On Friday, Andries
brought in a game he bought at Essen two years ago that we hadn’t played yet. Good move! Target
Earth was published by the Spanish guys Gen-X that also published the intreaguing
but excruciatingly badly written Luna Llena. This, however, is a much better
game and genuine Ameritrash. To those that remember the video game X-Com, the
setting will be very familiar.
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The gameboard with the countries marked (green for alien,
blue for allied) and Terschellinger pondkoek |
The players
together lead an alliance against an alien invasion of earth. Some of the countries
of the world have joined the alliance, others stay neutral or have already
succumbed to the alien threat. Worryingly, the aliens keep sending new and
stronger waves later in the game.
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Personal objective card indicating that you score points if Japan is part of the alliance
at the end of the game, and if the US, China and India are neutral or alien |
Prime
objective is to learn enough about the alien technology while keeping the
alliance more powerful than the aliens. The players all have secondary
objectives as well, which determine the winner if (a big if) the humans achieve
their prime objective. This adds a nice influence on the incentives for players.
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| The tiles to upgrade your base |
The
countries of the alliance produce income that can be used to either research
new or alien technology, upgrade their bases or buy new units. There’s four
types of units: infantry, tanks, shuttles and fighters. For each of your units,
you need room in your base. You can also build laboratories (for research) and
radars (to help interceptions).
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| Two of my veteran infantry taking on low grade alien ground troops |
During the
game, players try to fend off the attacks on allied or neutral states, either
by attacking the UFOs with fighters or the ground troops that spawn from them.
Combat is dice based and unpredictable, with the aliens holding the edge in
ties. There’s a few combat bonuses around in event cards but fundamentally you
need to improve your technology to keep apace with new waves of aliens.
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Examples of event cards, those with stars
are worth VP at the end of the game |
In terms of
strategy, we now feel that since researching alien technology holds no extra
benefits, it should be left as late as possible, concentrating on combat tech
first. In combat, playing it safe seems the best way to go about it because losing
units is costly and income is limited. However, with dice you can’t avoid
extreme results. Also, the ease with which the aliens can be held in phase one
is deceptive. The problem is: when the alien invasion gathers pace, it’s too
late to catch up. We had a hunch that it will be easier with four players.
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My base early on in the game, 3 credits in the top left, diplomatic
bonus counters bottom left and extra units bottom right |
All in all this game provides a tough but interesting challenge to veteran Ameritrash players. There's lot of dice rolling, and there are difficult decisions to be made. Because of that we gone from relief to agony and back many times in the game. I liked how the personal objectives add some spice to the cooperative goal of beating the aliens. There's no innovation in mechanisms that I could see. Although the rulebook is still not that easy to read and navigate, once you get playing the game ramblesalong fine. I bet we're going to give this one another try.
Andries, thanks for teaching us the game!
