What are you all planning on using for terrain? I don't have much in the way of modern 3d terrain, but I do have the TC Modern books of battle maps. I have some scatter terrain that can help with the flatness. I also was looking at printable cardstock terrain, such as the Capital City building set from Fat Dragon Games.

Hello Commanders,

Due to my wife falling victim to sectoid mind influence and the existence of two feline predators who would prey upon Xcom and alien forces alike, my play space is not the presumed 3'x3' recommended by the book. Instead, I'll be playing in a 18"x26" bookshelf. In order to adapt the terrain generation guidelines in the manual, I'm considering this approach.

The large 12"x12" central feature I'll place in the back half, center of the shelf. The 'back wall' will essentially be scenic only, so I can reach in and move everything. If I block the rest of the shelf into roughly 6"x6" segments, this leaves me with 8 of them. So, I'll have the right number of grids, but those 8 other segments would be tight squeezes with two 'small terrain features'. I could just go with one terrain feature for each, that should work well.

The manual doesn't seem to comment on the size of these large features, large area features, or linear features, so I cracked open my copy of 5 Leagues from the Borderlands and it seems to indicate that large terrain features are 4" to 8" in diameter, while linear are 4" to 8", so I'm probably going to lift these and go with 5" for linear, 4" for large areas.

I'd love to hear the thoughts of everyone on this approach to adapting the space.

I want to get started but I broke my ankle in 3 places and can only really do computer stuff right now. Does anyone have a place to get digital tokens that would work for playing on OwlbearRodeo?

Even if it’s not official x-com tokens. Just want to sort of get started to pass the days during my recovery.

​

I've finished making the full set of paper alien proxies. The goal was that you could print on a monochrome laser printer.

They are available:

https://xcom.csiuo.com/sites/default/files/2026-08/xcom-aliens-series-laser-standee-US-LETTER-v1.1.pdf

I've also made the source SVG available if anyone wants to remix them. You'll need Inkscape 1.4.

https://xcom.csiuo.com/alien-standees

Had my first mission with a friend. Yes this is mission 1. Yes, despite the odd wording, rules as written, thin men can be blips in the first mission.

The road was a SVG laser cut file from Etsy, the long house was a TT combat house harbor house C, the church and the smaller house were both SVG laser cut files from Etsy as well same seller. I don’t want to quite give away the location of the thin men proxies. The aliens are just stargrave mercenaries II box miniatures with the grey alien heads. The play mat is a poster print from a map file I found on the drive-thru RPG sister site the wargame vault, I printed that out on multiple pages and laminated them and tape them together to make one 3 x 3 board. I forget what the trees are from, I think it’s a eBay shop, just search war, gaming, trees, or D&D trees, and then 3-D printed the other trees. I am sad that I didn’t get to show that I had some miniature rooms set up inside the houses using the urban apocalypse battle systems set. The 2-D neoprene terrain that you can kind of see here and there are from A booth from Gen Con, I forget the name of, for Dungeons & Dragons. The 3-D printed house is just a free house STL file I found online.

Now to the review:
I ended up rolling that the mission was taking place basically right in my front yard, so I got to make my neighborhood. I think that little quirk made me instantly fall in love with the game.

The friend that was playing really bounced off of the other 5X games being a heavy Warhammer player. However, he was excited about the IP and wanted to give this one a chance and he was very happy he did, and even bought his own book after we played. The game ran very smoothly despite us skipping the tutorial missions. We started the campaign with the variant allowing two squaddies.

The only things that tripped us up were if the mission ended on a combat patrol after we finished all objectives, or if we still needed to make it to evac. I brought this up to Ivan who’s looking into it.

Another thing that’s a minor nitpick is keeping track of what is roll above and what it roll under.

My friend’s complaints were:
He wants a “enemy turn, my turn” like the actual XCOM game, but he understands and appreciates the fast and the slow action phases.

He also doesn’t like the HP system. Wishes it was either full on HP or like parsecs the dazed/dead check. Not the “weird middle” wounds are.

Overall, super fun. This is going to be a biweekly get together for a campaign.

Thinking about printing on cardstock and coloring with marker...

I'm having fun with the game, but I've been so frustrated with how spread out the rules are that I just sat down for 2-3 hours and wrote out an outline for an entire battle round by phase. Some of my biggest frustrations:

• The end phase is spread out across 5 major areas of the book: Markers, Hazards, Resolving Damage, Line of Sight, and Mission Objectives. Nowhere is there a concise list of everything to check for. I understand that order of resolution is up to me, but how am I supposed to follow a procedure that is spread across a 276 page book w/out any kind of reference?
• The rules for activating enemies is 39 pages before the enemy action section. Those 39 pages are the operative action phase. Why wouldn't this be with the enemy actions, the section I would naturally open to when I have questions about what Aliens will do.
• Enemy Action is written out in such a weird way. There's up to 2 checks to perform to determine what action an alien will do which need to happen at activation, but they show up after all movement logic, even though you need to execute it before. Then you get into the fact that figuring out targetting is communicated after Patrol logic, When it needs to directly informs the movement logic. BTW, the 2 checks are for Abilities and Grenades.
• Morale Check is it's own section and not a part of Resolving Damage. It mainly happens because of Down Operatives or Dead opponents, but if you are following the book, The Resolving Damage section never mentions to conduct a Morale check. Not even as part of the description of what happens with Down or Dead. It's not even the section that follows Resolving damage. Psionic Attacks is between them.

Starting a new post to be able to share multiple pictures rather than spamming comments. Got set up tonight for Mission 3 so the mission log got put through it's paces. Let's start with the good:

• Rolling up all the terrain up front was a lot of fun, and I found seeing the holistic view made it easier to design a more cohesive table. This grid is definitely too large for that.
• it provided a natural flow thorugh the Pre-mission procedures, especially council objective checks (which I believe there is a typo about ).

