Legendary Encounters: Alien- Strategy and Tips for movie scenarios- Part three: Alien 3 Movie

Today I will be continuing on with the movie scenarios for Legendary Encounters: Alien; I will be talking about the Alien 3 scenario.

The best characters for this scenario are: Scout, Mercenary, Medic, Executive, Synthetic.

There are some very important notes for all players to keep in mind.

1) This is the first scenario with “sacrifice” cards. These cards are “killed” to use a special ability. This is only for using the special ability, it can be just a basic card otherwise.

2) There are several coordinate cards in the deck that should be purchased by the other players not focused on that card type. These are “The company’s orders” and “Whatever it takes” The reason for other players getting them is so they can coordinate with the player. For instance on the medics turn other players coordinating with the “Whatever it takes” cards can make it so the medic has up to 9 cards to play with, triggering whatever specials their cards can do. The medic and scout should be buying sergeants in place of their own type cards (or the other player’s type card.) All players should be coordinating to buy cards.

3) There are no technical cards in this deck so don't even bother looking at the Technician Avatar for this scenario.

Tywin Lanister is in this!

4) The high value cards are of varying usefulness. “Buying time” should be bought at first availability by any player. Being able to push cards back on to the Hive deck is so important at keeping the higher powered threats back until you can more easily handle them. It is pretty much vital in the last objective. “Ultimate Sacrifice” is going to mostly be used as a high value attack card since its special doesn’t have to be used. BUT it’s a great nuclear option to keep in case things go completely wrong for your team. Since it is a coordinate card it doesn’t matter who purchases it, you can have any player take one for the team when the time comes. “Emergency surgery” is the cheapest of the high value cards and one of the best. Its high purchase power helps but the ability to heal 3 strikes will keep players in the game. While it's preferred for the medic to get it, that's not actually necessary. I'd rather get it in a deck ASAP. “Remember the dead” is massively powerful in the hands of the Mercenary or Medic. Since these two will have a lot of cards with the “sacrifice” power this card will really up their usefulness. Make sure one of these two have this card. (I prefer it in the hands of the mercenary)

Scout player you should be the first player. Buy sergeants and “Whatever it takes” cards. “The company’s orders” should be purchased by other players to coordinate with you on your turn. Your best cards are “Bar code” because you absolutely must keep scanning rooms! “Autopsy” becomes very valuable later in the game because players will be constantly killing character cards.

Badass badass

Mercenary should be right after the Scout. You will be following up on the scanned rooms with massive amounts of damage against the xenomorphs. None of your cards have purchase power so buy the cards mentioned in the important player point #2 above. "Reeducation" is super important. Use it to kill off your starter cards (remember to include your discard pile.) “Bait for the beast” cards are important for the high damage capacity and you will need to use the sacrifice ability late in the game. These can be amazing if you can get the “Remember the dead” card too. “I wanna get this thing” cards are why you go after the scout, since you cannot use them to scan. You will be putting out high damage so you can take care of any facehuggers and other xenomorphs that come up.

The Medic is very important to have. Focus on getting as many “medical attention” cards as possible. “Part of the family” are the cards to get for dealing damage. Out of all the players you will be most likely to purchase the high value cards (7 to 9 purchase power.) Do so!

The Executive will mostly want to buy the “Internal exam” cards. These will help purge starter cards from the player’s decks. The mercenary will be doing this for himself with his cards so focus on the remaining players (including yourself.) “Eulogy” is a decent card but the cards in important point 2 above are better. Only buy "Eulogy" if the other cards are not available or to get other cards into the HQ for the other players. “It’s his IQ” is decent since early on in the game you can opt to discard any starter cards to get the attack value. Once you get a good enough deck you can begin triggering the ignore ability.

The Synthetic should only be used as a 5^th player. Buy all of the coordinate cards you can and work at building the other players up. Be the supportive synthetic role the Alien movies feature.

The first objective “Where are the brothers” is surprisingly hard. The event cards cause strikes to be drawn (extra if revealed in the combat zone) meaning the medic is very important very quickly. The xenomorph threats are runners which can enter the combat zone very quickly (they move ahead an extra space when revealed) and the first event shuffles three facehuggers into the Barracks (the card store.) This adds a new dimension of threats into the game. The two "brothers" you need to find are best purchased by the Medic and Mercenary but don’t be too upset if they die. They are just basic 2 attack value cards.

In the second objective “The beast is out there” you need to find Bishops head and set it up in the complex. The higher up in the complex you can get him the better but since it changes scanning to purchase power it can be added anywhere and be useful. The event cards for this objective are disruptive but not too bad. Causing the next player to discard a 1+ value card from their hand. The second hazard on the other hand causes 2 random dead enemies to jump back into action directly into the combat zone. Depending on their strike value this can be deadly.

The third and final objective “Nobody can stop it” is extremely hard. First of all the big bad adds all revealed event cards under it. This is the number of times he must be killed. Since there are at least 2 events per objective he will be around for a very long time. Remember to kill other threats to ensure this guy doesn’t end up in the combat zone. If he does the Xenomorph guardians in this objective make things pretty much impossible (adding +3 combat strength to all other aliens in the combat zone.) If Micheal Weyland shows up in the combat zone he adds chestbursters to your deck instead of strikes. Kill this guy mercilessly, his threat potential is massive. The final hazard causes all of the characters in the HQ to be killed. Then the hazard is added back into the hive. Now this can be devastating depending on what cards were in the HQ but if you remember the facehuggers that were added to the barracks in objective one; you will realize how big of a threat this is. And it just keeps on happening. The one saving grace is the leadworks. It kills all enemies in the combat zone. Save it for when things are going really badly in the combat zone. This is the hardest objective in the game thus far.

Check back soon for the fourth and final installment of the Legendary Encounters: Alien strategies when I go over the Alien Resurrection movie theme.

Until next time, remember when you start this game you’ll play… you’ll die.