can be weather effects or movement of screen blips, representing unrevealed aliens or appearance of additional such blips.

This game is Science Fiction pure, and pure cooperation and pure flair and scenery, admittedly without and really breathtaking or surprising mechanism, but a very well working mix of standard mechanisms including some nice details, effects and variations – cooperation is essential and the game offers enough tactic and even strategy to satisfy discerning players. Agents and their characteristics offer enough room for variation, especially well-solved is the handling of Aliens via the game mechanics.

The opportunities for variation inherent in the game are being made use of in expansions that have already been published; there are Elite Alien Legion and Elite Alien Army for new and very strong opponents. Operation Strikeback and Extinction Protocol are campaign expansions featuring an attack on the Alien basis on the far side of the moon and the opportunity to reach the home planet of the Aliens via a portal.

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 1-5

Age: 12+

Time: 120+

Designer: Simone Romano, Nunzio Surace

Artist: Fernando Peniche, Adriano d’iIppolito, Francesca Michelon, Mario Barbati

Price: ca. 80 Euro

Publisher: Ares Games 2015

Web: www.heidelbaer.de

Genre: SciFi conflict simulation

Users: For experts

Special: 1 player

Version: en

Rules: de en

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Nothing spectacularly new, but good mechanism mix with clever details

Good story line across the campaign

Expansions available

Compares to:

Cooperative SciFi conflict games

Other editions:

Heidelberger Spieleverlag (de)

My rating: 5

Dagmar de Cassan:

Solid SciFi with attractive cooperation and clever alien control mechanism, guaranteeing fun in far-away galaxies.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 3

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0