Project: ELITE Review - with Tom Vasel

Tom Vasel takes a look at a real time alien fighting game! Project: ELITE!
Intro 0:00
Overview 1:53
Final Thoughts 11:53
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BGG Link: boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2...

[@AthexTube]

Cant believe Tom chickened out on the component drop on this game!

[@Aaackermann]

It wasn't the first time, though!

[@ryanbrown9102]

Go check Eric Summerer's review for his number 1 game of all time: Merchants of Venus.

[@SmokeRingHalo]

He waited too long for them to risk damage lol

[@MrCrixmadine2]

I can

[@mydemon]

I'm coming from the future to let you know some terrible news. The drop is RIP

[@petergross7235]

I love seeing Tom get on a roll when he loves a game! Maybe we can convince him to do a live play through with the guys sometime soon?

[@oneanotherstudios]

Best Dice Tower component drop EVER. lol

[@kevinporter7065]

Hahaha

[@ryanbrown9102]

You are only saying that because you haven't seen Eric Summerer's review for his number 1 game of all time: (And this action of Tom is probably made as a paraphrase for Eric's number 1) - Merchants of Venus. That review itself is unique and worth watching but the components drop is just HILARIOUS! Glad I could help! Now go watch it ;)

[@kevinporter7065]

Joe Drimmer haha just watched it. Hilarious!

[@kristiantornkvist2084]

Well its a cmon game. With the worst storage solution know to man. I had to colorcode Rising Sun so you don't have to spend the same amount of time dissasemblingen the game as the actual gameplay. If I hadn't gone out of my way to buy an insert that fixed all of that I would had kept the minis in a bag.

[@richardhancock1505]

Great review, your enthusiasm is infectious! I bought the game off the back of your no.1 recommendation and love it! Thanks

[@zdd9583]

We had a blast with 6! Everybody was sooo happy that we played it 3 times in a row! The atmosphere in the room was electric!

[@scpfoundation6195]

I thought about getting this one! Thanks for this review even though its old now! I want to see you doing an updated review on what you think now.

[@StrawHatLaw13]

I'm currently watching this vid because this is Tom's #1 cooperative game as of yesterday lol

[@kuremalone78]

I feel like this game will be even cooler if CMON ever releases their Teburu electric board.

[@jeremiahhammer2282]

My copy will be here any day now, and I am beyond stoked!

[@uplift-yourdailypickup6424]

Hmm this actually looks really fun. Adding to my wishlist.

[@TheOriginalSqueezel]

Absolutly adore this game. Never played the original. But one thing that I really disliked was the rulebook. This should be (and really is) an easy to learn and handle game. But CMON managed to make the rules quite unclear, so that we had to look up such a lot of small things online, because the rules where not clear or even had missing parts. Now the published an FAQ, only a few weeks after the games was delivered and it was 4 or 5 or even more pages. Crazy. So still, one of my favorite realtime games. Its a blast. I just worry to open all the extra content boxes, when the rules there will have the same issues!

[@joeharker]

you had me at "Aliens .. the second one"!

[@Nayr090]

Having owned the original, then backing this, this added so much more variety. The extras/stretch-goals seem tacked on and not quality checked, ESPECIALLY with rules. But at the very least, the base game overall is great!

[@raydexter9013]

I have both the original and the reprint and I'm keeping both. There are enough differences that they are not really compatible. I find the original to be a little simpler and plays more smoothly while the added complexity in the reprint keeps things fresh.

[@jettryker]

This quickly shot into my top 10! It's so great!

[@juliesquirrel5269]

The retail copy is neutered compared to KS. I hate that CMON does this.

[@Dalmatinac3]

How is it neutered?

[@BlitzkriegBryce]

Dalmatinac3 the same as every Cmon Kickstarter. Tons less heroes, monsters, components, scenarios and so on.

[@christian_daigle]

You can still enjoy the game very much !

[@BlitzkriegBryce]

Christian Daigle very true! Honestly I bought a ton of the Kickstarter extras for Zombicide Black Plague and the only thing I really use is the additional heroes but even without them the base game is still fun and it’s not like I’ve played it soooo much that all that bonus is needed (mainly I wanted ALL the minis because Black Plague is medieval fantasy so I can use them for D&D and such).

[@saykhia]

I’ve only ever backed one CMON campaign and was actually annoyed at how much stuff it came with. Clutter! But I know this is an unpopular opinion.

[@eriksjogren800]

Thanks

[@joeltrinidad4939]

I've never seen Tom this excited about a game! Dammit, it looks like I'm going to have to buy it.

[@Sam-vk8xd]

You MUST buy it. buy 3 copies.

