DOC REF: APC-2026-07 · POST-CITADEL OPERATIONS CLUB EYES ONLY

ADVENTURE PUB CLUB
CAMPAIGN REQUISITION DOSSIER

Next mission selection · Compiled from BoardGameGeek forum intelligence · July 2026
■ ANDY
■ KIERNAN
■ JASON
■ JOHN

// Mission Briefing

Situation: Four corporate operatives cleared the Citadel, shot the Dark Legion in the face, sabotaged each other politely, and finished every mission inside an hour. The Algeroth problem is handled. The table is empty. This is unacceptable.

Objective: Requisition the next campaign. Candidates below were screened against everything that made Siege of the Citadel sing, then stress-tested against hundreds of BGG forum threads — the difficulty complaints, the length overruns, the "is it worth it" verdicts. Tap any dossier for full intel. Choose. Deploy. Roll dice.

Target DNA — what the Citadel taught us to love
Dice-driven tactics Minis & table presence Gear / deck progression Missions ≤ 60–90 min Campaign over many nights A competitive edge Rules complexity ≈ 2.5–3 / 5
Rules complexity uses BoardGameGeek's community "weight" rating: 1 = party game, 5 = full wargame. Your sweet spot is the middle.
Backstab Ready
AQ

Arcadia Quest

CMON · PvPvE campaign · 2–4 players

The spiritual heir to the Citadel's dirty secret: you were never really on the same team. Guilds, loot, monsters — and your friends in the crossfire.

The shining city of Arcadia has fallen to Lord Fang and his monstrous vampire court. From the outer districts, rival guilds of heroes fight ward by ward toward the tyrant's palace — slaying his lieutenants, looting his armories, and absolutely wrecking each other's plans along the way. Only one guild gets the glory of liberating the city. The rest get a footnote.

Complexity
●●●●● 2.4
Mission
60–75 min
Replay
High
PVP + PVECAMPAIGNLOOTNO GAMEMASTER
◉ IN PRINT — Amazon / retail
▸ OPEN FILE

Why it fits

Siege of the Citadel's genius was corporations scoring for themselves — covering fire one minute, tripping a rival the next. Arcadia Quest mechanizes exactly that: guilds of 3 heroes, a branching campaign, weapons and abilities earned as you go, and full permission to target monsters and each other.

Forum intel

Standalone sequels (Inferno, Riders) are fully compatible, so the campaign well runs deep. Hour-and-change sessions confirmed across player counts.

Watchouts

Chibi art style — the table will grin or groan. Direct PvP kills sting more than the Citadel's card-based sabotage; agree on the spice level before night one.

▸ BGG FIELD REPORT — Illustrated review (Deskovehry #410)
Crowd Pleaser
ZI

Zombicide: Invader

CMON · Standalone sci-fi · 1–6 players · NOT the zombie Zombicide

Starship Troopers on your table. Xeno hordes, dice by the fistful, weapon upgrades, done in an hour. The lowest-friction fit on this list.

Planet PK-L7 was the cushiest posting in the frontier: babysit the mining rigs, collect hazard pay, ignore the docile local lifeforms. Then the Xenos turned overnight — and started changing. Now the base is half-lost to creeping alien mold, the airlocks are your only friends, and every haul of precious Xenium costs blood. Civilians and soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, holding the line at the edge of known space.

Complexity
●●●●● 2.4
Mission
~60 min
Replay
High
DICEMINISGEAR XPMODULAR MAPS
◉ IN PRINT — Amazon / retail
▸ OPEN FILE

Why it fits

Important: this is NOT the vanilla zombie-apocalypse Zombicide — it shares the engine family but is a fully standalone sci-fi game with its own mechanics (mold, airlocks, sentry guns, civilian vs. soldier roles). 10 missions on modular boards plus custom scenarios; find weapons, level skills through XP, mow down escalating spawns. Everything you loved, minus the rulebook overhead.