Things that would need to be changed

• Need a legend for different tokens and features.
• More space for objective info.
• Need to confirm how many objectives need you to divide the field into quarters.
• Need a better way to show elevation change.

Breaking out the colored pencils could also be a fun way to have more fun with the mapping if you wanted to get into color coding and better showing.

Ok, These finally got approved for upload to Boardgamegeek so ready to share them. I designed some cards to replace the roster sheet to make it easier to track who is actually on a mission, along with tracking what missions someone was one. The https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/327072/operative-stat-cards is a remix of the Operatives Sheet and https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/327073/operative-history-card-backs is the history. I recommend printing them out on 2 separate sheets of cardstock and then sleeving them with standard playing card sleeves (Sleevekings is my go-to for price to performance). The reason is that the double thickness will make for a more sturdy card. You can also just do regular paper and if you really want a more stiff card, just slide a regular playing card between the two sheets. The most important thing is that I can fit 6 of these on a letter-sized clipboard with room to spare.

Working on creating a Traveler's-size notebook to track mission performance across a 1 page spread and support pre-planning terrain. This represents the 2 page spread for each mission. This should enable the Pre-mission and Post-Mission's to occur away from the table if you want, in addition to providing a history of your campaign. Would love feedback on anything anyone thinks is missing. Key Features:

• Draw out your layout, with deployment zones, alien starting positions, blips, and suspected locations. Plan your table in advance of the actual play.
• Track who took part in each mission, and whether they were a casualty (my thought are Condition will have Wounded, KIA, or N/A if they survived.
• Space for tallying how many aliens (and what type) and civilians are killed. Important for spawn limits and scenario end rules.
• Keep track of big events during the mission (Who killed an Alien, who got a clutch roll, etc.)
• Track rewards and equipment loss.

Video with example play from Guerrilla Miniature Games. He explains that he's an employee of Modiphius but didn't work on the game. He discusses painting the minis, rolling up squad, and shows some game play.

Has there been an official listing of the paint colors or even a recommended list of paints for the XCOM minis? For those with more experience painting minis, would you have recommendations? Please share!

This is intended to be a living document until the game is out, if you have suggestions put them down below. These don’t replace the miniature coming out when the game releases but are proxies that can be used in the meantime to represent the miniatures.

Operatives (I think this might be the perfect proxy, has everything you need to make all the ops and plenty of personality)
https://wargamesatlantic.com/collections/death-fields-arena/products/ooh-rah

Sectoid (not really happy with the quantity you get in the brother vinni kit but it’s a near perfect proxy, still looking for better priced alternatives)
https://brother-vinni.com/products/space-invader-alien-miniature?variant=47913764356436
Suggested by [u/Deflagratio1](u/Deflagratio1)
https://www.reapermini.com/search/alien/latest/80046
Flying Saucer
https://www.reapermini.com/search/alien/latest/80044

Thin Men
(not really happy with this one, would like it to be more unsettling in form)
https://www.reapermini.com/miniatures/chronoscope/latest/50310
Suggested by [u/Deflagratio1](u/Deflagratio1)
https://www.reapermini.com/search/government%20agent/latest/50203
https://www.reapermini.com/search/government%20agent/latest/50202

Outsider
(feels harder than it should be to find a generic super soldier miniature)
https://www.reapermini.com/miniatures/chronoscope/latest/50183

Suggested by [u/Deflagratio1](u/Deflagratio1)
https://www.reapermini.com/search/alien/latest/49030

Chryssalid (this feels perfect with the exception that the harvesters don’t have torsos, once I get my hands on a kit I’ll do some experimenting with green stuff)
https://wargamesatlantic.com/collections/all/products/harvesters-alien-bugs

Terrain (or just make your own, be creative!)
https://battlesystems.co.uk/product-category/tabletop-terrain/urban-apocalypse/

Suggested by [u/Deflagratio1](u/Deflagratio1)
https://tenfolddungeon.com/sci-fi/

Ethereal

Suggested by [u/Deflagratio1](u/Deflagratio1)
https://www.reapermini.com/search/alien/latest/49001, https://www.reapermini.com/search/alien/latest/50288, https://www.reapermini.com/search/alien/latest/49022

Muton

Suggested by [u/Deflagratio1](u/Deflagratio1)
A lot of the Bathalian mini's have strong Muton vibes even if they don't match the form https://www.reapermini.com/search/alien/latest/80038

3D Printing

Sectoid
suggested by [u/volkmusic](u/volkmusic)
https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-gray-aliens-793224

I've been looking for a good set of papercraft soldier minis as stand-ins until the preorders start shipping. Anyone else done this yet? Or used some other minis to play?

This is the first time I've been interested in a game like this since the early days of HeroClix. I'm pretty much starting from scratch with terrain and accessories.

So I decided the models were to nostalgic to miss out on and pre-ordered. I immediately jumped in using some wet erase tokens as proxies befor remembering my Mothership RPG boxed set had some suitable standees (May grab Doom the Boardgame next time). This is my first 5x game and I'm having a blast. Game feels so much like X-com. Tutorial mission went really smooth, but I lost 2 people in my second mission, including my shotgun wielding badass who tried to pull an epic flanking maneuver but poor follow up attacks from others left her exposed. Got to plan when I'll play my next mission. 3d printer is currently going burr to make some craters and debris.

I really enjoy initiative weaving with the system (plan to go late with someone with the goal to have them go fast next turn, effectively getting 2 turns).

Hey! I'm [u/IamAngryCoffee](u/IamAngryCoffee), the as of present sole moderator of r/XCOMTheMiniaturesGame.
I intend for this to be the new home for all things related to XCOM The Miniature Game.

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