May the best species win.
Technically two games, they're sufficiently interrelated to be listed under one tropes page. Both games were developed by Precedence Publishing, with Aliens Predator published by Harper Prism, Terminator by Precedence themselves.
Aliens Predator is a Collectible Card Game based on the Alien and Predator franchises, and specifically their crossover. An assortment of scenarios allow for players to bring decks based on humans (who may be Space Marines. . . or not), Aliens, or Predators, and duke it out to ensure the victory of their species. An expansion mostly based on Alien: Resurrection was made, with a second expansion, Atmosphere, evidently ready for printing, though it was never officially released.
The Terminator CCG (based on the Terminator franchise) uses the exact same system as Aliens Predator, and while the two games were never officially merged, it was no secret they were designed to be compatible and the developers intended to include interconnected crossover scenarios, but this never came to pass before the publishers folded. The only existing official set is based primarily on the first film, though an expansion based on Terminator 2: Judgment Day was in the works.
Both games can be considered an odd merger of CCG and tabletop miniatures game or RPG. Tokens represent where your characters are on the the battlefield, with humans generally controlling a small group or squad, Predators between one and three Predators, Aliens a whole hive and potentially horde of Aliens, and Terminators a single Terminator (that changes in "Future War" scenarios). All players can search locations for supporting characters or equipment, explore the ever-growing and changing battlefield in search of their opponents or other scenario objectives, lay traps and plot ambushes, and so on. A six-sided die is required for making to-hit rolls in combat. This contributes to the game's odd reputation among those who remember it. . . it's very interesting and can be a lot of fun, but requires a great deal of accoutrements and setup to play (a d6, at least one deck, tokens for regular and hidden movement, Combat Pool, Alien groups, and damage counters).
The game system still has a pretty dedicated following, with fans making individual cards and even full expansions based on the associated media. The main fan forum for the game can be found here.
Tropes applying to both games
- Armor Is Useless: Averted. Characters have Power, which is also Resistance, letting them ignore a certain amount of damage from each attack. Armor adds to Resistance. Many Terminators have rather high Power, built-in levels of Armor, and can add more Armor through some gear, making it not terribly difficult to get even the base T-800 to No-Sell most of the weapons available in a Past scenario. Predators and Marines can wear armor to help them survive each other and the Aliens.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Environmental Damage bypasses all Resistance and Armor to deal direct damage, but usually not a lot. The Aliens' acid blood and Skynet's plasma weapons deal Environmental Damage, among other things. Additionally, some weapons or ammunition can reduce armor by a certain amount when calculating damage or ignore armor below a certain threshold.
- Badass Normal: Humans, especially those with "Marine" or "Resistance" Resources. The Alien Warrior has 4 Speed and 5 Power, the average Predator having between 4 and 5 Speed and 6 and 8 Power. Humans? Having 3 in either category is a big deal, and pretty much the peak of human ability in the game. When pitted against Predators or Skynet, they don't even have the technological edge. But a savvy Human player can make them just as formidable as the nightmarish alien horde, extraterrestrial big game hunters, and killer robots from the future.
- Celebrity Paradox: It's entirely possible to have Michael Biehn fight and kill Michael Biehn (since both Corporal Hicks and Sergeant Kyle Reese are characters in Aliens Predator and The Terminator respectively, and the games can be played together). Taking Chronically Killed Actor to its absurd conclusion.
- Civil Warcraft: Several scenarios exist which allow for multiple Human, Alien, Predator, and/or Skynet players to be opposed to each other. The basic "Future War" scenario of The Terminator posits that, after Skynet's primary defeat, multiple backups booted up, each convinced they were the "real" Skynet and trying to exterminate the "pretenders" and remaining humans, while several human Resistance cells are convinced several other cells have actually been compromised or completely replaced by Skynet's Infiltrators.
- Critical Existence Failure: Averted. Each point of damage reduces Speed and Power by one, making it easier to hit and damage the character on subsequent attacks. Since speed is generally less than Power, its not uncommon to see characters alive but immobile, as they've taken enough damage to reduce their Speed to zero, but still have Power (which doubles as Hit Points).
