Stats:
No. of players: 1-5
Amount of time to play: 60-150 min (depending on the mission)
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time: 5-10 min

In Galaxy Defenders the players are an elite fighting team that must defend Earth from aliens. This is a cooperative game that can be played as a campaign or as just one-shot games.

Galaxy Defenders Rules Description:

Galaxy Defenders comes with 12 missions. Missions may be failed, partially accomplished or fully accomplished. How you perform in your current missions may determine which mission you play next.

You take on the role of five different agents, the marine, infiltrator, sniper, biotech or hulk. Each has unique weapons and stats. As you kill aliens you can add tactics and skills to improve your agent. You also gain new weapons and devices as you kill aliens and gain experience.

Each round the group chooses the Alpha Agent. This player goes first and play continues to their left. On your turn you may do three things in any order you choose, move, attack and take an action. Combat is resolved on custom 10-sided dice. Your weapon determines the number of dice you roll and for each hit scored the defender must roll a defense die. Rolling a shield removes one hit from the pool and the remaining damage is applied to the defending unit. Guns can become jammed and some guns have limited ammo. You must use actions to un-jam your gun or search for more ammo.

Next you take a turn for the aliens. The Close Encounter cards tells you which aliens act based on type rank or color. Each alien type and rank attacks or moves differently depending on their distance from agents. A player’s turn ends after they take a turn for the aliens.

Once all players have taken their turns the Alpha Agent draws an Event card. These determine weather conditions, if new aliens will be added to the board and special mission triggers.

When aliens are added to the board they are represented by signal tokens. These may move during the Event phase. If an agent ever has line of sight to a signal it is revealed.

Each mission has its own end condition and goal that must be met for the win.

Quick Review of Galaxy Defenders:

Galaxy Defenders is true to its sci-fi theme and can be very challenging. You have to use strong tactics and get lucky to fully accomplish most missions. Playing the campaign mode just adds to the theme as you become more attached to your character.

The components for the game are really nice. The maps, art and miniatures look great. The rules are pretty good but there are a lot of them so you’ll be referring to them often the first few plays. There are also some circumstances that come up that aren’t fully covered in the rules. You’ll have to hit a forum or house rule these to make sense for your group.

Measuring distances in this game is nice and simple. The board is made of areas which are made up of seven hexes. Alien tactics and weapons are determined by area distance but movement uses hexes. The system is streamlined and makes the game move quicker.

The combat system is also well done. Once you are used to the flow, combat moves along quickly. Some units have personal shields that automatically remove hits. And getting better weapons (especially alien tech) can really make a difference.

Having the option to play in a campaign makes this great for groups that meet regularly. I could see a group dedicating several weeks to the entire campaign, having a great time and some fun stories emerging. Just be aware that some missions require a specific number of agents. So you may need one player using multiple agents on some missions.

Like most cooperative games Galaxy Defenders can be pretty swingy. Roll well and you’ll do well. Get the right Close Encounter and Event cards and things can be much easier than getting ones that make your situation worse. Also with so much to keep track of it can be a bit fiddly. Managing everything gets easier once you have played it a few times, but there can be a lot going on.

Galaxy Defenders is a really fun game that is very flexible. You can play it solo, as a one-shot or as a campaign. It takes some mechanics from similar games and combines them into a fun, tactical sci-fi board game. If you like the theme and cooperative board games, given the amount of times this game will hit your table, it is worth picking up.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction 4 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6