Invasion of the Brood Board Game - How to Play

hi it's tarrant and stella from apple university today we'll be teaching you how to play invasion of the brood and so hopefully you'll know how to play this game after watching this video coming up [Music] let's learn to play invasion of the brood game by sandy peterson and published by peterson games let's get to the table invasion of the brood is a two-player asymmetrical war game one player plays as the telepathic alien broodmaster magnalux who is headed to earth with conquest in mind the other plays as the humans trying to unite the world against the alien threat the human player wins by creating and then launching project orion a six-part nuclear mega weapon which needs to be constructed in stages transported to antarctica and then detonated safely the brood player wins by sending a brewed worker to control at least one factory in each of the six major nations of the world to set up the game lay out the main board and then place one dormant token onto each of the five eurasian superpowers with only one token spread across the two areas for russia and europe then place two dormant tokens on america then place a neutral token onto each of the miner nations which are the greyer areas containing factories once you're done only antarctica and the mountains of madness will be empty the human player takes the human player board and then chooses which of the six super powers they'll be playing in this game taking the matching card remove the dormant token from that country and then place starting units as shown here army units must go on the land area for that superpower fleets may go in any c area adjacent to that superpower and air units are placed on the available resources space of the player board if the human is playing as the us instead remove one of the two dormant tokens from the us and then place no starting units the brood player starts with no presence on the main board and simply starts with the player board and the mind power token set to zero keep all of the remaining square unit tokens off to the side ready for use all of these components are limited in the game you're now ready to play invasion of the brood is played in turns always starting with the brood player the players have vastly asymmetrical turns on the brood players turn there is the gather resources phase in which the brood player will get some free resources as well as action points in the form of mind power and then the spend mind power phase in which this mind power is spent to take actions the brute player has a menu to choose from and can take these actions in any order but is limited by action points the human turn is played in five phases which must be resolved in this specific order in the awaken phase the player awakens other superpower nations from their dormancy and brings them into the fight in the project orion phase the player builds moves and launches the orions required to win the game then there is the move phase in which the player moves units around the board the battle phase in which the human battles the brood and the build phase in which new military units are built the human turn is not limited by a number of action points allowing many more actions to be taken but it is limited by this specific order so now we'll look at each of these turns in sequence starting with the brood the brood players ultimate aim is to control at least one factory in each of the six superpowers to do this the brood player has four main units available lava brood masters which is where a broodmaster is formed adult broodmasters who are formed from lava brood masters and these grant extra action points to the brood player worker broodlings who are spawned from broodmasters and can control the factories and warrior broodlings these are formed from workers and they represent the main fighting force of the brood and they're the strongest military units in the entire game additionally the brood are telepathic and they will be able to exert mind control over human units causing them to fight on the brood side the steps of the brood turn are outlined here and it begins with gathering resources the first step of this is that the human player may move any expended air units back to the available box the impact of this will become clearer when we talk about combat and air support next count the total number of adult broodmasters that the brood player has on the board here it's two then set the brood player's mind power to that number plus three unspent mind power does not carry over between turns then the brood player takes one mind control token from the general supply and places it on any one human military unit this cannot be an orion but it can be any unit on the board or a human air unit to mind control an air unit move it to the available section on the brood players board and spend one mind power finally place a lava broodmaster onto any land area of the board which doesn't already contain an adult or lava broodmaster and which contains a factory this means you cannot place in the antarctic you'll then proceed to the spin mine power phase where you'll take your main actions there are a total of eight different actions available to the brood player each of which costs one mind power there are also two other actions which are free the eight actions which cost a mind power are as follows first spawn lava place a new lava broodmaster into a land area which has no existing broodmaster and is adjacent to an adult this is more restrictive than the free lava placement from the gather phase which did not require adjacency second is malt to adult where you will replace a lava broodmaster with an adult one these are much harder to kill than the lava and will give you extra mind power in subsequent turns third is to spawn a worker broodling and you will place a worker onto a land area containing an adult or a lava broodmaster fourth is to seize control of a factory with your worker and you will move the worker token to cover over the factory if after taking this action you control at least one factory in each of the six superpowers you win the game immediately fifth is malt to warrior and this is how you will produce your warriors which are your strongest fighters in the game choose a worker which is in an area with a control factory and this can include the worker who is controlling the factory itself in this case these three workers are all valid targets but this one is not return the worker to the supply and then replace it with a warrior if the worker that molted was controlling a factory then the warrior must leave the factory which opens it up for the humans once again the sixth action is control human and this requires a little bit more background on the mind control tokens at the start of the game