- Escort Mission: Human victory conditions tend to be these. Marines might need to evacuate a certain number of Supporting Characters from an installation overrun by Aliens and Predators, while Resistance players in the Past need to protect Supporting Characters worth a set number of Importance.
- Instant Marksman: Just Squeeze Trigger!: Averted. The game draws a distinction between "Weaponry" and "Military Arms," with "Military Arms" being generally more powerful, but characters require a specific Resource (such as Marine or Resistance) to use them. Any human character can use "Weaponry."
- Lightning Bruiser: Aliens, Predators, and Terminators have about twice the Speed and three to four times the Power of humans. Humans tend to have 2 Speed and Power, while the basic Alien has 4 Speed 5 Power, while Predators and Terminators tend to weigh in at 4 and sometimes 5 Speed and between 6 and 8 Power.
- Mana: Combat Pool, differing from most games in that very few cards have a cost in Combat Pool, those that do are generally very powerful, and those that have a cost of more than one or two are generally Too Awesome to Use (sometimes quite literally, as there are few reliable ways to generate Combat Pool, so having more than one or two to spend is a feat in and of itself). The Terminator adds Production for Skynet, generally generated by Drones at Factory locations, and used to bring Skynet characters and items into play by paying their Production cost.
- Mythology Gag:
- Vriess has the ability to find two items when searching a location, referencing a brief gag in Alien: Resurrection where he helps himself to several boxes of parts from the stores of the Auriga.
- Sarah Louise Connor, Mother Of Two is a Supporting Character worth zero Importance, but any Terminator who can declare an attack on her must do so, in preference of any other valid targets (like the actually-Important Sarah J. Connor). Because she was the first Sarah Connor in the phone book, and the Terminator is all about being systematic.
- The Resistance can play the card "Rubber Skin" to give an Infiltrator a malus to Infiltration. The picture is the obviously-fake animatronic Arnold head from The Terminator's Self-Surgery scene.Kyle: The 600 Series had a rubber skin. We spotted them easy.
- NPC: Supporting Characters. Players can search for them at appropriate Locations (Supporting Characters will have Restrictions showing where they can be found, either a particular Location Resource or a specific Location), and control them so long as they have a Main Character in the same Location. Aliens seek Supporting Characters to incapacitate and take to the Egg Chamber to breed more Aliens, Predators may or may not seek them for easy Honor kills, while Marine and Resistance players try to protect them and get them out of harm's way.
- Patchwork Map: The Battlefield System. Most scenarios have the players shuffle Location cards into their deck, or have a separate deck of Location cards. Each player can play one Location at the start of their turn, adding it to the left or right of their row of Locations already in play. Unless the Location is marked "Distinct," it is considered to be the same Location no matter who played it. Thus, the Operations played by the Alien is the same Operations played by the Marine is the same Operations played by the Predator, allowing them to access each other's Location rows. Where this really comes into play is that the Alien might have Operations between an industrial sewer and a kitchen, the Marine might have it between an Airlock and an Armory, while the Predator might have it between a garage and a bar. So the nerve center of this particular futuristic installation has exits to a sewer, a kitchen, an airlock, an armory, a garage, and a bar.
- Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Zig-Zagged. Ranged weapons will be noted a "Short-Range" or "Long-Range." Long-Range weapons can fire into adjacent locations, while short-range weapons can only fire at targets at the same location as the shooter. That said, humans have an average speed of two, letting them move two locations in a single turn, so that's still rather short range by the standards of most modern hardware.
- Skill Scores and Perks: Characters have two main stats: Speed and Power. Speed determines how many locations they can move through in a turn as well as setting Defense (the base to-hit roll; a character with 2 speed is hit on d6 roll of 2 or better). Power creates Resistance to damage and determines base damage in melee combat (a character with 3 Power shrugs off the first three points of damage from most attacks, and deals 3 damage when they punch someone else). Characters also have Resources, which can affect cards that can be played on them and sometimes have an intrinsic effect. For instance, a card letting someone immediately move their speed when an enemy enters their Location might require the "Coward" resource, while a card that gives combat bonuses for being overwhelmed by enemies might require the "Brave" resource. "Leader" for humans and "Adaptable" for Predators directly add to the player's hand size. And then there's the character's card text, which can include innate modifiers to Defense, To-Hit, Damage, or Armor, or include other abilities, talents, or skills specific to that character.
