Legendary Encounters: Alien tips on selecting your Avatars

Legendary Encounters: Alien can be a difficult game to beat. Over the next few posts I figured I would go over some tips and strategies for the game that I have come up with. For this post I am reviewing Character Avatars because choosing the right roles to play can have a huge impact on how the game unfolds. I’m going to go over how I feel about each of the roles in the game:

(Feel free to debate/criticize bellow.)

I feel avatars are best rated on three factors: 1) Special cards due to how they work and which HQ cards to purchase 2) health due to how long they will last against the aliens and 3) Armour which isn't as important until traitors or Alien players pop up.

Commander: This Avatar is good, his armour is low at 4 but his health is high at 11. He can soak up damage nicely. The Report For Duty card he starts with allows him to gain a 3 point card. This works well for building up a stack of cards and in most scenarios this player can build a deck aimed at helping the team. However this player must remember to purchase some higher level cards instead of just overloading their deck with mid-level cards. I find this character can have a fat deck which is a bad thing in a deck building game. Good cards tend to come less frequently and card combos become less likely.

Executive is another leadership oriented Avatar with slightly better armour of 5 but one of the lowest health scores in the list at 9. That small difference can cause early player death. I feel that the Welcome Aboard card is better than the Commander’s card in that it allows purchased cards to be placed on the top of the draw deck. It allows the player to guarantee that new cards can be used on the next turn. However this is only useful if it is backed up with some purchase power. I would still take the executive over the commander because of the rapid card deployment.

Medic If you are playing a 3+ player game without a medic you probably won’t win. This Avatars
Battlefield Medicine card’s ability to heal strikes will become vital in the later stages of the game when things start going sideways. This player will need to build a deck of Survival cards and focus on keeping the team alive. The armour of 5 is great but the health of 10 means players will have to focus on keeping the medic alive. Make sure you also buy attack based survival cards because you need to help kill Aliens too. Survival cards also seem to be the best cards in each scenario in my opinion. Again if you have 3 or more players someone should be playing this role.

Priest The absolute worst avatar in the game. While he does have decent armour at 5 his health is garbage at 9. The included Violence isn’t the answer card allows him to have huge purchase power to gain cards but he will likely focus on gaining Survival Cards that should be going to the medic. The player will also likely forget that violence is actually the answer and waste time purchasing too many cards without actually killing Aliens. This character is just part of the terrible concept that made the third movie bad. Don’t play with this character unless you want the game harder than necessary.

Gunner Thematically I love this avatar. The gunners are my favourite characters in the second film so I love this avatar for that. The armour sucks at 4 but with a health of 11 they can soak up the damage. The card Lets Rock! scales from being a lowly Strength based attack card to a decent attack card as you advance through the objectives but it lacks some of the impact I think it should have.

Mercenary The other Strength based character. As an avatar they have identical value to the Gunner with armour of 4 and health of 11. The special card Ready for Anything makes for a better character though. It allows the player to convert purchase power to attack. This may seem merely okay at first but in a five player game with all coordinating you can have a 14 attack hand with sergeants and base cards. This blows the Gunner away easily. However you must show some restraint and remember to also purchase more powerful cards as well because the coordinates and the special card won’t always be available.

Scout My favourite intel based character. His armour of 5 and health of 10 make him a well rounded character. The Reconnaissance special card allows a free scan of any room. This is fantastic for scouting rooms as it doesn’t eat up attack allowing the player to save attack points for surprise face huggers and the like.

Researcher Another Intel based character with armour 5 and health of 9. The included Thirst for knowledge card allows a player to draw cards equal to the objective number. This becomes a cool ability if the player can live to objective three, but that's difficult with that low health score. This ability could edge out the Scout in some scenarios but only if a small deck of great cards can be built with the starter cards purged. However for most scenarios this character usually doesn’t become great until late in the game whereas the scout is immediately useful and stays useful throughout the game.

Technician A decent character with armour 5 and health of 10. The role card Right Tool for the Job scales purchase power to the current objective. By objective three you should have already built a decent deck of cards so this is not as useful of an ability. It works a bit for the theme but overall it's a bit mediocre. The only real edge for the character is it is the only 100% tech character from the start but that's not much of an edge. The alternate tech, the Synthetic, is more of a jack of all trades character.

Synthetic An interesting character with low armour of 4 but huge health at 12 allowing this character to soak up damage. The Versatile programming special card doesn’t seem as useful as it only allows a player to draw a replacement card. But it does allow a player to trigger any card type special ability so this player could focus on building a varied deck to play back-up for everyone else or fill any role that wasn't selected by the other players. I think this is one of the more useful characters due to the high damage capacity and ability to trigger any card special.

My top characters are Medic, Mercenary, Scout, Executive, and Synthetic in that order.

In a five player game I would have the Scout lead as first player to scan rooms, followed by the mercenary to kill aliens, third medic to heal damage, fourth Executive to build the other players up for the next round, ending with the Synthetic to do random stuff. As you go down from 5 eliminate the Synthetic for a 4 player game. In a three player game eliminate any class other than medic that doesn't fit the players style. 2 player or less games tend to be easy so chose avatars based on your play style.

My next post will be tips how to play each film scenario so check back soon.