there is a general supply of 12 mind control tokens and as we saw before during the gather phase you'll be able to gain a mind control token from that supply and control any one human unit this is the only way that these tokens get from the general supply into the main game if any one of your mind controlled units is ever killed then the unit goes back to the supply but the mind control token goes to your available area the control human action allows you to spend one mind power and then take an available mind control token and place it on any human unit as before this does not include an orion and if you control an air unit place the unit itself in your available area alternatively you can use the control human action to move a mind control token from any one unit to another the seventh and eighth actions are move and berserk and i'll go through the specifics of how these work later in the video at a higher level to move you'll spend one mind power to move a warrior a worker or a mind control unit around the map you cannot move your broodmasters as they have zero movement the berserk action is how the brood player attacks the human player after choosing a unit to go berserk that unit will attack every human unit in that area each of which is resolved with a separate roll of dice after each attack is finished then the berserk unit will itself be killed the brood has two other free actions available the first is to destroy orions if one or more orions are ever in an area with only brood or brood controlled units then those are destroyed immediately this can occur in the middle of a berserk action so if this warrior went berserk and killed this army unit then the orion would be destroyed before the warrior was itself destroyed at the end of the berserk finally the dupe action allows the brood player to spend a dupe token to gain a mind power in this way dupe tokens are effectively stored action points for the brood player a human needs to be wary about giving the brood player too many dupe tokens as the brood player will be able to store them up and then eventually spend them all in one go for a huge mega turn that wins the game as the humans you will begin the game as one of the six major superpowers of the world and the only one who is aware of the invading hordes you only have access to your own military and factories and that is not enough to fight the brood as such a major part of your game in addition to fighting the brood and constructing the orion project to blast them back into space is to bring the rest of the world into the fight alert them to the trouble and bring their armies and their material in for you to fight with as you gain access to factories you will use them to construct the orion project and sending these mega bombs out into space is at least a three turn effect construction on one turn movement to antarctica on a second turn and then launching into space on a third turn so you need to make sure you have enough defenses to protect those orion project parts in order to win the game the human turn is split into five phases awaken project orion move battle and build which must be resolved in this order so first we'll talk about awaken and how to bring other nations into the battle the industrial nations of the world come in three types active neutral and dormant an active nation is any nation which does not contain one of these tokens and you will be able to use those nations factories unless they're controlled by a brood worker for an active superpower you'll be able to build that nation's specific type of military units and you'll be able to fight the war in these nations a neutral territories factory is not available for human use but you can activate this country by moving any land army into that territory this will be part of your move phase and will make that factory available from the subsequent build phase the third type of nation is a dormant superpower and the human player is not allowed to interact with a dormant nation in any way until awakening that nation through the awaken phase even if you can see that that nation is becoming overrun with brood that dormant superpower is unaware of the growing threat and will not allow military action on its territory so let's see how to awaken a nation there are two main ways to do this mediation or war to mediate you'll bring the other nation in through diplomacy and negotiation choose a nation and remove its dormant token if there are still two on the u.s you'll remove only one if you remove the last dormant token from the nation then take its starting units as shown on the card place air units into your available box and then place armies into that nation's land areas and fleets into adjacent sea areas next check how difficult diplomacy is between your nation and the nation you just awakened between japan and the eu for example it's two you must now choose that many of the remaining phases in the human player turn to block out for this turn so awakening a close ally will still leave you with most of your turn left over to take but awakening another nation with whom you've got a frostier relationship is going to take most of your turn and leave you with only one other phase the other way to awaken a nation is to declare war on that nation it's nowhere near as friendly a way to go about it but it will get that other nation building army supplies which you can then channel into the fight against the brute the actions you take on the board are exactly the same you will remove the dormant token and then assuming there's no dormant tokens left place the starting military units into that region but instead of blocking out phases of your turn the brood player will gain duped tokens equal to your country's diplomacy value with the awakened country as such if you declare war too many times you're going to give the brood player a lot of stored action points and the ability to have that one decisive turn your third option is neutrality in which you don't awaken any other nations you're unlikely to do this until either you've awoken all of the nations already or the only dormant nations left aren't strategically helpful to your position when you take the neutrality action the brood gains one dupe token this is not optional once you've awoken all of the nations so the longer the game goes on the more duped tokens the brood will have as we've mentioned a couple of times the us has two dormant tokens meaning it takes twice as long to bring the us into the war however the u.s has the strongest of the human military units and a strategic position which is more difficult to reach by land and this can be why you would want to expend that extra effort to bring the us into the fight the brood player does not care whether nations are neutral or dormant and may freely