- Visible Invisibility: The "Hidden Movement" rules. Some effects, most notably the Predator's cloaking device, allow characters to use hidden movement with a certain number of markers. You place the additional markers on the Battlefield and move them as if they were the character, but your opponent doesn't know if the marker near them is actually the character or a decoy (unless they use a "reveal hidden markers" card, like the Motion Tracker, or shoot it). Characters using hidden movement also gain a Defense bonus, so even hidden movement with one marker is valuable to some extent.
- Wall of Weapons: Locations with the "Weaponry" or "Military Arms" Resources will tend to have these.
Tropes applying to Aliens Predator
- Actually Four Mooks: Aliens have a mechanic where a card that represents a single Alien can have tokens placed on it representing other mature Aliens of the same type traveling and fighting with it, improving its combat abilities substantially.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: "Marine" was the default "Human" in the base set; it was entirely possible to have a Marine Civilian. "Human" was codified as a species with different factions in the expansion.
- Humans Are Divided: In the base set (Premiere), all humans were of the same "Marine" faction, whether they actually had the "Marine" resource or not. The first (and only official) expansion added "Rogues" (represented by the crew of the Betty), another human faction who might be working at cross-purposes to Marines; this effectively made "Civilian" a third faction by default. In the official game, humans were the only species to have multiple factions (fan rules divide Cloned Aliens, also introduced in the expansion, into their own Alien faction, adds Outcast Predators as distinct Predator faction and adds Corporate as another Human faction). When taking The Terminator part of the CCG into account, Humans could be one of three-and-a-half different factions: Marine, Rogue, Resistance, or Civilian.
- Willfully Weak: Predator players are likely to invoke this. The Predator often starts with a solid collection of gear, and can search for more (though usually only in his own ship). But each piece of Predator gear has an associated "Honor" cost, which increases the total amount of "Honor" the Predator needs to earn by killing opponents to win the game. Of course, since a standard victory condition in most any scenario is "kill all opposing characters," a Predator planning to win this way might load up with all manner of high tech tools of destruction. . .
Tropes applying to The Terminator
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Inverted. While all Infiltrators can shoot and smash more or less equally, the Light Assault Infiltrator (represented by one of the female dancers at TechNoir with red eyes added) gains the Retractable Claws implant for free when it enters play, making it slightly favor Close Combat over the other (male) Infiltrators.
- Immune to Bullets: As expected, even the basic Infiltrator from the Skynet starter box is practically immune to the weapons available in the Resistance starter box. Some weapons and ammo combinations can do Scratch Damage, and rarer cards include more powerful weapons that reliably penetrate the Infiltrator's armor (usually military-grade hardware). Of course, there are also rarer and more powerful Infiltrators, who can equip Implants that give them even more armor. . .
- Magikarp Power: The rarer version of Sarah J. Connor. In Past scenarios, the Resistance player must rescue Supporting Characters totaling at least ten Importance. The version of Sarah J. Connor that comes in Resistance starter packs is worth five Importance, the most of any character in the game. The rare version of Sarah J. Connor starts with only two, barely worth noting. However, each turn she is controlled by the Resistance, she gains a "Resolve" token, and each Resolve token adds one Importance when she is protected. Of course, Skynet in Past scenarios is out to kill up to ten Importance worth of Supporting Characters, and those Resolve tokens count for Skynet, too. . .
- Terminator Twosome: Played With in "Past" Scenarios. Skynet typically can only send one Infiltrator, while the Resistance can send up to three Resistance soldiers. Specific "Past" scenarios might increase the number of Terminators or decrease the number of Resistance soldiers.
- They Look Like Us Now: "Infiltration" is an important stat for Infiltrators, going down as the Terminator takes damage, but being able to be increased by things such as clothes, trenchcoats, and sunglasses. A Terminator at zero Infiltration suffers some minor drawbacks in both past and future scenarios (notably, there are some cards usable in Past scenarios that trigger off a Terminator with zero Infiltration, since it's kind of hard to ignore the giant walking metal skeleton).
- Wolverine Claws: The Retractable Claws implant for Terminators, three blades emerging from between the fingers with which to slice and dice hapless humans.
