Real-time

You are humanity's last hope.

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.

Where the world's militaries have failed to stand against the alien invaders, you must succeed. To do so, you must make strategic use of the resources available to you. You must launch Interceptors to shoot down alien UFOs, assign soldiers to key missions, research alien technology, and use that technology to defend your base — all while trying to keep the world from collapsing just long enough that you can coordinate one final mission to repel the invaders for good.

One of the more notable aspects of XCOM: The Board Game is the way that it incorporates a free and innovative digital app into the core of its gameplay. This digital companion will be available both as a downloadable app and as an online tool.

The app's primary function is to coordinate the escalating alien invasion, randomly selecting from one of five different invasion plans. Each invasion plan represents a general outline that the alien commanders will use to coordinate the arrival of new UFOs, plan strikes against your base, and respond to your successes or failures as it seeks to conquer Earth. The app manages all of these tasks and heightens the game's tension as it forces you to respond in real-time. Then, after you move quickly to coordinate your response, you engage the enemy in the untimed resolution phase and feed the results to the app. Based upon these results, the app launches the invasion's next strikes.

Additionally, the app teaches you the rules, controls the information that your satellites provide you, and tracks the progress of your resistance efforts, even as it allows you to enjoy the game at any of three levels of difficulty: Easy, Normal, or Hard.

The use of this app does more than simply streamline your play experience and track your turns in real-time; it also permits a uniquely dynamic turn structure. While the variety of game phases remains the same from round to round, the order in which you and your friends must play through them may change, as may the number of a given phase. As a result, while you'll want to know where UFOs appear before you deploy your Interceptors, the alien invaders may be able to disrupt your satellite intel and force you to deploy your Interceptors on patrol with limited or no knowledge of the UFOs current whereabouts. Similarly, you may be forced to think about the costs of resolving the world’s crises before you know how many troops you’ll need to commit to your base defense.

The effect of the app is to immerse you deep into the dramatic tension at the core of XCOM: The Board Game, and it ensures that the game presents a challenging and cooperative (or solo) experience like no other. Just like the XCOM department heads that you represent, you'll need to keep cool heads in order to prevail.

Source: Publisher

The story thus far...

The life of a Strategic Space Sheep Commander isn't easy, especially if that Commander is assigned to the Lambda Sector. Centuries of peace had lasted throughout Lambda, the various Sheep Systems have settled their remaining differences, and the sector has seen a golden age of prosperity and scientific advancement. With the era of scientific enlightenment came the creation of the Spatial Sheep Distortion Drive, supplanting the now-outdated Warp Drive. The ships outfitted with such operate both independently and synchronously with System bases to enable the crossing of vast distances in relatively short amounts of time. With this, the races of the Systems were brought even closer together. Commerce and cultural trade were at an all-time high, and families allowed their Sheeplings to roam free across the neighboring regions without fear.

All was well in the galaxy – until the first messenger ship arrived from a force that has become known only as "Wolf". Its language was unintelligible, but its message was clear: complete and total annihilation of Sheepkind. Soon after, the first Wolf ships arrived, laying waste to the satellite planets of the Sheep Home Systems. Front-line galactic defense forces were able to stave off further destruction – but what is coming is far, far more terrifying than any threat faced in the galaxy's known history.

All Systems have been placed under Red Alert, with the Strategic Sheep Command called together and a Flock Commander named. As members of Wolf have been spotted in Sheep Commanders' uniform, SSC has determined that the best way of insulating the individual Systems is by outlawing all usage of the Spatial Sheep Distortion drives. Inter-system access is granted only to the Elite "Shepherd" class ships, via a complex network of Hyperspace travel. A fleet of these specialized ships has been assigned to recover the Sheeplings and return them to their Home Systems while the Wolf invasion is repelled.

You are a Sheep.
You are a Defender in the Strategic Sheep Command.
You have trained all of your career for this moment in history.
You will issue Tactics to the Shepherd Fleet to direct the Rescue Mission.
You know how to defeat Wolf – "Ewe's The Force..."