take actions in either type of nation as well as active ones the second phase is the project orion phase which has three subphases launch orions mover ions and builder ions which must be completed in that order in launch orions any orions which are in either of the two antarctic territories are moved off the main board and placed onto the project orion spaces of the player board these are now safe and count towards your victory condition as soon as you launch your sixth orion you win the game immediately second is move orions and this is where you will take any orions that you've built and move them down towards antarctica we'll talk about how movement works a little bit later in the video thirdly you may build new orions you may build one orion per factory and it may be in any active factory that is not currently controlled by a broodling worker you may only build one orion per factory and be warned that any factory which builds an orion in this phase is not allowed to build a military unit in the build phase once again you can see that launching an orion is a three turn process one turn to build one to move and one to launch next is the move phase and here the human player may move every one of their military units up to its full measure excluding orions once again i'll cover the particulars of movement a little bit later in the video next is the battle phase and the first thing that happens is if the brood player has any expended air units those are returned to the available pool then every single human controlled unit may optionally attack one brood controlled unit in its area human units are not at any risk of being killed in these battles so there is no reason for the human player not to engage in as many attacks as possible the human player must attack brood units in a specific order and this reflects the order in which the brood would realistically set up a defensive line the human must first attack brood controlled human units under mind control then warriors then workers who are not in a factory then workers who are controlling a factory and finally broodmasters this means that if the brood gets a good defensive strength going it will take the humans a lot of effort to get to the control factories and broodmasters which give the brood player the most benefit this priority sequence is outlined here once again each battle is resolved with a roll of dice and we'll go through the specifics of how that works later in the video finally is the build phase and here the human player may build one military unit in every factory which is not dormant not neutral not controlled by a brood worker and that did not build an orion in phase two each factory may only build its nation's sort of military unit so eu factories can only build eu units and so on the miner nations which began the game as neutral may only build grey-colored neutral military units and do note that these are the weakest of all of the military units in the game army units are placed in the land area where they are constructed fleets are placed in a sea area adjacent to the factory and air units are placed in the available box of your player board after you finish building return to the next brood turn next we'll talk about movement and these rules are common to the brood and human players the third number shown on any unit is its movement range and this is always one if by land and two if by c broodmasters have zero air units all show an infinity however air units don't move in any of the game's move phases this is more to reflect that their attack range can be anywhere on the map but more on that later fleets may move up to a maximum of two steps and may only move in water areas the suez canal and the panama canal are both available to be traversed and the board wraps around both this region and this region are the north pacific and so right now these two are in the same area land units which includes orions have a movement range of one so it may move to an adjacent land area once again the panama and suez canals are traversable by land human land units may move into neutral territories in which case they are activated but a human may never move into a dormant territory the third type of movement is water transport and this allows you to move land units to other land areas over water you must use this to get orions into antarctica and you can also use it to move land units around the board to make a water transport you simply need to have an unbroken path of friendly fleet units between the initial and final destination of the land unit so here this army could be crossed over this single fleet into south eastern america or likewise for a single movement this japanese army unit could be moved across the north pacific all the way through here and down to antarctica to defend this orion the brood may also do water transport across mind-controlled fleets the three restrictions on naval transport are that a land unit is not allowed to both move on land and be transported by water in the same turn a land unit is not allowed to wait on a fleet between turns it must complete the entire transfer within a single turn and the human player is allowed to move a fleet before using it for transport but is not allowed to move a fleet after it has been used in transport in a given turn the brood player does not have this last restriction but still has to pay a mine power every time the fleet is moved however be warned that conducting water transport across a sea area containing at least one opposing fleet has the risk of a naval battle occurring this is called a naval intercept and it's a type of battle and battle is the next thing we'll talk about there are several different subtypes of battle in the game but ultimately all are resolved with a similar mechanic of dice rolling also of importance are the first and second numbers on each unit the number on the left is that units attack number and the number in the middle is defense for any simple land or sea battle there will be a single attacker and a single defender located within the same area the attacker rolls a d6 and if the number rolled is equal or less than its attack value it scores a hit if it scores a hit then the defender rolls 1d6 and if the number is equal or less than its defense value then the hit is blocked if the hit is not blocked then that unit is destroyed and removed from the map returned to the main supply ready to be deployed again later when a human unit attacks it chooses a single opponent according to the priority order and resolves the attack in this way brood units attack by going berserk and will resolve a separate attack using that same dice roll sequence against each opposing unit in that area before checking for unguarded orions and then itself being killed the third type of attack