Forum intel

A 60-play series veteran rates it 7/10 for the mold and airlock mechanics. Sister box Dark Side (weight 2.40, same hour-long missions) adds underground tunnels, and a crossover booklet merges both boxes into combined missions.

Watchouts

Similarity risk: this is the closest cousin to Siege of the Citadel on the list — same dice-and-corridors texture, but without SotC's rotating villain or point-scoring rivalry. If the club wants more nights that feel like Citadel nights, that's the appeal; if we want something that feels genuinely different, this is the wrong pick — Arcadia Quest keeps the rivalry DNA while feeling nothing like a Citadel crawl, and Nemesis, Earth Under Siege, or Death May Die break the mold entirely.

AI-run xenos means nobody plays the Dark Legion. Luck runs high, and a confident player can drift into quarterbacking. Rotate who reads the mission.

▸ BGG FIELD REPORT — Unboxed illustrated review
Hidden Gem
EU

Earth Under Siege: Flashpoint

Don't You Rage Quit · Co-op campaign · 1–4 players

The gem of the deep dive. XCOM as a board game: covert operatives infiltrating alien-held facilities across a 30+ mission campaign.

Six months since the Xethan came, and Europe's military bases fly alien banners. Conventional war has failed. What's left is AEGIS: a shadow agency running impossible black ops from a hidden HQ — cutting power grids, crawling through ventilation shafts, silenced weapons and stolen data, striking deeper and deeper until you finally learn what the invaders actually are and where they came from. Earth's counterattack starts in the dark.

Complexity
●●●●● ~3
Mission
60–90 min
Replay
Campaign
STEALTHDECK-BUILDHQ UPGRADESBRANCHING
◉ KICKSTARTER ONLY — publisher site, eBay & BGG marketplace; watch for reprint
▸ OPEN FILE

Why it fits

Each operative has a personal 30-card tactics deck you build over the campaign — the equipment-stack itch, fully mechanized. You upgrade operatives AND a headquarters between missions. Cut power, crawl vents, hack databases, or go loud.

Forum intel

Reviewers call it "X-COM in all the right ways"; BGG threads run to titles like "A Sci-Fi Masterpiece" — from a backer who almost passed because the $200K campaign seemed too small to deliver. It delivered. A World Killer expansion continues the story with 14 branching missions.

Watchouts

Small-print-run Kickstarter title — availability is spotty; watch for the reprint. Fully co-op, no rotating villain. The stealth layer adds real rules weight up front.

▸ BGG FIELD REPORT — Video review — “X-COM in all the right ways”
Quick Setup
DM

Cthulhu: Death May Die

CMON · Co-op horror · 1–5 players

Summon the Elder God on purpose, then shoot it in the face. Fast setup, huge minis, and the best dice-mitigation system on this list.

The 1920s. The cultists have already won — the ritual is underway and an Elder God is clawing into our reality. Sane people would run. You are not sane people. Your band of damaged investigators crashes the summoning with dynamite and tommy guns, using your own madness as fuel, because a god halfway through a door is the only kind you can actually kill.

Complexity
●●●●● 2.2
Mission
~90 min
Replay
Massive
DICEEPISODESINSANITYEASY TEACH
◉ IN PRINT — Amazon / retail
▸ OPEN FILE

Why it fits

Episode × Elder God × investigator combinations mean no two nights repeat. Reviewers rave about setup speed, teachability, and "mind blowing" replay value.

Watchouts

Episodes are standalone — no persistent gear or XP carrying between sessions. It's your palate-cleanser night, not your campaign spine.

▸ BGG FIELD REPORT — Illustrated session review
Event Night
NM

Nemesis

Awaken Realms · Semi-co-op horror · 1–5 players

The king of hidden agendas. A derelict ship, evolving intruders, and the creeping certainty that Dave's objective involves your corpse.

