Review: XCOM: The Board Game

XCOM: The Board Game (XCOM: TBG if you like acronyms) is much better than I expected it to be, but disappointing at the same time. Like Alchemists, which I reviewed before here, this is another of the new breed of board games that blend a boxful of cardboard and plastic with an app to let you play the game in a way you couldn’t do without it, and it creates a great experience.

Commander: Okay team, fall in! We’ve got a global crisis on our hands, these extra-terrestrials need to be stopped!

Communications Officer: Commander! Incoming transmission – we’ve got a crisis, how do you want to respond to it?

Commander: Looks like the alien menace is causing panic in Europe, we can’t afford to let that happen, we need their funding. Squad Leader, get some of your boys in the Sky Ranger to deal with it!

Squad Leader: But sir we just don’t have the manpower! Jones, Smith and Hendricks didn’t come back from the last mission, and we’ve got to stop those Sectoids in the base!

Communications Officer: Commander! Two more alien UFOs in Asia!

Chief Scientist: If I might offer a suggestion, we could develop body armour to protect our soldiers, I just need two more scientists to work on…

Commander: We just don’t have the money! I’ve got to pay for all those soldiers on the mission and the interceptors don’t fuel themselves! No more scientists!

The core gameplay of XCOM: TBG is the four distinct roles:

The Commander – the man in change, making the calls, and most importantly holding the purse strings. Sometimes this role seems more like an accountant than a commander, but you do get to play at being the one in charge even if you really have no idea what the other three are doing other than spending lots of money.

The Squad Leader – this daring member of the team is in charge of sending teams of soldiers out to combat the alien menace, by allocating soldier to mission tasks based on the skills required…and then you get to watch all of your soldiers die. Soldiers in XCOM: TBG have a really low life expectancy.

The Chief Scientist – researches new technology to give all the players new abilities. The scientist’s role is very important, quite low stress and will most likely be ignored because the Squad Leader is shouting more loudly about how all their soldiers are dead.

The Communications Officer – Otherwise known as the app button pusher. The Communications Officer holds the app and barks out instructions to the other three members of the team, like “Squad Leader deploy the team to the mission!”, “Scientist, allocate research 3!” or “Commander there’s another crisis!”. In some ways this does feel like it should be the Commander’s job, but he’s got all that money to count and that keeps him pretty busy.

Communications Officer: Squad Leader – new enemy in the base!

Squad Leader: Damn, look at that thing, how are we going to stop that!? I need to send more soldiers!

Commander: What do you mean more soldiers!? You’re already spending all the money!

Each role has a fairly simple task to do, but the app forces you to do everything under time pressure. 20 seconds to decide which soldiers to defend the base with, 10 seconds to allocate research, and so on in a breathless panic through the timed stage of each round, as you scramble to keep up with the relentless pace of the app. Things go wrong, you’ll forget to deal with the crisis, or will send the wrong soldiers, and that makes the game fun. On top of that the roles are interconnected and the success or failure of one member of the team will directly impact the other players. Which is great because it gives you a reason to root for everyone to succeed in the dice rolling phase and the end of the round, and you are there encouraging them to push their luck that little bit further because they absolutely have to succeed.

I really wasn’t expecting to like XCOM:TBG, on the surface the roles look too simple, the game play too basic, the challenge too dull, but somehow when playing the game it all comes together and I got into the role, and my team played out a desperate last line of defence between humanity and the alien menace. It was actually really good fun.

However, now that I have played the game a few times in quick succession I do not feel a strong desire to play it further. The threats that come up each game seem to be very similar, so you get used to what you are doing in each of the roles, making the decision process simpler and the time limit less of an issue. With the pressure off, suddenly the gameplay all felt a bit more irrelevant, and I could not maintain the suspension of disbelief that allowed me to get into the story of the game as I had in the first few games I played. Another problem is that tackling XCOM: TBG with less than the full complement of four does not really work. With fewer players you double the roles up, but when I tried that it just made me even less inclined to get into character lest I start talking to myself in the middle of the game. XCOM: TBG started off with a strong showing, but got weaker the more I explored it.

Altogether this makes it really difficult to recommend XCOM: TBG. I had a great time the first couple of games and really enjoyed it. But it didn’t stand up to repeated plays in quick succession. As an infrequent experience XCOM: TBG is a blast. If you’ve got exactly 3 friends all keen to play and you will all get into character whilst playing I suspect you’ll have a great time. But unfortunately that isn’t enough to make XCOM: TBG a great game.

Tags: 3/5, Chief Scientist, Commander, Communications Officer, Eric M. Lang, Fantasy Flight Games, Squad Leader, We're all going to die!, XCOM: TBG