Space Cat is a HUGE X-Files fan. I remember one day, long ago, Space Cat and I were hanging out in our dorm room (I’ve known her a LONG time). She was playing around with some X-Files stuff on her computer and played two sound bites for me. Both were Scully saying, “Mulder.” Space Cat asked if I could tell the difference between the two, and I said no. Space Cat was able to tell me which episodes the sound bites were from. They were not labeled with this information. It was impressive, if a little disconcerting.
Given how much she adores this show, it was not surprising that she bought the board game. It’s a five player game, so we saved it for Tabletop Day (Clumsy Ninja had to work on Tabletop Day).
President Gamer was elected to be the Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM) because of his experience as Mister X.
- Chubby Unicorn – Mulder
- Space Cat – Scully
- Professor – Skinner
- Shutter – Krycek
Turn order is supposed to move counterclockwise around the board, but we’d already rearranged our seats once (to put CSM on one side), so we decided to play clockwise.
Round 1
- Open cases:
- West – Anasazi
- Midwest – none
- Northeast – The Host
- South – Quagmire and Ascension
- Cases solved:
- The Host
- Quagmire
- Poster pieces bought – 1
- Ally – Deep Throat
Round 2
- Open cases:
- West – Anasazi
- Midwest – 731
- Northeast – none
- South – Our Town and Ascension
- Cases solved:
- Ascension
- 731
- Poster pieces bought – 2
- Ally – Deep Throat
Round 3
- Open cases:
- West – Anasazi
- Midwest – none
- Northeast – Fine
- South – Our Town and Soft Light
- Cases solved:
- Anasazi
- Our Town
- Poster pieces bought – 1
- Ally – Deep Throat
Round 4
- Open cases:
- West – none
- Midwest – Paper Clip
- Northeast – Fine
- South – The List and Soft Light
- Cases solved
- The List
- Poster pieces bought – 2
- Ally – Deep Throat
Round 5
- Open cases:
- West – none
- Midwest – Paper Clip
- Northeast – Fine
- South – Nisei and Soft Light
- Cases solved
- Soft Light
- Poster pieces bought – 0
- Ally – Deep Throat
Round 6
- Open cases:
- West – none
- Midwest – Paper Clip
- Northeast – Fine
- South – Nisei and Miracle Man
- Cases solved
- Nisei
- Miracle Man
- Poster pieces bought – 2
- Ally – Deep Throat
Round 7
- Open cases:
- West – Roland
- Midwest – Paper Clip
- Northeast – Fine
- South – The Walk
- Cases solved
- Roland
- The Walk
- Poster pieces bought – 2
- Ally – Deep Throat
President Gamer was frustrated by Deep Throat (prevents cigarettes from going in the clue bag). The shuffle of the Syndicate cards happened to put most of his allies on the bottom, so he wasn’t able to replace the Agents’ ally. Despite this, it ended up being a really close game. CSM had 24 of his tokens when the Agents got the last piece of the poster. If CSM had taken one more turn, the Agents would have lost. Obviously things weren’t going as badly as President Gamer made it seem.
Because there’s a cooperative nature to this game, it is very engaging for the Agents. You’re constantly trading cards and strategizing the completion of cases (it’s better if Scully closes a case because she draws an extra token from the bag). We may have discussed strategy too much (I’m not sure if the rules have restrictions on this), but we typically do a lot of group strategizing for co-op games. CSM can’t sit back while the Agents take their turns because he has to be ready to flip his Syndicate cards. The first few turns took a while (learning curve), but then things moved pretty quickly. It is a lengthy game (1-2 hours), but the pace of the turns keeps it from dragging.
There are a few errors in the rule book which are easy to figure out. However, the rule book didn’t indicate what was to be done with Syndicate cards once a case was closed. We decided that it made the most sense to discard them. If they weren’t attached to an open case anymore, there wasn’t anything the CSM could do with them, especially since it wasn’t guaranteed a new case would be placed in that region again.