is a naval intercept and this may be triggered by the inactive player when the active player attempts to make a water transport through a sea area containing an inactive player's fleet first the inactive player announces that an intercept is occurring and announces which ship is doing it then the active player nominates which of the fleets is being used for the transport then both units simultaneously attack each other any fleet that is hit rolls for defense and determines whether they are sunk or not if the transporting vessel is not sunk in the attack then irrespective of what happens to the intercepting fleet the transport is completed if the transporting vessel sinks then return the land unit back to the location it came from and remove the fleet from the board this unit's movement action is considered to have been cancelled and that unit may now move in a different manner even attempting another water transport if a valid route still exists that new transport can be intercepted as well even by the original intercepting vessel if it still floats whether the intercepting vessel sinks or survives has no bearing on the outcome of the water transport losing your ship is the risk of taking an intercept action a land unit may only be intercepted once per water transport action irrespective of the length of that transport up until this point we haven't said very much about air units but they are an important part of the battle and they behave quite differently to the other units available air units will sit on your player board and they always have range to attack at any location on the map anytime you've used an air unit in battle it will move to your expended box these do not return to your available box until either the start of the broods gather phase for the human player or the start of the human's battle phase for the brood player if the human player skips this phase then the brood likewise skips getting air units back when the brood player mind controls a human air unit it may come from either the available or expended box but will always go into the brood player's available box if the brood player relinquishes mind control by moving this to another unit then the air unit returns to the human player in the expended box an available air unit may get involved in battle in one of two ways either as an air strike or as air support an air strike is an air unit launching an attack and you will move the air unit to any valid land or sea area on the board and then resolve your normal attack for the human this means launching a single attack in priority order against a unit in that area before flying away the human may air strike in an active or a neutral area without activating it but may not airstrike into a dormant superpower the brood may make a berserk air strike into any region on the board attacking all of the human units there before itself being destroyed the other option is to support and here you will bring in one or more air units to support another land or sea unit as part of a conventional land or sea attack which has already been initiated here for example the human would have attacked this warrior and then brought in the air unit for support the air unit's attack is added to the land or sea units attack and so here the player would be trying to roll a 5 or under to score a hit the warrior then defends as normal before having rolled the dice you may bring in as many air units as you wish if the total attack meets or exceeds 6 then you automatically score a hit and if the attack exceeds 6 then any excess above 6 is deducted from the enemy defense here with 8 attack the warrior's defense is reduced to only 2.

as such the tactical use of air support makes it much easier to defeat strong opposing units once the support is over any supporting aircraft are returned to your expended box air support is limited to conventional land and sea attacks you may not use air support to support an air strike nor a naval intercept you also can't use air support to help you in defense when resolving a berserk attack resolve each attack separately and so each of those individual attacks may or may not be chosen to be supported by air anytime either player sends out an air unit whether it be for strike or support the opposing player has the opportunity to attempt an air intercept and this resolves in a battle between the air units before it even reaches the main board not only is this the only way to defend against the extra strength that an incoming air attack brings but it's also the only way to destroy an opponent's ear units as was the case for a naval intercept both units roll an attack die against the other all air units have zero defense so any air unit that makes a hit shoots the other one down if a unit is shot down while making an air strike then the attack is over if a unit is destroyed when it is on its way to be providing air support then this interception is complete and the opposing air unit will return to the expended box on the opposing player's board and the attacking player may optionally attempt to send more air support to this battle which may again be intercepted if the opponent still has available air units or may choose not to resolve any more air support either way the originally declared land or sea battle gets resolved if the air support is not shot down then it will join the battle and the original battle will be resolved with that support the opposing player cannot attempt a second interception of an air unit if the intercepting air unit is not shot down then it returns to the other player's expended box ready to be used on a subsequent turn if it is shot down it gets destroyed this outcome is entirely independent of whether the original airstrike or air support survives and once again it represents the risk of taking an air intercept action the game will end immediately once one of the two players meets their win condition if the brood player controls at least one factory in each of the six major superpowers then they control the means of the world overtake the planet and win the game if the human player can launch six subparts of the orion project into space they will destroy the mothership and allow the earth to be reclaimed and that's how to play in station of the brood we hope that you enjoy the video check out invasion of the brew we will put a link to the project page below so you know where to check it out if you find this video useful please help us by hitting that like button subscribe to us meeple university if you haven't already done so and hit the bell so you get notification for our new and exciting videos you can also follow me on instagram for my boardgames journey and if you have any questions comments or feedback please leave them in the comments section below see you next time