2014 · Theory 12 Games
Theme: The time is in a distant future. Humanity has become part of a Galactic Council of a precarious nature, wrought with nefarious alien races all watching the other with incredulity and disdain. The Council has adjourned from a meeting that has left the members……at odds, to say the least. Having already been dispatched, you take the role of commander of a small strike force representing your race and its enthralling stake in an archaic space station orbiting Earth. Equipped with unique and outlandish weaponry, abilities of extraordinary and marvelous effect, and the luck of the die, you will battle other players and the perils on board the station in a race to complete your missions and grasp victory.
Game-Play: In Xenofaction, you control one of the many playable alien races with 3 four man squads at your disposal. Each with unique weaponry, abilities and styles of play. The board is made of a hex grid making movement very easy and fluid. Weapons ranging is also based on this hex grid, for example; if a weapon has a range of 4, you count 4 hexs in the direction you are shooting from the attacking unit to the defending unit. The flow of game play if fluent and smooth as each unit completes its actions before you move to the next. Players take turns moving their units aboard the station and taking actions when necessary or desired. What stands out about Xenofaction is in between each players turn, another player will get the chance to control the station units (generally NPC's in a computer game). So instead of a computer autonomously controlling the actions of these type of units, players will get the chance to act as a sort of pseudo A.I. Action cards are used to create unique events and spur of the moment tactics, as well as useful items and bonuses to units.
Goal: The way to win in Xenofaction is to simply gain enough victory points. These points are gained by accomplishing numerous tasks. First there are universal missions you can try to complete that are active for every player. Each mission can only be completed by each player once, but another player completing a mission does not make it unavailable for others. Next is sometimes even more fun and necessary than the missions. Each unit you kill or destroy, except your own, gives you victory points, each being worth a designated amount. One thing to keep in mind, sometimes the station wins.