You wake from cryosleep to alarms, a dead crewmate, and total amnesia about the last jump. The ship Nemesis is crippled, drifting, and something is moving in the vents — something that gets stronger the longer you take. Worse: everyone woke with sealed orders, and not all of them say 'get home safe.' Fix the engines, set the course, watch the intruders... and watch your friends.

Complexity
●●●●● 3.4
Mission
3+ hrs
Replay
High
HIDDEN GOALSBETRAYALCINEMATIC
◉ IN PRINT — Amazon / retail
▸ OPEN FILE

Why it fits

Your secret secondary missions, weaponized. Praised universally for tension, replayability, and production; every game produces a story you'll retell for months.

Forum intel

The killer thread: an experienced group with 20+ co-op plays, zero downtime, zero rules debates — and their games still run past the printed 90–180 minutes. Believe the box-plus.

Watchouts

Complexity drew criticism at launch. Player death is real and can come early. Schedule it as the marquee night, one mission, pizza ordered in advance.

▸ BGG FIELD REPORT — Illustrated review (Anatoli’s Game Room)
Assembly Req’d
AL

Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps

Gale Force Nine · Co-op survival · 1–6 players

Pulse rifles, motion trackers, Hadley's Hope. The shared Endurance deck — timer, hit points, and gear in one — is a genuinely brilliant mechanism.

Hadley's Hope went dark, and you're the marines sent down to find out why. What starts as a routine sweep of an empty terraforming colony becomes a fighting retreat through corridors that click and hiss — motion trackers screaming, ammo counters dropping, all the way down into the nest itself. It's the movie's second act stretched into a campaign: outnumbered, outclassed, and absolutely not leaving anyone behind.

Complexity
●●●●● 2.8
Mission
60–90 min
Replay
Moderate
LINKED CAMPAIGNSHARED DECKBUG HUNTS
◉ IN PRINT — recently reprinted, Amazon / retail
▸ OPEN FILE

Why it fits

Four missions link into a campaign where deck losses carry forward — how badly last mission went literally sets next mission's difficulty. Two standalone bug hunts for quick nights.

Watchouts

Reviewers report 3+ hours of miniature assembly with glue, broken tails, and regret. The rulebook is fiddly. Buy only if one of you enjoys the hobby side.

▸ BGG FIELD REPORT — Illustrated review (Above Board)
Deep Cut
GD

Galaxy Defenders

Ares Games · Co-op campaign · 1–5 players

The forum-favorite deep cut: agents vs. alien invasion with the smartest enemy AI of its era, from the team that later built Sword & Sorcery.

Near-future Earth, and the invasion arrives in waves — scouts, then hunters, then things with no name yet. Between humanity and extinction stands a single secret agency and its handful of enhanced agents. Across a branching interplanetary war, your team scavenges alien tech, upgrades between battles, and takes the fight from crashed saucer sites all the way to the enemy's home soil.

Complexity
●●●●● 3.2
Mission
90+ min
Replay
High
ENEMY AIBRANCHINGPERSISTENT XP
◉ OUT OF PRINT — eBay & BGG marketplace
▸ OPEN FILE

Why it fits

Branching campaign, persistent agent upgrades, and aliens that behave intelligently without a human running them. BGG threads rate its enemy AI among the best ever designed for a co-op tactical game — no human villain needed, no scripted predictability.

Watchouts

At your complexity ceiling and fiddly with it. Out of print; hunt the secondary market. Missions can run long.

▸ BGG FIELD REPORT — 7,300-word comprehensive review

// Denied & Watchlist

Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — gorgeous, fast, great loot loop, but the BGG record is unambiguous: a community "difficulty guide" thread exists solely to fix how easy it is. Only acquire if you'll house-rule from night one. You joined this club for tension.

Descent: Legends of the Dark — 3–4 hour app-driven sessions break the 60-minute doctrine badly. Denied.

Doom: The Board Game (2016) — thematically your closest cousin (corporate marines vs. demons, one-vs-many). Long out of print; watchlist only, pounce if a cheap copy appears.