[@tdogtom]

I can believe why he did not drop components. If his minis came like mine, I had to glue all most 2/3 of minis to back to their bases

[@JLH111176]

draw 3 item cards and keep 1 is that done during real time, new people have to read and decide what to keep could take more than 2 minutes, or is that not an issue I never played before

[@richardhancock1505]

You can choose to either choose which card you want straight away or leave them to one side while you’re busy mowing down aliens in your timed session and then after the timer has finished, select the card you want from the 3 you picked up during the melee. I usually wait to pick the card I want and focus on the gunslinging/moving/ objectives.

[@Hewardrv8]

Tom you seriously need to review core space!! If you love this game you will love core space!!

[@beaglegod1]

For some reason Core Space First Born will probably never get reviews from the big gaming channels. Such a shame.

[@ambrosehuang897]

is there a titanic board game? (background on the shelf)

[@miniatureworldsworkshop8286]

Haha that’s what I was thinking when I saw it... 🧐

[@xCriticalStrikex]

@6:30 rolling the red alien move symbol means you have to perform a full move with an alien not just one space right? So the runner should move 3 spaces? That is how we've been playing it. Am I wrong? This game is awesome btw.

[@RscSteve]

You move any alien ONE space when you roll an alien symbol. Movement values on the cards are only for activation. I guess you just made it harder for yourselves :)

[@raydexter9013]

One space for red die movement and full move during alien activation.

[@xCriticalStrikex]

@@RscSteve feck. Whoops! We still managed to win a lot so nevermind!

[@johnpanagos5835]

This is a good game, doesnt scale good with the different player counts though

[@justanerd1138]

What player counts don't you like it at?

[@aarondowning5791]

@@justanerd1138 He doesn't know what he's talking about. Good with 2 to 5 players on BGG. That says everything.

[@Sam-vk8xd]

Aaron Downing yup bgg says it all. 100% trustworthy and correct all the time all day everyday.

[@vonwoolf9963]

1:37 - I feel cheated.

[@ryanbrown9102]

This action of Tom is probably made as a paraphrase for Eric summerer's number 1 game of all time- Merchants of Venus. Beautiful review nonetheless, but the components "drop" there is simply HILARIOUS! Glad I could help... Now go watch it ;)

[@vonwoolf9963]

​@@ryanbrown9102 Hillarious! ahah

[@williamhatfield1094]

I feel like this easily could have also had a Cthulhu theme slapped on it lol

[@aurelienguyon9330]

Project ELITE, board game name fitted for the price

[@tommygrahn1516]

Looking forward to trying to this one

[@jriggz2938]

Getting this in about a week and looking forward to playing with the family! Especially my son who loves video games and gaining interest in board games 😁

[@karuso229]

Great review - fun to watch 😄

[@someone890]

Kind of reminds me of XCOM

[@RscSteve]

I don't recommend playing it solo. It's good for a practice game, but the original solo rules are just not that fun. There are homebrew variants though.

[@Lines42]

RscSteve Don’t know the CMON solo rules, but in the original you play solo using 1 character with more dice. Worked well for me.

[@RscSteve]

@@Lines42 In the CMON version you play with 2 characters with less dice total. It's hard to do objectives and even impossible if you lose a few dice. I'll check the original solo rules, thanks!

[@KeithWheelerBooks]

Can’t wait to get my hands on this game.

[@DiegoDeschain]

You know the game's a big deal when there's not even a component drop.

[@ProjectBarett]

Scales well? We tried to play it at 2 a couple times and it was insanely hard to complete objectives. Maybe I'm wrong but I disagree with that statement.

[@rachelandryan]

Really? We won our first game with 2 on Hard. YMMV I feel.

[@brandonsurowiec8789]

I've heard 3-4 is the best player count.

[@AliciaDarky]

Was concerned about people saying Back to the Future: Back in Time was very hard at 2 players. Some even claimed it was mathematically impossible. We won our first game 😅.

[@Valcurdra]

Just some feedback Tom, this game doesn't scale that well, it gets easier with more players. 5 players is pretty easy compared to 2. Which is not a big deal, but I just thought I would mention it.

[@Messengus]

Sort of regretting not picking this up when it was still in stock at various LFGSs.

[@PuertoGeekan]

Is this also a video game?

[@AliciaDarky]

No

[@Sam-vk8xd]

Nope.

[@dbungart3044]

Like the dice and miniatures a lot. Not fond of the art direction and board myself... looks muddy, drab, and outdated. Fun game though.

[@markusschmidt9260]

One thing, they promoted in the old version was, that the miniatures were sturdy enough to be thrown around without breaking, which was useful because of the real time nature of the game. I guess, that is not true anymore, given Tom's "Component Drop" on this one?

[@christianhemion4204]

Markus Schmidt the minis are not fragile, like resin minis. I’ve played it 15 times and not had any issues. They don’t have a bunch pointy bits or the like to worry about

[@Sam-vk8xd]

He didn’t component drop because there’s a ton of pieces and he didn’t wanna make a mess, lose em’ (it has happened before) or anything of the sort. Also I think it’s to show how much he loves the game that he doesn’t wanna do anything that could damage it. Don’t read so much into the little things.