Space Sheep! is a real-time, customizable, cooperative game – with possible traitor(s) in your midst – for 1-8 players. The Defenders want to get the Space Sheep tokens and Shepherd tokens back to their matching Systems before all the cards are gone and time has run out. (If playing with Infiltrators, thus making the game semi-cooperative, each player receives a secret allegiance card; each player knows only her own allegiance, leaving her to guess and decipher who else is on her team.)

In Space Sheep!, on each player's turn, the player will play a card from her hand, allowing her to:

Activate a System and take the action associated with it (moving the Space Sheep and Shepherds), Play a card to move a Shepherd clockwise, or Play any card face down to the Defense Mat.

Additionally, a player may play a card matching the System occupied by the Wolf to attack (and knock the Wolf token on its side).

In Space Sheep!, one player acts as the Supreme Flock Commander, managing the one-minute sand timer. If the sand runs out, Wolf attacks and players must discard cards from the Defense Mat, the deck, or their hands; if they can't, they lose the game. If the Wolf token has been knocked on its side, the Supreme Flock Commander may flip the sand timer before it runs out to avoid the Wolf attack, standing up the Wolf token and moving it to another System in the process.

Players who are Infiltrators will, of course, be attempting to delay action, make poor moves, and subtly manipulate the other players into making poor choices of their own. At any time players may point at one another in an accusatory fashion. If more than half the players simultaneously point at one player, this player is out of the game. He then reveals his Allegiance and:

If players have found an Infiltrator, shuffle the player's cards in hand and place them on the bottom of the deck.

If players have found a Defender, place the player's cards in hand on the face-down discard pile. On the ousted player's turn, Wolf attacks.

If the Defenders get all shepherds and space sheep to their matching systems, then they win the game. If the sand timer runs out and players can't discard enough cards – or if the number of Infiltrators matches the number of Defenders in the game – then the Infiltrators win.

Players can customize Space Sheep! by varying the number of Systems in play (more Systems = more complexity), the number of tactic cards in the deck (fewer cards = greater difficulty), the strength of Wolf, the ratio of Infiltrators to Defenders, and the types of direction cards (more directions = greater variability).

"The Game of Scattergories," published in 1988 by Milton Bradley, is a great game for any group to play. In the game each player fills out a category list 'with answers that begin with the same letter.' If no other player matches your answers, you score points. The game is played in rounds. After 3 rounds a winner is declared, and a new game can be begun.

Similar to:

Facts in Five

'Boggle is a timed word game in which players have 3 minutes to find as many connected words as possible from the face up letters resting in a 16 cube grid. When the timer runs out, players compare their lists of words and remove any words found by multiple players. Points are then awarded for remaining words, depending on how many letters are in the word. (In the original Boggle, all words must contain 3 or more letters to score points.)

An example grid given in the French Canadian rules (of Deluxe Boggle) holds an amazing 459 words!

A number of variants have been produced by Parker Brothers over time, including Big Boggle (which uses a 5×5 grid of letters and forces players to search for longer words).

Boggle is a word dice game.

"A fleet of ships at your fingertips"

This huge box (88 x 44 x 7 cm) was part of MB's Floor Wars Series. Indeed, it is playable only on a floor --unless you have something large to put it on, like Ping-Pong tables.

This game is an introduction to naval miniatures of sorts; each player has four very large miniatures of WWII vintage ships (a battleship with its three escort ships) which manoeuvre about the large board. The players also have a "torpedo launcher" shaped like a submarine which fires discs that glide along the playing surface. The players aim at specific places along the ship waterlines. There, slots allow the discs to slide under the ship and trip a rubber-band mechanism which sends part of the ship's superstructure (or gun turrets) flying, simulating damage.

Note: This game is available by request only and requires having a membership to play.
See game associate for details.