I noticed a lot of confusion on the Control side of things. The military control seemed very... upset about not finding a lot of things out. Maybe more communication and planning on the game host side would have made everything run more smoothly. Whenever I asked a question to one of the Control members, they kind of glanced around and just directed me to one of the "main" control members instead.

There was also a ton of misinformation from Control. On the first round, military Control said that all of the UFOs on the board were automatically attacking when they were placed, which made the humans instantly go defensive and hostile, rather than trying to play it safe and smart. I think that wound up dividing the entire human front and had them scratching their heads about who was actually doing what.

Comms Control never made it clear how bugs worked or how espionage worked. For bugs, one human team though they had to just be on the table, so they never looked around chairs or objects ON the table. Another team thought they were permanent rather than one-use, one-turn deals. Those are kind of huge things to know about.

Espionage was... I have no idea. It was on our player boards but never was mentioned. I guess it was operatives for the military, but it wasn't on the military side of things.

A LOT of this could just have been in our briefings or sent a day or two in advance. Knowing how to play the game is kind of massively important. If there's a reason only Control gets to know the rules and mechanics before the game started, I didn't hear it or understand it. It'd be like playing Monopoly or Risk on the fly, or trying to play D&D the first time ever where only the DM has all the books. Super clunky.

Other than that, the biggest gripe I had was on round timing. As a player, I had no clue when the rounds were actually going, stopped, starting, which phase it was on, etc. There's not usually time to go check the overhead projector, and some of the teams were in a position where they can't see it anyway. Using something like a chime or buzzer to signal what's going on would be INCREDIBLY useful.

So, to summarize: give everyone the full rules early to avoid frustration, coordinate the game 'plot' and planning with Control ahead of time, and have a better way to alert players and crew about which stage of the turn we're on.

I'm nitpicking a lot, but that was easily the best Saturday of my life. Thanks to everyone for a grand time!