Buried Gems of the Ameritrash Rehabilitation Movement

Shit, didn't have the time to sift through 8 pages. Has anybody mentioned Okko?

VonTush wrote:
This one is my personal grail game. This is the only game that I've been looking for that I can't even catch a sniff of.

Um, unless I'm reading something wrong, there's one for sale on the BGG marketplace for 49 Euro right now, ships worldwide.

Cambyses wrote:

VonTush wrote:
This one is my personal grail game. This is the only game that I've been looking for that I can't even catch a sniff of.

Um, unless I'm reading something wrong, there's one for sale on the BGG marketplace for 49 Euro right now, ships worldwide.

Well...There's my sniff! Only been listed for a few weeks now.
Now, I guess I have to ponder if it is worth $100 to get it to my side of the pond...

It's worth it! It is better than Fury of the Clansmen and Blood Berets. You damn well better buy it.

Intruder is a great boardgame and unlicensed simulation of the classic sci-fi/horror movie Alien. It was published in 1980 by Task Force Games, the company that is better known for publishing Star Fleet Battles. Intruder was just a pocket game that probably retailed for about $8 back in the day, and delivered a fantastic value in terms of entertainment and replay value. The components include a large foldout map of a space station that lacks artistic merit but is very functional in terms of the game play. There is also a sheet of small one-sided cardboard chits that are glossy on the printed side. Also a small rule book and two tiny six-sided dice. All of this is stored in a plastic bag ziplock bag that is maybe 8.5" by 5.5".

The default scenario is solitaire or co-op, with the player(s) controlling 9 crew members. Three crew members are pacifist science/medical personnel. Three crew members are engineers/maintenance techs who can build cattle prods and flamethrowers. And three crew members are officers who have the ability to unlock the weapons locker and set or deactivate the self-destruct sequence for the entire station. The alien is mixed in with a bunch of escaped lab animals and dummy counters, which are then randomly deployed in nine starting locations, then moved around a bit with d6 die rolls. The crew members try to capture the lab animals and store them in the laboratory, and maybe also capture the alien if it is still small.

Still small? Every turn, the alien rolls to see if it grows to the next size category, on a scale of 1 to 6. Each time the alien grows, it acquires new random powers that aren't revealed until the next time that a crew member encounters an alien. The chance that the creature will attack and/or kill a crew member is also increased at each stage. And while the scientists are never allowed to use lethal attacks against the alien, the other crew members are allowed to do so after the alien has reached at least stage 3 in size. Play continues until the alien is captured or killed, the crew is all killed, or the space station is destroyed by self-destruct.

There are two additional variations. One allows one player to take the role of the alien, so random movement of unrevealed tokens is now all chosen by the alien player. And an alternative scenario features nine space marines invading an abandoned space station that is now overrun by level 6 alien(s). Yes, one of the potential powers for the alien is "clone," which introduces one additional alien token per life stage reached after stage 1. In the space marine scenario, there is a strong possibility that the clone power is part of the package. Crew members or marines get a variety of weapons, including stun pistols, gas grenades and even a blaster, but most of the alien powers are immunities or resistances to various attack forms.

Is Intruder fun? Yes! Whether solitaire, co-op, or oppositional, there is a lot of potential suspense each game. The intelligent alien option also allows for a fair amount of bluffing and misdirection by the alien. Combat is always fast and brutal. The variety of random alien powers is enough to provide decent replay value from game to game. The space marine scenario is amazing in that it pre-dated the movie Aliens by seven freaking years. I wonder if somebody working for James Cameron had ever played Intruder before that sequel script was completed.

There are some downsides to Intruder. Modern players will not enjoy playing with cardboard chits on an unfolded paper map. The glossy tokens can give away the alien's position, unless you color in the borders of those bright red chits with black ink to eliminate the reflection of the red onto the map. The rulebook contains some annoying typos, including one on the combat resolution table. Perhaps some or all of these issues were fixed with the 2013 Kickstarter edition of Intruder, which went by the name of Hidden Intruder. That Kickstarter edition was done by the same guy who Kickstarted the reprint of The Vesuvius incident, so the cardboard chits were at least replaced by scrabble-type tokens which are easier to manipulate. The Kickstarter map is likely more attractive and the dice are probably bigger. The rulebook typos were probably also caught and fixed.

So one day I sat down to solo Intruder, got everything setup, had my plex onto of my map keeping it smooth...And then, I noticed that I was getting a reflection from the hidden upsidedown counters and was clearly able to see which counters were red and which ones were white. It saddened me and I pulled everything up to remove the plex and at that point it sapped my drive.

Cambyses wrote:

VonTush wrote:
This one is my personal grail game. This is the only game that I've been looking for that I can't even catch a sniff of.

Um, unless I'm reading something wrong, there's one for sale on the BGG marketplace for 49 Euro right now, ships worldwide.

Not any more. That was fast.

scissors wrote:

Cambyses wrote:

VonTush wrote:
This one is my personal grail game. This is the only game that I've been looking for that I can't even catch a sniff of.

Um, unless I'm reading something wrong, there's one for sale on the BGG marketplace for 49 Euro right now, ships worldwide.

Not any more. That was fast.

ARM - Gotta catch 'em all!

black inferno wrote: Today I dropped a nice chunk of change on Mage Knight Dungeons, a title I haven't owned or played in at least 10 years. We'll see if it holds up; even with everything that's come out since then, I fondly recall it as the best pure dungeon crawler I've ever played. I hold it in higher esteem than the D&DAS games, and I enjoy those a great deal. Those little chests were so damn cool.

Oh, and it's an amalgamation of disparate Ameritrashy genres. It's a game very much of its time, something that seemingly could have only come out of 2002. The game is a weird synthesis of its own past, present and future: thematically rooted squarely in 1980s dungeon crawlers, sold in the 90s set-and booster model yet occupying an awkward transitional space in WizKids' history between the slow decline of Mage Knight and the rise of HeroClix. It's not a struggle to see why it failed: mainline MK players didn't want to play a grid-based, throwback dungeon crawler; board gamers didn't understand it wasn't a miniatures game. And never mind that it was only kind of a collectable game; for many folks in 2002, the late 90s/early-aughts CCG glut was still fresh enough to cast considerable baggage on anything that even vestigially recalled that kind of sales model.

It felt like a weird product, even back then, even for someone who really enjoyed it. The first time I played it, way back in 2002, we talked about two things at the table: 1) how fucking awesome it was and 2) how we couldn't figure out who was supposed to be the audience for this game. Yet, despite its hybridized/bastardized pedigree, the game itself doesn't have an identity crisis: it's a goddamn dungeon crawler, and it knows it. There's nothing confused or awkward about it. In fact, it's lean, mean, pure, highly customizable and boatloads of fun. And if it's even half as good as I remember it, I'll probably never touch the DDAS games again.

Truly a gem. Carry on.

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Please keep us updated on how it works out for you after all this time. Info on BGG is somewhat sparse, and due to the cost of the game, it's hard to justify springing into it without much info.

I made a geeklist on this very thing sometime last year.

boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/156087/ameritrash-cult-classics