Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps leans on endurance deck, feels derivative

Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps, a cardboard adaptation of James Cameron’s film, centers on a novel “endurance deck” but otherwise plays like a familiar dungeon crawler, according to a review. The endurance deck is the game’s central mechanism: players spend cards to fire weapons, activate abilities and bring new equipment into play, and some events force negative effects or permanent card removal.

That depletion is intended to represent falling morale and resources, creating an escalating sense of dread. The design also includes an “aim dial” that ticks down when you fire, forcing trade-offs between offensive actions and defensive capability. The review criticizes the system as overwrought and cumbersome.

Examples include actions that require removing multiple cards, turning the aim dial and then rolling a 10-sided die to determine hits, with frequent reshuffles and nuanced interactions among a draw deck, an exhaust pile and an out-of-game discard pile. Rest actions can return cards to the bottom of the deck, making gameplay heavily focused on deck manipulation; the reviewer compares the implementation unfavorably to The 7th Continent, Space Hulk and Claustrophobia.

Noted positives include attractive miniatures (which require significant assembly), larger cardboard tiles that reduce setup time, and a linked campaign with permanent character loss and rescue side missions.

Key Topics

Culture, Aliens Board Game, Endurance Deck, Aim Dial, Space Hulk, Claustrophobia