[@Andrew.Griffin]

Did Tom like this one? I heard grunting, just thought I'd check. (wink)

[@TabletopIsland]

Such a solid game! Need to get everything to the table but for the most part a majority of it is great and the base alone offers so much! Haha

[@Syko1985]

Not saying this a bad game by any stretch, but for someone who has literally played 1000s of games I just don't understand how he could rank this game as his number 1.

[@AliciaDarky]

In the end it's all about taste. I've played about 400 games and I bet this one would also be my number one game because it looks like A LOT of fun. I like everything I've seen.

[@raziel2273]

The game is pure fun..thats what a game should be.. Fun above all..

[@raydexter9013]

When I first got the original game my son and I played it 17 times in two days!

[@Jeff321]

Real time games are too stressful for me and not fun.

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

It feel flat for me. Mainly because it’s to chaotic and unwieldy with 5-6 players but it is so bad at 1-2 players. The difficulty curve in solo is off the chain and it’s already hard enough at two player. Having that restriction on player count was a put off.

[@ProfOfHifi]

Looks good but real time gaming is madness. Could be fun, but too stressing.

[@booner29]

Minis are great but the card quality is hot water trash.

[@johnkfriday]

That's a lot of plastic.

[@aminzarei8078]

This should be the doom board game not that crap ffg made

[@Sam-vk8xd]

Hehehe

[@LMKlees]

Have to agree miniature quality is great but IMO they are sooooooo boring. The arts just so stereotypical its boring.

[@raydexter9013]

I love the art style for the heroes in the original game. It had a strange retro future look that was unique. Although the graphic design of the aliens was not near as nice, there were distinct alien family trees you could place each type of alien into. You could even see some attempt was made to have the abilities within alien families to be related. If only, if only, if only, CMON had built upon these artistic choices instead of the unrecognizable mishmash of tropes we got... It also didn't help that they got cheep/lazy and chose to re-purpose old Sedition Wars Rejects...

[@VaultBoy13]

Yeah, the wonky art direction of the game pushed me away from backing this on Kickstarter. It's not just boring, it's outright bad. They had an opportunity to do something thematic and interesting, and instead it feels like they used minis they'd already developed for other games. The game looks fun. But, it's a situation where I'll buy the game when it's on sale for $50.

[@LMKlees]

I liked original art because I liked the art style too. I feel if they went more cartoony (not chibi) then it would be better. In this case its too busy in places to keep up a grim dark atmosphere but without the color elements that make successful grim dark so appealing. The heros almost look like the background if you know what I mean.

[@ironwolf56]

I'm sorry but I keep getting distracted by the background in the intro. A Titanic (Cameron movie) board game? Really?

[@Revariance]

It's actually pretty good imo

[@ryanbrown9102]

Is it possible that Tom gets cuts of the sells due to his actions of united both the companies which made that game possible..? I hope no, because such a thing worth a disclaimer... (With a disclaimer - that is just reasonable that he will get something, but then, although I believe him he liked the game a lot - I'm not sure is the right un-bios dude for that specific task of reviewing it...)

[@thedicetower]

I haven't gotten a red cent. I got the game, that's it.

[@raziel2273]

Sometimes I wonder why people think like that in this community..

[@ryanbrown9102]

@@thedicetower Thank you for the clarification.

[@ryanbrown9102]

@@raziel2273 Don't be naive...

[@Sam-vk8xd]

Joe Drimmer you’re the naive one though...

[@JohnSmith-pu3pm]

My favorite game to play right now is a game called Let's Go Brandon. It's a fun and exciting game of political intrigue with a traitor mechanism and some heavy tom foolery and shenanigans. The rules are simple, although they keep changing depending on who you bribe or who is bribing you. It has many elements but basically revolves around taking the rules and using them to do away with the rules in order to remove all rights from your opponents. Whoever has the most rights removed is put in prison and loses an eye. It's a swell game and has all sorts of neato mechanisms that I just love. Each player will have workers made up of their criminal family members and will use them to gain different skills, such as painting, videography and laptop repair.. Actions are decided upon by whomever pays you the most and always revolve around destroying the entire game as much as possible. What's nice is that the players aren't the only one's in the game, basically anyone outside of the game can effect change as long as they have money. The game is great as is, but their is an expansion on the way, I can't give away too much, but the expansion's name starts with a K, which will up the player count to the whole world and increase the excitement with a "Lawless" & "Racing" variant. I'd say go out and buy it, but why buy it when you can just loot it. That's Let's Go Brandon! My #1 game right now.

[@JohnSmith-pu3pm]

I almost forgot to mention the minis, they come pre painted in all black but are a little hard to tell apart on the board.