Stats:
No. of players: 2-6
Amount of time to play: 60-120 min (depending on the scenario)
Age requirements: 14+
Set-up time: 5-10 min

The Black River Irregulars expansion adds new heroes, a 5 or 6 player count and epic heroes to the Undercity board game.

Black River Irregulars Description:

If you have not played The Undercity, you can get a basic understanding of the rules and gameplay by reading my review and overview of it here. This post is going to be about the new elements introduced in the Black River Irregulars expansion.

Black River Irregulars is a heroes expansion and there are four new heroes introduced. You can replace some or all of the heroes in the base game with these ones. The new heroes are a military officer named Colbie Sterling, an arcanist investigator, Eilish Garrity, a battle chaplain, Bastian Kinnet, and a pistoleer, Barl Blackheel.

Having more heroes gives you the option of playing with up to six players. Not much changes you use the four player Villain Action deck and if there are too many figures in a space and a villain gets the Rush action it attacks the closest hero instead.

There are new rules so heroes can also advance to Epic level. You can choose to go Epic whenever you like. Once you do you can no longer buy ability cards. But you may purchase up to three Epic Hero tokens for 15XP each. You may use an Epic Hero token at any time to heal two wounds, gain a die for attack, damage or challenge rolls, re-roll dice, reshuffle your Feat deck, reuse a one use card, move two spaces, draw Feat cards or make an attack.

A new one-shot scenario, Blood Sport, is included too. In it you must eliminate wave after wave of opponents and see how long you can survive.

Quick Review of the Black River Irregulars Expansion:

The Black River Irregulars expansion adds new hero options for the players and allows more people play. It also has a fun new scenario and options for higher leveling.

The components for this game are in line with those from the base set. They are excellent. Everything looks good on the table and the rules are easy to read and digest.

The new heroes let you explore different play styles, which is cool. The new heroes feel balanced when compared to those in the base set. They just let you do different things. But since they add up to two more players it makes them even more awesome.

Having a one-shot survival type scenario is nice too. It is a good way to test out the different heroes and figure out which work well together.

One thing I didn’t mention above is that this expansion is compatible for both the Undercity and the upcoming Widower’s Wood set. Having that extra flexibility is nice and will help you make good use of the new heroes.

If you enjoy the Undercity or want to play it with 5 or 6 players you should pick up the Black River Irregulars expansion. It adds some fun new heroes and a few new rules.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction 4 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6