You know the rest of the story. Or maybe you don’t, if you’re one of those unfortunates who has never played Tom Wham’s wonderfully bizarre The Awful Green Things from Outer Space (TAGTFOS for short). In it, hordes of deadly aliens develop from that little green rock and engage the brave yet dysfunctional crew of the good ship Znutar in an epic struggle for survival.
Tom claims not to have seen Alien before creating this game, but for my money John Carpenter’s movie Dark Star is a more likely source of inspiration. With its beachball alien, wacky crew members, dead-but-still-in-charge captain, and a talking bomb that thinks it’s God, Dark Star feels like a Tom Wham game come to the big screen.
Whatever its inspiration, TAGTFOS is a delightful, fast-moving game that truly can be played, and played well, by kids as young as eight (despite its sug- gested age). One of the great things about TAGTFOS is that adults can easily scale their level of play down to that of a child without the younger ones catching on. It’s an added bonus that the colorful, simplistic-yet-appealing Tom Wham artwork on the board and counters makes for amusing eye candy for young and old alike. Toss in a playing time of under an hour and you’ve got a wonderful game to play with your kids.
The game first saw print in Dragon magazine #28 (August 1979), but TSR published it as a stand-alone product the following year, in both a slipcased edition and then, scant months later, in a third edition, now housed in a longbox. The playing surface for the longbox edition is made of sturdy, non-folding cardboard stock and depicts a top-down view of the besieged Znutar. The ship is divided into 30-plus rooms — engine room, sick bay, bridge, #3 sensor, and so on — with doors and corridors connecting them. This is the arena within which will be waged the battle for glory and all the Zgwortz the winning side can drink.
The defenders of the Znutar are a motley crew from several different planets. Images of Smbalites, Frathms, Snudalians, and Redundans adorn the glossy crew counters, all drawn in Tom’s inimitable style. The mascot (who I call Ook, from the one word he can say) and the mighty robot Leadfoot round out that side. Each crew member has a unique combination of stats for movement, attack, and defense.
The other team consists of the eponymous Awful Green Things (AGTs). These fearsome creatures come in four varieties: eggs, fragments, babies, and adults, in order of increasing danger to the crew. Eggs can’t move or attack, fragments can’t move but can attack, babies move slowly and attack weakly, and adults move fast and bite hard.
Play begins with the crew player placing his pieces. The crew members each have a couple of locations where they can start, according to their particular occu- pations (medic, engineer, pilot, etc.). There’s enough leeway in initial placement that the crew player can gather his team together into small groups or spread them out across the ship, as needed. The former allows for better defense but the latter enables quicker detection of AGTs.
Once the crew is all set, a random roll of the die determines where the AGTs start out. Another roll determines how many there are and of what types. Then the fun begins.
Each round of gameplay consists of the AGT player’s turn and then the crew player’s. They both move and attack, but each side gets a unique activity, as well. For the AGTs, it’s the grow phase. At the start of his turn, the AGT player can grow all his critters of a certain type into the next higher level. Eggs or fragments can grow into babies, babies can grow into adults, or adults can choose to lay eggs. Then all those AGTs move and attack.
The crew gets to use weapons. Since the AGTs are an unknown species, there’s no telling what items will work against them and what will backfire. The crew grabs whatever is at hand — pool cues, cans of Zgwortz or rocket fuel, knives, welding torches, and so on — and sallies forth into battle, hoping for the best.
The weapons ratchet up the fun, for both players. When a weapon is used against an AGT for the first time, a weapon effect chit is drawn blindly from a cup. Whatever the chit says is what that weapon does against the Green Things for the rest of the game. This can vary from 5 dice to kill (rolling 5 dice and comparing the total to the AGT’s health) to no effect to the dreaded (for the crew player) 1 die fragments, which creates more of the little beasties to battle. Within each game, there’s no telling what’s going to work on those pesky AGTs. The crew player frantically tries out weapons on the invaders while the AGTs gleefully pull down and eat the Znutar’s defenders.
For me, the essence of what makes TAGTFOS the best family game ever is summed up in two words: Tom Wham. That means fun, fast-moving, addictive gameplay that can be enjoyed by anyone. Those are common features in all of Tom’s games. But what makes TAGTFOS special is the random element of the weapon effects. It makes each game a different experience, requiring different tactics and strategies for both players.
Randomizing the weapon effects makes perfect sense when you’re fighting an unknown species of critter. It also makes for many hilarious and memorable moments. The suspense of discovering what each weapon does this time around is an integral part of the fun. I can still recall my dismay, and my opponent’s glee, when I had a crew member set up an electric fence only to find its effect was to create one die’s worth of fragments. My brave warriors struggled to dismantle the fence while adult and baby Green Things threw themselves against it. The resulting horde of fragments quickly grew into a mass of babies and then a tidal wave of adults. No crew members survived that debacle.
Not only is the weapon randomization great fun for both players, it also gives an adult a sly equalizer when playing against a much younger opponent. Kids usually want to play the monsters, which conveniently leaves the more tactical side for the adult. Level the playing field by spreading crew members out too thinly, trying area-effects weapons a little too freely, or “forgetting” that certain weapons have bad consequences. Even if they lose, most kids will have a ball chasing crew members around, catching them, eating them, and then pooping out little eggs. It’s a game designed to delight the young and the young-at-heart equally.
Tom Wham is the most whimsical, inventive designer I’ve ever encountered.And for my money, The Awful Green Things from Outer Space is his best game yet. If you don’t have a copy, go on eBay to pick one up. The TSR third edition is rather rare, but Steve Jackson Games more recently released editions in various box sizes. If you have the chance, pick up two copies, for when you and your kids wear out the first one.
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