Introduction

Invasion of the Air-Eaters: Alien Conversion of Earth in the 1980s, is microgame 12 from Metagaming, designed by Keith Gross and published in 1979.

Invasion of the Air-Eaters is a grand strategic simulation of the Alien invasion of Earth in the 1980’s for two players. Each turn represents three months. Hexes are about 2000km at the equator, though much smaller near the poles. Alien units are single vehicles or complexes, each run by several Aliens. Terran armies represent 3000 to 6000 tanks, several hundred combat aircraft, and 300,000 to 800,000 men. Terran submarine fleets represent 30 to 50 attack subs. Other advanced Terran units represent 20 to 30 vehicles or machines and about 100 men.

Components

1 Small rules booklet of 24 pages, which wraps the counter sheet and map in a ziplock.
1 12"x14" green map of the entire Earth with the turn sequence, the industrial zones, and boxes for in orbit, on mothership and the Atmospheric Index.
1 Die-cut very thin half counter sheet, white and brown, with 135 counters.

Counter Manifest

Alien counters (white on dark brown)

1 Mother ship
8 Crawler attack vehicles
6 Landers
8 Bases (production and transporters)
8 Atmospheric Converters
6 Escort Spaceships

Neutral counters (white on light brown)

1 Atmospheric Index marker
5 -3 loss markers
6 -2 loss markers 10 -1 loss markers

Terran counters (brown on white)

14 Land armies and air forces
6 Submarine Fleets
6 Improved Submarines Fleets
12 Laser Batteries
10 Laser Tanks (with force fields)
10 Disintegrator Batteries
8 Disintegrator Tanks
6 Space Attack Forces
4 Corvette-class spaceships

Player’s Value

Invasion of the Air-Eaters (IAE) is introduced as a microgame, but in fact it is a full game with a lot of options. Both players must develop well-planned strategies to win. At the beginning of the game, the Terran player has only a few units which are not very powerful against the aliens. He must invest resources in R&D to design better units, but at the same time he must:

• struggle against Aliens crawlers that want to destroy the industrial centers (the resource sources);
• destroy the atmosphere converters, which are vacuuming the earth air; and,
• reduce the enemy bases which produce new units.

With luck, the armies are impossible to destroy but are very slow, the industrial centers are working hard, and the Aliens are few.

On the Alien side, the mission is clear: emptying the earth’s atmosphere with the atmosphere converters. To do that, the alien must choose a bridgehead such as any continent (Antarctica is great) or under the seas; build bases to produce units; and at the same time install air converters and send the Crawlers to destroy the human resources striving to limit production. The Alien units are generally not very vulnerable until new Terran units are developed, but, with some luck and a lot of concentration, the number of Terran attacks can destroy all bridgeheads in few turns.

The task of the Alien is not very easy, and requires a lot of strategic thinking and planning to organize the best plan.

To quickly explain the game, the best way is to scan through the game turn sequence, which contains many segments but are very fast to implement.

First, each atmospheric converter deployed reduces the Terran air by one (at the start the index is 20).

Second, the deployed alien bases and the Mothership can produce new units. The new units will move and/ or be deployed later in the same or different turn. It is difficult to find the best production balance between bases to build new units, Crawlers to protect units and destroy Terran resources, and Air Converters to deplete Earth.

Third, the different kinds of movement are executed. Beams between Mothership and bases, transports by Landers and Crawlers moves for the Alien; unlimited transports for few units and normal move (often just one hex) for the Terran.

Fourth, all Alien combat is resolved, the Terran firing back with any survivors. To resolve combat, each unit involved rolls a die against a table, and with basic units it is very difficult to succeed. Some units are specialized for land combat, other for underwater and still others for space combat. It is even possible for the Terran to destroy the Mothership.

Fifth, the Terran can produce with intact industrial centers. He can build new units, increase the Atmosphere Index (with the right R&D project) and invest in R&D.

Lastly, he rolls for the R&D projects’ success. Often there are prerequisites and some times bonus. For instance, to develop Laser Batteries, the Terran needs to have a land combat in the turn. If a base has been destroyed, a bonus is given. There are eight projects, seven to get a new kind of unit and the eighth to reconvert the atmosphere. The game is over when the Atmospheric Index reaches 0, or the Alien does nothing for two turns (the invasion is a failure).

There are some advanced rules to boost the game: political restrictions on stacking and fighting for Terran armies of different nationalities; the Antarctica sanctuary; oil resources for the Terran; the possibility of repairing industrial hexes; nuclear attacks; special air or submarine attacks; the landing of Alien spaceships; and the effect of rare atmosphere (index under 5).

All in all, IAE is a real gem: easy to learn, fast to play and always different, but I found it more difficult to win with the Alien. Metagaming produced a sequel, The Air-Eaters Strike Back!, covering the invasion of the entire solar system, but this game is less successful.

Collector’s Value

All the microgames from Metagaming are always a good opportunity, hindered only by poor component quality. Boone quotes low, high and average prices of 2/10/5.40 at auction and 2/15/ 6.73 for sale.

Support Material

Four articles have appeared about this game:

• one in Interplay 3 by the designer, providing additional data;
• two in The Space Gamer (issues 23 and 27) with notes, scenarios, rules and counters; and,
• one capsule review in Ares 1, in which Steve List says: “The design should have made for an intriguing game of management as well as combat, but the aliens never lose. This may be a design statement that certain corporations have saturated the atmosphere with too much sulfur dioxide already, but it does ruin the play value of the game.”

The fanzineVindicator was devoted to Metagaming games, and dealt with IAE extensively.

Other games by Keith Gross

Ice War (Microgame 9) 1978; the Air-Eaters Strike Back! (Metagame 1) 1979; Lords of Underearth (Microgame 18) 1980; the Dragons of Underearth (Metagame 2) 1981; Hitler’s War (Metahistory 1) 1981; all by Metagaming Concepts; and Hitler’s War , 1985, from Avalon Hill.

Other games of this type

Again, Dangerous Air-Eaters and Battle for the Planet of the Air-Eaters were planned, but never published, by Metagaming.

A sample of other games dealing with human-alien conflict, although not necessarily on Earth, includes: Alien Armada (Centurion, 1983); Alien Contact (Phoenix, 1983); Alien Space (Gamescience, 1972); Aliens (Nova, 1990); Awful Green Things From Outer Space (SJG); Buck Rogers Battle for the 25th Century (TSR); Bug-Eyed Monsters (West End, 1983); Cold War 2007 (ADA, 1972); Colony Delta (FGU, 1979); Combat Moonbase (AIWA, 1977); the Creature that Ate Sheboygan (SPI, 1979); Flash Gordon (House of Games, 1977); Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo (FGU); Intruder (TFG, 1980); Invasion Earth (GDW, 1981); It! (AIWA, 1978); Marine: 2002 (Yaquinto, 1979); Monsters Ravage America (AH, 1998); Solar War (Trembly, 1971); Starship Trooper (AH, 1976); Stellar Conquest (Metagaming, 1975); Stomp! (The Chaosium, 1978); They’ve Invaded Pleasantville (TSR, 1980); UFO (Daugherty, 1975); the War of the Worlds II (Rand, 1974); the War of the Worlds (TFG, 1980).