Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game

Standard original-base cooperation supports 1–5. Complete objectives 1,2 and 3 with at least one survivor to win together. Strike damage reaching a role’s health kills that player; all players dying loses. Avatar Defense is not used to reduce ordinary cooperative enemy strikes.

Each player starts with seven Specialists, five Grunts and one role character: thirteen cards, shuffled to draw six. Choose a location and objectives 1–3. Add one random Drone per player to each corresponding Hive mini-deck, then stack 1 above 2 above 3. Four characters provide the 56-card Barracks, with five cards face up in HQ.

A turn has Hive, Action, Strike and Cleanup phases. Add one hidden Hive card at the Complex entrance and push cards only as needed to make room. Each of five rooms holds one card. Hidden cards pushed past the Airlock into the unlimited Combat Zone turn face up immediately.

Play hand cards one at a time and resolve their text, saving generated Recruit Points and Attack for later use that turn if desired. You need not play every card. Class or crew abilities generally require another matching card played earlier; later cards do not retroactively trigger a missed condition.

Interleave recruiting, scanning and fighting. Recruits normally enter discards and HQ vacancies refill immediately. Scan by spending Attack equal to the room’s scan cost; killing requires a separate full enemy Attack payment, with no partial damage carried between turns. Fight revealed enemies in either area, but a Final Enemy cannot be fought before objective 3.

In Strike, Combat Zone enemies strike the active player in arrival order, drawing Strikes and resolving their abilities; Double/Triple Strike follows its text. Cleanup discards unplayed and played cards except explicit exceptions such as Vigilant, then draws six. Reshuffle discards only when the deck is empty and another draw is needed.

Complete objectives in order and immediately apply the next objective’s setup. Events use the current objective; Hazards use the location ability for that Hazard reveal’s count in the game. The first time an empty Hive must add a card, reshuffle Dead Enemies into a new Hive. If that deck also empties when another card is required, all players die.

Coordinate during another player’s turn by setting aside one Coordinate card and drawing a replacement; they may play a copy. Each supporter may coordinate at most one card to that player on that turn. At turn end, the original goes to its owner’s discards rather than transferring permanently.

A revealed Facehugger goes in front of the active player, with that turn and the next player’s turn available to kill it. Otherwise its original target gains a Chestburster in discards and dies upon later drawing it. Standard rules do not automatically return that player as an alien; that is an optional advanced module.

Original solo uses one role and one player deck, with one Drone added to each Hive mini-deck and ordinary turns. Coordinate cannot target yourself, and the sole remaining player also counts as the next player. Player Aliens, Hidden Agendas and Delayed Hidden Agendas are optional base-box advanced rules, outside this standard cooperative procedure.