Originally a Dragon magazine packin, Awful Green Things from Outer Space (AGTFOS) pits one players player as the motley crew of the starship Znutar while the other plays the eponymous Green Things (AGTs). The game is played on a single board divided into 50ish rooms:
Each character is represented by a chit:
The numbers in each corner are move, constitution, and attack dice. Move is in rooms, constitution is what the enemy has to roll over to kill your unit, attack dice is self explanatory.
So every turn the green things get to grow, move, attack, recover. So they get to chose of Eggs grow into Babies, Babies in to Adults, or Adults lay more eggs. Meaning a skillful AGT player can easily take over the map with overwhelming odds. But to combat this the crew has a wide variety of weapons. The thing is you do not know what the weapons do, until they are used on the first AGT. So you may get a gas grenade that has no effect, but a kitchen knife that does three dice worth of damage. As the game goes on it will become clear if the AGTs will take over the ship. If that is the case the crew can explode the ship and leave in a life boat (we view this as a tie).
Is there luck, absolutely
Is it a dice fest, you betcha
Is it thrilling when your pilot runs into a room with a fire extinguisher that is untested and gets the five dice to kill ability, absolutely.
For new players, the AGT is a much easier side to play, since they do win more often than not. But I have never had a bad game of it. The worst was when I shot at an adult and fragmented him, then hit the fragments with a fire extinguisher that caused them to grow to babies. This was more funny than annoying.
There are multiple versions of the game since original printing. I have the newest version and highly recommend it if you want a great 2 player super light wargame. Some of the most fun you can have for under $20. And thanks to never knowing how the weapons work, every game is different.
