The idea
Your six defenders (black cards) face a stream of aliens (red cards). Pair two defenders whose values add up exactly to an alien to beat it cleanly, trade a single stronger soldier for it, or throw someone away to buy time. Survive the first wave and the aliens come back in a mixed, deadlier second wave. Very luck-heavy, but rewards thinking about which numbers your squad can still make.
Setup
- Split the deck by color. Shuffle each half.
- The black cards are the defender deck: deal 6 of them face up as your defenders.
- Hold the red cards face down in your hand — the alien deck. Leave room for a discard pile.
- Ace is 1; Jack, Queen and King are 11, 12 and 13.
How to play
Each turn
- Flip the top 3 aliens face up in your hand, in order. The front one is the current attacker; you can see the next two coming.
- Deal with the three, one at a time, in order, using one of the actions below.
- Whenever you have fewer than 6 defenders, refill from the defender deck. When it's empty, you fight with what's left.
Actions
- Dual attack — two defenders whose values add up exactly to the alien. Discard the alien; both defenders stay.
- Single attack — one defender of higher value and the opposite color. Discard the defender and put the alien in its place as a new (weaker) defender.
- Sacrifice — discard any defender and send the alien to the bottom of the alien deck.
The second wave
- When the alien deck is empty, shuffle the whole discard pile — defenders included — into a new alien deck. Now it has black and red aliens.
- From now on, after a dual attack, also discard any defender used whose color matches the alien's.
Winning, losing and score
- You win
- Defeat every alien in the second wave.
- You lose
- You run out of defenders on the table.
- Score
- Win: cards left in the defender deck plus defenders on the table. Lose: minus the aliens still left (minus another 50 if you never reached the second wave).