Review: The X-Files Board Game

I. Love. The X-Files. I’m just going to come right out with that, I am a HUGE fan of The X-Files. I am always aware of any and all new news about the show or it’s actors. If there’s news I’m all about it (#Xfiles2015). One thing I am NOT all about are board games, I mean I don’t hate board games but I don’t tend to actively seek out board games. Until recently the most board gaming experience I had was having a serious of Trivial Pursuit with the family at gatherings. My Managing Editor, Alexis, has been introducing me to the world of board gaming and it’s been fun ( love Pandemic). But I wouldn’t call myself an ‘enthusiast’ of board games. So when I heard that IDW Games was making a board game based off of The X-Files I was very excited but a little apprehensive seeing as I wasn’t sure what I was in store for with this being a board game. But it’s X-Files, so I was going to get it no matter what!

Description: In The X-Files, players take on the role of Mulder, Scully, and the X-Files team as they work to uncover global conspiracies and threats while going up against various members of the Syndicate. In game terms, 1-4 agent players team up against one opponent who controls the Smoking Man and his nefarious network.

Number of players: 2-5

Suggested age: 13 yrs old +

Playing time: 60-90 minutes

Added review info: When I was doing this review it was just me and Alexis playing so according to the rules when there are only 2 people the one playing on the side of the FBI must play two agents at once. We played about 3 rounds, first round I played as Mulder and Scully, second round Alexis played as Skinner and Krycek, third round I randomly picked out Scully and Krycek. Also while going over the rule book and playing we noticed that it looked like some of the tokens were mislabeled, we reached out to IDW Games and they did inform us that there were missed typos in the rule book. They directed us to a corrected version of the rule book that can be found and downloaded at BoardGameGeeks.com.

Pros:

Quality. The materials with which the game is made with is really good quality. The game board is sturdy and thick, the game tokens are a nice thick cardstock, the images are printed very nicely. The game does not feel cheaply made.
The artwork is well done. Being that the game is an IDW property they utilized a lot of the artwork that is featured in their comic series of the 10th season of The X-Files, with artist Menton3’s work being featured on the boxart and in the game.
Being that this is essentially a card game there is a big part of the game that is chance in terms of what cards you draw, but there is a good use of strategy when it comes to deciding how to use your turn. The agent turn is a 3 step process, 1st you either move your agent to a part of the map with a case open OR you stay put and exchange ‘information’ (an agent card) with another agent. 2nd you either collect influence tokens OR play an agent card in your hand. The agent cards can do a number of things like create an action to investigate a case or sometimes you can present an Ally card which can offer a buff for as long as that Ally does not get replaced with another Ally card (The Syndicate also has Allies). 3rd the agent picks up another agent card to hold in their hand. So for example when I played as Scully and Krycek, I noticed one hand where the cards I had for Scully were more of a weakness for her but Krycek had cards that were more strengths for Scully. So I had to plan for them to be in the same area, exchange the right cards that benefit the agents and play them to garner the maximum amount of progress tokens to try and close the case I was investigating. There were a couple of rounds where I thought that I had this in the bag but Alexis who was the Smoking Man used her Syndicate cards to completely wipe out my progress. The only saving grace was that I had an Ally card on the board that prevented the Syndicate player from putting cigarette tokens in the evidence bag, essentially slowing down their progress. So while the game may be ‘simple’ in board gaming terms there was some cool checks and balances that kept me and Alexis constantly trying to out maneuver each other, which kept the game fun.
As I mentioned the game is fairly easy to play, ONCE you understand how to play (I’ll go into more depth about that in the Cons). When you understand the mechanics and what the character abilities do, the game flows really well. This was something I appreciated since I am not someone that plays a lot of board games. I think having played Pandemic helped me grasp the concept of character skill cards and such, but if I never played a game like Pandemic I think I could have handled this game fairly well.
The games has X-Files references all over the place, from the case files that refer to episodes (as well as featuring quotes from said episodes) from the first 3 seasons of the show, to the little touches like Mulder’s sunflower seeds on the game board and the alien stiletto. Even the character badges look really cool! I really love that the little details do a nice job of paying homage to the series, any X-Files fan would appreciate this as well.

Cons:

Despite being fairly easy to play there is still a BIG learning curve to understanding how to play and the rule book was a big hindrance at first. As I mentioned earlier the rule book that came with copy of the game I received has some things mislabeled, for example the page that has the components of the game mislabels the ‘evidence’ tokens as ‘influence’ tokens The rule book also incorrectly identifies the influence tokens when explaining how to acquire the pieces of the the ‘I Want To Believe’ puzzle
These were some pretty confusing errors that added about another 1/2 hour to our already hour and half long first game. We persevered through it and figured out the correct names for the tokens but getting to the correct answer was frustrating.
If you look at the basic elements of the game, it’s pretty much a simple card game that is painted over with an X-Files brush. While there are a lot of things in the game that relate to the show I can envision any other subject matter be theme of this game. Not to say that they did not adapt themes and characters of the show into the game in an entertaining way, but I understand where the word ‘generic’ could pop up when describing the game mechanics.
I mentioned before that the use of the artwork from the 10 season comic series is fantastic, as well as a lot of references and quotes from the show appealed to the fangirl in me, but I do wish that they could have used artwork from the actual episodes or had the artists that worked on the comics recreate scenes from the show. Something like this would have really complimented the case file cards that reference episodes from the show but I imagine that there may have been an issue of FOX not giving IDW the rights to use direct images from the show. This is only an assumption but none the less I would have liked to have seen more artwork on the cards.

Despite some issues I had with the game overall I had tons of fun with the game. I’m not sure if hardcore board game aficionados will love the game, but fans of The X-Files will definitely have a good time. A side effect of playing this game with those that are noobs to the show is that they will probably want to start watching, or at the very least inquire about the episodes referenced in the game. My hope is that IDW Games considers making an expansion to the game that would utilize other allies (Doggett and Reyes) as well as other Syndicate enemies (The Well-Manicured Man) and maybe more case files from seasons 4-9 so that the game can grow some more. I WANT TO BELIEVE! I will definitely be playing this some more with friends at the next get together (It’s going to PAX East with me for sure).

The X-Files board game is now available. Check out some images of the game in our gallery below.