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In XCOM: The Board Game, you and up to three friends assume the roles of the leaders of the elite, international organization known as XCOM. It is your job to defend humanity, quell the rising panic, and turn back the alien invasion.
AFABBI
If you liked the video game but always wanted to play a coop version with friends than this is the board game for you. Xcom the board game does a great job of replicating the video game experience on a table with four players and a app. Your team members play one of four very different roles which the game delegates different aspects of the Xcom program roles to. Some roles are more involved than others so different levels of interest/experience can be accommodated. Xcom is a fun ride but I find that there are two sticking points worth mentioning. First, the game runs a timed and untimed phase so ap players are effectively mitigated which is good BUT social play is reduced pretty dramatically. People are too busy trying to execute their role in the given time constraints to be bothered with a lively debate about whether Hans Solo was a pirate or if a smuggler is a subclass of rogue who is different all together etc. The second thing to note is that one role involves handling the game app which manages the game and handles upkeep. This, in my experience, makes that person the apps sock puppet/bitch. The person is effectively spending most of their turn doing what the app is telling them to and a little bit of it making some minor decisions. It can be exhausting. The tablet does not buy you drinks first either.
ande9249
The intensity and tension of the timed sections is great. The resolution gets better the longer the game gets as players have more action cards to interact with. Saddly the most depressing this about this game is the very low flavor impact of the base defense and mission component of the game.
AZrugger
Better than your average co-op. The timing element makes it feel like space alert. Everyone seems to have enough to think about with their own roles that they aren't worried about playing other people's roles at the same time.