It’s got some really good ideas. Having a bit more variety in the aliens is good. Having specific weapon vulnerabilities is excellent, means that you actually have to consider your loadout rather than just ‘everyone has laser rifles and a stun rod in their backpack’, and their behaviour is a bit more diverse too. The twister research tree is good in theory, and needing to capture more live aliens helps keep strategy diverse too.

The lesson to be learned from ‘it is a bit tedious fighting 90% of your battlefield missions across the same three farmhouses’ was unfortunately not ‘every level should consist of thousands of cubbyholes that you need to spend ages clearing out, and it’s very likely that you’ll get shanked walking around each corner’. Abandon the arctic environments that you just never see for a few more scout variants? I’d have paid for money for that DLC.

If you’re just wanting to play it, you don’t really need the models, do you? Couple of packets of the cheapest army men you can find in the toy shop will do it you want fancy pieces, but just folding a piece of card in half so that it stands upright and writing on it what it is will suffice.

3D printing would do very nicely for the one-off models that you don’t want to kitbash, of course. Also great for playing DnD with; another game where you’re not obliged to use the ‘genuine books’ to play either.